The Venice Conspiracy (8 page)

CHAPTER 18

A tray of coffee signals the end of hostilities. Tom toys with a double espresso then downs it like a shot of vodka. His eyes are still glued to the expansive sketch of the teenager’s six hundred and sixty-six wounds. Lieutenant Valentina Morassi waits until he’s wiped his mouth. ‘Father, we asked you to help because you have spiritual knowledge and because in finding Monica’s body you’re already part of the enquiry. That gives you a unique insight. It also means we don’t have to risk telling other people about what we’re doing. Even church circles have mouths that can’t keep secrets.’

‘Sorry to pull you up, but I’m no longer a Father. Just Tom. Plain Tom Shaman.’

‘
Scusi,
’ says the lieutenant, holding up her hands. ‘
Tom
, where do we begin? What is the meaning of the six hundred and sixty-six wounds?’

‘Okay,’ says Tom, putting down the empty cup. ‘Then we go back to Book of Revelation. Chapter thirteen, verses seventeen to eighteen. There are many translations and they all differ by a word or two, but in the main it’s understood to go like this: “This mark is the name of the beast or the number of its name. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.”’

Valentina looks confused. ‘What does that mean? Are we looking for some killer - or killers - tattooed with six-six-six? ’

‘You might be, but I would have thought that unlikely. I don’t believe your killer is from the crazed lunatic end of the Satanic spectrum. To inflict so precise a number of wounds and then to leave the body on public display seems indicative of someone who plans things very well - and that will most probably include meticulously hiding his Satanic beliefs.’

Valentina’s impressed. ‘We call them organised offenders. I suspect now you’re just plain Tom Shaman you might make a good psychological profiler.’

‘I’ll try to take that as a compliment,’ says Tom. ‘Six-six-six is a highly significant number to Satanists,’ he adds. ‘By inflicting exactly that number of wounds, someone with Satanic beliefs is making an offering, a sacrifice. I think you can also say that they want
you
to notice what they’ve done. So you should see it as a declaration, a show of their power and statement of intent.’

The answer’s more than Valentina expected. ‘It’s certainly true that there are more cases of Satanic killings than ever before. That’s not just here in Italy, it’s the same across Europe and America too.’

Tom nods. It’s not news to him. ‘There’s been a rise in Satanic activity for the last decade. Some of it is just cranks seeking sexual thrills or publicity for their newly formed rock band. Some of it, like the attack on this poor girl, is more sinister.’

Rocco looks surprised. ‘The church has been aware of the rise in these crimes?’

‘The Vatican follows this kind of news as closely as the FBI tracks terrorist incidents. Many exorcists maintain that disciples of Satan are building towards something, deliberately increasing coven activity and pushing the boundaries of their ceremonies and sacrifices.’

Valentina spoons sugar into her nearly cold espresso. ‘I pulled up a case from Yaroslavl in Russia, about three hundred miles from Moscow. Two teenage girls were stabbed six hundred and sixty-six times and had their hearts cut out. The killers poured their blood over the body of another teenager they were initiating into their cult.’

Tom nods. ‘I remember those killings. The following day the gang killed another two youngsters and then hid their remains in graves marked by upside-down crucifixes. They set fires, too, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ confirms Valentina. ‘We’ve only got outline intel at the moment, the Russians are sending us more details. But, yes, there was a sacrificial fire, and apparently some of the victims’ hair was burned on it.’

‘It follows. And cannibalism, right?’

‘Right again. They drank some of the blood and roasted slivers of flesh on the fire.’

‘You think your case and that one are connected?’

Valentina shakes her head. ‘They made arrests in Russia, so there can’t be a direct connection. There may be a copycat element. In Italy there have been other cases too. A Satanic cult was unearthed in Milan after the ritualistic killings of a young rock singer and two women.’

Tom nods. ‘Very often you’ll find modern Satanic rituals involve three killings. It’s their way of defiling the Holy Trinity - three corpses to mock the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and to show Christians that Jesus is powerless in his endless struggle against Satan.’

