He had been there before, he recognized, during his vision of Angela, but then he had been the servant or victim of events. Now he felt that he was their master, a god looking down at his creation. Uttering a command in a language beyond words, he summoned Mercury and ordered him to draw away the curtain of the sky.
What was revealed behind the curtain might have taken Leo by surprise, but he was now as objective as a camera, impassive as a force of nature, beyond any personal emotion or reaction. It was the back view of Baron Emanuele, clearly recognizable from his slicked-down gray hair. He was dressed in a silk brocade bathrobe, and in the act of opening the door to let someone in. A person entered, a woman. It was Angela. She did not speak, smile, or greet her uncle, but crossed the unfamiliar room, which now came into the view of Leo’s all-seeing eye. It was a large, square sitting room, its walls painted from floor to ceiling and hung with antlers and other trophies. The windows were shuttered against the night, and modern standard lamps cast a few pools of golden light on sofas and oriental rugs.
Angela entered a small, lighted chamber off the main room, kicked off her slip-on sandals, and lay down on a bed. Emanuele followed her.
From this point, Leo’s perception was not limited to the visible spectrum, but seemed to take in the mental states of both uncle and niece. Angela’s was that of someone suspended between sleeping and waking, and her bodily movements were as automatic as those of a sleeper who turns over in bed. Emanuele, on the other hand, was a red-hot fire of will and desire. It was not the simple sexual desire for a beautiful seventeen-year-old, though there was an element of that in it. It was all-devouring desire for power. Leo knew, without discursive thought, that the Baron was consciously aiming at a state similar to that in which Leo now found himself: an autonomous will beyond the restrictions of time and space, which had only to utter the Fiat! and what it willed would be done. But he was using a different technique from that of pure meditation and imagination. It belonged to an order of events that Leo would never have conceived of in his normal existence, but which he now registered without surprise and without emotion. Emanuele was trying to unite his mind with Angela’s, and use the latter as a vehicle for projecting his will. To what end, was not presently given.
Emanuele lay down on the bed beside Angela and passed one hand under her neck. The other hand he raised to his own neck, as though cupping his ear. Leo had never heard of the technique, used in certain Tibetan cults, of momentarily stopping the flow of blood to the brain in order to induce a trance state. If he had, he would have dismissed it as a very reckless thing to do, risking permanent brain damage or worse. Now the same wordless intuition told him that Emanuele and Angela had practiced this before.
As Emanuele pressed gently on Angela’s neck, she remembered Orsina. She had promised to tell something to her sister. What was it? It was important. She began to struggle against growing oblivion.
Emanuele squeezed harder. He took his hand away from his own neck and half rose, bending over Angela whose eyes were now open with a questioning, confused look. He pressed his lips down on her protesting mouth, as though to suck out her soul. Angela had now forgotten what she was going to tell her sister. She had forgotten that she had a sister. As her brain missed its accustomed supply of blood, emergency signals started to fire in her autonomous nervous system. Her heart fluttered. The abyss gaped.
The Baron pressed his thumb into his own carotid artery and felt the familiar tightening of the skull. He closed his eyes and, in his imagination, entered Angela’s empty mind.
As though passing through the doorway into another world, for the first time in his life Emanuele succeeded in entering a state of full-blown magical ecstasy. He beheld the god whom, in his previous exercises, he had often tried to visualize: Mithras, coming to meet him in the guise of a golden youth. The joyous and radiant figure wore a Persian cap and a star-spangled cape, and held the short sword favored by his military devotees, the Roman legionaries. With all the twisted logic of a dream, Emanuele knew that he was a bull, and bowed himself in adoration. Mithras mounted his neck and plunged his sword deep into the throat of the beast.
Back in the physical world, the Baron’s muscles contracted with the force of a rigor mortis. His fingers and thumb pressed deeper into Angela’s unresisting neck. The baroreceptors in the carotid area began to send panic signals to the heart, urging it to slow down and reduce the blood pressure. After ten minutes or so, it had stopped, but Emanuele was oblivious, suspended in a timeless paroxysm.
