The Traitor (The Carnivia Trilogy) (3 page)

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.

S
ECOND
L
IEUTENANT
H
OLLY
B
OLAND
flipped the catches on her father’s old footlocker trunk and pushed open the lid.

Inside, under a layer of lining paper, was her childhood.

The first thing she saw was a drawing she’d done of her favourite
piazza
in Pisa – not the overcrowded Campo dei Miracoli where tourists congregated round the Leaning Tower, but the much smaller square at the end of the street where her own family had lived, where their Italian neighbours chatted over purchases in the grocery store, drank espressos propped against the zinc counter of the bar, or sat on the backs of parked Vespas eating ice creams and flirting, depending on their age and gender. The drawing was signed “
BUON COMPLEANNO PAPÀ!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE HOLLY!!!”

She noticed that she’d mixed Italian and English. It must have been done when she was eleven or twelve, the two languages still overlapping in her head.

Beneath the card was a class assignment in a clear folder, titled, “What it’s like to be an American officer’s daughter in Italy.” It was illustrated with a photograph of her and her brothers at a barbecue at Camp Darby, all three of them in swimwear. She’d been as lean and wiry as her brothers even then, her hair even blonder than theirs after weeks in the Italian summer sun. Behind them, a group of Marines jogged along the beach in PTs and fatigue caps.

“Hi!” the caption read. “
Io amo la mia vita in Italia!
I love my life in Italy!”

Smiling, she put it down and moved on. A
Certificato di Eccellenza
from the Scuola Secondaria di Madonna Dell’Acqua attested that student Signorina Holly Boland had swum eight hundred metres. Another card, also handmade, bore the words, “
Per il miglior papà del mondo!
For the Best Daddy in the World!” It was dated
marzo 19
, the Feast of St Joseph, when Italian children wore green clothes and baked
frittelle
in honour of their fathers.

She wondered when she’d stopped giving him cards on the third Sunday in June, Father’s Day in the US. Had she even noticed that she’d ditched the customs of her homeland for those of the country she was being raised in? Had he? And if he had, had he been proud, or concerned? Or a little bit of both?

Fascinated and nostalgic in equal measure, she continued digging through the layers. Every card she’d ever made him, every homework assignment she’d ever proudly passed on, every certificate she’d earned and postcard she’d sent home – he’d kept them all. Like most military personnel, always ready to move at short notice, his most precious possessions were stored in trunks rather than cupboards or drawers. That he’d devoted most of this one to mementoes of her childhood moved her almost to tears.

Further down, she found a photograph he’d taken of her. She was sitting on the back of a Vespa, grinning like a cat who’d got the cream, about to be driven somewhere by a handsome youth in sunglasses, his teeth gleaming in his olive-brown face. She must have been about fifteen. Her long, adolescent legs ended in the briefest pair of denim shorts she’d ever seen.

“How are you doing?”

Holly turned round. Her mother had come into the garage. “Hey, Mom. Look what I found.” Holly showed her the picture. “Did I
really
go out dressed like that? And did you really think it was OK?”

Her mother smiled ruefully. “I don’t recall us having much choice – you were always so determined. And the Italian boys were always very respectful.”

“They may have seemed that way round you and Dad. I remember some very persistent wandering hands. It’s a wonder I wasn’t—” She stopped abruptly.

Her mother said nothing. Holly had told her a little of the events that had led to her taking extended leave from her posting at Camp Ederle, near Vicenza. A US colonel had incarcerated her in an underground military facility and tortured her, that much she knew. But she had also learnt that it was best not to press her daughter for details unless she was in the mood to talk about it.

Turning back to the trunk, Holly took the upper tray out. Underneath was her father’s “formal”, his dress uniform – a four-pocket green jacket, complete with insignia and shoulder braid; tan trousers with a black stripe down the seams; a peaked, braided hat – and, alongside, a small case of medals. Medals for achievement and diligence rather than combat. Her father had been a conscientious officer who loved and believed in his country and his job, but he was no bloodthirsty warrior.

Beneath the medals was a sash. She lifted it out. It was designed to fasten around the neck like a waistcoat and bore a series of embroidered symbols: a compass, a set square and an eye inside a triangle. “I didn’t know Dad was a Mason,” she exclaimed.