Valentina does her best to hide her fear that Monica Vidic may just be the start of such a sequence. ‘Tom, I apologise for ruining your trip to Venice and your new romance. We’ll get you back to the hotel as soon as possible. Would you do us one more favour?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘It’s a big favour. My major would like to fix a meeting - a sort of brainstorming session with you and the medical examiner, Professore Montesano.’ She lets a beat go by. ‘At the morgue.’

Tom doesn’t flinch but his reaction gives away the fact that it’s an appointment he’d prefer not to keep. ‘And if I do that, then you’re done with me? Finished, completely?’

Valentina looks to Rocco, then back to Tom. ‘Completely.’ She hopes her face doesn’t give away her deception. Now is not the place to mention what else the killer had done to Monica’s body.

CAPITOLO XIII

666 BC
Atmanta

Two heavy, S-shaped iron hooks hang over the top of one of the city walls.

They’re rusty from being there so long. Ugly brown deposits stain the honey-coloured stone.

No one ever asks what they’re for.

Everyone knows.

They know, because when they’re in use, the entire community lives in fear.

The hooks belong to Larth. He hangs things from them. Living things.

Once, he hung a villager’s dog by its hind legs. The animal had been stupid enough to run at him barking. Larth had almost broken its neck with his bare hands, but that wasn’t enough. He strung the mutt up from the hooks and made its owner and his six-year-old son sit beneath it until the dog died in the baking sun. The animal had taken more than a day to give up its last yelp. Larth had warned the owner that if he so much as touched it, let alone comforted it or gave it water, then he’d be strung up as well. When the hound was dead, he made the child cut it down and bury it outside the walls.

Beneath the hooks are a series of smears and stains. Blood, sweat and tears. Most of it human. Most of it male.

But don’t be fooled, Larth is certainly not opposed to hanging a woman if circumstances demand it.

A foreign whore who slighted a friend of his was recently strung naked from dawn to dusk. In the afternoon he spun her around, face to the wall, so some of the diseased and deformed men who slept rough by the cemetery could pleasure themselves.

The hooks have sharp ends and dig hungrily into the soft wall when a rope is wound around them and a body hung from them. Larth made them himself. Heated the metal white and pounded it until he had just the right angle. A labour of love.

He thinks of every beat of the hammer and flying white spark as he and his assistants make their way to what the locals call the Punishment Wall. He likes that they call it that. That they recognise its importance, its place in their lives.

Today’s victim, a petty thief, is stripped bare. He’s an old man known as Telthius. When he was a child, Larth was often left with him and his wife while his own mother and father worked. He thinks briefly of that now, and how he used to playfully pull the old man’s long beard and hair. The memory stops as soon as his assistants have finished lifting Telthius on to the platform and stringing him up.

Back to the wall, he hangs from ropes around his wrists, his face already distorted with pain.

Larth feels his anger rise. The thief’s suffering ignites something inside him. Something exciting. Something that makes him feel more powerful and complete than at any other time in his life.

Telthius disgusts him. His long beard is white. White hair sprouts from his nose, his ears, his armpits and even around his manhood. White is revolting. The old man is revolting. What he did was revolting. He was caught stealing from Pesna’s silver mine where he labours. Now the magistrate has decreed that he must be publicly punished. Taught a lesson. One he’ll never forget. One everyone will remember.

Larth puts out his hand and takes a flaming rag torch from one of his aides. ‘Open your eyes! Open them, Thief!’

The kindly elder who once rocked him to sleep in the sticky afternoon heat squints towards his former charge.

Larth holds the flaming torch between the old man’s legs and smiles.

The white pubic hair catches fire.

Larth laughs. A throaty roar that rolls across the gardens. Telthius jerks with pain.

The torturer’s assistants can’t bear to look. The air smells of burning skin and hair.

Larth sniffs at the aroma, like a maiden savouring the fragrance of a rose. ‘You stole from your master. Betrayed his trust. Defiled his good name. For these crimes I justly punish you, so others will see the errors of your ways and respect the rights of good men.’

He rolls the flaming torch over the hair that covers the old man’s chest and arms. Telthius screams in agony.

