The Venice Conspiracy (32 page)

His family come and go, flowing around him like a river round a rock. They eat dinner and supper, then finally drift off to bed, amused by his preoccupation.

Gradually, book by book, he picks up the trail of the tablet.

He is certain the characters are Etruscan. He finds a suggested alphabet drawn up by scholars of earlier times, but can’t make sense of any of the words they list. As his eyes grow tired, it becomes apparent that the experts contradict each other as to the base of the language. Some, such as the Dominican monk Annio da Viterbo, claim it sprang from the same source as Hebrew, others link it to Greek, while many suggest it came from Lydia in the east.

None of this helps the now bleary-eyed Ermanno.

He puts the troublesome inscription to one side and scans book after book for drawings similar to the figure that the monk has sketched. It doesn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that he was right – it’s an augur – a seer, priest, haruspex or netsvis.

By the time the first light of dawn pierces the dirt-streaked windows of the Buchbinder home, Ermanno’s eyes are as red as raw meat. His neck aches and he’s desperate to stretch out in bed and rest properly.

Wearily, he thumbs through the last of his ancient volumes.

Now he sees it.

In a dusty, broken-spined book on myths and legends, he comes upon the Tablets of Atmanta – a story of a blinded augur called Teucer and his sculptress wife Tetia.

Present Day

Hotel Rotoletti, Venice

Two a.m.

The banging on Tom’s bedroom
door wakes him from a deep sleep.

He rolls out of bed, his heart thumping from the shock of the loud noise. ‘Who is it?’

No one answers.

More banging.

Tom’s alert now. On his toes. Wide awake. Life in Compton prepared him for all manner of surprises. He jerks the door open, ready to deal with whatever lies on the other side.

Valentina Morassi falls into his room.

She stumbles headlong and Tom only just manages to catch her.

She reeks of booze. White wine, by the smell of it. Her hair is a crazy mess and her make-up smudged so much she has panda eyes.

‘Okay. Be careful,’ he steadies her and kicks the door closed behind them.

She slurs something, then wobbles her way to the edge of his bed.

Tom guides her carefully, worried she might fall, and then realises he’s wearing nothing but some black boxers Tina bought him. ‘Excuse me.’ He leaves her on the bed, quickly grabs his trousers off the back of a chair and steps into them. ‘Are you all right?’

She forces a weak smile.

It’s clear she’s very much
not
all right. Tom scouts for a glass to pour water in and offers it to her. ‘Here, drink this, it will help.’

Valentina takes a tiny sip, then just holds the glass. ‘I’m sorry – sorry I woke you. I just can’t be alone tonight.’ She suddenly looks more flustered and embarrassed than drunk.

Tom sits alongside her and lifts the glass to her lips. ‘It’s fine. Come on, you need to drink it. I don’t have coffee, so this is the only way I can help get you sober.’

She pushes his hand
away. ‘I don’t want sober.’ She peers up at him pitifully. ‘I’m going mad, Tom. I hurt so much. I feel like I’m going to crack, just break into a million pieces.’

He takes the glass out of her grip, sets it on the floor and puts his arms round her.

She presses her face against his naked shoulder as if it’s a relief just to touch someone. He holds tight and waits for her to unwind.

It starts as a tiny sigh, like the first whisper of a newborn breeze, then rises into a deep, long gale of sobbing. Valentina holds on to him so tightly and cries so hard that all her muscles ache with the strain of it.

When she’s finished, he gallantly offers her his bed for the night and takes a brief walk outside to give her some privacy.

The sky is jet black. A handful of stars sparkle like diamonds spilled on black velvet cloth. The streets are eerily empty, and the deep silence makes Venice look like a film set that’s been deserted. Tom spends a while thinking of Valentina’s grief and the dangers that lie ahead for her as she learns to accept her loss while pursuing a career that’s full of death and evil. He thinks briefly of Tina: her betrayal of him and, if he’s honest, how much he misses her, and how his mind had tricked him into seeing her at Isola Mario. And he thinks of another woman, too.

Mera Teale, the billionaire’s feisty PA.

Valentina is asleep by the time he creeps back in. He pulls the quilt up over her shoulder, switches off the light, grabs his cellphone and returns outside.

Mera Teale, the loudmouth with a teardrop tattoo identical to that of a Death Row inmate he’d met more than a decade ago at San Quentin.

