The Abomination Page 19

  “Yes. It’s not in use, of course, and hasn’t been for decades.” He smiled faintly. “What was once spoken of approvingly by the Church as ‘self-discipline’ is now called ‘self-harm’ and treated accordingly. Proof, if you like, that we have indeed moved on.”

  She crouched down. The wall was discoloured and crumbling, but even so she could make out several rust-coloured spots a few inches above the ground.

  “These bloodstains don’t look that old to me, Father.”

  “The room has been used for butchering pigs, I believe. The drain makes it convenient for such things.”

  She stood up, feeling a little foolish. “Oh.”

  “Was there anything else. . .?”

  “Yes. I’d like to see a complete list of the patients who were here in the first week of January, please, together with their passport details,” she said, all pretence that this was not an interrogation abandoned.

  He spread his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, unless you bring a warrant. We want to cooperate with the police, naturally, but we also have a duty to preserve our patients’ confidentiality.”

  There was no chance whatsoever that Marcello would give her a warrant without any further evidence to support it, she knew. She suspected Father Uriel knew it too.

  “You seem suspicious, Captain Tapo,” he said gently. “Can I ask what it is that you suspect us of?”

  Caution, and the desire to provoke him, battled briefly. She said, “I think you lied to me about those stećak markings. I think you recognised them from the start.”

  “Ah.” Father Uriel had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “It’s true that it did occur to me they might be Croatian in origin. Although,” he added quickly, “I don’t think I actually lied. It was stupid of me not to tell you what I suspected, though. I should have realised that you would identify them sooner or later.”

  “Why didn’t you want to tell me what they were?”

  “These are difficult times for the Church. With respect, Captain, your own hostility and willingness to assume the very worst of us is mirrored, on a larger scale, in the wider world. I feared that if you drew an erroneous connection between what happened on Poveglia and the Church, this Institute might get dragged into your investigation. And it’s essential for our work that we keep a low profile.”

  “Many of your patients have committed criminal offences in their own countries,” she guessed. “Having the police wandering around might frighten them away.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  “In fact, let’s take that a step further. Many of the priests you treat here are women-haters of one sort or another. None of them would exactly be in favour of female priests, would they? You can see why I’ve good reason to be suspicious.”

  He looked her directly in the eye. “Captain, I accept that your victim may have been on Poveglia because she felt some misguided affinity with a previous patient of ours. But that’s as far as the connection goes. You’ve seen how remote we are here – there’s simply no way that a patient could go missing and commit a crime without our being aware of it. As a man of God, I promise you that if I had any evidence at all that linked a patient here, past or present, with your murders, I’d save you the trouble of a warrant and tell you. But I don’t.”

  Thirty-four

  ALDO PIOLA DROVE down to Chioggia, taking care to park some distance from the house he intended to visit. When Mareta Castiglione opened the door she recognised him and froze.

  “Can I come in?” he said quietly. After a moment she nodded and let him past. He noted that before closing the door she checked to see if any neighbours were watching.

  “No one saw me,” he said. “I just want to ask you some more questions about your husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “Let’s sit down, shall we?”

  Back at headquarters, Kat did some internet searches on the Institute of Christina Mirabilis. As she’d expected, information was scant. There was a bland, uninformative website – with no map, she noticed, no contact details other than an email address, and no explanation of what the hospital actually did.

  She clicked on a tab titled “Who we are” and read:

  The Institute is a privately funded charitable organisation generously supported by donors at home and abroad. We acknowledge in particular the longstanding support of the Companions of the Order of Melchizedek.

  That was all. She ran another search, this time for the “Order of Melchizedek”. There were a number of links, mostly to pages pointing out that Melchizedek was the first priest mentioned in the Old Testament, and that all priests were thus sometimes said to belong to his Order. There were several organisations with similar-sounding names, but most seemed distinctly amateur. None had links to the Institute of Christina Mirabilis.

  Then she came across a website that, though light on content, had clearly been professionally designed. A symbol at the top caught her eye. The upper half was a conventional Christian cross, but the lower half resembled a sword, the down-beam transformed into a short, stubby blade. She’d noticed a pin of a similar design in Father Uriel’s lapel.

  The Companions of the Order of Melchizedek are dedicated to promoting and defending the highest personal and moral standards amongst the priesthood. “The Lord has sworn, and He shall not repent: thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek” – Psalms 110:4.

  Admission to the Order is by invitation only. There are twelve degrees, each of which must be fulfilled before the candidate progresses to the next.

  “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil” – Romans 13:4

  That was all. She tried clicking on individual words, but none contained links. A “Contact us” button looked hopeful, but led only to a blank page and the words “Under Construction”.

  If the Companions of the Order of Melchizedek were funding an entire private asylum, their resources must be vast. That wasn’t in itself suspicious – quasi-religious organisations such as the Knights of Malta and the Red Cross of Constantine were, she knew, able to raise huge amounts from those attracted to their particular blend of ceremony, snobbery and charity. But those organisations – she checked, to be certain – had thousands of individual webpages devoted to their work.

