The Venice Conspiracy
Table of Contents
Jon Trace is the pseudonym for the Chief Creative Officer of one of the world’s largest global television production companies, who is also an internationally published thriller writer, award-winning documentary maker and creator of multi-media interactive games.
Published by Hachette Digital 2010
Copyright © Michael Morley 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 0 7481 1503 7
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In memory of
Stuart Wilson
Like a favourite story, much loved
and never forgotten
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Present Day
Compton, Los Angeles
Midnight. A pimped black Buick blasts hip hop from rolled-down windows. Heads turn on a sidewalk still wet from a storm. But Tom Shaman sees and hears nothing. He’s in a trance. Lost in thought.
Six-three in his bare feet, Tom has cloudy eyes and thick dark hair. Thanks to a job that lets him train two hours a day in a boxing gym, he also has the body of a heavyweight.
But right now a two-year-old could blow him over.
He’s just left a squalid rental in West Alondra Boulevard where he watched an Italian immigrant die from cancer. Just hours ago, Rosanna Romano had reached her hundredth birthday. She didn’t get any cards or presents. No friends or visitors. Only the doctor, Tom and now the coroner called on her. No way to end a century on earth.
Across the street, a desperate shout snaps Tom out of his melancholia.
Down an alley by a fried-chicken takeaway, an angry huddle of figures is kicking up more noise than is healthy.
Tom’s halfway across the blacktop before he realises it. ‘Hey! What’s going on down there?’
His shout draws a face into the grey light. A big guy, dressed like an OG - an Original Gangster. ‘Keep the fuck away, man! This is none of your business.’ He rolls his fingers into a fist to make the point. ‘You got any sense, you take a hike and keep the motherfucking hell outta this.’
But that’s not the kind of thing Tom Shaman can do.
As the OG spins back into the shadows, he follows him.
A three-on-one beating is in full flow. And the big guy with the big mouth has a blade.
Tom wades in, delivering a well-planted kick to take out the knife.
Shock spreads through the scrum of bodies. Tom only has a second before they pile on him.
He takes a heavy whack to the back of his head. A knee deadlegs his thigh. No matter - he’s bouncing on his toes and full of adrenalin. He ducks a meaty right-hander and throws a knockout punch to the knifeman’s head. The kind of shot that would stop an eighteen-wheeler and leave its radiator hissing steam.
Tattooed hands grab his neck in a weak choke hold. He pulls the goon up and over his right shoulder and hits him against the alley wall.
The third gangbanger swings a leaden kick. Clumsy and loose. No real power as it slaps his thigh. Tom grabs a boot, steps over the outstretched leg and feels the knee crack.
The kicker’s down squealing, but his neck-grabbing buddy is back on his feet, bouncing with adrenalin. And now
he
has the knife.
Swapping it from side to side, like he’s seen movie villains do.
Mistake.
Big Mistake.
Tom steps forward. Shifts his balance. Snaps a hook-kick to the head.
Two down. One left. And the one left isn’t staying around.
‘
Fucker!
’ He shouts as he slides away, holding his busted knee. ‘We know who you are, you crazy motherfucker!’ He makes a gun out of one hand and points the barrel-finger. ‘We’ll find you and fucking
cap
you for this!’
Tom ignores the insults. He leans over the victim, tries to see how he can help.
The body on the ground is that of a young woman, fifteen, maybe seventeen max. Her clothes have been torn and it’s obvious what’s happened. In the half-light he can see blood and a head wound that accounts for why she’s unconscious.
Tom dials 911 on his cell and asks for an ambulance and squad car. He hangs up and checks her breathing. Shallow and thin. He daren’t move her, there might be back or neck injuries. He covers her with his jacket and hopes help arrives soon.
The big gangbanger who attacked her is still prostrate. No surprise. It had been the best punch Tom had ever thrown. A lucky shot. And the guy’s homey is still out for the count as well. They’re late twenties, veteran OGs, wearing low-slung jeans, football jerseys and red bandanas - the colours of the Bloods, Compton’s minority gang.
Tom turns them both over.
They’re dead.
Shock washes through him. He doesn’t even have to feel for a pulse. The knife is stuck deep in the big guy’s gut and half his intestines are out.
His buddy doesn’t have a mark on him. But his head is hideously twisted and the eyes are open and glazed.
