Michael Morley - The Venice conspiracy

'Signorina, I agree,' says Alfie. 'I am only telling you what some in the Church believed. Remember there was a time when you could have been tortured to death for following any religion other than Catholicism. We are an august body,' he adds sarcastically, 'well used to persecuting women, preventing them taking holy orders and even falsely labelling them as witches, then drowning them to prove their innocence. '

He lets these points of mitigation sink in. 'So: that leaves the first tablet – the one that shows a horned demon believed to be Satan in front of the gate of serpents. This piece is said to be the most important of the trio. When it is placed in its original position on the left of the trinity, it establishes Satan – not God – as the creator of all things. Thus when we pass through the gates of this life into the next, it is Satan we will have to face. The tablets also suggest that it is Satan who created man and woman and gave everyone free will to indulge themselves – not God. The middle tablet is interpreted as recognising that some people started believing in false gods – hence the netsvis impaled upon the staff of doubts. Then the final piece shows Satan's wrath. He was so angered that he sent his own spirit to earth to take human form and punish the priest by raping and impregnating his wife.'

Vito Carvalho blows out a long breath. It's heavy stuff. Certainly the kind of religious psychobabble that the impressionable and evil would follow. 'Father, do you know the whereabouts of all, or any, of the tablets?'

'No,' says Alfie. 'Over the centuries, the Church has had one or more in its possession, but never all of them. According to the records I can trace – and there may be more in the archives that I have not yet found – Satanists have managed to unite all three, but not for long.'

'And what happens when the three are united?' asks Valentina. 'Some kind of Satanic festival?'

Now it's Alfie's turn to blow out a long breath. 'You know how the Church is always asked why, if there is a God, does he allow terrible things like earthquakes, floods and diseases to happen? And you know how, when world leaders talk of terrorists blowing up innocent civilians they always say that evil people only have to get lucky once, while we have to get lucky every day? Well, there are those in the Church who believe that when the Tablets of Atmanta, or the Gates of Hell, as they are more appropriately known, are brought together they create that window of opportunity for the devil. The combined artefact opens a space in time during which God is powerless and the darkest of all deeds cannot be stopped.'

'A window of opportunity for the devil?' repeats Valentina incredulously.

'Quite.'

Vito almost daren't ask the next question. 'Father, we have found a symbol drawn in blood on altars in Venice.'

'Three divisions of an oblong?'

'Exactly.'

'The rectangle is a symbol of the tablets, the sign of the conspirators of Satan. They have their roots in the north of Italy, back in the times of Teucer and Tetia, long before the first settlements were established in the marshes that became Venice.'

Vito, Valentina and Rocco all exchange knowing looks. 'Beneath the last symbol there was a number,' continues Vito. 'Would that have a significance?'

'A six. I presume it is a six?'

'It is.'

The doors to the tiny office where Alfie is calling from burst open. Two Vatican guards, in full uniform, are facing him.

'Six days,' says Alfie, before they rip the phone from his hands. 'You have six days before they make their last and most significant sacrifice, then the gates of hell will be unlocked and we'll be powerless against the evil that's let loose.'

Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venezia The tiny island's terrible history floats in the night like an invisible but poisonous cloud.

Lazzaretto Vecchio – Venice's biggest burial ground, the home of the plague dead.

Almost a century and a half earlier, the disease had devastated the city. More than a third of the population – around fifty thousand people – had been killed. Such was the toll, prisoners had to be released to ferry the dead – and the dying – out to the lazaret, Italy's first quarantine island. Back then, it was more benignly known as Isola Santa Maria di Nazareth, but the saintly name was lost as the cadavers stacked up. The hospital did its best to cure the incurable, but it quickly became just a sorting office for the dead and the dying.

Since then, it's been uninhabited.

Or so people believed.

As Tommaso steps ashore, his nerves are in shreds. He remembers only too well the stories the brothers at the monastery told about the island and how mass graves were hurriedly dug to swallow rotting corpses that the city couldn't cope with. He knows that the steps he now takes were once routes for carts full of wasted lives, corpses of men, women and children carried to communal pits to be burned.

Oarsmen with lanterns fall in at the front and rear of the party as it heads further away from the shore and into what seems a dense thicket.

The night is quickly becoming icy, and the ground underfoot hard and slippery. Someone in front stumbles and then the lanterns go out. A woman shouts. Lydia, by the sound of it.

Something cracks into the side of Tommaso's head. He thinks he's cracked it against a low-hanging branch.

Then another blow slams into his head. Much harder this time. Strong enough to knock him flat and to make him realise he's being attacked. He rolls on the hard, slippery ground and covers his face to protect himself.

Pain explodes in his right shoulder.

Now in his side and thighs.

A flurry of clubs smash his head, legs and arms.

A knee thumps into his gut and stays there.

They're kneeling on him. Pressed so close to him that he can smell them.

Alcohol. Garlic. Strange perfume.

A fist pounds his face. Bone-jarring brutality. Blood and teeth in his mouth. He spits and coughs for air.

Hands grab his legs and arms.

He's dizzy. Blacking out.

Something rough touches his face.

A rope.

The last thing he's conscious of is the smell and feel of the noose, as it slips over his busted nose and tightens around his throat.

Present Day Venice Tom's been unconscious for so long he has no idea of the length of time he's been held. Certainly twenty-four hours. Maybe longer. Much longer.

He feels as though he's lost the ability to judge things. Doesn't know whether it's day or night.

Whether he's blind or his eyes are still bandaged.

At times, he can't even tell whether he's awake or asleep.

On the grey movie screen in his mind, familiar scenes flicker by: The Monica Vidic Killing. The Disneyland Murders. The Death of Antonio Pavarotti.

The leading actors are always the same: Vito Carvalho, Valentina Morassi and Lars Bale. The minor ones equally familiar: Tina Ricci, Mera Teale, Sylvio Montesano and Alfie Giordano.

But it's all a mess.

In his muddle of drug-induced plots and subplots, Tom has Vito cast as a Satanic high priest, Giordano as the killer of Antonio Pavarotti and Valentina Morassi as the secret owner of the Gates of Destiny. Drugs do that. They expand your mind, make you think differently, but warp everything in the process.

While Tom has no exact idea how long he's been held captive, he knows it's running into days, not hours. He knows it, because he's developing a tolerance to the drug they're feeding him. The gaps between total immersion in his never-ending narcotic netherworld and gradual surfacing back into the air of the real world are becoming shorter and shorter. Whoever is shooting him the stuff is not as smart as they should be.