Vito Carvalho is at his desk before the sun of a new morning has fully risen.
He stands by the open window of his top-floor office blowing smoke out over the buildings and canals beneath him. He barely slept last night. Now he's anxious about how Valentina is going to take the news that he's decided to drop her from the team. He should have done it long ago – straight after her cousin's death. She's had no chance to recover. No time to grieve.
He finishes the cigarette and turns away from the window. Even now he's having second thoughts. Work is what she's hanging on to. The one constant that's stopping her falling apart. He shakes his head. The screw-up over the fingerprints in the boathouse has changed everything. He simply can't let another mistake like that happen. He has to put the investigation before her personal needs.
Vito settles back behind his desk and goes through the overnight reports from his team leaders. Gradually the offices around him begin to fill and he knows it will be only minutes before Valentina arrives.
He's still thinking about how she'll react when the call comes in.
A call that instantly has him sending all his officers to a fresh scene: the sacred building that locals call the Chiesa d'Oro – the Church of Gold. Most people would jump at the chance to visit St Mark's Basilica free of tourists.
But not today.
No one is staring at the shimmering gold mosaics that adorn the ceilings. No one notices the brilliant Byzantine architecture or cavernous domes. The only people moving across the Chiesa's geometrically patterned marble floors are police officers. The only thing getting their attention is far from holy.
Ashen-faced, the Prime Procurator Giovanni Bassetti sits on the back pew in a state of shock and dismay. As the person responsible not only for the basilica's restoration but also for its caretakers and security guards, he's failed in his duties. History will not remember the care he lavished on the iconic campanile or the wonderful four horses of the Triumphal Quadriga: it will only recall the atrocity that happened on his watch.
Vito Carvalho walks straight past him, down the main aisle towards the familiar figure of Rocco Baldoni. Somewhere off to the side, a camera shutter clacks and echoes through the cathedral's waxy emptiness. He reaches the elevated presbytery and can't help but feel it's inherently wrong to be entering an area that used to be reserved for the clergy, and now excludes everyone except police officers. This is the resting place for the remains of St Mark, stolen by Venetian merchants from Alexandria back in the ninth century. It's now the scene of a chilling act of blasphemy. At the back of the high altar is the basilica's beautifully intricate Pala d'Oro – the Golden Pall. Across it, daubed in blood, six inches high and seven inches wide is the same rectangular symbol that they found at the Salute, and beneath it, the number 6.
Vito is shaking his head at the monstrous sacrilege when Valentina arrives, having just deployed search and interview teams. She crosses herself, genuflects and joins him on one of the isolation planks that forensics have put down to keep the area uncontaminated. 'This is it?' she asks. 'There's nothing more?'
Vito can't help but remember that right now they should both be in his office and she should be learning she's off the case. 'This is all we've found for now,' he answers. 'There's no liver, if that's what you were thinking.' He cranes his head forward to get a better look at the blood, then glances towards a forensics officer hard at work. 'Has it been brushed on?'
A dark-haired young woman, gloved and suited, looks up from her kneeling position. 'Si. We've found a couple of bristles on one of the strokes.' She nods towards a spray of Luminol. 'And, yes, it is blood, not paint.'
Vito leans back. 'So our killer has taken blood – bottled it – then he's brought it here to paint a blasphemous message across the religious heart of Venice. And the victim? Dead or alive?' He looks up, almost as though he expects an answer from God. 'One we already know of, or one we are still to discover?'
Rocco joins them on the raised safe zone. 'I've had a call from the Control Room. The press have found out that something's going on. What do you want to do?'
Vito's face turns angry. 'I don't want people to read about this. I don't want the press to know anything about this. No words, no photographs, no gossip. Nothing must get out. Do you understand?'
Rocco breaks the bad news. 'Too late.' He throws a look towards the back pews. 'The Procurator says there's already been a snapper in here. He had to get him to leave.'
The major just about stops himself swearing. 'Any signs of entry?'
'Nothing obvious,' says Valentina. 'I've got men checking right now.'
Vito looks around and sees steel scaffolding, several buckets of plaster and industrial trowels and boards in the far corner. 'Our man didn't break in. He probably disguised himself as a maintenance or restoration worker, and then found a way to stay behind and hide somewhere when everyone else left.' He climbs down from the forensic plank and walks off the altar. The absence of a liver at the scene is worrying him. He's starting to understand what it could mean.
'The offender still had to get out,' says Rocco, following him down. 'That would have been a gamble. There's more of a chance someone noticed him leaving than entering.'
'Then find them,' snaps Vito. 'I don't have time for debating what's obvious.'
Valentina takes a final look at the symbol before descending. 'We're already interviewing the workers. Asking if they saw anyone leaving early. We'll canvass tourists as well – maybe someone got a snap. Of course, you know how difficult it is tracking tourists.'
Vito puts his hands to his head and closes his eyes. 'Oh God, sweet merciful God, I hope I'm wrong.'
Valentina and Rocco exchange quizzical glances.
Vito shares the thoughts that are troubling him. 'There's no liver because this victim isn't dead yet.' He points back towards the daubed blood. 'But I'm sure that very shortly they will be.'
They all stare silently at the desecration and try to put themselves in the mind of the offender, try to guess his motivation, his end game. Vito motions towards the number beneath the symbol. 'What's going on here? This number, what do you think that means?'
'Numbers are for counting,' speculates Valentina, 'so it's some kind of countdown?'
'Quite. But what? Is it in hours, days or weeks?'
Vito turns squarely to Valentina. 'Find that damned ex-priest of yours. Find him quick, and pray he can tell us what the hell this all means, before someone else dies.'