The Venice conspiracy

CHAPTER 3

Flight UA:716 Destination: Venice Mid-Atlantic, Tom Shaman looks again at the postcard Rosanna Romano gave him.

He knows now that the painter is Giovanni Canaletto and the scene is an eighteenth-century view of the Grand Canal and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. He knows it because he searched the internet all day until he found it. It was this card and this view that made him decide leaving LA was the right thing to do. Not for a short time. Not for a vacation. But for ever.

From the moment he picked the card up off the floor near his bed, he knew his days as a priest were over. The hands that held the postcard were stained by mortal sin. Murderer's hands. They could never hold the host again. Never baptise. Never marry. Never consecrate.

Oddly, he feels both he and God are happy with this decision. Tom can't yet figure out why, but it seems as right to quit now as it did to join the clergy when he was still at college.

The cops said the girl who'd been raped went kind of crazy. Found out she was pregnant. Wouldn't leave her bedroom. Just sat there in the dark all day and needed her mother to sit with her. It broke Tom's heart to hear about it. He tried several times to visit her, but she wouldn't see him. She sent a message through the cops that she was unclean – unholy – and he must stay away.

Poor kid.

Tom still blames himself. If only he'd been more alert, stepped in earlier, been more decisive. He might have saved her. Might have spared her all this pain.

The thoughts still haunt him as the Airbus begins its descent into Marco Polo.

Dipping through thin cloud on a crisp, clear morning he catches a tantalising glimpse of the Dolomites and shimmering Adriatic. Next comes the Ponte della Liberta, the long road and rail causeway that links the historic centre of Venice with mainland Italy. Finally, the distinctive outline of the Campanile di San Marco and the meandering outreaches of the Canal Grande. The waterway doesn't seem to have changed much since Canaletto's time.

Marco Polo's runway lies parallel to the dazzling coastline and, unless you're perched on the pilot's knee, the view you get does nothing to reassure you that you're not landing in the centre of the lagoon. There's a cheer of relief and a round of applause as the plane bumps on to the blacktop and the brakes judder.

In the main terminal, everyone's in a mad hurry to get places. And the madness reaches a climax in the baggage hall.

Tom's luggage isn't there.

All his belongings, crushed into one big, old suitcase, have vanished.

The nice airline people promise to try to trace it. But Tom's heard promises like that before, usually said by people kneeling in front of him confessing their sins and then rattling out prayers like they were ordering cheeseburgers and Cokes.

By the time Tom gets out into the blinding sunlight he sees the funny side. Maybe it's right that he starts his new life with nothing but the clothes on his back.