Tom Shaman -
parish priest
, Father Thomas Anthony Shaman - has seen a lot of corpses but he’s only ever blessed them - not caused them.
In the distance, the wincing squeal of an LAPD cruiser, blue and red lights pulsing, tyres spilling rubber round a corner. An ambulance is just behind it, its horns weaker, wallowing like an elephant around the bend.
Tom feels everything go blurry. No sound. No feelings. He squats on the kerb and throws up.
In the sodium lamplight the blood on his hands looks black.
As black as sin.
The cruiser screeches to a halt.
Doors slam. Radios crackle. Patrolmen take in the scene and mutter to each other.
The ambulance finally pulls up and a trolley clatters out on to the sidewalk.
Tom’s head’s somewhere else. He’s messed up with it all. The dead pensioner at Alondra - the girl he couldn’t save from being raped - the OGs he’s killed - and the one that got away. It’s all tumbling in on him.
Now a cop is saying something. Helping him to his feet.
He feels empty.
Alone.
Lost in a personal hell.
Like God just deserted him.
CHAPTER 2
Compton, Los Angeles
The morning after the night you’ve accidentally killed someone is the worst ‘morning after’ you can imagine.
No hangover, no bad night at the casino, no regrettable sexual indiscretion comes close to how bad you feel.
On the greyest of days Tom Shaman sits in his grey vest and shorts on the edge of his small single bed feeling smaller than he’s ever felt.
Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t pray.
Can’t anything.
Downstairs he hears voices. His housekeeper. The two other priests he shares with. A diocesan press officer. A police liaison officer. They’re drinking tea and coffee, sharing shock and sympathy, planning his life without him. Seems the only good news is that the girl is alive. Scared to death, but alive. Traumatised and scarred by the rape, but nevertheless alive.
Tom’s already been interviewed downtown. Released without charge but warned that, if the news gets out, all hell will break loose.
And it has.
The devil dogs of the nation’s press have been unleashed and they’re already messing up his lawn. Packs are prowling around the church and vestry. Their trucks line the roads, satellite dishes spinning in search of a signal. Just the noise of them is purgatory. He puts his hands to his ears and tries to blot out the incessant sound of cell phones ringing, walkie-talkies crackling and presenters rehearsing lines.
Foolishly, when he’d left the station house just before dawn, he’d imagined he could come home and try to get a grip on things. Weigh up whether God had scripted the whole night of horror as a personal test. One rape and three deaths - a frail widow and two street kids who came off the rails. Quite a script. Maybe God knows that in LA tragedies have to be Hollywood epics.
Maybe there is no damned God!
Doubt rocks him.
Oh, come on, Tom, you’ve long had your suspicions. Famine. Earthquakes. Floods. Innocent people starved to death, drowned or buried alive. Don’t pretend these ‘Acts of God’ never shook your faith.
A knock on his bedroom door. It creaks open. Father John O’Hara sticks his bushy red hair and freckly, sixty-year-old face through the gap. ‘I wondered if you were asleep. You want company?’
Tom smiles. ‘No sleep. Not yet.’
‘You want some food sending up? Maybe eggs and fresh coffee?’ Father John motions towards a mug that’s gone cold near his bed.
‘Not yet, thanks. I’m gonna shower, shave and try to get my act together in a minute.’
‘Good man.’ Father John smiles approvingly and shuts the door after him.
Tom glances at his watch. It’s not even 11 a.m. and already he’s wishing the day was over. Since 6 a.m. news anchors coast to coast have been telling his story. The eyes of America are on him and he doesn’t like it. Not one bit. He’s a shy man, a guy that’s friendly and strong but dreads walking into a room full of strangers and being forced to introduce himself. He’s not the kind who wants to be interviewed on network TV. The hacks have already been pushing cheques beneath the vestry door, bidding for exclusives, trying to buy a slice of him.
Tom just makes it to the bathroom before he heaves again.
He runs the cold tap, pools water in his hands and splashes his face until eventually he feels the coldness.
He looks up into the mirror over the sink.
The face of a killer, Tom. Look at yourself. See how you’ve changed. Don’t pretend you can’t see it. You’re a murderer. Double murderer, to be precise.
How did it feel, Father Tom? Come on, be honest now.