For two months, he’d been posted there, listening to the lost souls trapped in the purgatory of an appeals process that had them hoping for a reprieve right until the second their sleeves were rolled up and a fatal fix of potassium chloride prepared for their veins.

One fiercely violent but strangely charismatic young man had a teardrop identical to Teale’s.

Lars Bale.

Bale was a talented and passionate artist. Once, as a punishment after he’d broken some petty prison rule, guards had searched his cell and confiscated all his paints and equipment. Bale retaliated by using his own faeces to paint a portrait of the governor on his wall.

All in all, Tom had probably visited Bale close to twenty times. Although it was policy not to ask about the inmates’ crimes, Tom knew. A
guard walking him through on a visit had described Bale as a latter-day Charlie Manson. Said he was as mad as a frog on acid and had been the leader of a sect that had abducted holidaymakers from theme parks and murdered them in what the press had called the Disneyland Killings.

When they were done slaughtering their victims, Bale and his followers had smeared their blood over church altars in LA.

San Quentin, California

San Quentin Governor Gerry McFaul is about to leave for an evening’s golf when he’s told there’s a long-distance call from someone called Tom Shaman.

McFaul smiles and tells his secretary to put it through. He remembers Tom well. A ballsy young priest who visited the landings and shared his love of boxing. He’d even let him spar with some of the more trusted inmates, and the guy had turned out to be pretty handy.

‘Governor McFaul, speaking.’

‘Governor, I’m sorry to trouble you. This is Tom Shaman – I used to be Father Tom. I don’t know if you remember me, I—’

‘Sure, I remember you. Southpaw – a sweet left guided by the good Lord. How can I help you, Tom?’

‘Do you still have a man called Lars Bale on your landings?’

McFaul doesn’t even have to check. ‘Certainly do. But thankfully not for much longer. His note came through.’

Tom had always had some trouble accepting the death penalty, and the governor’s casualness throws him for a second.

‘You still there, Tom? I can’t hear you. Hello?’

‘I’m here.’ He gets his brain in gear. ‘Is Bale still painting?’

The governor glances at his watch and starts shutting down his computer. ‘Like crazy. He’s done enough to fill a gallery. I guess we’ll have to pull a damned paintbrush out of his hand when we strap him down.’

‘Is he allowed calls? Could you fix it for me to speak to him?’

Suspicion creeps into McFaul’s voice. ‘What’s this about, Tom? His appeal’s been rejected.’

Tom’s not sure how to
answer. What
is
it really about? Some strange connection he’s made to a series of LA murders nearly a decade and a half ago, and some modern-day killings in Venice that seem to have Satanic undertones? It sounds too weird to say out loud. ‘Governor, I’m in Venice – Venice, Italy – trying to help the Carabinieri with a murder case. I think talking to Bale might be useful.’

McFaul glances again at his watch. He’s going to be late. If he tries to fix the call tonight then he’s sure as hell gonna miss his golf. ‘Tomorrow, Tom. Call me tomorrow – six p.m. your time – and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thanks.’ Tom’s about to hang up when a question hits him: ‘Sorry, Governor, one last thing. You said a date had come through for his execution?’

‘That’s right.’

‘When is it? How long has he got?’

McFaul can’t help but give off a slight chuckle. ‘I don’t know whether the pen-pushers in Justice did it on purpose, but that son-of-a-bitch is set to meet his maker at six a.m. on the sixth of June. Six, Six, Six. Just six days from now. I sure hope he likes the irony of that.’

1778

Rio Terà San Vio, Venezia

Tanina sits in a friend’s plush apartment in the Sestiere di Dorsoduro. She swirls golden wine in a blue-green, tulip-shaped Murano glass and wishes she too was a woman of independent means.

Not that she begrudges Lydia Fratelli a lira of it.

Flame-haired Lydia is the older sister she always wishes she’d had – her closest friend and only real confidante. And tonight Lydia’s getting chapter and verse on her rocky relationship with Ermanno. ‘Really, he has become an unspeakable gossip! Last week he told me vile – and I am sure untrue – tales of Signor Gatusso.’

Her friend sits forward, her face full of anticipation. ‘What tales? It is a while since I heard anything spicy.’

‘It’s no laughing matter. He accused
Gatusso – without substantiation, I might add – of having numerous courtesans.’

