Michael Morley - The Venice conspiracy

Tom powers more double-handed blows between his kidnapper's legs. Ruthless raw energy that leaves the guy creased up and choking for air. He's immobilised. But he's going to recover.

Kill him, Tom.

You know you have to.

You know you want to.

Tom hesitates.

The voices in his head make sense. Kill or be killed. But then demons always make sense, it's their stock in trade.

The injured jailer begins to stir. He's going to shout for help.

Tom instinctively follows the noise and leans his right forearm across the man's windpipe. If he was going to shout, he won't now. He kicks and bucks like a wild animal, but Tom presses down hard. A hundred and eighty pounds hard.

The kicking stops.

Tom shifts his arm and rolls off him. His head cracks the floor, but he knows he has no time to let the pain register or to draw breath. He lifts his cuffed hands. Gets his thumbs under the bandages across his face and pulls upwards. It's a real struggle to work them off. They rip at his mouth, snag and tear at his nose. Finally, they unravel like the skin of a cotton onion.

Tom still can't see.

White light blinds him. Pain worse than a punch. He shifts on to his side, angles his head away from the brightness and towards the floor.

Better.

He's not blind, just painfully sensitive to light.

The room is windowless. The burning light is from an overhead strip. So high he can't hear it buzz.

In less than a second Tom takes in the rest of the room.

Bare brick. Stone floors with cracked tiles. One heavy door with no window and just a single lock.

It looks like an old hospital ward.

Small and dingy. Musty. Mould on the bottom part of the room. Paint and plaster peeling from damp and cracked walls.

His sight is returning.

The jailer on the floor coughs for air and moves his legs.

Tom turns towards him. The guy's no giant, but he's well-built enough to have thought he could have injected the drug into Tom without help.

The sedative.

Tom grabs the needle from its steel bowl and jabs it straight into the prostrate man's neck. Squirts the whole chamber into his bloodstream.

Now he can relax.

The jailer's out for the count, and his body is a treasure chest – a belt, a Swiss Army knife – and the most valuable trinket of all, a cellphone.

He works the blade open and suffers a few close misses with his wrist veins as he saws through the plastic cuff ties. He rubs blood and feeling back into his wrists and grabs the cellphone. Quickly punches in Valentina's number.

No signal!

Damn!

He's going to have to leave the room. Make a run for it.

Tom wraps the man's belt around his waist and notices for the first time what they've dressed him in.

A sort of gown. Long. Sleeveless. Black.

A robe of some kind.

Now he gets it.

A sacrificial robe.

Today is the day. The day they plan to kill him.

The walls of the incident room next to Vito Carvalho's office are plastered with prints of Bale's final painting. The blow-ups come in every shape and size – from as big as a boy-band poster in a young girl's bedroom to as small as a postage stamp. There's not a minute when someone on the task force isn't staring at them, trying to make an inspired guess as to what messages and threats are hidden in the brushstrokes.

Three whiteboards have also been set up, each one dedicated to a different tablet. Almost everyone can now draw a netsvis, a horned devil or a couple lying together with a baby at their feet. In capital letters the word VENICE has been printed out on a giant sheet and pinned above the boards, with its coded Roman numerals running beneath.

Vito's working on a strategy of best guesses. The cubist drawings – the ones Gloria Cucchi suggested were titans of industry, building a city, have prompted him to raise extra security around banks and finance houses. Bale's impressionistic waterfall of blood and his attempt at Canaletto's view of the Canal Grande have resulted in him deploying extra boat patrols throughout the whole of Venice's canal system. Right now, he's stretched the Carabinieri's resources to their limits.

But of course, all the interpretations could be wrong. And the fear of that haunts every passing second. So much so, that Vito has a team of officers scouring the web, trying desperately to find works of painters – new or old – that might give further clues to anything shown in Bale's work.

He and Valentina sit in the far corner of the room, a stack of papers and bottles of water in front of them, a hundred operational actions and hopes behind them.

'We know it's today, and we know it's going to be some kind of attack on Venice,' says the major.

'We know it will probably involve Teale and Ancelotti,' adds Valentina.

'And Tom.'

She flinches. 'And Tom.'

'If it's local, it will be one of the remote islands, perhaps underground and out of sight.'

'Maybe in an old mansion?'

'That takes us back to Fabianelli's place.' Vito points across the room to a blow-up of the billionaire's mansion. 'And we've now flipped that place more times than a crepe.'

Francesca Totti joins them, looking exhausted.

'And you thought undercover work was tiring,' says Vito with a smile. 'Welcome to the weary world of homicide.'

Francesca tries to smile. She has a printout in her hands. 'A message from the FBI in California for Lieutenant Morassi: San Quentin finally came up with IDs on all Bale's visitors. There are several photo matches with Mera Teale, though she used a different name for the visitor's pass.'

'What was it?' asks Valentina excitedly.

'Lourdes di Natas.' Francesca scrapes a long strand of unwashed hair off her face and fleetingly dreams of a hot shower. 'She used a false driver's licence tied to an address that doesn't exist. Made three visits, starting just five years ago.'

'Di Natas sounds Hispanic,' observes Valentina. 'She probably guessed the system would be filled with Latinos and would go unnoticed.'

'Don't be racist,' says Vito. 'Anyway, it's not Hispanic. Lourdes is an allusion to Lord, and also to both the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and a place in France noted for its apparitions. As for "Natas" – well, our girl Mera really is having some fun at everyone's expense – Natas is the reverse of the word Satan.'

Valentina gets up and paces out of frustration. 'It's all a game, isn't it? Just one sick game that these animals are playing on us.' She scrubs her hands through her hair out of anger. 'God, this case is driving me crazy.'

'I know how you feel,' says Vito, looking up from his chair. 'If I had any hair, I'd probably do the same.'

She manages a laugh. So too does Francesca.

One of the search-team officers shouts from behind his computer. 'Major! Major, please look at this!'

Vito walks to the terminal, closely followed by his female lieutenants.

A young officer with bloodshot eyes points at his screen. 'It is Salto Angel – Angel Falls in Venezuela.'

'So?' says Vito, not quite on the same wavelength.

Officer Bloodshot points to a blow-up on the wall. 'It is in the painting.'

Vito frowns and squints at Bale's waterfall. 'Similar. Certainly similar.'

Valentina reads from the computer. 'Salto Angel is in Venezuela and is the tallest waterfall in the world.'

'Venezuela?' queries Francesca.

'The villages there, the palafitos,' says Vito, suddenly starting to see the connection, 'are built over water, just like in Venice. They made the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci think of Venezia. He took the Italian Venez and added the Spanish suffix zuola – meaning little – and named the place Venezuola.'

'So what does it mean?' asks Valentina, looking up at the painting. 'Something is going to happen there instead of here?'