The Absolution (3 page)

DANIELE BARBO STEPPED
onto the balcony of the Doge's Palace. Below, in Piazza San Marco, a thousand masked faces looked back up at him expectantly. Many more, he knew, would be watching on computers and tablets all around the world. Never before in the history of Carnivia had its founder made a public appearance, let alone a speech: for the last two days, ever since he had announced his intention to address the website's users directly, the blogosphere had been awash with speculation about the reason.

Many believed Daniele was going to announce that Carnivia was finally being sold. Both Google and Facebook had made no secret of their desire to acquire it. Analysts were talking about a potential price in the region of half a billion dollars, pointing out that although Carnivia currently carried no advertising, the lack of a revenue stream was more the result of its founder's idiosyncrasies than any inherent lack of commercial viability. Alternatively, the encryption algorithms it employed would be worth a small fortune to the defence industry.

Others believed Daniele was going to announce curbs on the very thing that made Carnivia what it was: its anonymity. Each of the masked figures in the square below him was an avatar, the online representation of an individual user, their
real identity and location hidden from everyone but themselves. Uniquely, though, the anonymity only went one way – Carnivia itself could access all the data in your contacts list, allowing you to interact with your Facebook friends, your neighbours, classmates or colleagues without them knowing who you were. Not surprisingly, it was often controversial. In one recent case, a fourteen-year-old girl had killed herself after being taunted by a gang of anonymous cyberbullies. In similar situations, most websites gave law-enforcement agencies the perpetrators' details. Only Carnivia consistently maintained that even the site owner – Daniele Barbo – simply did not have access to that information.

As he looked down from the balcony – which was an exact simulation of the balcony on the real Doge's Palace, right down to the tiniest detail of crumbling stone – Daniele hesitated. He had planned the substance of what he was about to say, but had neglected to consider how he might begin. He was aware, of course, that it was customary to preface a speech with some kind of greeting. But what? “My fellow Carnivians” seemed like the wrong tone. “Hi”, on the other hand, sounded too casual.

It was exactly the kind of difficulty that led many, he knew, to label him socially dysfunctional.

The silence dragged on.

Hello world
, he said at last.

A ripple of amusement went around his audience, transmitted via tweets, emoticons and murmurs, as Carnivia's own internal communications were called. For those in the know, Daniele Barbo had just made a brilliant joke. A “hello world” program was a hacker's way of demonstrating proof of concept on a piece of coding. By using those words, Daniele was not only reminding his listeners that everything around
them was his creation, but also acknowledging that they were sophisticated enough to appreciate such references.

Up on the balcony, Daniele glimpsed some of the responses as they fluttered past. He sighed. He had meant no such thing, of course. But at least he had started now. The most difficult part was over.

As many of you are aware, this website started as a mathematical model to help me understand certain aspects of computational complexity. But over the years, it has grown into something I never anticipated
, he said.

Technically, he was at a computer screen, typing rather than speaking, but one of the many strange things about Carnivia was that such distinctions soon ceased to matter. The murmuring fell quiet as his listeners concentrated on his words.

That is, Carnivia has become a community.

Ten years ago, when he'd built the site, few had seen the point of its elaborate encryption. After all, wasn't the internet anonymous enough already? More recently, though, rising concerns about data privacy and online surveillance had meant that Carnivia was no longer just a haven for hackers, cypherpunks and crypto-anarchists. The site now had more than three million regular users, and that number was growing all the time.

Keeping that community free, peaceful, and safe from the interference of governments and regulators has taken up a great deal of my time
, he continued.
Too much time, in fact. I have done no useful work for over a decade.

As a result, I have decided that the burden of running Carnivia should be devolved to you, its users. You will decide, for example, what the correct balance should be between your privacy and your public responsibilities. You will decide what
constitutes acceptable behaviour, and what should happen to users who infringe those rules. You will decide whether there should be investment in the site, and if so, how it must be generated. You will decide – your most pressing task – how these decisions themselves are to be made, choosing your own system of government by whatever process you collectively see fit.

As of today, I will take no further part in those discussions.

