The Abomination Read online

  “Well, if you’re a carabiniere, you can show me some ID, can’t you?” the owner said reasonably.

  Kat caught the sound of an outboard from around the corner. “I’ll be back,” she said, turning towards it.

  The yard owner shrugged. Then he heard it too. “Hey! What’s—”

  The boat came into view, passing the two of them at speed. Without hesitating, Kat jumped, landing neatly in the prow.

  “Nice,” Holly said, opening up the throttle.

  “I’m a Venetian. We don’t fall over in boats.”

  Behind them, the boatyard owner reached for his cell phone. Then he hesitated. If she was a carabiniere, reporting it stolen might be the wrong thing to do. He’d check up the line before he did anything else.

  Seventy-one

  IN THE MCI surveillance room, an orderly turned to the suited man at the observation desk and said quietly, “Sir, Mr Gilroy’s requesting videocon.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Good day to you, General,” Gilroy said courteously as his face appeared on the screen.

  “Mr Gilroy.” There was just the faintest inflection on that “Mister”. None of the men in the observation room were still in the military, but they carried their former ranks with them like invisible limbs. To be plain “Mister” meant you were either a civilian or a spook, neither of which categories of person the general had much time for. “How’s the weather in Venice?”

  “Oh, it’s a beautiful day,” Gilroy assured him. “Good flying weather, in fact. Although I believe I can spot a few clouds on the horizon.”

  The general glanced at the sensor screens. “So can I, Mr Gilroy. So can I.”

  “In fact, you’re probably wondering why you can’t see very much at all right now,” Gilroy said bluntly.

  “We do seem to have lost sight of our objectives,” the general admitted.

  “I can tell you where your quarry is going.”

  The general’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you wanted them safe and sound.”

  “I did. Because I wanted them to lead us to the girl. But once we’ve established where she is. . .” Gilroy let the words tail off. “But please, no more loud bangs. Do you have someone nearby who can clean this up for us?”

  “Our man never left the city. How solid is your intelligence?”

  “It comes from someone close to the women. He’s cooperating with me.”

  “You must be very persuasive, Mr Gilroy.”

  “It’s what I do,” Gilroy said flatly. “I find that if you give people a good enough reason to help you, they generally oblige. Does your man have a boat?”

  “He can get one.”

  “Tell him to go out to the lagoon. I’ll relay further instructions when he’s on the water.” Gilroy disconnected without waiting for the general to say any more.

  Seventy-two

  NEITHER KAT NOR Holly spoke much as they headed across the lagoon. The tiny outboard protested with a high-pitched whine at the speed it was being asked to do. Icy water exploded in their faces every time they crashed down onto a wave.

  Eventually they came within sight of their goal, and Holly slowed.

  “The jetty’s pretty rotten,” Kat said, remembering. “We can tie up by the shore.”

  They cut the engine, and suddenly everything was very quiet. Waves sucked at the boat’s keel. They tied up and jumped onto the concrete.

  “The old hospital’s over there,” Kat said, pointing. “Through the trees.”

  “It looks like it’s derelict.”

  “We’ll try the tower. That’s where the fisherman said he saw lights.”

  They pushed their way through the hospital’s broken front door. The authorities still hadn’t bothered to come and board up the windows. There was the same debris lying on the floor, the same graffiti on the walls.

  “Melina!” Kat hollered. “Melina!” After a moment Holly joined in, the two of them calling at the top of their voices.

  Holly held up her hand for silence. “I think I heard something.”

  They listened. A bat see-sawed past their heads, tumbling over itself in a frantic effort to get past them to the door.

  “Melina!” Holly shouted again.

  And then they heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and in front of them stood a dark-haired young woman.

  Seventy-three

  “MELINA KOVAČEVIĆ?” Kat said gently.

  The young woman nodded.

  “I’m an officer of the Carabinieri, and this is a friend of mine. We’ve come to take you somewhere safe.” Fear flashed in the girl’s eyes, and Kat added hastily, “Don’t worry. From now on, one of us will stay with you all the time. We know you’ve been in danger. Have you been here all along?”

