The Abomination (24 page)

She frowned. “I told you, we already tried that. It's useless.”

“You're mistaken.”

“What makes you so sure?” she said, curious.

“I've done it before.”

When Daniele was ten years old, his parents had given him a computer – a Commodore 64, one of the very first mass-market devices with a hard drive. Its processing power was eight bytes, less than a thousandth of the capacity of a modern credit card. But by the time he was twelve, he was as fluent in the programming language BASIC as he was in Italian, his father's tongue, and American, his mother's. What was more, he felt infinitely more at home in the world in which that language was spoken than he did in what others called the “real” world. In this new universe, everything obeyed a set of rigid, predictable laws. Everything was programmed, and if it didn't behave the way you wanted it to, you reprogrammed it until it did.

That summer, the family transferred to their villa in the Veneto countryside, just as they did every year when the heat and the stench in Venice got too bad to bear. Daniele had insisted on taking his computer. His father had been carrying it to the launch outside when he slipped, and it fell into the canal. To his parents' consternation, Daniele had immediately dived in to retrieve it. He developed a fever from the polluted water, but as soon as he was better, he set about salvaging what data he could from the hard drive. It was painstaking work, like rebuilding a smashed vase that had been crushed almost to dust. But eventually he had succeeded.

He still wondered whether his father had really slipped, or whether his parents had simply decided their son was spending too much time with only a keyboard for company.

None of this he felt inclined to share with Captain Tapo, of course, although he was aware that she was watching him curiously.

“That hard drive is evidence,” she said. “If it were to leave police custody at all – let alone to be placed with a convicted criminal – it would no longer be of any use in court.”

“It's of no use in court as it is,” he pointed out. “What do you have to lose?”

She hesitated. She still had the hard drive, after all, and it was true that Malli had said it might as well be thrown away. What was the difference between disposing of it and giving it to Barbo?

But, she reminded herself, if there
were
something on it, and Barbo could retrieve it, she had no guarantee as to what he would do with that information. He could just as easily steal it for his own ends, and then say it had been irretrievable. Piola, she knew, would regard this proposal as utterly unfeasible.

“I'm sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I can't do that.”

He shrugged, as if that were the answer he had been expecting. “I understand. But will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“When your investigation becomes stalled by people you can't even identify; when evidence goes missing, or witnesses are silenced; when you and Colonel Piola are prevented from following leads you know are promising – then, will you reconsider?”

She didn't say that most of those things were already happening. Instead she nodded. “Perhaps.”

“In that case, Captain,” he said, standing up, “I'll be expecting your call.” The interview was over. She glanced at her watch. It had taken exactly twenty-nine minutes.

As she left she saw that he had gone to the whiteboard and was studying it intently, tracing the mathematical formulae on it with his pen, as if reading a page of music that only he could hear.

KAT DROVE OUT
to the Institute of Christina Mirabilis, where Father Uriel had grudgingly agreed she could speak to one of the older nuns about Poveglia. But her mind wasn't on the forthcoming interview so much as her conversation with Daniele Barbo.

She tried not to make snap judgements about people. Detective work had taught her that the smiling father who proudly showed you pictures of his children might turn out to be abusing them. The likeable old rogue who spent most of his time tending his vegetable patch might turn out to be a killer for the Mafia. Young professionals, to all intents and purposes no different from her, might be slaves to their cocaine habits, or beat up their partners.

But she'd formed a strong opinion about Daniele, which was that he could be useful to this investigation. She wouldn't go so far as to say that she trusted him – but whatever her feelings about his website, his stand on not allowing the government access to it at least pointed to someone who could be principled when he chose to be.

Piola, she knew, would say the decision wasn't theirs to make. When police officers started making their own rules, they became part of the problem. And the logic she was employing – that Daniele was trustworthy precisely because he had refused to cooperate with a lawful request by the government – was hardly one she would be able to defend in court.

She was no nearer resolving her dilemma by the time she was shown into Father Uriel's office. Sitting in a leather armchair, and almost dwarfed by it, was a woman so tiny she looked barely more substantial than a child, although a slight stoop to her neck betrayed her real age. She was wearing the grey habit and white wimple of a nun.

Father Uriel obviously intended to stay and listen to their conversation; Kat was equally adamant that he wouldn't. Once she'd persuaded him to leave, she asked a few introductory questions to put the nun at her ease. She quickly realised it was hardly necessary: Sister Anna was only too keen to talk.

She was, she said at once, one of the longest-serving nurses in the hospital. “That's the advantage of being a nun,” she exclaimed. “There's no one making you retire.”

“So you worked in the hospital on Poveglia before this?”

“I did. And a horrible place it was too. Oh, not the hospital, that was fine enough. But the island had a bad feel to it.” The nun lowered her voice. “They did say it was haunted. And although I'm not saying I ever saw anything myself, it definitely had an atmosphere. Those poor plague victims, you know. None of us would eat the fish.” She nodded significantly, as if to say that not eating the fish was all the proof that could be required.

“What sort of people were the patients?”

“Oh, it wasn't like now,” Sister Anna assured her. “Most of the Reverend Fathers we treat here . . . well, they seem quite normal, don't they, until you know what they've been up to. In those days we had more what you might call mad people. People who weren't right in the head,” she added, as if Kat might not understand what mad meant.

Kat noted the indiscreet aside about the Institute's current clientele and stored it away for future reference. Priests who required Father Uriel's personal combination of prayer and pharmaceuticals . . . Perhaps the Institute was one of those shadowy places one heard of where those who had disgraced the Church were quietly sent for treatment. That might explain why Father Uriel seemed so evasive. “Were there any women at the asylum?” she asked.