He looked down at the multitude.

Does anyone have questions?

Several hundred did, it seemed. From the clamour he selected one.
Yes?

But you as owner will always have the final say, right?

No. The ownership of the site, along with its servers, will be transferred to whatever body you, Carnivia's users, decide on. I will no longer have any legal claim to it.

Why? What are YOU going to do?

There was a pause as Daniele struggled to articulate his answer. Eventually he said,
I have recently become interested in writing a piece of software to simplify seating plans for weddings.

Again there was a ripple of amusement, although it was rather smaller this time. Daniele's joke was barely funny.

Will you continue to use Carnivia yourself?

I don't know. But then, Carnivia's users have always been anonymous. Assuming you wish to maintain that principle, I suppose you will never know whether I'm on Carnivia or not. Whatever happens, I will no longer be an administrator, or reserve for myself any special privileges.

His audience seemed almost more stunned by this final demonstration of his seriousness than by anything else he had said. To become a Carnivia administrator was a privilege most of them could only dream of. There were no tweets now,
no murmurs, only the occasional exclamation mark that floated over the heads of the crowd and was lost in the faint breeze that rippled the waters of the Bacino di San Marco.

I wish you the best of luck
, he added, stepping back. Closing the balcony doors, he sensed the hubbub starting up below as they began to debate what it all meant.

In the music room of the real-world Palazzo Barbo, where Carnivia's massive servers were housed, Daniele pushed his chair back from the screen and breathed a sigh of relief. Taped to the wall in front of him was a short To-Do list. Reaching out, he crossed off the first item with a single stroke of his pen.

Leave Carnivia.

As he turned back to the computer and closed the program, a message flashed up.

Are you sure?

He clicked “Yes” and felt a great load lifting from his shoulders.

“
I WANT YOU
to take the statement from the witness who found the body,” Kat said, going over to where Bagnasco was rinsing her mouth with a water bottle. “I'll listen in, but it'll be good training for you.”

“Thank you.” Bagnasco gestured at the tent. “In there . . . I'm sorry. It won't happen again. I was still a bit seasick, that's all.”

“Forget it. But for future reference, it's better to speak up and leave a crime scene than to throw up all over it. Ready?”

They made their way over to where the young man was standing. Bagnasco did a good job of putting him at his ease, Kat thought, turning occasionally to involve his partner in the conversation, and even reaching out to stroke the dog, although she recoiled involuntarily when it tried to lick her fingers with its moist, sandy tongue.

The young man, it transpired, was an actor, in Venice for the film festival. His partner was a director, drumming up finance for his next movie.

“I brought the star with me,” the older man interjected, squeezing the younger man's arm.

The actor gave him a devoted look, then continued, “Anyway, I couldn't sleep, and Dauphin was awake too, so I took him for a walk.”

“I'd taken a sleeping pill,” the older man said. “I said to David, why don't you take one too? But you don't like pills.”

The young man nodded. “They make me groggy. Anyway, when we came back, Dauphin found that . . . that
thing
and I saw there was a body.” He shuddered, and the older man patted his shoulder.

“What time was this?” Bagnasco asked, writing it all down in her notebook.

The young man hesitated. “It's hard to say. Pretty early.”

“And the body wasn't here when you first went past? Only when you returned?”

“I think so. I mean, it was only just light.”

Kat waited until Bagnasco had finished, then asked politely, “Could you fetch your ID documents from your hotel, please?”

As she'd hoped, the older man said, “I'll get them. It's too hot for Dauphin out here, anyway.”

When he'd gone, she addressed the younger man. “Now would you tell us what actually happened last night?”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Was it really an early-morning walk? Or a late-night cruise?” Bagnasco was giving her a puzzled glance. “Look, I know what goes on in the woods at Alberoni at night,” she continued. “It's fine, but I need to find out what time that body was actually placed here.”

The young man looked shamefaced. “I'd have told you, but it was difficult with Milo listening. I thought if I took the dog he'd never know. And I only meant to be gone for an hour or so. But it was . . . busy last night, and all of a sudden I realised it was past four. So I headed back, and that's when Dauphin found the tongue.”