Then he came to himself. Angela was still in his arms, breathing no longer; dead.
Although Leo had no sense of himself during this vision, the feeling of intense cold now returned: yet he sensed that this was not only his own state, but the Baron’s too.
For an indeterminate time after his eyes opened, Emanuele did not move. Then he rose from the bed, pulled his dressing gown tightly around himself, and let himself out of the front door. Leo now saw that he had been in a small hunting lodge, fronted by a walled courtyard. The Baron went to his Lancia, opened the driver’s door, and rummaged around the dashboard. He walked back to the lodge wearing his driving gloves, returned to Angela’s body, and removed its few clothes: t-shirt, skirt, and underpants.
The Baron was not tall, but he was strongly built, and had little difficulty in maneuvering the limp body in a fireman’s lift and lowering it into the bathtub. Still wearing gloves, he took soap and a sponge and scrubbed every inch of the unresisting flesh. He washed her hair too, and blow-dried it with great care. Then he took three large towels from a cupboard in the bathroom, spread two of them on the bathroom floor, dried the body with the other, and put its skimpy garments back on, down to the sandals.
With absolute self-collection and economy of movement, Emanuele now wrung the driving gloves over the sink to the last drip. He methodically put them back on, and opened the front door of the hunting lodge. By the Lancia, parked in the courtyard, he opened the trunk. Going back inside, he hoisted the body once more and carried it to the car, shutting the trunk lid over it. Then he returned to the inner rooms and gathered up the bedclothes and towels, took off his bathrobe, and put them all into a washing machine that occupied a tiny room of its own. He added detergent and started the washing cycle, then left the lodge in his shirt, trousers, and damp gloves, locking the front door behind him.
The night was still, moonless, and warm. Using his sidelights only, Emanuele drove the first of the two kilometers towards the villa, then, where the road rose over a knoll, he stopped, turned the car around. He was driving back to the lodge.
Leo could read his intentions: he had to deal not only with Angela’s body, but with her Vespa. He opened the trunk again and, with some difficulty, extracted the stiffening body from it. This he now placed in the front passenger seat, propping it up with the seat belt. Then he lifted the Vespa into the trunk, which did not shut completely, and drove away once again. Emanuele’s mind, disciplined and focused, now carried the intention of bypassing the villa, driving for an hour or more on roads which, at this hour of 2:30 a.m., were deserted, then dumping the body and the scooter to simulate an accident.
But as the little road to the hunting lodge passed through the villa’s back courtyard, Emanuele had another idea. He switched off the lights altogether, put the engine in neutral and turned it off. By inertia, the car slowly and very quietly reached Nigel’s Ferrari. With a glance up at the windows, all of them now black as the starlit night, he got out of his car. With his gloved hands, he turned the handle of the Ferrari’s trunk and resisted its spring so as to open it silently. Then he came around to the Lancia’s passenger door, opened it with similar care, and lifted out Angela’s body. A few footsteps, and he settled her crouched limbs into the Ferrari’s trunk. He closed it with the softest click, returned to his Lancia, started the engine and, with the least possible pressure on the accelerator, glided away.
As soon as he was out of sight of the villa he switched on his headlig
hts and drove at normal speed along the river Adige. Some thirty kilometers from the villa he stopped by the water’s edge, and hauled out the Vespa. He did not start its engine, but was careful not to leave it in neutral; instead, he put it in second gear, squeezed the clutch, and walked it into the river with scarcely a splash. Then he shut the trunk firmly and drove home. By 3:30 he was surreptitiously letting himself into the back door of the villa. Half an hour later, he was asleep in his own bedroom.
