The Traitor (The Carnivia Trilogy) Read Online Free

walk? Or a late-night cruise?” Bagnasco was giving her a puzzled glance. “Look, I know what goes on in the woods at Alberoni at night,” she continued. “It’s fine, but I need to find out what time that body was actually placed here.”
    The young man looked shamefaced. “I’d have told you, but it was difficult with Milo listening. I thought if I took the dog he’d never know. And I only meant to be gone for an hour or so. But it was… busy last night, and all of a sudden I realised it was past four. So I headed back, and that’s when Dauphin found the tongue.”
    “So it was dark when you first went past this spot? Meaning that you might have walked right past the body?”
    He nodded.
    “Thank you. I’ll have that written up as a statement for you to sign.”
    When they were alone, Kat turned to Bagnasco. “Weren’t you ever told to take statements one-on-one?”
    The sottotenente looked mortified. “Yes, but…”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “I wanted… That is, I suppose…”
    “You wanted to show that you weren’t homophobic,” Kat said. “So that’s the second lesson learnt: get over it.”
    She went over to where the three local carabinieri were guarding the tapes. “Morning, boys,” she said pleasantly. “Please tell me you’ve already questioned everyone on this beach in the hope of turning up a witness.”
    The three men exchanged glances.
    “What?” she demanded.
    One of them, the maresciallo she’d recognised earlier, said, “We’ve talked to the guys who put out the sunloungers. And the tractor driver who cleans the beach first thing. And the builders working at the hotel.”
    “And?”
    “No one saw anything. More than that, no one was even here. The sunlounger guys were sick. The tractor driver had an engine problem. And the construction workers were all off shift, though they can’t tell us who was on.”
    “What about this lot? Any of them get here early?” She gestured at the sunbathers.
    “They’re all tourists,” the maresciallo said. “If there were any locals here, they’ve decided to call it a day.”
    Now that Kat looked again at the sunloungers, she saw how many were empty. And more were emptying all the time. Like a flock of starlings taking fright at a distant hawk, the people on the beach had decided that it would be better to forego a day in the sun than be associated, however loosely, with whatever it was that had happened here.
    She sighed. “Try the builders again, will you? And come back tonight, in case there’s anyone uses the beach late who was here yesterday.”
    By tonight, she suspected, the ripple of silence would have spread right across the Lido into Venice itself. But it was worth a shot.
    While the scene-of-crime team finished up, she and Bagnasco took the boat down to the pine woods at the southern end of the Lido. Known as Alberoni, or simply “the dunes”, this was Venice’s unofficial naturist beach as well as its only gay one, the exact demarcation between the two shifting almost as fluidly as the sands themselves.
    They had little luck in finding any witnesses there either, however. The woods were quiet at this hour of the morning, and the sight of two uniformed Carabinieri officers sent the few men who were still around scurrying into the trees.
    Then, deep in the woods, Kat caught a flash of red. A tent. Camping was illegal outside the official site at San Nicolò, but she wasn’t surprised to find someone ignoring the regulations. Going up to it, she called, “Anyone in there?”
    After a few moments the door was unzipped. A grizzled face peered up at her.
    “Carabinieri,” she said unnecessarily. “Would you mind stepping outside?”
    The man did so, and she added hastily, “But would you mind putting some clothes on first?”
    “Why?” he said belligerently.
    It was on the tip of Kat’s tongue to say that he was committing a crime of indecency in addition to disrespecting the uniform of the Carabinieri, but she