It was exciting, wasn’t it?
Admit it.
Tom looks away. Grabs a towel and walks back to the bedroom.
On the floor near the foot of the bed is an old postcard. One that Rosanna kept pinned to her wall. One that she’d asked for when he’d prayed with her last night. She’d kissed it and given it to him as a token of thanks. ‘
Per lei
.’ For you.
He picks it up. Notices that it’s brittle with age, the edges torn and dirty. A rusty ring of white shows where a cheap drawing pin had been. Tom looks closely at it for the first time. It’s lost whatever colour it once had but it’s probably a reproduction of some famous Italian painting. Maybe a Canaletto. Through the sepia fog he can make out the shadowy outline of a church dome and long dark smudges that look like seahorses but are probably gondolas. A scene thousands of miles away, from a painting made hundreds of years ago.
Tom smiles for the first time that day.
Rosanna Romano’s home city of Venice is offering him a glimmer of hope.
CAPITOLO I
666 BC
Atmanta, Northern Etruria
Foaming Adriatic waves fizzle on a pale peach shoreline. Beyond the ragged north-eastern coast a solemn service of divination comes to a close. Worried villagers file from one of the curtes, the sacred groves nestled between plateaus of olives and vines. The experience has not been an uplifting one.
Their seer has let them down.
Teucer - a once-gifted priest - has
yet again
failed to discern any good fortune for them.
The young netsvis is distraught. Bemused as to why the gods have temporarily forsaken him. He’d fasted three days before making today’s sacrifice, worn clean clothes, stayed sober and done everything decreed by the divine books.
But still the deities offered nothing joyous.
The villagers are muttering loudly. He can hear them complaining. Suggesting he be replaced.
It’s now been two full moons - maybe longer - since the augur last brought any good news to the people of Atmanta, and Teucer knows their patience is wearing thin.
Soon they will forget that it was
his
powers of divination that helped them settle on the metal-rich north-eastern hills. It was
his
blessing of a copper plough blade that fashioned the first sods of earth and fixed the sacred boundaries of the city. They are so ungrateful. He has come to the curte straight from the death of an elder. An old slave - in the servile settlement beside the drainage pits. She’d died of infestation - demons roaring and cackling inside her ribs, chewing at her lungs, making her spit thick cuds of blood and flesh.
He thinks of her now as he stands alone in the centre of the sacred circle. He’d drawn it with his lituus, a long, finely sharpened cypress stick with a slightly crooked end. It was fashioned by Tetia, his soul mate, the woman he’s pledged to spend eternity with.
He looks around. They’ve all gone. It is time for him to go too.
But where?
Not home. Not yet.
The shame of failure is too great to take to his wife’s bed.
He removes his conical hat, the ceremonial headpiece of the netsvis, and resolves to find somewhere to meditate.
A tranquil place where he can beseech Menrva, the goddess of wisdom, to help him through his doubts.
Teucer collects his sacred vessels and walks around the remnants of today’s offering, the remains of a fresh egg his acolytes had given him to crack and divine.
The yolk had been rancid.
Stained red with the blood of the unborn. A sign of impending death. But whose?
Teucer walks from the curte to the adjacent land. It is here that the community’s temple is being built. But it is taking forever to finish.
Unbaked bricks and wood make up its walls. The grand façade is dominated by a triangular fronton. The wide and low double sloping roof will soon be tiled in terracotta.
When it’s finished, Teucer will consecrate the altars and the gods will be pleased.
Everything will be good again.
But he’s unsure
when
that will be. All the workers have been redeployed to the local mine to dig for silver. Worship is now secondary to commerce.
He walks to the rear of the temple and the three areas dedicated to the main deities: Tinia, Uni and Menrva. Once his wife has completed the bronze statues of the holy pantheon, he will bless them in their respective chambers.
This final thought brings him peace and comfort, but not enough self-respect to go home.
Still melancholic, he meanders through the long, overgrown grass and wanders into a thick copse of limes and oaks.
He hears them long before he sees them. Young commoners from a neighbouring settlement. Running. Chasing. Shouting. Three of them, up to some kind of horseplay.
As he draws closer, he’s less sure of their innocence.
The sun is in his eyes but it seems they have a boy on the ground.