As the Baron’s consciousness, onto which Leo’s intuitive vision had been locked for the past hour, faded into oblivion, Leo’s own consciousness began to return. He had fallen on the floor, and seemed to be sprawled in a pool of cold sweat, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. As he started to move his stiffened limbs, his fingers and toes felt as though they had been flayed and were now being scraped with shards of ice. “Can’t I just die?” he groaned as he half rose and tried to open his eyes. But he could not. The thought flashed across his mind that this unspeakable vision had struck him blind, permanently this time. Would this be his punishment for storming the gates of perception and beholding things that he was never meant to see, things whose memory would torment him for the rest of his life? He felt so weak that he had to concentrate just to keep breathing. Prostrated, he lingered in the dark, shivering in his own cold sweat, so enfeebled that he could hardly move or think.
****
Shortly after eleven in the morning, Ghedina entered the hotel, escorted by Colucci and five policemen. Their Alfa Romeos had devoured the 170 miles from Bolzano. Except for the Inspector, they were all in uniform. There was no need to show their credentials to the dumbfounded concierge.
“Do you have a signor Kavenaugh among your guests?” the Inspector asked.
“Why, yes, but—”
“Where’s his room?”
The concierge, an even older colleague of the one with the hare-lip, hesitated.
“Tell me now, will you?” the Inspector urged him, as the policemen drew their guns.
“It’s room 331, but—” The police were already running up the stairs.
Ghedina knocked, then banged on the door. “Open the door; it’s the police!”
No reply.
“We know you’re in there. Open the door—now!”
Perfect silence replied to the command. Ghedina turned to his men. “Force it open.”
The heaviest policeman hurled himself against it just as the concierge was arriving with the key. The flimsy door yielded at the first attempt. The policeman stepped back.
“Watch it, boss,” said Colucci to Ghedina, “he may be armed.”
But Ghedina, the first one to glance inside, stopped himself short. “Stay back!” he said, barring the door. “Colucci, get me Venice’s prefetto on the phone, right now.”
Leaning forward with his arm, but still not stepping inside, the Inspector switched on the light. There was blood everywhere. The bathroom door had been left open, and he could see blood on its floor, too. The room’s gray industrial carpet was blood-soaked, and there was blood on the table, on the bed, everywhere. No body was in sight.
“The prefetto is on the line, boss,” said Colucci, his eyes bulging with curiosity. Ghedina grabbed the phone and explained the situation to the chief of police. He asked for the immediate dispatch of the crime lab. “Make sure it includes a serologist, it’s of the utmost importance.”
The concierge was sneakily walking along the corridor toward the stairs. Ghedina called him back. “Come here.” He did, meekly. “Now, tell me: have you seen signor Kavenaugh today?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When? Why didn’t you tell me already?”
“I tried, but you cut me short. He checked out this morning.”
“Did he? When?”
“At around ten.”
“God damn it! Did he mention where he was going?”
“No.” The concierge paused, then corrected himself: “Actually, he did ask me for something.”
“What?”
“The nearest bookshop.”
“A bookshop? What the hell?” wondered Ghedina in his mind. “Tell me, did he look normal to you? Did he seem agitated?”
“Oh, he looked … awful, sir. I did notice that.”
“Awful? How do you mean?”
“Feeble. Weak. As pale as a corpse.” The concierge could almost have been describing himself.
“And with all that he still asked for a freaking bookshop?” Ghedina asked in his mind. Then, aloud: “Can’t you remember anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Did he leave with his luggage?”
“Oh, yes. He had a suitcase and, I think, a backpack.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“All right, go downstairs, and remain at our disposal.”
****
When the old man had gone, Ghedina said to Colucci: “Go down too, with a man. Keep watch on the concierge, any phone call he may make or receive. In fact, any phone call that comes through to the hotel. And wait for the crime lab. When they arrive, send them up immediately.”
Still not entering the room, Ghedina tried to imagine what might have happened, and jotted down a series of conjectures in his notebook. They all seemed far-fetched. Something was certain, though: Professor Leonard Kavenaugh was up to no good. He might have a firm alibi: Ghedina had checked, with the collaboration of Interpol, and established that Kavenaugh had been in Washington when Angela was murdered and also when Orsina was kidnapped. But what did that prove? The professor could have been the mastermind behind either crime, or both.