  “Jelena brought me here,” the girl said in broken Italian. “She said it was a safe place. I didn’t know it would be so cold.”

  So Melina had been here for over three weeks, living off the Pop-Tarts and tinned chickpeas the older women had bought for her. Mentally, Kat kicked herself for not having realised at the time what those supermarket receipts in the women’s hotel room, and the smell of fires here on Poveglia, had meant.

  “When the police came – me and my boss, and the forensic team – why didn’t you give yourself up?” she asked.

  “Barbara said not to trust the police.” Melina was silent a moment. “I thought Barbara would come to get me. She said she would. Then my phone battery ran out.”

  “I’m afraid Barbara’s dead,” Kat said, as gently as she could. “And presumably you know about Jelena.”

  “I was here,” she whispered. “I saw the man kill her, right in the middle of Mass. He didn’t see me, but I saw him drag her to the sea.”

  “Did you get a good look at him? Would you know him again?”

  “I think so. It was dark, but there was a moon.”

  “Do you know who he was, Melina?”

  She shook her head. It was not the moment, Kat decided, for explaining exactly what relation Bob Findlater was to her. “Let’s get you back to Venice. Do you have any things here? Clothes? A bag?”

  “Just my sleeping bag. It’s upstairs.” She glanced sideways at Kat. “I had to burn things to keep warm.”

  “Don’t worry. No one will care. They should have knocked this place down years ago.”

  They went with her to get her sleeping bag. It was marginally less derelict up there, but without heating the nights must have been bitterly cold. It occurred to Kat that without more supplies of food, a phone battery, or a way of getting off the island, Melina would probably have ended up dying on Poveglia.

  It was as they were coming down again and making for the front door that a dark figure stepped out from a doorway behind them and said, “Stop.”

  They turned. Findlater was holding his pistol two-handed, his body aligned precisely behind it, knees slightly bent. He looked both alert and relaxed, like someone who had stood that way many times before.

  “I’m surprised at you, Second Lieutenant Boland,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” Holly said warily.

  “First rule of hostile territory. Secure a perimeter and your exfiltration point. You’re a disgrace to the US Military.”

  Holly didn’t reply.

  “I want all three of you outside. Assume the captive position on the terrace. That means kneeling, hands behind your head. Don’t look round, don’t look at each other, don’t talk, or I’ll shoot you immediately. Go.”

  They did as they were told. As she knelt on the cold stone, Kat felt her arms lifted from behind, something soft and rubbery looping itself over and around her wrists.

  “We call these Guantanamo restraints,” Findlater’s voice said conversationally in her ear. “Gitmos for short. No matter how much you struggle, they won’t leave a mark.”

  He moved along to Holly and did the same to her. Melina he left until last: Kat heard her gasp in pain.

  “You don’t get the gitmos, daughter deares
t,” Findlater observed. “’Cause you don’t need them. Plain old ratchet ties for you.”

  He came back over to Kat and Holly. “You two, stand up and come with me.”

  He made them walk at gunpoint through the bushes to the shore. Kat risked one glance back. Melina was lying on her side, her arms and legs immobilised. Why separate us? Kat thought.

  Then, with a sudden chill of understanding, she realised why. It didn’t matter whether Melina had bruises on her wrists or not because her body, with its incriminating DNA, was never going to be found. He’d kill her, take her out to the lagoon and dump her, properly weighted this time.

  Why he wasn’t planning the same for Holly and her, she had no idea.

  She soon found out.

  “Onto the jetty, you two,” he ordered. “Careful now. If you go through it you’ll drown for sure. That’s it. Now lie down on your sides.”

  Kat felt him step onto the jetty, gingerly picking his way across the rotten boards. Then he yanked her bound wrists and fastened them with another tie to one of the sturdier posts that supported the structure.