One of the youths has the boy’s head locked between his knees - like a sheep trapped for shearing. The other two have pulled up his tunic. He is naked from the waist down and is being raped by the biggest member of the group.
Teucer stays back. He’s tall and wiry, but knows he is no match for savages like these.
Cloud flickers across the sun and fleetingly he gets a clearer view.
The slight figure is not a boy. It’s Tetia.
Now he doesn’t hesitate. The field flies beneath his feet. As he runs he pulls out the knife he uses for sacred sacrifices, the blade he uses to gut animals.
He plunges it into the back of the rapist.
The brute screams and knocks Tetia over as he falls. Teucer sweeps the blade at the face of the beast who’d been holding her, slashing him across the face.
Now there are arms around his neck. The third one is on him. Choking him. Pulling him over.
They crash to the ground. Teucer feels dizzy. He’s banged his head and everything’s going black.
But before he passes out, he feels one thing. The knife.
It is being taken from his slackening grasp.
CAPITOLO II
‘Teucer!’
The seer thinks he’s dreaming.
‘Teucer! Wake up!’
He opens his eyes. They hurt. Tetia’s staring down at him but he can’t see her face properly because the sun is burning so brightly behind her.
It must all have been a dream.
But the look on her face says it isn’t.
The blood on her hands says it isn’t.
He turns on his side and slowly pulls himself upright. He looks around. Sees nothing. He gets to his feet and puts out his shaking hands to her. ‘Are you all right?’
There’s a look of terror on her face. She is staring behind him.
Teucer turns.
He can’t believe what he sees.
It
was
real. All
very
real.
The body of the rapist is still there. Laid out in the dirt. His face and body have been cut to bits. The man whose face he cut has fled, along with his accomplice.
Teucer looks at his wife. She’s soaked in blood.
He doesn’t have to ask what happened; it’s obvious. When he passed out, she must have taken the knife and stabbed her attacker to death. Stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until she was absolutely sure he was dead.
And she didn’t stop there.
Teucer can’t speak. Can’t look at his wife.
She’s gutted him.
Tetia has driven the blade deep into the man’s body and sliced him open. Organs are spread everywhere. Heart. Kidney. Liver. She’s butchered him like a goat.
Finally, Teucer turns to her. His voice is stretched and heavy with worry. ‘Tetia? What did you do?’
Her face hardens. ‘He raped me.’ She points at the remains. ‘That pig of a man raped me!’ Tears glisten in her eyes.
He takes her by the hands and feels her tremble as she struggles to explain. ‘He’s dead and I am glad that he is. I have sliced him up so he will never reach the afterlife.’ She tilts her head towards the offal of his body, organs like those she has seen her husband rip from animals in sacrifice to the gods. ‘I have had his liver and Aita has his soul.’
Her words stun him. Aita - lord of the underworld. Stealer of souls. The name no netsvis dares speak. His feet are sticky with the blood of the man his wife has slaughtered - the man who debased and defiled him almost as much as her. A wave of sickness washes through him. He looks around at the carnage. It astonishes him. He never thought Tetia had the strength, let alone the anger. Gradually Teucer snaps out of his thoughts. ‘We must go. We must visit the magistrate and tell him what has happened. How you were attacked and defended yourself. Everything that happened. ’
‘Ha!’ Tetia throws her hands out with an exasperated laugh. ‘And what of this?’ She turns in a circle to indicate the slaughter. ‘Must I be pointed at and talked about for the rest of my years? “See her! See that woman there? She was raped and went mad.”’
Teucer goes to comfort her. ‘People will understand.’
She pulls away. ‘No!’ She holds her bloody hands to her face. ‘No, Teucer! No, they won’t!’
He grabs her wrists, tries to pull her hands away but can’t. Instead, he draws her to him and holds her tight. She’s shaking. He puts his face into her hair and kisses her softly. What he’s thinking is wrong. He knows it’s wrong. But he also knows it’s the only thing they can do.
Teucer steps a pace away, hands now on her elbows. ‘Then we go and wash in the stream. We go home and burn these clothes. And if anyone asks, we have been together at home all night.’
She looks relieved.
‘And we never say a word of this to anyone. Do you understand?’
Tetia nods. She folds herself in his arms and feels safe. But she also feels different. Different in a way she dare not describe. A way that will alter their lives for ever.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
PRESENT DAY