The Absolution (8 page)

So people were still talking about that. “Like I did with Colonel Piola, yes.”

“Is it true he left his wife for you?” Bagnasco asked curiously. “And that you sent him back to her, because you weren't interested any more?”

Kat was fairly sure a male officer would never have asked such a personal question, but she swallowed her irritation and said mildly, “I believe the colonel and his wife have separated and are currently going through a divorce. It's not something he and I ever discuss. These days we keep our relationship strictly professional.”

“Isn't that difficult? Given that you still work together quite closely?”

“No,” she snapped. “It's actually a lot easier than gossiping like a couple of old women.” She pulled out a ten-euro note and threw it on the counter. “Come on. We've got work to do.”

THANKFULLY, BAGNASCO PROVED
more adept at filling in Budget Requisitions, Overtime Projections, Evidence Collection Protocols and all the other forms needed to make the Carabinieri's labyrinthine bureaucracy creak into action than she was at inspecting crime scenes or interviewing witnesses. Kat left her to it, and went to break the news of Cassandre's death to his wife.

Signora Cassandre turned out to be a more elegant woman than the photograph on her husband's desk had suggested, impeccably dressed and well mannered even in the midst of shock. At one point she clutched Kat's arm and asked what would happen to her apartment. It was a curious thing to mention at such a time, so Kat asked what she was concerned about.

“The mortgages,” Signora Cassandre whispered anxiously. “I had to sign them. But he said it was only for a short time.”

Kat made a mental note to have an officer go through Cassandre's personal bank accounts. If he
was
money laundering, where had the proceeds gone? His lifestyle, she surmised from the elegance of his apartment, along with its location in one of the most fashionable parts of San Marco, was lavish, but hardly more so than one would expect of a senior partner in a Venetian bank. And then there had been all
that money on the memory sticks. If that wasn't Cassandre's, whose was it? A client's?

She escorted Signora Cassandre to the morgue for the formal identification. Hapadi had placed wooden blocks under the victim's head and a folded cloth over the gaping wound in the neck. Even so, the removal of the tongue had caused the cheeks and mouth to swell and twist grotesquely. Signora Cassandre took a careful look before confirming in a steady voice that it was her husband. One should never underestimate, Kat reflected, the sang-froid of old money. Hapadi, by way of contrast, looked deeply uncomfortable.

Back at Campo San Zaccaria, she checked over what Bagnasco had done and had to grudgingly admit to being impressed. She did spot one glaring mistake, however.

“I asked for five officers and twenty
carabinieri
. That's standard for a homicide. You've listed three officers and eight
carabinieri
.”

Bagnasco nodded. “Allocation are saying that's all that's available.”

Kat went straight to General Saito. “As you said yourself, this is clearly going to be a big and complex investigation,” she reminded him. “We'll probably need to bring in financial experts from the Guardia di Finanza. And because of the Masonic angle, people may be reluctant to talk to us – we'll need more resources than usual, not fewer.”

Saito held up a hand to forestall her. “It's August, Captain. In case you hadn't noticed, everyone's away. But when you mention Freemasons . . . Let me caution you against jumping to conclusions. There's no direct evidence yet that Freemasonry had a bearing on your victim's death, as I understand it.”

“You're probably not aware of the latest developments,
sir.” She filled him in on the calling cards they'd found at Cassandre's office and the USB stick full of electronic money. “My working hypothesis is that he was involved in financial crimes, in the course of which he may have swindled or otherwise betrayed some of his fellow Freemasons. That's why they killed him in a way that reflected the wording of their oath.”

“Was he wearing a watch when he was found?”

“No,” she said, puzzled by this sudden change of tack.

“So a far more obvious hypothesis, Captain, is that he went for a late-night swim and was mugged,” Saito said blandly.

“Whilst dressed for a Masonic ritual?” she said incredulously.

He shrugged. “It's your first solo investigation. All I'm saying is, be careful not to get carried away.”

“Of course, sir,” she said. “Am I right in thinking that you yourself are a Freemason?”