The torturer is careful not to go too far. He lets the fire burn only briefly. Enough to hurt, not to kill. There is no fun in setting fire to a dead body. Well, not nearly as much as setting fire to a living one.

Telthius is unconscious by the time Larth has scorched all his head and body hair. ‘Cut him down,’ he calls over his shoulder as he walks away. ‘Give him to his bitch of a wife to cosset and mend.’

The assistants climb the platform. The younger one asks in a horrified voice, ‘In the name of the gods, how much silver did this fool steal?

‘Shush!’ says his companion, fearing they’ll be heard. ‘Not silver. Not even a scraping from the mine. Telthius took only food. Stale bread that he thought no one would miss. And he only took that because his wife was too ill to bake.’

At the end of the wall Larth throws his torch into the dirt. He hurries away to find himself a whore upon whom he can vent the last of the delicious rage still burning inside him.

CAPITOLO XIV

The Sacred Curte, Atmanta

Tetia feels strangely nervous as she makes her way down the hillside to the groves near the settlement walls.

The sound of hammering spills from the temple in the adjoining curte. Squinting into the sun, she can see the silhouettes of slave workers moving like crabs along the roof as they pin tiles to timber frames.

She’d long anticipated the day when her husband would consecrate the completed temple in front of her family and all the other villagers. Now, for the first time, she has a sensation of dread.

Will Teucer be able to see by then? Will he ever see again? Will the elders and the nobles and the magistrates still want him as their netsvis?

She sees the sacred circle. Without Teucer, it doesn’t seem sacred any more. She walks clockwise outside it, her thoughts trailing behind her like a long robe. The grass is all trodden down. The blaze that claimed her husband’s sight is nothing but a blackened hole in the turf. The frenzied marks made by Teucer’s lituus are still visible - as is the small but distinctive oblong he scraped in a clay patch in the west of the circle.

S
he senses something. Someone close to her. Behind her.

She wheels around.

Nothing.

No one there.

Her baby kicks as she crosses the line of the sacred circle, almost as though it remembers what occurred the last time they were here. Now she can clearly see the small patch of reddish clay where her husband made his knife marks. Tetia has brought her own sculpting blades to erase his impressions, but she can’t resist letting her artist’s eyes examine them.

They’re stunning.

So precise, so detailed and intricate. She’d have never thought him capable of such beauty.

She drops to her knees and the baby makes her stomach groan.

‘Incredible,’ she says to herself. The snakes are so vivid she can almost picture them moving. The evil demon doesn’t look that evil to her, in fact there’s a certain majesty to him. She smiles, the netsvis even bears a passing resemblance to Teucer. She bends closer to examine the final revelation. It’s magnificent. The couple look so peaceful, so happy. And the baby - surely he is everything she could hope for in a son.

Tetia feels happier than she’s done for months. She runs her light, sculptress fingers over the indentations. They even feel pleasurable to touch.

She unwraps a cloth containing her work tools. Selects a broad knife. Takes a deep breath and meticulously begins.

Only she no longer intends destroying the markings. She’s decided to keep them. Lift them from the ground and keep them for ever.

CAPITOLO XV

Tetia carries the slab of clay from the curte as though it’s the most precious thing in her life. She goes straight to her work space at the back of her hut, rather than to Larthuza’s where her husband is recovering. This clandestine and selfish act makes her feel guilty, but the emotion is forgotten when she looks again at the beautiful object in her hands, the carving of the Gates of Destiny.

Using water and her own fine picks and knives, she accentuates the rough cuts made by Teucer. Very quickly she becomes immersed in her task. Consumed by it. Possessed by it.

Time flashes by.

Her cuts are bold, broad, intricate, dashing, decisive. It’s as though her hand is being guided. The clay begins to turn leather hard, no longer malleable. She drizzles water on to the surface to keep it workable, wipes tiny fragments of waste from her blade after every cut and polishes the sharp tip on her tunic.

Lost in her art, she is oblivious to the daylight fading. The grey ghosts of night start to gather.

First, a rustling noise. Then the sudden presence of a strange man’s feet.