“You need to clean the carburettor before you look for the leak. No, listen to what I’m telling you. The filters were new three months ago—”
The carabiniere on the bed scrambled to his feet and saluted. Hearing him, the other one turned, slipping his phone away and saluting Kat in one practised gesture.
“Found anything?” Kat asked pleasantly.
The men looked at each other and shrugged.
“Well, what exactly are you looking for?” she prompted.
“Clues?” the first one said tentatively.
“Such as?”
Both men looked blank. Kat gave an inward sigh. “Clueless” would be a more fitting description. “OK, I’ll take it from here.”
When they’d gone she started putting underwear back into the drawers. “All right, I can see why you called me,” she conceded.
Holly nodded. “Bad enough when it happens in your own country, but here…”
“Amongst the savages, you mean?” Kat said, more sardonically than she’d intended. Holly didn’t reply, which was probably wise.
Kat picked up a pair of panties. Like most of Mia Elston’s things, they were quite plain – there was none of the extravagant, lacy lingerie an Italian teenager would buy. The front bore some kind of slogan. Not a joke, but “Timothy 4:12”, written in flowery script.
“Strange,” she commented. Putting the panties down, she picked up a silver bracelet and read out the inscription. “‘True passion is purity. True commitment is abstinence. True love waits.’ What does that mean?”
“It means she’s joined an abstinence movement.” Seeing Kat’s incomprehension, Holly added, “No sex before marriage.”
Kat frowned. “Why join a movement? Why not just decide when the time comes, like everyone else?”
Holly shrugged. “They’re pretty popular in the US right now. Look.”
She showed Kat the photo album she’d found in the bookshelf. Inside someone had pasted an invitation to “The Fourth Annual Ederle Purity Ball. Dress code: Prom!” Opposite was a picture of Mia, several years younger than in the photo Kat had. She was wearing an elaborate white dress, almost like a wedding gown. Alongside her stood her father, in full ceremonial uniform. On the next page were their pledges: in his case, “To support and protect you in your purity”; in hers, “To keep myself chaste, as a special gift for my Creator, in honour of my father, and as a solemn commitment to the man I will one day marry”.
“Weird. But how come she needs this, if she’s such an asmodello di virtu?” Kat held up a laminated card she’d just found, hidden inside a CD case.
“What is it?”
“A student ID. According to which, she’s twenty-one.” Kat looked at the card again. It was a terrible fake. “However little she paid for it, she got ripped off.”
“Kids in the US get them off the internet. Usually so they can buy alcohol.”
They searched the rest of the room methodically. There was a laptop, but it was protected by a password. In the closet hung a dozen outfits, including a cheerleader’s frilly skirt and top. Two posters hung above the bed, neatly framed. One showed the American flag, with the slogan “These Colors Don’t Run”. The other was headed “Rules To Be a Lady”. Kat stopped to read it.
A Lady Doesn’t: Answer “Yep” or “Nope”.
A Lady Does: Answer “Yes, please” or “No, thank you”.
A Lady Doesn’t: Let others down.
A Lady Does: Keep her promises.
Holly held up a slip of paper. “Take a look at this.”
Kat took it. It was a receipt from a mask shop in Venice, showing that two weeks earlier Mia had spent twenty-eight euros on a feathered Columbina.
“I’m just thinking – we haven’t seen a mask anywhere, have we?” Holly added. “Maybe she went to something to do with Carnevale.”
“Good thought.” Kat pulled some more books from the bookcase and compared the flyleaves. “She changed her name,” she commented. “Up until last year, she signed herself Maureen Elston. Then she starts calling herself Mia. Her signature changes too. Like she’s trying to be more grown-up.”
“Lots of girls do that. After all, you stopped using Katerina.”
“And in my case, it was round about the time I started doing things my parents disapproved of.” Kat bent and retrieved a small foil packet that had fallen from between the pages of one of the books. “Ah!”
“What is it?”
“A condom.” Kat examined the packet. “‘Strawberry flavour.’ That hardly fits with the abstinence bracelet, does it?”
“But the very fact it’s still there, unused, shows we can’t infer that she was sexually active,” Holly pointed out.
“Goldoni come in packs of three. Where are the rest?”
“If it’s flavoured, maybe she was just practising. You know – so she’d be good at it when it comes to the real thing.”
“American girls do that, do they?” Kat said, shooting her an amused glance.
“It’s hard to generalise about American girls,” Holly said frostily. “Since there are around fifty million of them.”
“Oh, of course. You’re a superpower, right?”
“So what are we going to do?” Holly said with a sigh. “Can you help? Or do the parents just have to go on waiting?”
“Doesn’t this look odd to you?” Kat demanded, glancing round the too-neat bedroom.
“In what way?”
“It’s so… tidy. So perfect.” She gestured. “She’s even made the bed. What teenager does that?”
“Oh.” Now it was Holly’s turn to look amused. “Kat, it’s a military family.” She nodded at the rows of houses beyond the window. “They’ll all be like that. My own bedroom—” She stopped, aware that she was straying back towards an area better not discussed right now. “It just becomes routine.”