His expression gave nothing away. “How is that relevant?”

“Only that in circumstances such as these we have to be seen to be completely objective. There may be people who will imagine that we might try and steer the investigation away from Freemasonry, in order to deflect attention from the number of
carabinieri
who are Masons.” She kept her tone as neutral as his had been.

“Only if we draw their attention to the issue in the first place. Which is precisely my point, Captain. Putting a more . . .
melodramatic
interpretation on events than is strictly warranted by the evidence might be counterproductive. It might even be seen as an attempt on the part of an inexperienced officer to sensationalise the case and thereby draw attention to himself. Or, indeed, herself. Do I make myself clear?”

“Thank you for the warning, sir. I'll bear it in mind.”

Softening his tone, he said, “Look . . . running an investigation like this effectively gives you the rank of acting major. Get it right, and promotion will surely follow. But you have to understand what getting it right means, in this context.”

“Identifying the killer and getting a conviction,” she said. “Obviously.”

“We always aim to do that, Captain. But there is another, equally important aspect to this case.” He raised his eyebrows. “I'm talking about maintaining public confidence in the Carabinieri. A diligent and carefully managed investigation, one that's proportionate to all the circumstances, is what's required here.”

She went downstairs still seething. Saito was as good as telling her to keep a low profile on this one, dangling the prospect of a promotion if she obliged. But at the same time, he was covering his arse by appointing an investigating officer who demonstrably wasn't a Freemason. If Cassandre's killers had hoped to create a climate of fear around his murder, they had certainly succeeded.

Bagnasco was waiting for her, looking anxious.

“What is it?” Kat said.

“Have you been to the female officers' locker room recently?”

Kat sighed. “No, and I really can't be bothered to right now. What is it this time? Someone's decided to tell us that we're lesbians? Or that we're whores? Or that we're lesbian whores?” Ever since she'd joined the Carabinieri, her locker had regularly been defaced with graffiti, none of it very imaginative. She added, “You wanted career advice earlier, so here's some: lighter fluid gets rid of it just fine.”

“I know,” Bagnasco said impatiently. “I've had plenty of stuff like that, and usually I ignore it. But I think you should see this one.”

Kat followed her to the changing room. There, sprayed across her locker, was a cross inside a circle – the same symbol that had been on Alessandro Cassandre's Masonic calling cards.

“What does it mean?” Bagnasco asked.

“It's a warning,” Kat said at last. “A warning that they're watching us. And that's fine. Because now we're also watching them.”

Her final interview of the day was with the archivist whose name Dr Hapadi had given her. It turned out that he worked in a library attached to the hospital complex, just a few hundred yards from the morgue. She trudged up a narrow stone staircase to the first floor. There she found a long, well-lit room under a magnificent gilded ceiling. It was unexpected, but she had learnt over the years that Venice was full of such tucked-away treasures, too many to be listed by the guidebooks and consequently all but forgotten.

A figure was bent over one of the display cases. “Signor Calergi?” she called.

The figure turned, and she got her second surprise: he was wearing a dog collar. “Monsignor, actually. And you must be Captain Tapo – Dr Hapadi told me you might be coming. You want to know about Freemasonry, I understand?”

“That's it,” she said, wondering what else Hapadi had told the cleric. “We have a corpse who's had his throat cut and his tongue torn out. He was left on the beach, to be washed by the tides . . . That relates to a Masonic oath, I understand?”

“Some Masonic rites make reference to such a scenario,
yes,” he said quietly. “I've never heard of it being enacted before.”

“Our victim was also wearing an unusual mask. Dr Hapadi called it a ‘hoodwink'. And he had some rope wound around his arm.”

Monsignor Calergi nodded. “These are symbols connected with a Mason's initiation into a new degree – that is, a higher level of the organisation. The hoodwink represents the mystical darkness, or ignorance, of the uninitiated.

“And the rope?”

“The cable-tow symbolises the secret obligations that bind one Mason to another. Masons believe their first duty is always to help a brother, no matter what.”

“Forgive me for asking, Father. But are you yourself a Freemason?”