Ghedina noticed how he was calling the aristocratic sisters by name. They had become very familiar to him. Uncharacteristically, he had begun to feel sorry for them, and for their whole family, and all the more now that Kavenaugh had slipped away. Ghedina knew only too well that the moment he had learned the American was in Venice, he should have informed the local police, asking them at least to keep him under surveillance until Ghedina could get there. He had deliberately not done so; for his career, it was a risk worth running. The dual investigation was his pet project, and this was going to be his first masterstroke after all the derision he had been suffering at the hands of the media. Besides, all he had meant to do with Kavenaugh was question him. There had been no sufficient reason to apprehend him, perhaps not even to suspect him of anything other than adultery, which is not a crime. Nothing could have prepared him for this blood bath.
“Inspector Ghedina?” A burly man was addressing him. “I’m Inspector Giannelli, at your service,” he said somewhat begrudgingly. Giannelli was followed by several technicians, comprising the crime lab, and some more policemen.
“Thank you,” said Ghedina. “We’re up to our necks in a bloody mess.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Giannelli, peering inside the room.
“Who’s the serologist?”
“I am.” An anemic-looking, lanky man replied.
“All right. Now, you go in, only you for the moment. Try not to step in the blood.”
“Easier said than done …” replied the serologist as he entered the room.
An hour later, the scene of the potential crime—“potential” for no body had been found—had been thoroughly inspected. The photographer had taken hundreds of photos, while the forensic chemist and serologist had been busy; the former, looking for hairs, body fluids other than blood, nail fragments, fibers, and relevant chemicals and particles; the latter, concentrating on the abnormal amount of blood. The serologist had collected countless samples. Ghedina consulted him.
“I find the scene unreal, Inspector,” he said. “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions before doing the lab work.”
“But …”
“Well, usually, when the reason for bloodletting is a wound, let’s say inflicted by either one or multiple bullets or by a blade of various sorts, there’s a single or multiple gushes from the victim’s body. The victim falls
to the floor and some of the blood spatterings on it are more intense the closer they are to the wounds on the body. But in this case, the victim, that is, if we are dealing with a human being—”
“What do you mean?”
“As far as we can tell at this stage, unlikely though it may seem, an animal, say, a goat, might have been slaughtered in here.”
What on earth was Kavenaugh up to?
“Anyway,” the serologist resumed, “if it is a single person’s blood—which we will soon find out by matching all the samples—he or she seems to have oozed blood from the whole body. I can’t detect any area of higher intensity on the floor. That is very unusual.”
“Any alternative idea?”
“Maybe, but a very remote one.”
“And that would be?”
“Lectopirosis, which the victim may have contracted by drinking water contaminated by the urine of rats.”
“Did you say lectopirosis?”
“Yes, rat fever. Many things happen to the person infected: vomit, diarrhea, fever, headaches. In the acute state, he can bleed through the skin, even die.”
“But how likely is this to happen?”
“In Venice? With our thousands of resident pantegane? Very likely, as long as one drinks canal water. That is what’s most unlikely. Of course, a person could be forced to do that, but that’s for you to determine. I stick to scientific facts. We’ll soon know more about this man by analyzing his blood, assuming, of course, that it is his.”
Ghedina went downstairs. Once more, he spoke with Venice’s chief of police. Not on the phone this time, though—he had come in person after hearing an early report from Inspector Giannelli.
“Sir,” said Ghedina looking him straight in the eye, “I have strong reasons to believe that Leonard Kavenaugh is a dangerous individual. As he is believed to be currently on Italian soil, I urge you to alert all police headquarters in the country, and all points of entry too, airports, ports, and the customs along the borders with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. I myself will shortly be calling the police headquarters in Bolzano to give them the same instructions.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 21