The Abomination Page 2

  She dug an ID card out of her pocket and held it up. “Capitano Tapo, sir. I’ve been assigned to the case.”

  “You’d better come across, then.”

  She hesitated for only a moment, he noticed, before pulling off her boots and wading barefoot towards him. He caught a flash of red paint on her toenails as she put her foot into the murk.

  “Last time I saw someone try that in Venice,” Hapadi said cheerfully, “they cut their feet to ribbons. Broken glass under the water.”

  The capitano ignored him. “Any identification on him, sir?” she asked Piola.

  “Not yet. And we were just remarking on the fact that our victim is not in fact a him.”

  Tapo’s eyes darted warily to the body, but Piola noticed that she didn’t cross herself as he had. These youngsters didn’t always have the ingrained Catholicism he’d struggled so hard to shake off. “Could it be some stupid joke?” she said hesitantly. “It’s La Befana, after all.”

  “Perhaps. But it should be the other way round really, shouldn’t it?” In Venice, where any excuse for dressing up was always seized on, La Befana was celebrated with fancy dress; not least by the boatmen and manual workers, who put on women’s clothing for the day.

  Squatting down beside the body much as Piola had done a few minutes earlier, Kat scrutinised it carefully. “This looks real, though.” Gently, she tugged a chain out from under the robes. A silver cross dangled from the end of it.

  “Perhaps it’s not hers,” Piola said. “Anyway, first things first, Captain. Establish a perimeter, start a visitor log, and when the dottore here is finished with his photographs, make arrangements for the corpse to be removed to the mortuary. In the meantime I want screens and an evidence shelter – we don’t want the good citizens of Venice any more alarmed than absolutely necessary.” It went without saying that it would be the fact that the dead woman was defiling a priest’s robes that would cause the alarm, not just the fact that she’d been murdered.

  “Of course, sir. Shall I call you when the body’s at the mortuary?”

  “Call me?” Piola seemed surprised. “I’ll be going with it. Chain of evidence, Capitano. I was the first officer at the scene, so I stay with the corpse.”

  If that was impressive – Kat’s last supervising officer had usually knocked off for the day not long after the end of his extended lunch break, telling her to “call with any developments” while switching his phone off even before he’d reached the door – it was nothing compared to what happened when the State Police turned up, their launch idling over to where Hapadi was packing up his kit. Kat was blue with cold now, the freezing water eating into her very bones; when she saw the words “Polizia di Stato” her first reaction was one of relief.

  An officer stepped out of the boat, immaculately dressed for the occasion in police-blue fishing waders. “Sovrintendente Otalo,” he said, introducing himself. “Many thanks, Colonel, we’ll take it from here.”

  Piola barely glanced at him. “Actually, this one’s ours.”

  Otalo shook his head. “It’s been decided at a higher level. We’ve got some spare capacity at the moment.”

  I bet you have, Kat thought. She stayed quiet, waiting to see how Piola would handle this.

  Visitors to Italy are often surprised to discover that there are a number of separate police forces, of which the largest are the Polizia di Stato, answering to the Interior Ministry, and the Carabinieri, answering to the Ministry of Defence. Effectively they operate in competition, right down to having two different emergency numbers, a system which the Italian government claims keeps both organisations on their toes, and which Italian citizens are aware is actually a recipe for muddle, corruption and bureaucratic incompetence. Even so, it was a source of pride to Kat and her colleagues that most people preferred to dial 112 for the Carabinieri, rather than 113 for their civilian counterparts.

  Piola did look at Otalo now, his glance one of barely concealed contempt. “Until my generale di divisione says I’m off this case, I’m on it,” he said. “Anyone who tries to tell me otherwise is obstructing an investigation, and may well get themselves arrested.”

  The other man looked equally disdainful. “All right, all right. Keep your precious body, if it’s so important to you.” He shrugged. “I’ll get back to my nice warm station house.”

  “If you wanted to be helpful, you could lend us your boat,” Piola suggested.

