The Venice Conspiracy (50 page)

‘Come in,’ says Tom, warmly. ‘They’re not visitors, they’re my friends and
former
employers. Valentina I’m sure you’ll recognise.’ The two women just about manage a smile in acknowledgement. ‘And this is her boss. And right now they’re going to kindly leave my fruit alone and get themselves some breakfast.’ He turns to Vito. ‘And while you’re doing it, maybe you could swing it for me to leave this hospital bed and get out of here, ASAP?’

‘We’ll see what we can do,’ says Vito, rising from his seat and nodding good day to Tina.

Valentina gives her an icy stare as she passes. ‘Don’t eat all the grapes while we’re gone.’

Tina waits until the door closes and then looks across to Tom. ‘Is this a good time to talk? Or do you want me to come back?’

‘No, this is good,’ says Tom with a smile. ‘In fact, it’s just perfect.’

Los Angeles

Six thousand miles from
Venice, a young Californian woman sleeps deeply in a hospital bed identical to Tom’s.

Cristiana Affonso is lucky to be alive.

The doctors say she bled so heavily during the operation they almost lost her.

The girl’s mother, Gillian, is at her bedside. She holds her teenager’s hand and wipes strands of brittle hair from her troubled face.

Poor girl has had to put up with so much. And when she wakes, a whole world of new troubles awaits her.

The newborn in the glass crib next to Gillian moves his tiny arms; a nervous twitch, the sort of shake that prompts old folk to joke that someone walked on your grave.

Gillian Affonso lets go of her daughter’s fingers and leaves her grandchild to twitch in his sleep. She’s going to find the hospital chapel. Somewhere she can kneel and pray. Ask for guidance.

Before she leaves the bedside, she reaches around the back of her neck and unclips a gold cross given to her at her own First Communion. She puts it around her daughter’s neck and kisses her. She hopes it’ll protect her for the rest of her life.

She looks back as she reaches the door to the hospital corridor. It’s strange that the baby hasn’t cried. The doctors noticed that too. All babies cry. But apparently not this one. He entered the world without so much as a mutter. His eyes wide and confident. Like he’s been through it all before.

There are other strange things as well.

Grandma Affonso doesn’t want to pick her grandson up. She feels no instinctive urge to cradle him, love him or kiss him. It makes her feel guilty. Not only guilty – slightly afraid.

Maybe it’s because the birth was so traumatic.

Maybe it’s because she’s frightened of hurting him.

No – that’s not it.

Deep down she knows the
real
reason. It’s because her grandchild is the son of the man who raped her daughter.

The man a priest killed in an alley in Compton, almost nine months ago.

Huge thanks to
David Shelley, who encouraged me to write long before anyone else ever did. David, it’s a pleasure to finally deliver a book for you! Much gratitude to all at Little, Brown for their faith, help, support and advice, especially Nikola Scott, who did the heavy lifting with my early stuff and provided much inspiration. But for the eagle eyes and smart suggestions of Thalia Proctor and Anne O’Brien, the final drafts would have been considerably poorer.

Immense appreciation to my usual helpers – Luigi Bonomi, still holder of the World’s best Agent Award, international agents Nikki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough at ILA, who work so tirelessly and enthusiastically across the globe and ‘Scary’ Jack Barclay, the only accountant I’ve ever managed to have a laugh with.

I’m exceptionally grateful to Guy Rutty, Professor of Forensic Pathology, East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit, University of Leicester for his guidance and patience – any minor deviations from fact are down to me and not him.

Best I come clean.

Some Etruscan details are made up.

Total fibs.
Absolute
fabrication. Not many of them – but some.

There was no city of Atmanta. And, thankfully, absolutely no
Gates of Destiny
.

Time-wise, I’m also guilty of cheating (a little). While everything I describe in the passages on Teucer and Tetia (these were genuine Greek/Etruscan names, by the way) are accurate, it is far more likely that the fully evolved settlement and society in which they lived would not quite have existed in 666
BC
. It was a tad too early for towns with regular road layouts like the
cardo
and
decumanus
, the architectural sophistication of the temple that is built in the
curte
, the large-scale figurative sculpture that is described and the advanced level of sea trading that is depicted. Some of these things would probably not have been established for another hundred years or more. Other detail is more reliable – such as the roles of the netsvis (sometimes referred to as a haruspex) the divin ation of livers, the worshipping of a pantheon of gods headed by Uni, Tinia and Menrva and the herbal medicines applied by Larthuza the Healer. The Liver of Piacenza is of course a genuine artefact and is so prized it is under high-security protection in Italy.

So why didn’t I just accurately describe what life was really like in 666
BC
? Truth is, very little is known about this particular time, and certainly not enough to paint a vibrant pre-Venice landscape in which to set the Satanic legend that I had in mind. I also wanted to nudge the historic timeline towards the point where the Etruscans were entering their most powerful (pre-Roman) and most ambitious phase. At their height, they were one of the most evolved and civilized peoples across the world, and for many years even the Romans were reluctant to engage them in battle. Indeed, many of their rituals and practices were sub squently adopted by the Romans and as a consequence filtered through to much of the rest of the world.

I was very kindly and
patiently assisted in my research by Dr Tom Rasmussen, Senior Lecturer and currently Head of Art History at the University of Manchester. Tom is a world expert in Etruscan archaeology with a particular insight into its art and material culture, so you’ll see his direct influence both in the shape of Pesna’s more cultured pleasures and of course Tetia’s trade as a sculptress and the subsequent creation of the Tablets of Atmanta. The Etruscan era is an immensely difficult one to research – mainly because few texts from the times have survived and the Etruscan language is particularly different to any other ancient language. So, unlike ancient Egypt, where there are numerous texts and papyri to fall upon, Etruscan scholars have to rely much more on artefacts, archaeology and the wisdom of those who interpret them.

Tom’s many writings enabled me to fix accurately the backdrop for Atmanta, a beautiful landscape of dense forests with crops grown in small fields or gardens around settlements with the odd pig, goat or sheep being the main livestock. This was an age of elaborate rituals, ceremonies and superstitions that ran throughout society from childbirth to burial and into the afterlife, or underworld, as it is often called. The rituals performed by Teucer are a mix of what little was known of accepted practices of a netsvis and total fabrication to fit the storyline (as a general rule, you can put any deviations from what historians deem to be accurate down to my interpretations rather than to any errors on Tom’s part).

Just for a moment, let me share with you some of the many things Tom had to put me right on. In doing so, hopefully you’ll get a further fascinating glimpse of Etruscan life and also the literary difficulties in incorporating such history into a thriller. Libation altars were sited outside Etruscan temples, not (as one of my early drafts suggested) inside them. Gold – my original choice of precious metal – wasn’t mined in Italy during Etruscan times but silver was (this helped as silver is the chosen metal of Satanists, who reject gold because of its long link with Christianity). Mamarce (the silversmith) is accepted as a real Etruscan name, but not Mamercus, the name I first gave him – this, apparently, was Roman (stupid, ignorant me). The list goes on – and on – and on. I think Tom used up several felt markers red-lining all the inaccuracies, and I’ll be for ever grateful for the knowledge he’s given me.

The internet has a good smattering of sites that comment generally on the rise and fall of the Etruscans, their way of life and their gods and rituals, but sadly they’re not all reliable. Many of them are inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes just speculative. If you only read one book on this incredible civilisation, read Tom Rasmussen and Graeme Barker’s
The Etruscans
, published by Blackwell – it gives you an enchantingly easy-to-read
introduction to the facts and fiction behind this mysterious race. But while you read it, please don’t forget Teucer and Tetia. I hope their spirits live on in your imagination for many years to come.