“I have an academic interest in the Craft,” Calergi said with a slight smile. “But the Vatican's position is that one cannot be both a Mason and a practising Catholic.”

“Why not?”

“To understand that, you have to know a little about Freemasonry's origins. Back in the thirteenth century, Venice was dominated by a number of powerful guilds and cofraternities. It was one such organisation, in fact, the Scuola Grande di San Marco, which built this very hospital. At that time, the Freemasons were little more than a trade guild for the itinerant stonecarvers who travelled from country to country building Europe's cathedrals. Their symbols – the set square, the keystone, the plumb line – depicted the secrets of their craft, mysteries they were careful to keep from outsiders.

“Then, in the eighteenth century, the first men of science found in the almost-forgotten secrets of the stonemasons a kind of allegory for their own rationalist beliefs. To them, the
masons' craft represented everything the Church was not – a brotherhood of equals, where man listened to his fellow man instead of the dictates of an autocratic pontiff; progress and reason, instead of medieval superstition and conservatism; mutual prosperity and self-help, instead of sacrifice and charity. In their rituals, Masons replaced the Bible with the Volume of Sacred Law. Their oaths were dedicated to the Grand Architect of the Universe. They weren't denying God, not explicitly; but they were open to the heresy that the divine wears many masks, of which the Catholic deity is but one.”

“And from rejecting the authority of the Church to questioning the authority of the state wasn't such a great leap either, I imagine?”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “It was a group of Masons, for example, who were responsible for betraying Venice to their fellow Freemason, Napoleon Bonaparte, without a single shot being fired. A century later, an offshoot of the movement, the Carbonari, was accused of trying to overthrow the government and seize power for themselves. In many ways, the Masons were a white-collar version of the Mafia, and followed a similar trajectory. What began as a network of self-help organisations that depended on secrecy for their survival gradually became a magnet for criminality. In our own century that has been particularly true, of course, with so-called black lodges like P2.”

“P2. That was Propaganda Due, wasn't it?” She recalled Piola telling her a little about the P2 scandal, but was interested to hear the archivist's view.

He nodded. “A black lodge that existed from about 1960 to 1980. Over two hundred government officials, military leaders, journalists and businessmen were listed as members. The Grand Master fled abroad and was charged
in absentia
with
conspiracy against the state. But the truth is, no one really knows what P2's purpose or political agenda was, even today.”

“Do you have any knowledge of a black lodge like that operating here in Venice?”

Father Calergi's expression gave nothing away. “Such a thing is always possible. But if so, it has no contact with any of the lodges I know of.”

She took out one of the cards she'd found in Cassandre's desk. “Does this look like the card of an official lodge to you?”

Father Calergi examined the card, visibly surprised, then shook his head. “‘De la Fidelité' was the name of an ancient Venetian lodge, long since vanished. They must have resurrected the name to lend themselves an air of authenticity. ‘Third Degree' is a reference to Cassandre's status – it means he was a fully fledged master Mason, a member of the innermost circle. Cards like these were once an important part of a Mason's paraphernalia – when visiting another lodge, he would hand one to the Tyler, the official guarding the door, to prove his bona fides. But this symbol isn't Masonic, or not specifically.”

“I have a feeling I've seen it before. But I can't recall where.”

“A few years back it was banned – it had been appropriated by some unpleasant far-right thugs for their own purposes. It's sometimes referred to as ‘Odin's Cross'. But long before that, it was known as the
carità
, and it was the symbol of the oldest of Venice's
scuole grandi
. You can still see it today, carved into the side of the Accademia, which occupies their former headquarters.”

“Why would a present-day lodge adopt an ancient Venetian symbol as their emblem?”

Father Calergi looked troubled. “I don't know. But given
that the symbol has political associations now, it's surely worrying.”

Once again she thought she caught a flash of fear in the archivist's eyes as he turned back to his books and cabinets. And once again she was left with a sense that the person she was speaking to wasn't telling her everything. The message that had been left on the sands of the Lido had done its work too well for that.