'Thanks, I'll be just a minute.' She resumes her talk with Tom. 'Sorry, I have to go, the boss is calling.'
'I understand. But before you vanish, I need to tell you about a man called Lars Bale who's on Death Row in San Quentin. He was a cult leader – he and his followers killed tourists and smeared their blood in churches across-'
Valentina cuts him off: 'Tom, tell me tomorrow, I need to go.'
'Okay,' he sounds irritated. 'But this may be important – Bale has a tattoo, the same as Mera Teale's. A teardrop, just below his left eye. If you get his prison mug shot you'll-'
'Tom, I really have to go, lieutenants don't keep majors waiting. Sorry.'
'Valentina!'
He's left pleading with the dial tone.
By the time he slams the phone down he realises it's his own fault. He should have kept her more in the loop, told her what his suspicions were. He stands up and paces. Glancing down at the sketches, something clicks. From upside down he finally sees what Bale meant. It's not a teardrop.
It's a six.
Or is he clutching at straws? Making things up. Imagining the proverbial mark of the beast.
He grabs his jacket and decides to go straight to Carabinieri HQ. Even if he's got it wrong, it's best to tell Vito and Valentina. Sooner rather than later.
As he walks, he wonders if it's possible that Bale and Teale could know each other. They're both American, but she's much younger than him. Of course, Venice is full of Americans, so it could just be coincidence. And what of the tattoo? Is a teardrop as common as a peace sign or a smiley face? Or is it a modern-day Satanic gang marking? Maybe there are two other teardrops on her body somewhere, making three sixes in all. He's been around so many gangs in LA and seen so many cult tats that he appreciates the power invested in symbolically marking your body to show your beliefs, your true colours.
Tom heads east down the Ponte Tre Pont, south-east down the Fondamenta del Gafaro before finding some narrower and quicker backstreets to take him towards the Carabinieri buildings on the northern side of the Ponte di Rialto. He's somewhere close to the Campo dei Frari when a man in a red tee and jet-black jeans looks directly at him and smiles. Tom is still wondering whether he knows him when the stranger lifts his right arm like he's about to look at his watch.
It feels like water's been sprayed in his face.
Then comes the burning.
Pepper spray!
Tom puts his hands to his face just in time to stop another burst of spray.
He wheels around in the burning blindness.
Feels a sharp jab in his neck.
A hypodermic.
He rocks on his feet, feels a tingling queasiness spread through his veins and then crashes painfully like a toppled tree.
CHAPTER 55
Through a stinging, painful fog Tom hears them jabbering in Italian.
His eyes are burning from the OC – Oleorisin capsicum. Now he feels a different kind of spray in his face. Lagoon water. He's on a boat, moving somewhere.
'Attenzione!' someone shouts.
He's awake – and they're aware he's awake. Before Tom can shut his eyes and feign unconsciousness, someone covers him again in pepper spray. The burn barely has time to hit home before another needle finds a river of blood in his neck. His limbs turn to jelly and he floats off again on a queasy sea of blackness.
He doesn't stir until they lift him from the boat.
The first thing he notices is that the air has changed. It's less fresh. Much cooler. Almost damp.
He thinks he's inside.
Clear male voices talk around him in hushed tones. Tom can feel the heat and closeness of their bodies. He can't see them, but he imagines them peering down and talking about him.
Sensation is slowly returning to his limbs. Pain prickles his eyes again. He knows how much trouble he is in.
Both his arms and legs are tied. Tied tight. Whoever has abducted him has gone to great trouble to make sure he doesn't get away.
CHAPTER 56
Vito Carvalho is at his desk before the sun of a new morning has fully risen.
He stands by the open window of his top-floor office blowing smoke out over the buildings and canals beneath him. He barely slept last night. Now he's anxious about how Valentina is going to take the news that he's decided to drop her from the team. He should have done it long ago – straight after her cousin's death. She's had no chance to recover. No time to grieve.
He finishes the cigarette and turns away from the window. Even now he's having second thoughts. Work is what she's hanging on to. The one constant that's stopping her falling apart. He shakes his head. The screw-up over the fingerprints in the boathouse has changed everything. He simply can't let another mistake like that happen. He has to put the investigation before her personal needs.
Vito settles back behind his desk and goes through the overnight reports from his team leaders. Gradually the offices around him begin to fill and he knows it will be only minutes before Valentina arrives.
He's still thinking about how she'll react when the call comes in.
A call that instantly has him sending all his officers to a fresh scene: the sacred building that locals call the Chiesa d'Oro – the Church of Gold. Most people would jump at the chance to visit St Mark's Basilica free of tourists.
But not today.
No one is staring at the shimmering gold mosaics that adorn the ceilings. No one notices the brilliant Byzantine architecture or cavernous domes. The only people moving across the Chiesa's geometrically patterned marble floors are police officers. The only thing getting their attention is far from holy.
Ashen-faced, the Prime Procurator Giovanni Bassetti sits on the back pew in a state of shock and dismay. As the person responsible not only for the basilica's restoration but also for its caretakers and security guards, he's failed in his duties. History will not remember the care he lavished on the iconic campanile or the wonderful four horses of the Triumphal Quadriga: it will only recall the atrocity that happened on his watch.
Vito Carvalho walks straight past him, down the main aisle towards the familiar figure of Rocco Baldoni. Somewhere off to the side, a camera shutter clacks and echoes through the cathedral's waxy emptiness. He reaches the elevated presbytery and can't help but feel it's inherently wrong to be entering an area that used to be reserved for the clergy, and now excludes everyone except police officers. This is the resting place for the remains of St Mark, stolen by Venetian merchants from Alexandria back in the ninth century. It's now the scene of a chilling act of blasphemy. At the back of the high altar is the basilica's beautifully intricate Pala d'Oro – the Golden Pall. Across it, daubed in blood, six inches high and seven inches wide is the same rectangular symbol that they found at the Salute, and beneath it, the number 6.
Vito is shaking his head at the monstrous sacrilege when Valentina arrives, having just deployed search and interview teams. She crosses herself, genuflects and joins him on one of the isolation planks that forensics have put down to keep the area uncontaminated. 'This is it?' she asks. 'There's nothing more?'
Vito can't help but remember that right now they should both be in his office and she should be learning she's off the case. 'This is all we've found for now,' he answers. 'There's no liver, if that's what you were thinking.' He cranes his head forward to get a better look at the blood, then glances towards a forensics officer hard at work. 'Has it been brushed on?'
A dark-haired young woman, gloved and suited, looks up from her kneeling position. 'Si. We've found a couple of bristles on one of the strokes.' She nods towards a spray of Luminol. 'And, yes, it is blood, not paint.'
Vito leans back. 'So our killer has taken blood – bottled it – then he's brought it here to paint a blasphemous message across the religious heart of Venice. And the victim? Dead or alive?' He looks up, almost as though he expects an answer from God. 'One we already know of, or one we are still to discover?'