  “Exactly,” the man agreed. “If I wanted to be helpful. Ciao, then.” He stepped back into the launch, saluting ironically as the boat reversed into the canal.

  At about three in the morning it started to snow; fat, wet flakes as big as butterflies that melted as soon as they settled on the salty water. The snow turned to slush in Kat’s hair, chilling her still further. Glancing at Piola, she saw that his entire head glittered, from his scalp down to his stubble, as if decked in a carnival mask. Only on the corpse did the snow not melt, gradually covering the dead woman’s open eyes and forehead with a white, blank gesso.

  Kat shivered yet again. Her first murder, and it was going to be a strange one, she could tell that already. A woman in a priest’s robes. A desecration, right here on the steps of Santa Maria of Health. You didn’t have to be standing in freezing salt water for that to send a chill right into your soul.

  Two

  THE YOUNG WOMAN coming out of the baggage hall at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport shortly before 7 a.m. looked very different from the other passengers who had arrived on Delta flight 102 that morning. Where they were dressed for vacations or business trips, she was wearing the combat fatigues that, since the declaration of the war on terror, all American military personnel were encouraged to wear on commercial flights as a gesture of reassurance to other travellers. Where their hair was tousled from catching some sleep on the red-eye from JFK, she had already ensured that her blonde locks conformed to US Army regulation AR670 (“Females will ensure their hair is neatly groomed, and does not present a ragged, unkempt, or extreme appearance . . . Long hair that falls naturally below the bottom edge of the collar will be neatly and inconspicuously fastened or pinned”). Where they wheeled suitcases with extending handles, or piled their luggage onto airport trolleys, she carried hers on her back, a bulging Molle field-pack so large it seemed remarkable she didn’t overbalance with its weight. And while they clustered around the waiting travel reps, or scanned the milling crowd for drivers holding up name cards, she turned right, walking confidently – with a parade-ground gait she was by now entirely unconscious of – past the coffee shop and the Hertz rental office to where a booth tucked down an inconspicuous side corridor bore the acronym “LNO – SETAF”.

  Behind the counter was a man her own age, also wearing grey US fatigues. He returned her salute with a friendly “Welcome, Second Lieutenant”, turning an electronic card-reader towards her so she could swipe her CAC card. “You’ve timed it well. The shuttle bus leaves at 0800, and it looks like you’ll have it to yourself. Once you get to Ederle, report to Inprocessing. I’ll notify your sponsor you’re en route.”

  Nodding her thanks, she made her way to the car park, which to her delight was lightly dusted with snow. A white minibus was parked to one side, engine running. It too was marked only by the acronym “SETAF” in small letters on the front doors. The US Military tried to keep its presence here relatively low key: even unscrambled from its acronym, “Southern European Task Force” sounded suitably generic.

  The driver, a private, jumped out to help with her bags. Taking in his passenger’s face – which was kind of geeky for a blonde, but not without charm – as well as the newness of her second lieutenant’s tabs, he decided to chance a conversation.

  “Welcome to Venice, ma’am. TDY or PCS?” Meaning: Temporary Deployment or a Permanent Change of Station?

  “PCS,” she said with an eager smile. “The whole four years.”

  “Awesome. Must be your first foreign posting, right? Ever visited OCONUS before?”

 
OCONUS – that was military-speak for Outside the Contiguous United States. To many soldiers, she knew, OCONUS was just as much of a place as Utah or Texas. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, given that their experiences of all three ended up being remarkably similar.

  “First foreign posting,” she agreed. “But actually I was raised here.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Army brat?”

  “Affirmative. My dad was in the 173rd. Camp Darby, down at Pisa.”

  “Speak any Italian?”

  She nodded. “In realtà, lo parlo piuttosto bene.”

  “Neat,” he said, clearly not understanding a word. “Listen, I’m not meant to do this, but since you’re the only passenger, want to take off now and get a tour en route? There’s a great view of Venice if we go by the coast road, and we’ll still arrive on schedule. Ederle’s only about fifty minutes away.”

