The Venice Conspiracy Read Free

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 drawsher 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

CHAPTER 3

    Flight UA:716
    Destination: Venice
    Mid-Atlantic,TomShaman looksagain at the postcard Rosanna Romano gave him.
    He knows now that the painter is Giovanni Canaletto and the scene is an eighteenth-century view of the Grand Canal and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. He knows it because he searched the internet all day until he found it. It was this card and this view that made him decide leaving LA was the right thing to do. Not for a short time. Not for a vacation. But for ever.
    From the moment he picked the card up off the floor near his bed, he knew his days as a priest were over. The hands that held the postcard were stained by mortal sin. Murderer’s hands. They could never hold the host again. Never baptise. Never marry. Never consecrate.
    Oddly, he feels both he and God are happy with this decision. Tom can’t yet figure out why, but it seems as right to quit now as it did to join the clergy when he was still at college.
    The cops said the girl who’d been raped went kind of crazy. Found out she was pregnant. Wouldn’t leave her bedroom. Just sat there in the dark all day and needed her mother to sit with her. It broke Tom’s heart to hear about it. He tried several times to visit her, but she wouldn’t see him. She sent a message through the cops that she was unclean – unholy – and he must stay away.
    Poor kid.
    Tom still blames himself. If only he’d been more alert, stepped in