The Venice conspiracy

CHAPTER 53

Present Day Hotel Rotoletti, Venice Priests are a lot like cops.

They instinctively pick up on things. Slight changes in anything. Hesitations in speech. Cagey ways of answering questions. Anything that helps them detect the truth.

Despite being thousands of miles away, Tom's picked up on plenty – not least the fact that Lars Bale sounds entirely different than when they met a decade ago. His voice is tight. Guttural. As though some wild animal is pacing and growling in the pit of his gut.

But there's something else. Something that's dangerously out of place in a man about to die.

He sounds calm.

Tom backtracks over an earlier remark. 'Lars, what did you mean, you've been wondering who God would send?'

Bale laughs – the sniggering kind, suited to a private joke. 'You are chosen, Tom – just as I am. You phoned me because you know that everything is connected to me. Everything that will happen, will be as a result of me.'

Tom's taken aback. The phraseology is so egotistically ambiguous it could be interpreted in several ways. 'What do you mean? I still don't understand.'

'Oh, but I think you do. You're in Venice, chasing ghosts. Ghosts in the lagoon, spectres in the sacristy.' He breaks into a heartier chuckle.

Tom can't work out how Bale knows where he is. Maybe the governor told him. Maybe the dialling code has shown up on some caller display. He wants to believe there's a rational reason – anything except what appears obvious.

'Our paths were fated to cross, Tom. It was divined centuries before your fuck-less Christ child was even born.'

Tom has no time to counter the blasphemy. He cuts to the chase. 'I remember you had a lot of tattoos. Didn't you have one beneath your left eye, a sort of teardrop?'

Bale ignores the question. 'Tell me, Father, did you think of God when you first fucked her? When you slid your fatty tube of flesh inside sweet Tina, did you call out for Jesus?'

A shiver arcs over Tom's shoulders. Tina? How does he know her name? Then he remembers the magazine article and guesses it's been passed around the cells or, worse still, other papers have picked up on the story.

'Lars, I asked you a question: do you have a teardrop tattoo?'

'You know I do,' Bale sounds amused. 'Now, you tell me something. What kept you hard when your priestly cock sought out the wet mouth of her vagina? Thoughts of God, or thoughts of her flesh and your own pleasure?'

Tom stays focused. 'Was the tattoo a gang symbol, Lars? Did other members of your cult all have the same sign?'

Again the killer ignores him, his voice low and lecherous. 'What did you shout when you felt yourself come, Father Tom? When you frantically dumped all those years of denial into her, did you take the name of your Lord, your God in vain?'

Tom fights images in his head. Tina's mouth, her breasts, her perfumed skin.

'Are you reliving those memories now, Tom? I'm sure you are.' Bale fakes passion in his voice. 'Oh God! Oh fucking Jesus, I'm coming!' He rolls out a chilling laugh.

Tom snaps. 'Answer me! What does the tattoo mean to you?'

Lars swallows the last of his dark chuckles. His voice grows deep and growls down the phone as though covered in hot tar and grit. 'It's not a teardrop, you fool. Didn't you ever look at my paintings? Didn't you pay any attention to my art? How fucking ignorant are you?'

Tom's nerves tingle. His mind begins a desperate mental scramble through years of dusty archived images. Flash-frames of Bale's barred cell flood back – the grey sheets, the bolted-down bunk, the lack of any family photos, the smell of freshly squeezed oil paints, rows of canvases stacked alongside the steel toilet – but nothing else.

'You're a fool, Father Tom – just like all the other mother-fuckers in churches and police stations all over the world.'

Bale drops the phone off his shoulder and lets it swing on its metal flex. The guards, Tiffany and Hatcher, move towards him. He shouts at the swinging receiver, 'See you in hell, Father Tom! See your dumb, fucking ass in hell!'