  She knew he simply wanted an opportunity to flirt with her, and a part of her recognised that as an officer, even one with the greenest and most lowly of rankings, she should probably say no. But another part of her was euphoric at finally getting back to the country where she’d done her growing up. She’d found it hard even to walk past the airport coffee shop without pausing to go inside – a proper coffee shop! At last! With a real zinc counter to lean against while you threw your espresso down your throat, rather than the faux-college-library atmosphere and gigantic cappuccinos of Starbucks or Tully’s! Even before that, on the plane, she’d pressed her forehead to the window when the seatbelt sign came on, eager after so long for a glimpse of Italy. It hadn’t been a particularly auspicious one – from the glorious dawn sunshine of altitude they’d struggled shakily down through cloud, the window becoming flecked with ice, before emerging above a grey, cold-looking lagoon dotted with islands. For a moment she’d had the strange sensation that she was actually in a submarine, dropping towards a dark seabed, rather than flying. But the plane was still turning, and just for a moment Venice – that magical, extraordinary island – had been tantalisingly visible beneath her, buildings and canals crowded into its ridiculously small area, as intricate as a piece of coral or the inner workings of a watch.

  “OK,” she said suddenly. “Why not?”

  The private grinned, certain it was him, not the promised view of Venice, which had swung the decision. “Outstanding. What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Boland. Second Lieutenant Holly Boland.” And then, because the place and the soil seemed to demand it, she added, “Mi chiamo Holly Boland.”

  Despite taking her along the coast road, where the views of Venice across the water – “Regularly voted world’s most romantic,” he assured her – were just as remarkable as he had promised, Private Billy Lewtas’s talk was all of their destination. Caserma Ederle, or Camp Ederle as he called it, had everything a soldier might need, right there on post. The PX was no ordinary store but a whole shopping mall, with a 24-hour supermarket, various clothing concessions including American Apparel and Gap, and a flower shop for those – like him – who liked to give a girl a nice gift after a date. There was a twelve-bay auto repair centre specialising in Chryslers, Fords and other vehicles unfamiliar to Italian mechanics. There was an 800-bed hospital; four bars – including the Crazy Bull, the Lion’s Den, and the “outstanding” Joe Dugan’s; a bowling alley, movie theatre, sports arena, high school, three American banks, five restaurants serving everything from French fries to pulled pork, a Burger King . . . even an Italian gift shop, so that you could buy mementoes of your deployment abroad without actually leaving the post. Best of all, he enthused, was the proximity of the Alps – look, they were visible right now, if you looked high enough, with that great coating of snow – where the military maintained its own cadre of skiing instructors for their exclusive use.

  Holly had an idea that it was actually the Dolomites, not the Alps, that rose in the distance, but chose not to correct him. She was obliged to live on-post for six weeks – had in fact already been assigned a room in the rather unmilitary-sounding Ederle Inn Hotel – but after that she’d be free to move off-base, into private housing around Vicenza. Six weeks wasn’t so long to wait. Until then she would drink Miller and Budweiser in Joe Dugan’s, and probably even go on dates with, and accept flowers from, men like him, although not – if she could help it – after a visit to Burger King.

  She turned her head to the window, drinking in every Italian street sign and licence plate, every expressive gesture of the drivers and passers-by. A teenager on his way to school, steering his moped with ridiculously exaggerated panache through the crawling morning traffic, carried a raven-haired girl on his pillion. Neither was wearing a helmet: the girl was facing backwards, the better to eat the hot slice of pizza that was folded a fazzoletto, like a handkerchief, in her right hand. The boy shouted something back to her; she looked up, her brown eyes alive and dancing. With a pang of mingled yearning and exultation, Second Lieutenant Holly Boland recognised herself, a decade younger, speeding through Pisa on the back of her first boyfriend’s Vespa.

  “This is it,” Private Lewtas said.