  “High water tonight,” he said conversationally. “Which, as we know, washes bodies from this location right into Venice. Including yours.” Standing over her, he put a boot on Kat’s head and rolled it to and fro, thoughtfully, like a football. “The tide will reach about a foot higher than this, I reckon. I’ll stick around, watch you both drown, then I’ll just take off the gitmos and let you float back to town. Seawater in your lungs, and not a mark on you. Boating accident.” With his boot he rolled Kat’s head some more, pressing down on her cheek until she was forced to look up at him. “Question is, how shall I amuse myself in the meantime? Shame I can’t mark that pretty face. But perhaps there’s another way of having some fun.”

  The boot left her head and roughly sought out her crotch, pushing her thighs apart, making her hiss with pain as he leant his weight on her groin. “Indeed, I think there might be,” he said. “Good thing I bought a condom. We wouldn’t want any pesky DNA to be found at your autopsy, would we?”

  He reached into his shirt pocket. “So, which one’s it to be? The brunette or the blonde? Or even my pretty little Bosnian daughter? Hmm, it’s a tough one. Oh, what’s this?”

  Crouching down, he flashed something in front of her eyes. A small blue packet.

  “Would you believe it?” he breathed. “Looks like I’ve bought a pack of three. Everyone gets lucky. But I think, just for novelty, my daughter gets it first.”

  Kat felt him lean in close, scrutinising her face, looking for the fear and revulsion in her eyes. She shut them so that he wouldn’t have the satisfaction. Felt his breath on her cheek. He chuckled.

  “Now you know what it was like in Bosnia,” he whispered. “The strong or the weak. Life or death. Pleasure or pain. No rules. It’s beautifully simple, really. There’s no sweeter feeling than having the power to do whatever you want to another human being.” He tucked a lock of her hair, almost tenderly, back behind one ear. “Unless it’s doing what you want to an entire country, like we’re doing to yours. Once you’ve tasted that, it’s kind of hard to go back.”

  He stood up and sprang lightly onto the shore. “Maybe I’ll bring my little girl over here so you can listen to us. How’d you like that, Captain? Like to listen to me screwing her as she dies?”

  He turned, added “What the fuck?” in a belligerent voice. There was a single sharp crack, followed by another. It seemed like an eternity before there was any other sound: the splash of his body hitting the water.

  Seventy-four

  BECAUSE OF THE way she was lying, Kat couldn’t see what was going on. Had Findlater stumbled on the jetty? Had that been the crack of a breaking board? Or had Melina somehow worked herself loose and come after him? Competing explanations tumbled through her mind, but none made any sense.

  “What’s happening, Kat?” Holly called.

  But the voice that replied was American, male, and steady. “Findlater’s dead. Are you girls all right? Don’t try to move, that jetty’s barely safe. I’m going to bring the boat round and cut you free.”

  “Mr Gilroy?” Holly said.

  “Indeed. Captain Tapo, it’s good to meet you at last, although I’m sorry about the circumstances. It took me a little longer to get here than I’d have liked. Was Findlater alone?”

  “We think so. Melina’s over at the old hospital—”

  “I know. I already checked on her, she’s fine. We need to get you back there too, and quickly.”

  “Why?”

  There was an explosion out in the lagoon, half a mile away. Water pulsed into the air as if from a giant spout.

  “Predator drones,” Gilroy said bluntly. “Still watching, though they’ve been fed the wrong coordinates by Daniele GPS spoofing, I believe it’s called. Let’s get under cover, then I’ll make some calls.”

  Kat felt a knife slide inside each of her restraints in turn. Painfully, she got to her feet. Gilroy was already cutting Holly free.

  “And we’d better tow that back to Venice.” He nodded contemptuously at Findlater’s corpse. “Get a line round his feet, will you? We’ll work out what to do with him later.”

  “Did you just use us as bait?” Kat said incredulously.

  Gilroy turned his friendly blue eyes on her. “In a manner of speaking. But I assure you I had no choice. Let’s get back to the hospital, and I’ll explain.”