Lydia laughs.

Tanina is not amused. ‘Ermanno has not the mouth of a true gentleman but that of a common fishwife. And this is the man I would hope to marry? I think not.’ She gulps indignantly at her wine.

Lydia tuts at her. ‘My dear friend, Ermanno is an
angel
. You are lucky to have him. You should forgive and forget his torrid tales as surely as you’d forgive a small child a slip of the tongue.’

‘But he is
not
a small child. Or at least, he’s not supposed to be.’

Her friend rolls her eyes. ‘Of course he is. All men are children. They may get older and uglier on the outside, but inside they remain forever children. Like menstruation, male immaturity is one of the inevitable curses we women must suffer.’

Tanina laughs and tucks her feet up under her thighs. ‘And Gatusso? My great fornicating employer and fallen father-figure, is he a small child too? Must I also extend my endless supply of forgiveness to him?’

‘You must. I have known Lauro Gatusso almost as long as you. He is a lovable, delicious flirt and, given that boring wife of his, I should say he’s entitled to any fun he can find outside her sheets.’

Tanina scowls at her. ‘Signora Gatusso is
not
boring.’ She pauses and thinks for a second, then her face softens. ‘Oh, all right, perhaps a
little
boring. But why are men so driven by their penises? Why is one woman not enough for them?’

Lydia finger-combs a fall of natural ringlets from her face. ‘Oh, come! Men are not
so
different from ourselves. We grow bored with one lover and move on to the next, sometimes forgetting to divest ourselves of the old before we are certain about the new.’

‘
You
do,’ replies Tanina indignantly. ‘I most certainly do not.’ She sips her wine, but then can’t hold back a small smile. ‘I know I used to be like that – a little – but not now. Or at least, I hope not. If Ermanno can mend the error of his ways, then he is the only man I wish to be with.’

Lydia breaks into ironic applause. ‘Then either consider his ways well and truly mended, or else irrevocably broken. Tanina, you must move on and stop dwelling on this silly thing.’

‘Not until he apologises.’

‘He
hasn’t
apologised?’

‘Has not and will not.’

‘You asked him to?’

‘Of course. We have met several times since his indiscretion and not
once has he proffered anything amounting to an apology, nor has he produced anything to substantiate the slander against a man who is not just my employer but has been like a father to me.’

‘Why not?’

Tanina grows visibly irritable. ‘He says he has nothing to apologise
for
. Told me to forget the matter. And now – now he’s immersed in one of his
quests
, and I get little time to talk to him about anything, let alone speak of us and our future.’

‘
Quests
? What quests?’

Tanina puts her empty glass down at her feet. ‘He is buried in his books. Some artefact he’s trying to trace. From time to time he becomes obsessed with tracking down the history of certain paintings or sculptures, right now it is some religious relic.’

‘Jewish, no doubt. What is it? A menorah? They’re as common as thieves.’

‘No, no. Not Jewish. In fact, it’s quite interesting. He thinks it’s Etruscan. I’m not so sure – I’m good on paintings, not sculptures – but it is certainly very old.’

‘Etruscan? That’s unlikely. Not much has survived from those days.’

Tanina looks amused. ‘How do you know? I credit you with a wide span of general knowledge’ – she grins playfully – ‘and of course endless
man knowledge
, but I did not realise your expertise stretched to artefacts and Etruscans.’

‘It doesn’t. I had a lover who collected any reasonably valuable rubbish he could lay his hands on. I remember him talking about Etruscans. It didn’t interest me much. What’s so special about Ermanno’s piece?’

‘Well, he hasn’t got the piece. It’s not
his
– not yet. He’s only seen a picture of it. Some monk from San Giorgio owns it. It’s a silver tablet showing an augur with his staff stuck in him.’

Lydia puckers like she’s bitten a lemon. ‘How unpleasant.’

‘Ermanno thinks it’s part of something called the
Gates of Destiny
.’

‘Does he, indeed? Well, I hope it makes a lot of money for him, for you and for the mad monk who wants to sell it.’

‘And for Efran. He will want his cut.’ Tanina reaches down and waggles her empty glass at her hostess.

Lydia goes to retrieve the wine bottle. ‘That scoundrel always does. Though, he did get me some very beautiful jewellery last year. Pearls. A gorgeous necklace that goes perfectly with a blue silk bodice I’ve had made.’