Kat grunted, also conscious that this was probably not the time to go too deeply into the subject of Holly’s domestic habits. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt to talk to her friends.”
“What about her phone?”
“I can put in a request. But it will take eight weeks to get anything back.”
“Eight weeks!” Holly looked aghast.
“This is Italy. We may not be a superpower, but we do have certain checks and balances. I’ll have to apply for a warrant – that means getting a prosecutor appointed, then proving to their satisfaction that a crime has been committed, and that there’s a reasonable chance of convicting someone.”
“But how can you say who committed the crime if you haven’t been allowed to investigate it?” Not for the first time, Holly found herself wondering if the Italian legal system hadn’t been deliberately designed to obstruct criminal investigations, rather than facilitate them.
Kat, who had come to exactly that conclusion long ago, shrugged. “That’s the law.”
Holly hesitated. “What about Daniele Barbo? Could we ask him to help?”
“Are you joking?”
The founder of Carnivia might be an acquaintance of theirs, but he wasn’t someone you could just ask a favour of. Not that the illegality of accessing someone’s phone records would bother him – Daniele had his own, somewhat idiosyncratic, concept of morality – but the notion of doing another person a good turn would, Kat suspected, be completely alien to him.
“If it wasn’t for us, he’d be in prison,” Holly said. “I thought perhaps – in an unofficial capacity, of course…”
Kat considered. Saito had, after all, asked her to help in any way she could, and since there was no chance whatsoever that Daniele would say yes, it could do no harm to ask. But she thought it significant that Holly – normally a stickler for doing things through official channels – was worried enough to suggest something as desperate as this.
“Well, as a Carabinieri officer, I can’t ask him. But there’s nothing to stop you doing it – so long as I don’t know, of course.”
“I’ll send him an email,” Holly s
aid. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s almost certainly doing it in front of a screen.”
As they left the bedroom Kat picked up the fake ID again. “You say teenagers in the US use these to buy booze?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“Major Elston said they’ve been in Italy for three years. Mia and her friends can buy alcohol here quite legally at sixteen. So what else was she doing, that she needed to lie about her age for?”
NINE
SHE HEARD THE rattle of a chain at the door. The man in the Harlequin mask came in, carrying a tray. Behind him was Bauta, once again filming everything.
On the tray was a bottle of nutrition drink. She recognised the brand – Ensure. Some of the jocks at school used it as a supplement.
“The prisoner will eat,” Harlequin said flatly, setting the tray down. He stood back so that the other man could continue to film as she opened the plastic bottle. It was banana flavour, sweet and sickly. But she was hungry, so she drank it all.
It seemed strange to her that they were so interested in watching her do this. What was so special about the Ensure?
Unless it’s drugged. A terrifying scenario flitted into her mind. She would now fall unconscious, then they’d undress her while she was out and do whatever they wanted to her. Perhaps they’d even film themselves. Maybe that was what this was really all about – making some kind of snuff movie. Or they could be traffickers, and this would be the first step in forcing her into prostitution.
She must have been staring at the bottle in horror, because Harlequin said quietly, “It’s not drugged.”
She looked at him, surprised that he’d been able to guess her thoughts. She realised that, whatever else he was, he was intelligent – too intelligent, surely, to be just some Mafia henchman. And his English, although he spoke it with a strong accent, was grammatically correct.
So: an educated man, then. She wasn’t sure if that made her situation more or less terrifying.
But at least he’d spoken to her, so she seized her chance. “I’m an American citizen. I demand to know who you are and why you’re keeping me here.” As soon as the words were out, she wished she’d said, “I respectfully ask” instead of, “I demand”.
But Harlequin only watched her thoughtfully. “It is because the prisoner is an American citizen that she is a prisoner.”
“Who are you? What do you want me for?”
“Our name is Azione Dal Molin – in English, ‘Action for Dal Molin’.” He glanced at his watch. “As for what we want you for, you’re about to find out.”
TEN
DANIELE BARBO HELD up his hands, fingers spread, so that they were exactly opposite the hands of the young woman sitting across the table from him, his left palm facing her right and vice versa, with only a few millimetres separating his skin from hers.
“Begin,” a quiet voice said behind him. He heard the click of a stopwatch.
He looked directly at the woman, flinching minutely as they established eye contact. But he’d made good progress since the first time he’d done this exercise. Now he was able to meet her gaze without panic or distress, although he felt his breathing quicken.
Long seconds passed. Where their hands almost touched, his palms and fingers seemed to throb, as if his pulse was reaching out to hers. It was, he knew, an illusion, but the sensation was not unpleasant.
“Good,” the voice behind him said.
If he could manage it, the exercise required him to stare directly into her eyes for six whole minutes. Gradually he relaxed, and it became easier. She was, he supposed, attractive; her eyes especially so. Around the pupils, her irises were light grey, flecked here and there with variations of colour. Magnified by the curve of the cornea, he could make out intricate white lines within each one, like the pattern inside a Murano glass paperweight. Involuntarily, his skin prickled at her closeness, and blood thickened in his groin.
