The Abomination (21 page)

The second man put her in a van with three other girls and took them to a tiny fishing port, where they were put on a boat and brought across to Italy at night. After they landed, they were taken to a place where some other girls were already waiting. One of them explained how it worked: they were being sold along a supply chain that ended up in the big Italian cities, where they would have to earn back the money that whoever eventually bought them had paid for them. Because they didn't have their passports, they couldn't run away, and if they somehow escaped and went to the police their families back home would be targeted.

She'd asked how they could ever earn enough as nannies to pay back the traffickers. It was the other girl's silence that finally made her realise what was going to happen to her.

There was another remote farmhouse, in the Italian countryside this time, where the girls were “trained”. Those who resisted were raped until they stopped resisting. Those who didn't resist were shown pornographic videos and instructed to “do it like that”. All the girls were filmed having sex, and were told that if they stepped out of line the films would be sent to their families.

By that time Nevena had made a decision. She was going to survive, so she did what she had to do. After a while, she said, you got used to it. Men didn't hurt you if you knew what you were doing and made it look as if you wanted to please them. When she finally got to Venice she was sold to a pimp for 1,500 euros, and told that once she'd earned it back her passport would be returned.

It turned out to be even harder than it seemed. The cost of the room where she serviced her customers was taken out of her earnings, as was the
pizzo
due to the Mafia. She had to pay for her food, and a deduction was made for lighting, heating, laundry and medical check-ups. Even so, she'd nearly made it, after a year of having sex with as many as six men a night. But not long before she reached the magic figure, her pimp sold her to someone else. Now she had to start all over again. But she was going to do it; she wasn't going to let herself give up hope.

Nevena spread the money Kat had given her on the table. She pushed ten euros to one side. “That's the
pizzo
– what Romano has to give the Mafia.” She took another ten and put it on top. “That's for my upkeep.” There were three tens left. “He gets that, and I get that,” she said, putting two on the pile and leaving one out for herself.

Kat gave Nevena her card. “There are organisations that can help you,” she said, just as she always did. “They can take you away from this work, send you back home. . .”

For a moment the girl looked as if she was tempted. Then she pushed the card back across the table. “Thanks, but if I do that I'll lose everything I've saved, and they'll still come after me. It's better to do it their way. Then when I go home there'll be no video in the post, no attacks on my family, and I'll be able to pretend I've just been a nanny, like they thought.”

“What if your pimp sells you again?” Kat said gently. “Have you thought of that?”

“I don't think he will,” she said. “I don't think he's as bad as the others.”

“Keep the card, anyway,” Kat said, leaving it on the table. “Keep it somewhere safe.”

Around eleven, as the bars were getting noisier and the pimps more threatening, Piola came to find her.

“I thought you might want some company. If only to watch your back.”

“What I want,” she said wearily, “is to get the hell out of here.”

“Shall we eat?”

She shook her head. “Let's go home.”

In her apartment she kissed him, feeling the solid warmth of his body. She started to undress him – only to stop, suddenly, at the thought of a girl from Bosnia who'd thought she was going to be a nanny, who was shown pornographic videos and told to copy what she saw in them.

She said, “I can't do this.”

“I understand,” he said gently. “Come on, let's get you to bed.”

He got her under the shower, then took her out and dried her, making her kneel between his legs so he could rub her hair with a towel. It was how her
papà
used to do it when she was a child.

He put her to bed and pulled the covers up over her. “Shall I go?”

“No,” she said. “Stay for a bit.”

He climbed in, fully dressed, and held her. But sleep still wouldn't come.

She told him about Nevena. “And what does the law say about Nevena?” she said furiously into the dark. “That she's a criminal. That she isn't even one of our citizens. That she doesn't have any rights. And so she has to keep screwing for money, because we won't help her.”

“And all the time the Mafia takes its cut.”

“Just like everything else in this city.”

“You know, when I started, it wasn't this bad. But now . . . I know for a fact that every single gondolier has to pay the
pizzo
. Every croupier in the municipal casino is a Mafia placeman. Half the hotels are laundering drugs money, and a kid straight out of school can set himself up with a handgun and a kilo of cocaine on easy credit. And what do the police do? We say: let's focus on the important stuff, the murders and the crimes against property. The prosecutors look the other way, jury service is like winning the lottery, and the judges go along with it or get blown up. And that isn't the important stuff?” He was silent a moment. “The thing I keep asking myself is, why Italy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why is it that our country is so especially corrupt, when others aren't? Spain, Greece, Portugal, France . . . Poorer countries, some of them, yet none of them have an organised crime problem like ours. What's so unique about Italy, that we haven't been able to root it out?”

“Maybe it's just one of those things.”

“Maybe. Or perhaps it's something about us. Our national character. Perhaps we'll never be free of it.”

“Don't be a pessimist. Even Nevena has hope.”

“Nevena was fed hope,” he said. “That's what makes it worse. They've got it down to a fine art, haven't they? They used to give the girls a little bit of smack to keep them docile. But hope is cheaper, and just as effective. The most obedient whore is the one who thinks she's working her way out of whoring. Capitalism, the pimp's best friend.”

“You think she'll be sold on again before she can pay off her debt?”

“I'd bet my life on it. Sorry.”

They both dozed a little. Later she woke him up and they made love in the dark, slowly and gently, and she thought how extraordinary it was that this act could be so wonderful and yet at the same time so terrible; that it could keep women like Nevena in debt bondage and yet, between her and Aldo, mean so much, and comfort so profoundly.