  Even so, there was nothing here which implicated the Institute in any wrongdoing. Perhaps Father Uriel had been right: she was inherently hostile towards the Church, and as a consequence was willing evidence into existence rather than following a genuine trail.

  Piola hated doing it, but he had no choice.

  “But I think you knew, Mareta,” he persisted. “I think you knew about the girls he brought in on his boat. A woman always knows, doesn’t she? I think you knew that was how he got paid sometimes. That he went with the girls for nothing.”

  She was already crying, but now she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head so violently that tears flew through the air, like a dog shaking water from its fur.

  “What I’m looking for is proof,” he went on relentlessly. “Something I can show a prosecutor.”

  “There’s nothing,” she gasped.

  “Nothing? Or nothing you can tell me? Mareta, I understand there are some things it’s not safe to talk about. But girls who go with other women’s husbands? They’re nothing but sluts. Why protect them?”

  “I found a film,” she said.

  The instant she said it, he knew that this was it, this was the breakthrough he’d been looking for. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “What sort of film?”

  “A disc. Him. With one of those . . . those creatures.”

  “What creatures, Mareta?”

  “My husband. And a . . . a whore.”

  “How much did you watch?”

  “A few seconds. It was enough.”

  “Did you tell him you’d seen it?”

  Mutely, she shook her he
ad.

  “So what happened to the film? What did you do with it, Mareta?”

  “I put it back.”

  “Yes? Where?” If she’d returned it to its hiding place and never told her husband she’d seen it, there was a slim chance it might still be there.

  Her eyes went to the floor.

  Piola pushed back the rug with the edge of his shoe. One floorboard had no nails in it. He got down on his knees and pulled it up. It was stiff; he had to get out his car keys to lever it free.

  In a cavity under the board were two fat bags of white powder. And a disc. No markings, no title.

  He left the drugs where they were and stood up with the disc in his hand, careful to hold it by the edges. “Well done, Mareta. You’ve done the right thing.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she said in a dull voice. “Please, Colonel. It’s too dangerous. Ricci always kept his mouth shut. He wouldn’t even talk to a priest usually, and then look what happened. . .”

  “I’ll have to write this up, just like any other evidence. But only the prosecutor will see my report.”

  She shook her head and moaned. “No. . .”

  “Mareta, I have to take it.”

  “I’m not letting you have it. Give it back.” She made a sudden grab for the disc.

  “Mareta, listen to me,” he said, taking an evidence bag from his pocket and slipping the disc inside. “I’m taking this film because I think it could be evidence of a crime. I think the girl you saw your husband having sex with may have been unwilling. That’s why, legally, I’m entitled to take it. It’s called ‘reasonable grounds’. Do you understand?”

  “No, no, no,” she keened. She began to slap her own face, whether in grief or rage at her own stupidity in telling him about the disc he couldn’t say. “You mustn’t take it. They’ll kill me.”

  “I’ll keep it safe.”

  “I know what you want.” She stared at him, wide eyed. “Of course you do. Take the drugs. Just not the film. I’ll. . .”

  “You’ll what, Mareta?”

  “I’ll go upstairs with you,” she whispered. “That’s better than any film, isn’t it? The real thing.”

  He felt an unbearable sadness. Standing up, he said gently, “I have to go now. I promise I’ll keep it safe.”

  She pushed her hands over her eyes and let out a terrible wail. As he left the room, all he could see of her was black hair cascading over her face and those two hands, beating a savage rhythm against her own flesh.

  At Campo San Zaccaria he went straight to his office and put the film into his computer, ignoring Kat, who was trying to catch his eye through the glass.

  For a moment the metal whirred uselessly in the disc drive and he thought he was going to have to call a technician to come and make it work. Then it started. He forced himself to watch for several minutes with the sound turned down.

  Kat knocked and entered all in one movement and he jumped to pause it.

  “What’s that?” she asked curiously.

  “Don’t look. Please, Kat. I don’t want you to watch it.”

  “Why not?”

  He made a hopeless gesture. “It’s Ricci Castiglione. With a girl.” He took a breath. “I thought maybe he’d filmed himself with one of them. But it’s worse than that.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s one of the videos they use to . . . keep the girls docile.”

  “Let me see.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Because I’m a woman, or because I’m your lover?” she said, her voice low but furious.

  “Because I want to protect you from filth like this,” he muttered.

  “Filth is our job.” Without waiting for him to answer, she reached past him and pressed “Play”, swivelling the screen so they could both see.

  “Oh my God,” she said after a few moments. “This is clearly rape.”

  He nodded. “Mareta must have known that. But maybe he was the same with her. Some men . . . they end up thinking this is the way it’s meant to be. Some women too, when it’s all they’ve ever had.”

  She reached out and paused the image again. “You were right. I probably didn’t need to see it. But now that I have seen it, I’m going to watch it all, with the sound up, to see if there are any clues, anything at all, that could help us identify the girl or the place where it happened.”

  “Kat, you realise what this means, don’t you? I think we’ve found a pipeline. Poveglia’s how they bring the stuff in – cigarettes, drugs, guns, even girls. I’ll bet they use a number of fishermen like Ricci for the last leg, to avoid suspicion. If we play this carefully, we may be able to roll it up section by section – first this end, then back to Eastern Europe. We might even get to some of the big players at last, the money men who sit in their nice houses and never get their hands dirty.”

  “It’s not a new pipeline, either,” she said slowly. “Remember Martina Duvnjak? She was smuggled into Italy from Croatia, on her way to the Vatican. Her journey ended on Poveglia.”

  “That would make sense. Though in those days organised crime was all about trafficking goods into Eastern Europe, of course, not out of it. Back then a pair of Levi’s or a Sony Walkman changed hands in Moscow for five times its Western price.”

  “Walkmans – they were a bit like iPods, weren’t they?” she said mischievously, glancing at him. “Only not as good?”

  “So let’s say the supply chain operates in both directions,” he continued, getting to his feet and pacing. “And that it’s been running for decades. My God!” He stopped. “I wonder. . .”

  “What?”

  “You remember I told you that one of my very first investigations was a death on Poveglia? A young doctor. His body was found at the foot of the clock tower, full of drugs. But it didn’t really make sense – he had no history of drug taking, and it seemed strange that he’d have injected himself with hallucinogens. At the time people were saying he must have gone mad. But what if he’d simply seen something he shouldn’t have, and was silenced?” He shook his head. “Poor devil.”

  “Where does this leave Jelena Babić and Barbara Holton?”

  “I’m still of the view that they wandered into something on Poveglia they couldn’t possibly have anticipated, and paid the price.”

  “And I still think there’s more to it than that.” She told him about her visit that morning to the Institute. “If it was the Order of Melchizedek who locked Martina Duvnjak up on Poveglia, maybe they’re somehow connected to the pipeline too,” she concluded.

  “The Catholic Church working with organised crime? That’s a little far-fetched, surely?”

  They were splitting along gender lines, she realised. To him, the Mafia connection was the bigger prize. To her, proving that the Church had in some way sanctioned the murder of a female priest was more important.

  “Let’s not argue,” he said softly.

  She shook her head. “No. Let’s not.”

  “We’ll leave early and eat near your place – somewhere we don’t have to think about work.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “I’ll cook. Perhaps some bigoli with ragù? But it may not be early.” She ejected Ricci’s disc from Piola’s computer. “I still intend to go through this video frame by frame.”

  Later Piola looked up and saw Kat make a note, carefully, as she peered at something on the screen.

  She’s tougher than I am, he realised. Less romantic, less likely to get carried away.

  Why she was sharing her bed with him he had no idea. He still didn’t know whether he dared tell her how deeply he was falling in love with her.

  One reason he’d gone back to tackle Mareta Castiglione on his own that afternoon, without Kat as backup, was that he’d known he’d have to lean on the widow, go in hard about Ricci screwing other women. He wasn’t sure he could have done that in front of Kat. He’d have hated for her to see him being a bully. Not to mention a hypocrite. What was it he’d said
to Mareta? Girls who go with other women’s husbands? They’re nothing but sluts. He hadn’t meant it, of course, but he doubted he could have uttered those words in Kat’s hearing.

  He caught her eye through the glass wall of his office. Not long now, he told her silently in his head. A few more hours, and we’ll be in bed together.

  Thirty-five

  HOLLY BOLAND APPROACHED the Education Centre with a box file stashed neatly under her arm. Once inside, she went to the room where Ian Gilroy taught his class on Italian Military History.

  There were no other attendees. Gilroy had made sure of that. It was the perfect way to make contact with him: anyone looking through the glass panel in the door would see only a teacher in civilian clothes, and a solitary student seated in the first row.

  “I can teach you how to do by-the-book dead-letter drops if you’d prefer,” he’d joked. “But if a US Army base isn’t a secure debriefing venue, where is?”

  Now she had to tell him that the US Army base was itself part of the trail.

  “I went down to Camp Darby, as you suggested,” she said, opening up her file. “Most of the documents from 1995 had already been destroyed, but I found these older ones – this is a set for you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, taking them and spreading them on the desk. It could have been any academic receiving a student’s paper.

  “Looking through, I noticed that one name kept cropping up. Here, for example, and here.” She pointed. “Villem Bakerom.”

  “That name’s not familiar to me.”

  “Nor me. And when I ran it through Intellipedia, it didn’t ring any bells either. Then I thought, why not try putting it into Google Translate? Turns out it’s the same as this name that’s already in the file in English – here.” She showed him.

  “William Baker?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And who exactly do we think this William Baker might be?”

  “That’s the problem – I’ve no idea,” she confessed. “I’ve checked all the databases I can think of – Inprocessing, the dental centre, even the auto repair shop. There’s no record of any military personnel of that name. No civilian employee, either. But whoever he was, he was at Camp Ederle a lot – look at all these dates. He seems to have organised one large meeting in particular – it’s here in the documents, Srpanj 1 – 4 Devetnaest Devedeset Tri. That is, July 1st to 4th 1993. The location is given in the Croatian documents as Kamp Ederle, Italija. But after that, I draw a blank. I can only assume William Baker was his cover name.”