The eyes opposite him seemed to widen minutely, as if she knew. Or, he realised, as if something similar was happening to her. His hands twitched, ready to break away, but the fractional distance between their palms still held.
As their breathing deepened and synchronised, he became aware of the regular rise and fall of her chest. Now, somehow, he understood that it was her turn to feel self-conscious. He could feel her wanting to drop her gaze; the inner struggle as she told herself she couldn’t. It felt as if the two of them were having the most intimate conversation, but without speaking a word. He wondered if it was the same for her. Every fibre of his body told him that it was, that this intense bond was being reciprocated. But a small, rational part of his brain knew that, unlike him, she had probably done this many times before, and with other patients besides him.
He also knew that the exercise they were carrying out, apparently so simple, was the result of extensive research. In a 1989 study at Clark University, psychologist James Laird had established that mutual eye gazing for just two minutes could produce rapid increases in sexual empathy, even between strangers. The physical proximity of their hands was based on a similar discovery by Leon Festinger and Robert Zajonc at Stanford.
“Sabrina, make a gesture,” the voice behind him said.
Without taking her eyes off Daniele, the young woman moved one of her hands sideways, down towards the table. Immediately, Daniele copied her, so that their hands remained opposite each other. She did the same with her other hand, then turned her head from side to side. Each time he copied her, their eyes still locked together.
After two minutes of mirroring each other’s movements – again, based on research which demonstrated that it increased feelings of closeness – the voice behind him spoke again.
“Now truth,” Father Uriel said. “Daniele, you first.”
He thought. What secret did he want this woman to share with him? Under the rules of the exercise, she had to answer any question honestly, no matter how intimate or revealing.
“Sabrina, why are you here?” he asked.
The young woman reflected, picking her words carefully. “Father Uriel is my PhD supervisor. When he asked for volunteers to help with his clinical work, I thought it sounded interesting.”
“Are you being paid?”
“We get term credits for participation, in the same way any research assistant would. So, yes, you could say I’m getting paid.”
“Do you work with his other patients too?”
She frowned, and he guessed that if she hadn’t been obliged to keep her eyes locked on his, she’d have looked to Father Uriel for reassurance that this wasn’t off limits. “I don’t think I can talk about that.”
“I need the truth,” he reminded her. Father Uriel remained silent.
“I have done this with others, yes.”
“Did it feel like this?”
She shook her head minutely, her eyes still fixed on his. “Not exactly, no.”
Father Uriel’s voice said, “Sabrina, your turn.”
She looked at Daniele in a different way now, assessing him. “Today I felt you were attracted to me. Were you?”
“Yes,” he said honestly. He waited for her next question.
“Why are you here?” she said, and he sensed that she really wanted to know; sensed, too, that had the answer to the previous question been different, she wouldn’t have asked this one.
“You mean: am I a woman-hater, or a paedophile, or one of the other categories of offender Father Uriel usually works with?” he said slowly. “And the answer to that is ‘no’. But for various reasons, I’ve never found it possible to be close to other people.”
“Are you autistic?”
“I have been called that, and by some very eminent doctors. But Father Uriel believes my condition is acquired, not inherited.” He wondered if she realised how hard it was for him to talk about this; wondered, even, if the psychiatrist had put her up to it. “I was kidnapped as a child. They kept me locked up for several weeks.”
“Is that how you lost your ears? An
d your nose?”
He tensed involuntarily. “Yes. The kidnappers… They did it to put pressure on my parents.”
“Why didn’t you have cosmetic surgery? Afterwards, I mean?”
He took a deep breath. “I was offered it, of course. But I refused. I told my parents I wasn’t ready. But the truth was, my father loved beautiful things – artworks, his palace in Venice. I wanted him to look at me and see what he’d done. To remember that all his wealth had created something ugly.”
She nodded calmly. He felt the rush of mental connection that came from sharing a secret he had never divulged to anyone else. It both excited and terrified him.
“What made you seek help now?” she asked.
“I realised I was never going to form a relationship – to love someone – unless I did.”
“Are you in love with someone?”
It was getting to be too much now. Surely the six minutes were up? He shook his head. “No.”
“But there’s someone you’re interested in?”
The silence drew itself out. Behind him, he heard the click of the stopwatch. He no longer had to answer.
“There is someone, yes,” he said slowly. “Perhaps it’s not possible. But I think I’d like to find out.”
“Thank you, Daniele,” Father Uriel said quietly. “You too, Sabrina. That’s all for today.”
Sabrina stood, pulled on a woollen cardigan, smiled briefly at Daniele, and left. He watched her go, feeling how the consulting room suddenly seemed a little emptier, a little drabber, for her absence. He thought: is this what people feel? Is this what normality means? To make a brief connection with a fellow human being, only to experience the wrench as it was broken?
The Abduction: A Novel Page 6