  She became aware that they were driving alongside a long, unmarked wall of bomb-resistant concrete. It was, however, hardly anonymous, being covered in long, looping scrawls of graffiti. “NO DAL MOLIN” she read, and “US ARMY GO HOME”. There were people milling by the roadside – civilians, some dressed in outlandish clown-like costumes, while others were holding placards with more slogans. When they saw the minibus they shook them fiercely.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Oh, this is nothing. Weekends we get hundreds, sometimes thousands of these guys. Camp Ederle’s scheduled to double in size over the next few years, and some of the locals ain’t too happy.”

  “What’s Dal Molin?”

  “The airfield we’re expanding onto.”

  The bus slowed briefly at the gate, Lewtas exchanging swift salutes with the guards as the barrier was raised. Most of the guards were carabinieri, she noticed, Italian military police, working alongside an American MP.

  “You’d think the ginzos would be more grateful we’re here, protecting them,” he said as they pulled over inside the gate to have their IDs checked. “Welcome to Camp Ederle, ma’am.”

  In front of her was a town – or rather, a fortified town-within-a-town, its boundaries marked by that bomb-resistant wall that ran in either direction as far as the eye could see. Italian street signs were replaced by American ones; right now they were on the junction of Main Street and Eighth. Crosswalk poles in English instructed pedestrians to “Walk” or “Don’t Walk”. Most people wore army fatigues, and military vehicles alternated with Buicks and Fords.

  “Hey, Inprocessing’s just about a hundred yards down. I can drop you right outside. They’ll give you a map, by the way – everyone gets lost to begin with. This place is huge.” He turned round a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes fluttered on a pole. “Do you want to give me your number? Oh, I forgot, you won’t have a European phone yet.” Pulling up, he scribbled something on a piece of card and handed it to her. “I believe I’m free on Saturday night.”

  As she stepped off the shuttle bus, still a little amused by Private Lewtas’s self-confidence, Holly Boland still saw only a vast military encampment of anonymous buildings, similar to every other US army post she’d ever been on. There was nothing to make her suspect that what happened in this place would soon test, and stretch, loyalties she didn’t even know she had.

  Three

  THE BODY WAS in the mortuary at last, where Kat was barely any warmer, the morgue being kept at a constant nine degrees in order to prevent its occupants’ flesh from corrupting during the long Italian summers. Piola still hadn’t relinquished custody, and Kat, determined not to be outdone in stamina, intended to stay with him until he did, even though the colonel had suggested several times that she go home and get some sleep, not to mention some proper clothes.

  The mortuary technician, a man called Spatz
, was explaining why identification was going to be difficult.

  “See here,” he said, lifting the dead woman’s left wrist in his own blue-gloved hands. “Salt water does terrible things. Fingerprints will be almost impossible.”

  “Is there anything you can do to enhance them?”

  “We can glove her.”

  “Better do it then.” Piola glanced at Kat. “Know what gloving is, Capitano?”

  “No, sir,” she confessed.

  “Spatz will peel the skin from the victim’s fingers and stretch it onto a hand cast.” He nodded to where four or five wooden hands of different sizes, like glove-makers’ mannequins, stood on a shelf. “Standard practice where a corpse has been in seawater, and something we have to do quite often in this waterlogged city of ours. In future, if you hear something you don’t understand, ask, OK? This is your first homicide, but I expect you to be able to run the next one on your own.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said awkwardly.

  “Now go home and get a couple of hours’ rest. This time I mean it. And next time we meet, I don’t want to see quite so much of your legs.” His smile – the lines beside his eyes falling into a well-worn pattern, like a fan – robbed the words of any offence, even before he added, “They’re a distraction, quite frankly, and I’m a happily married man.”

  “Colonel?” Spatz said softly behind them. Piola turned. The technician was still holding the corpse’s arm. The sleeve of the robe had fallen back, revealing something on the woman’s right forearm, just above the wrist. Both officers went to examine it, Kat holding back a little since she was technically disobeying an order not to be there.

  It was some kind of tattoo. Dark blue and barely more sophisticated than a child’s drawing, it resembled a circle with lines coming out of it to represent the sun – except that in this case there was something inside the sun as well, a motif like a kind of extended asterisk.