The Abomination Read Online Free Page A

number? Oh, I forgot, you won’t have a European phone yet.” Pulling up, he scribbled something on a piece of card and handed it to her. “I believe I’m free on Saturday night.”
    As she stepped off the shuttle bus, still a little amused by Private Lewtas’s self-confidence, Holly Boland still saw only a vast military encampment of anonymous buildings, similar to every other US army post she’d ever been on. There was nothing to make her suspect that what happened in this place would soon test, and stretch, loyalties she didn’t even know she had.

Three
    THE BODY WAS in the mortuary at last, where Kat was barely any warmer, the morgue being kept at a constant nine degrees in order to prevent its occupants’ flesh from corrupting during the long Italian summers. Piola still hadn’t relinquished custody, and Kat, determined not to be outdone in stamina, intended to stay with him until he did, even though the colonel had suggested several times that she go home and get some sleep, not to mention some proper clothes.
    The mortuary technician, a man called Spatz, was explaining why identification was going to be difficult.
    â€œSee here,” he said, lifting the dead woman’s left wrist in his own blue-gloved hands. “Salt water does terrible things. Fingerprints will be almost impossible.”
    â€œIs there anything you can do to enhance them?”
    â€œWe can glove her.”
    â€œBetter do it then.” Piola glanced at Kat. “Know what gloving is, Capitano?”
    â€œNo, sir,” she confessed.
    â€œSpatz will peel the skin from the victim’s fingers and stretch it onto a hand cast.” He nodded to where four or five wooden hands of different sizes, like glove-makers’ mannequins, stood on a shelf. “Standard practice where a corpse has been in seawater, and something we have to do quite often in this waterlogged city of ours. In future, if you hear something you don’t understand, ask, OK? This is your first homicide, but I expect you to be able to run the next one on your own.”
    â€œYes, sir,” she said awkwardly.
    â€œNow go home and get a couple of hours’ rest. This time I mean it. And next time we meet, I don’t want to see quite so much of your legs.” His smile – the lines beside his eyes falling into a well-worn pattern, like a fan – robbed the words of any offence, even before he added, “They’re a distraction, quite frankly, and I’m a happily married man.”
    â€œColonel?” Spatz said softly behind them. Piola turned. The technician was still holding the corpse’s arm. The sleeve of the robe had fallen back, revealing something on the woman’s right forearm, just above the wrist. Both officers went to examine it, Kat holding back a little since she was technically disobeying an order not to be there.
    It was some kind of tattoo. Dark blue and barely more sophisticated than a child’s drawing, it resembled a circle with lines coming out of it to represent the sun – except that in this case there was something inside the sun as well, a motif like a kind of extended asterisk.
    Pushing the sleeve further up, Spatz revealed a second tattoo, similar but subtly different in design.

    â€œCurious,” Piola said after a moment.
    â€œAnd here. . .” Spatz indicated the fingernails. None were painted, the cuticles short and unpolished, but three of them, Kat now saw, were missing completely, the skin beneath lumpen and scarred. “Same on the other hand too.”
    â€œTorture?” Piola ventured.
    Spatz’s shrug said that interpretation of evidence wasn’t his concern. “The scars look pretty old.”
    â€œHow quickly can you do the autopsy?”
    Spatz’s eyes went to the hand. “Next week, according to the schedule. But I’ll make sure it’s today.”
    â€œGood.” Piola’s gaze turned back