The Abduction: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

on much more than glorified filing. Stolen cameras, cloned credit cards, pickpockets dipping into open backpacks in Piazza San Marco – by the time she’d written up the crimes, the tourists who’d reported them were usually long gone, making any kind of investigation impossible.
    She slipped the wedding ring onto the coat hook on the back of the bedroom door, ready for its next outing. It had cost a hundred euros and was one of the best investments she’d ever made – that, and the subscription to the Married and Discreet message board. Coupled with an anonymous account on Carnivia.com, it allowed her to conduct her sex life without any emotional entanglements whatsoever.
    If only she’d found Married and Discreet before, she thought. If she had, her career might not be in such a total mess.
     
    Leaving her apartment, she caught a train for the short hop across the Ponte della Libertà. As she strode out of the vast, imposing Stazione Santa Lucia – the only Fascist-era building in Venice, it was considered a monstrosity by most, although Kat secretly rather liked it – she was lucky enough to step straight onto a number two vaporetto . Even though this was the fast line, the boat made slow progress as it chugged its way up the Grand Canal. During Carnevale Venice attracted up to a million extra visitors, and crowds of people – some in masks and costumes, despite the early hour – surged on and off at every stop. A few surreptitiously raised their phones to take pictures of her. But she was used to that. A capitano donna , a female captain of the Carabinieri, was still a rare enough sight that even some Italians did a double take.
    The Carabinieri headquarters were in Campo San Zaccaria, just behind the waterfront at Riva degli Schiavoni. Once, these cloisters had been part of Venice’s largest convent. And the people who worked here now, Kat thought viciously as she passed through the entrance lobby, would probably prefer it if their female colleagues still behaved like nuns. But even though the comparison gave her some satisfaction, she knew it was actually a flawed one. The convent of San Zaccaria had been famous for the licentious behaviour of its inmates, many of whom had been dumped there by noble families unwilling to pay their daughters’ dowries. Having escaped the crushing social confines of their family palazzi , the young women soon realised that the convent afforded them their first opportunity to take a lover. Like so many things in Venice, appearance and reality were two subtly different things.
    There was nothing subtle, though, about the graffiti she found scrawled across her locker in the female changing room.
    Va’ a cagare, puttana.
    Piss off, whore.
    A few weeks back, when the insults had started appearing, she’d meticulously cleaned each one off with lighter fuel. Now she tended to leave it until three or four had accumulated before bothering.
    She rarely used the locker these days. It had been a while since she’d opened it to find dog shit inside, though more than once someone had tried to urinate through the keyhole. When you made a complaint of sexual misconduct against one of the most popular male officers in the division, and a colonel to boot, this was the kind of thing that happened.
    At her desk, she logged into her computer without acknowledging the officers on either side. They in turn ignored her, just as they did every day. She wondered which of them had written the graffiti.
    She could tell from her inbox that it was going to be a morning of yet more tedium. On top of everything else, someone had forwarded a request from the Guardia di Finanza to investigate whether the handbags sold by the hawkers around Piazza San Marco were counterfeit. Of course they are , she found herself shouting inside her head. The bags cost a few euros from a homeless Nigerian on a street corner. Did anyone really imagine that was how Louis Vuitton and Dolce e Gabbana chose to sell their goods?