  Once they reached the relative safety of the old hospital, Gilroy went off to another room to make a series of phone calls, each one in a different language.

  She overheard him saying, “We have the whole thing on film. One of my people has been recording the feed from your UAVs.” There was a pause. “That’s why I hold all the cards, and you none whatsoever. But listen, we’re done now. It’s quite straightforward—” Through the open door he saw Kat listening and moved away, lowering his voice as he did so.

  A few minutes later he returned. “It’s all taken care of,” he said bluntly. “Game over. We beat them, people. Let’s go home.”

  Seventy-five

  TEN DAYS LATER, Daniele Barbo stood up in court to receive his sentence. To the surprise of many in the crowded courtroom, the judge gave a lengthy list of all the reasons why the convicted man should go to jail, but followed it by noting that he had received a report from the distinguished chief doctor of a respected psychiatric institution. This stated that the accused had now placed himself under the doctor’s care, and that in view of the excellent possibilities for progress enumerated in his report, it would be entirely wrong to impose a custodial sentence. The sentence was therefore suspended for as long as the accused continued to receive medical treatment.

  Daniele Barbo walked from court a free man.

  But not an untroubled one.

  Once he’d shaken off the pursuing journalists, he made the taxi take him not to Venice, but to Villa Barbo, the family’s former summer residence near Treviso, now occupied by Ian Gilroy.

  “I suppose you’ve heard the news from court,” he said when he was shown into the older man’s presence.

  Gilroy nodded. “Indeed. Many congratulations. Though it was not, of course, entirely unexpected.”

  “Not the Italian court. I meant from The Hague.”

  “What news is that? General Korovik’s trial doesn’t start for another three days.”

  “There won’t be any trial, now. He was found dead this morning.” Daniele lifted his phone and read from the screen. “‘General Korovik had recently claimed he was suffering from a heart condition, the severity of which made him unfit to stand trial. Preliminary reports suggest that he may have been trying to exacerbate his own symptoms with smuggled medication, but fatally misjudged the dose.’”

  “How fast news travels nowadays,” Gilroy mused. “I’m constantly amazed how everyone seems to know almost everything, right as soon as it happens.”

  “Except that in this case, no one really knows anything, do they
?” Daniele said. “I suppose this makes your plan to impeach a former US president and his Secretary of Defense for war crimes a little impractical?”

  Gilroy nodded thoughtfully. “Well, it’s certainly a setback. I won’t deny that.”

  “You know, I almost believed you for a moment,” Daniele said. “I really thought you meant it.”

  “Oh, you mustn’t think. . .”

  “You played me, Gilroy. Just like you play everyone. Working out what we most want to hear, then constructing a story that we want to believe in.”

  “Daniele,” Gilroy said patiently, “I thought we’d finally put the suspicious-teenager phase of our relationship behind us.”

  “You never intended to impeach anyone. Just like Carnivia was never going to be hacked, was it? You just made me think it might be. It was one of the first buttons you pressed, to make me do exactly what you wanted.”

  “What did I want, Daniele?” Gilroy asked, his pale eyes narrowing.

  “The assassination of two men who knew too much. One – Bob Findlater – you killed yourself. The other – Dragan Korovik – was apparently out of your reach, in a prison cell in The Hague. And to make matters worse, he was about to talk, as a way of saving his own neck. But you knew that, given enough of an incentive, there were others who’d do your dirty work for you. Did Korovik know what was in those pills he was taking? His death has your signature all over it, Gilroy – persuading a man to willingly swallow poison, by making him think it’s in his own best interests.”

  “Daniele, this all sounds very ingenious. Worthy, almost, of one of your internet boards. Father Uriel did warn me that you might experience increased paranoia during the early stages of your treatment. I take it there isn’t a scrap of evidence to back up these fantasies?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet,” the older man echoed. Just for a moment, Daniele glimpsed relief in Gilroy’s clear blue eyes.