The bird-like face nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. Almost as many as men, I'd say. Poor creatures, you wouldn't believe—”

Kat cut across her. “Do you remember a woman called Martina Duvnjak?”

Sister Anna blinked rapidly. Then she said, “Oh, dear, yes. They called her the abomination.”

It was the same word Father Uriel had used. “Why?”

“Well,” Sister Anna pursed her lips, “she was deluded, the poor woman. She thought she was. . .” She shook her head at the awfulness of it. “A priest,” she whispered.

“And was she?” Kat asked baldly.

The old nun looked shocked. “Of course not.”

“But she believed she was?” Kat persisted.

“The patients believed all sorts of things, poor dears,” Sister Anna said primly. “But yes, that was her particular fixation. It wasn't one I was likely to forget.”

“And the doctors treated her how?”

“In the usual way. With drugs and prayers and electric shocks.”

“Successfully?”

Sister Anna considered. “I would say that she was calmer at certain times than others. When she first came, I understand, she was in a terrible state. She would talk about how His Holiness had summoned her to Rome, how she was going to show the world that women could be in orders. They had to restrain her on occasions, I heard.”

Kat tried to imagine what it must have been like for Martina Duvnjak – smuggled into a foreign country, only to be imprisoned in a mental hospital where no one believed, or wanted to believe, that she was what she said she was. Where those whom she had trusted most betrayed her most profoundly.

“And yet you say she was called the abomination?” she said.

Sister Anna nodded. “Indeed.”

“Why would they call her that,” Kat asked, “if she wasn't one?”

For the first time in their conversation, she had the satisfaction of seeing the other woman rendered speechless.

Father Uriel was loitering in the corridor. “I trust that was useful,” he said, bustling forward.

“Sister Anna was very informative,” she assured him.

“Good. Well, unless there's anything else, I'll walk you back to your car.”

As he steered her towards the main entrance, she said, “Incidentally, we identified the remaining wall markings at the Poveglia crime scene. The ones you didn't recognise.”

He turned his face towards her, professionally curious. “Yes?”

He was just a little too good, she thought. He was working so hard at keeping his face impassive that he'd neglected to convey the normal interest that anyone, surely, would show on being told such a puzzle had been solved.

“They're called
stećak
markings. They're Catholic, not occult. From Bosnia and Croatia.”

Again, his face gave nothing away. “That's one less mystery, then, isn't it? Although I should point out that religious symbols can also be appropriated and abused by occultists.”

“I'm sure. But in fact these markings were drawn on the wall before the other symbols were added. Before the priest was killed, even.”

Involuntarily, he flinched.

“Sorry,” she added, “I should have said, ‘the woman dressed as a priest'. Tell me, Father, if you had a woman as a patient today who genuinely believed she was a priest, how would you treat her?”

He considered. “Well, every treatment programme is different. The individual circumstances would determine—”

“But you
would
treat her?” she persisted. “You'd say she was deluded, just as Martina Duvnjak was?”

Father Uriel didn't react to her mention of Martina's name. “Medicine has moved on a great deal since those days.”

“But the Church hasn't. The position on women priests has, if anything, hardened.”

He didn't reply.

“Last time I was here,” she said on an impulse, “you offered to show me round.”

He frowned. “Did I?”

“I've a few minutes to spare now. Would you give me a tour of the premises, please?”

She could see him calculating, then deciding that the easiest thing was to go along with her lie, bare-faced though it was. “Of course. We've nothing to hide here, Capitano.”

Abruptly he turned, barely waiting for her to follow. “These are all treatment rooms,” he said, gesturing at the rooms on their left without breaking stride. “We can't interrupt the patients' therapies, I'm afraid.”

“When you say ‘patients', Father, I take it you mean ‘priests'?”

If he was annoyed that Sister Anna had divulged this information, he didn't show it. “The Institute is a privately funded charitable facility, working under the auspices of the Catholic Church. As such, we prioritise those from within the ecclesiastical community.”

“Fallen priests.”

“Sick priests,” he corrected. “As I think I said to you, the approach we use here combines the medical and the spiritual. That's a greater overlap than many people imagine. Cognitive behavioural therapy and the rigorous self-examination of a monastic rule, for example, have many similarities. Prayer and visualisation therapy . . . Confession and non-directive psychoanalysis . . . Even concepts as apparently old-fashioned as penance and penitence have their parallels in the twelve steps of an addiction programme.”

“And the drugs you use?”

“Help to manage symptoms and make the patient more receptive to therapy.”

“More suggestible, you mean?” she said, hoping to provoke him, but Father Uriel was on familiar territory now and his phrases had the well-polished tone of ones that had been trotted out many times before.

“If only curing the sick were as simple as suggesting to them that they've been cured,” he said mildly. “It worked for our Lord, of course, but here our miracles are rather more uncertain.”

From behind one of the closed doors she heard – faintly but unmistakeably – a woman moaning in simulated ecstasy. “Is that
pornography
I can hear?”

Without stopping, he tilted his head. “It's possible. Flooding, or confronting an addict with the object of their craving, is standard treatment for certain forms of sex addiction.”

He led her through a high-ceilinged refectory into a kitchen. Men in brown habits with knotted cinctures at their waists were preparing food at long counters. A few looked up. She felt their stares burn into her briefly, before their eyes dropped back to their work.

“We are a community here, as well as a hospital,” Father Uriel was saying. “While they're with us, patients observe the monastic rules.”

It was eerily quiet. “Including the vow of silence?”

“Yes. Except in the treatment rooms and other specially designated areas. We find it helps to focus their minds on their treatment.”

A tall, thickset man wearing, rather incongruously, a black woollen hat as well as his monk's habit, came in with a dead deer across his shoulders. He hefted it down onto a counter and reached for a knife. Blood dripped from a neat hole between the stumpy antlers.