“So it was dark when you first went past this spot? Meaning that you might have walked right past the body?”

He nodded.

“Thank you. I'll have that written up as a statement for you to sign.”

When they were alone, Kat turned to Bagnasco. “Weren't you ever told to take statements one-on-one?”

The
sottotenente
looked mortified. “Yes, but . . .”

“Why didn't you?”

“I wanted . . . That is, I suppose . . .”

“You wanted to show that you weren't homophobic,” Kat said. “So that's the second lesson learnt: get over it.”

She went over to where the three local
carabinieri
were guarding the tapes. “Morning, boys,” she said pleasantly. “Please tell me you've already questioned everyone on this beach in the hope of turning up a witness.”

The three men exchanged glances.

“What?” she demanded.

One of them, the
maresciallo
she'd recognised earlier, said, “We've talked to the guys who put out the sunloungers. And the tractor driver who cleans the beach first thing. And the builders working at the hotel.”

“And?”

“No one saw anything. More than that, no one was even here. The sunlounger guys were sick. The tractor driver had an engine problem. And the construction workers were all off shift, though they can't tell us who was on.”

“What about this lot? Any of them get here early?” She gestured at the sunbathers.

“They're all tourists,” the
maresciallo
said. “If there were any locals here, they've decided to call it a day.”

Now that Kat looked again at the sunloungers, she saw how many were empty. And more were emptying all the time. Like a flock of starlings taking fright at a distant hawk, the people on the beach had decided that it would be better to forego a day in the sun than be associated, however loosely, with whatever it was that had happened here.

She sighed. “Try the builders again, will you? And come back tonight, in case there's anyone uses the beach late who was here yesterday.”

By tonight, she suspected, the ripple of silence would have spread right across the Lido into Venice itself. But it was worth a shot.

While the scene-of-crime team finished up, she and Bagnasco took the boat down to the pine woods at the southern end of the Lido. Known as Alberoni, or simply “the dunes”, this was Venice's unofficial naturist beach as well as its only gay one, the exact demarcation between the two shifting almost as fluidly as the sands themselves.

They had little luck in finding any witnesses there either, however. The woods were quiet at this hour of the morning, and the sight of two uniformed Carabinieri officers sent the few men who were still around scurrying into the trees.

Then, deep in the woods, Kat caught a flash of red. A tent. Camping was illegal outside the official site at San Nicolò, but she wasn't surprised to find someone ignoring the regulations. Going up to it, she called, “Anyone in there?”

After a few moments the door was unzipped. A grizzled face peered up at her.

“Carabinieri,” she said unnecessarily. “Would you mind stepping outside?”

The man did so, and she added hastily, “But would you mind putting some clothes on first?”

“Why?” he said belligerently.

It was on the tip of Kat's tongue to say that he was committing a crime of indecency in addition to disrespecting the uniform of the Carabinieri, but she decided to play this a different way. “You feel more comfortable like that?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Well, let's see how it goes,” she said amiably. “We're trying to establish what boats were in the area in the early hours of this morning. Say around four a.m.?”

The man considered. “As it happens, I was up early this morning. There was a big cruise ship, but that was some way out. And a
motoscafo
as well.”

“A water taxi? You're sure?”

“Pretty sure. It was one of those old motorboats, the nice wooden ones with a cockpit and a long hull.”

“Any flags? Side markings?”

“None that I remember.”

“Well, if you remember anything else, give us a call. That's my number.” Kat handed him a card. As an afterthought she added, “The cruise ship – which way was it headed?”

“That way.” He pointed north.

Kat looked out to sea. There were two or three ships out there, in the shipping channel. Otherwise the sea was empty all the way to the horizon.

For the first time since leaving her desk she felt the enormity of what she was faced with. A man had been brutally murdered in cold blood. But it was more than that. The dumping of his body on the beach had been designed to convey a very public message. Whoever they were, the murderers clearly believed they could deliver it with impunity.

Binding myself under no less penalty than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low watermark . . .

Despite the heat, she felt a shiver go down her spine.