FROM THE MORNING
edition of
La Nuova Venezia
:

“BLACK MAGIC MURDERS” SNARE FOREIGN TOURISTS

• Woman's body was “dressed in Catholic robes”

• Prosecutor warns of “depraved world of occult”

• “Illegal” website implicated in deaths

The body of an East European woman found near Santa Maria della Salute during La Befana was dressed in the robes of a Catholic priest, prosecutors confirmed yesterday.

The woman was believed to have been killed while trespassing on Poveglia, an island declared unsafe for visitors by the Commissary of the Lagoon. A second body, belonging to an American woman of East European extraction, was later found in the
rio
below the hotel room they shared. A hotel chambermaid has said she heard the couple arguing violently on at least one occasion.

It is believed that the women were accompanied to the island by local fisherman Ricci Castiglione, 37, also found dead on Monday in circumstances that a source close to the investigation described as being “consistent with suicide”.

The prosecutor, Marcello Benito – widely regarded as one of the city's most effective – said yesterday in a statement, “It's much too early to draw any definite conclusions. However, I can confirm that occult symbols were found at the first murder scene. Of course, such matters were for a long time considered extremely dangerous, and even from our modern perspective we can see that there may be good reasons for that.”

He added, “If a local person has been drawn into this unpleasant affair, and has taken his own life as a result, then that only underlines just how real these dangers still are.”

Asked if there were indications that the two women were lovers, a Carabinieri spokesperson said “No comment”.

In a further twist, it appears that the pair may have bragged of their activities on a controversial website. Carnivia.com, which is based in Venice but attracts online visitors from across the world, allows users to exchange messages and even video material anonymously. Amid concerns that it could be used by pornographers and occultists, the Italian government recently applied for access to Carnivia's servers under anti-secrecy laws. The site's owner, Daniele Barbo, is currently awaiting sentencing for refusing to cooperate.

Barbo had not responded to requests for a comment as this edition went to press.

“So Ricci Castiglione committed suicide,” Kat said disgustedly.

“Apparently,” Piola said. “Drowned himself in a tank full of his own crabs in remorse at having murdered two gay East European witches. Impressive.”

“You said yourself, Marcello's good at this. There's almost nothing in this account that doesn't fit the evidence, with a little shoehorning.”

“Until you know what it leaves out,” Piola agreed.

It was mid-morning, but the operations room was quiet. Overnight, half of the officers on their investigation had been reassigned to other cases.

Piola sighed. “The trouble is, we don't have anything concrete to offer as an alternative. There are so many elements that seem suggestive – but when we chase them, they turn into will-o'-the-wisps.”

“Don't worry,” she told him. “We'll get there. Something will give, I'm sure of it.”

After the discovery that the tattoos on Jelena's body were Catholic in origin, Kat had sent a second email to “Karen”, the woman who'd called herself a priest. She'd heard nothing back at the time, but now, out of the blue, there was a message waiting in her inbox.

Log on to Carnivia now. Meet me in Campo San Zaccaria. Come alone.

She did as she was told, except for one small thing: while in Carnivia her avatar appeared to be alone, in reality Piola was standing next to her at the computer, fascinated but confused.

“So this is a kind of computer game?” he asked, as she hurried through the virtual equivalent of Venice to Campo San Zaccaria.

“Malli tells me it's technically a mirror world, which in turn is a kind of MUSE – a multi-user simulated environment. They're huge in cyberspace. Second Life, World of Warcraft . . . there are tens of millions of users on those sites alone. My brother used to be obsessed with a mirror world called Twinity. He spent hours every day interacting with it. Niche players like Carnivia are tiny by comparison.”

“So they're mainly for teenagers?”

“Some are. But Carnivia's a bit different, because everyone wears masks. Your Carnivia persona can effectively be used to shield all your activities on the internet, if you want it to.”

As Columbina7759, she crossed a perfect simulacrum of Piazza San Marco, walked along the Riva degli Schiavoni, and turned north into Campo San Zaccaria.

“Here we are.”

It was strange, to be both sitting in a building and seeing a perfect replica of it on the screen, right down to the slight crack in the pediment above the door.

“Remarkable,” Piola breathed.

In front of the Carabinieri headquarters a figure in a Domino mask was waiting. As Kat hurried towards it, a pop-up screen appeared above its head.

D
OMINO
67980
WANTS TO CHAT TO YOU
. A
CCEPT
?

She clicked “Yes”.

T
HANK YOU
. Y
OUR CHAT WILL BE ENCRYPTED
.

A balloon appeared from the figure's mouth.

–
Follow me
.

She followed. The figure led her to a quiet corner of the square.

–
What do you want to know?

Kat typed:

–
Are you a priest? A real one, I mean?

–
You've started with a difficult one
.

There was a pause. Then Domino67980 wrote:

–
According to the Pope, I'm not. But the theology is actually on our side. It's bishops who choose priests, not popes. And if a bishop decides to ordain a woman, then as soon as that woman has received the Sacrament of Holy Orders she is a priest, in the eyes of God. A heretic one, perhaps; even an abomination. The Church can excommunicate her. It can try her in an ecclesiastical court and defrock her. But according to the basic tenets of Catholicism, she has the “indelible mark” of priesthood on her forever, and there's no reason why her sacraments and prayers, although illicit, are any less valid than any other priest's
.

–
Is that why you won't give me your real name or location?

–
Exactly. The Church knows, or at least suspects, that we exist. It's spending vast resources trying to track us down. And when it finds us, it persecutes us
.

–
In what way?

–
It varies. There was a woman priest in Chicago, for example, called Janine Denomme. It was only after she died, in 2010, that the diocese found out she'd been ordained. It refused to let her funeral take place in a Catholic church, or for her to be buried in consecrated ground
.

–
Why do you do it? If there's such a risk, I mean?

There was another long pause. Then: