‘All we can do is go on towards the cistern,’ said Francesca. ‘We have no choice. I hope your men aren’t feeling trigger-happy,’ she added to Reggiani.
They walked for about twenty minutes in the dim glow cast by the torch. When they were approaching the cistern, Reggiani called out, ‘It’s us! We’re coming out!’
‘We’re waiting for you, Lieutenant! It’s safe to come out,’ came back the sergeant’s voice, followed by a thump and a loud buzz as the photocells flooded the cistern well. The four people who had been feared buried alive came out one after another, last of all Fabrizio with the child on his shoulders.
An ambulance soon pulled up and a couple of nurses came out with a stretcher, accompanied by a doctor.
‘He’s fine now,’ said Fabrizio. ‘He fainted, but he’s better now.’
‘I’d still like to have a look,’ said the doctor, who had been given a much more alarming prognosis by Reggiani’s men. ‘I think it’s best we keep him under observation for the rest of the night.’
Francesca took Angelo’s hand. ‘I’ll go with him. Don’t worry. We’ll see you in the morning.’
Fabrizio kissed her and held her tight. ‘You were very brave. I never would have forgiven myself if anything had happened to you . . . I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ replied the girl, leaving him with a gentle caress.
Lieutenant Reggiani mustered his men. ‘The operation is suspended,’ he announced. ‘The animal has been destroyed.’
‘Destroyed?’ repeated Sergeant Massaro. ‘How?’
‘With . . . a flame-thrower,’ replied Reggiani curtly.
‘A flame-thrower, sir?’ asked the sergeant incredulously.
‘That’s correct. Why? Is there something strange about that?’
‘No, nothing. I was just thinking . . .’
‘No need to rack your brains, Massaro. Everything’s fine, I can assure you of that. You can demobilize now and return to headquarters. It’s all over. There will be no more deaths. All I have to do now is face the Home Secretary and the press, but at least they don’t bite . . . At least, I hope not.’ He turned towards Fabrizio. ‘Where can I drop you off?’
‘At the museum. My car is still in the middle of the road and . . . there’s something I still have to do.’ He switched on his mobile phone and called Sonia, but her phone was off and when they reached the museum there was no trace of her.
‘I’ll call her tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I have to ask her to forgive me. Or . . . would you like to call instead?’ he asked Reggiani, guessing at his thoughts. ‘Yeah, I think that’s a better solution. Here, this is her number. Tell her that I’ll call her as soon as I can and that I’m very, very sorry, but that I had no choice. You know why.’
‘I’ll take care of it,’ promised Reggiani. ‘What’s next?’
‘Come in. There’s something I want to show you.’ He took the key from his pocket, opened the door, crossed the hall and walked down the stairs to the basement. The room was still full of smoke and invaded by an intense, acrid, scorched smell.
Reggiani noticed the gas canister and burner. ‘You could have blown up the whole place. You’re completely irresponsible.’
‘I told you I needed a flame-thrower and this was all I could find. Thank God I did! I remembered seeing a roadworker using something like this once to melt tar.’
‘I think you owe me an explanation,’ said Reggiani. ‘Even if this is all over, I want to know what set the whole thing off and how.’
Fabrizio took a folded sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to Reggiani. It was the translation of the inscription. ‘Read this. You’ll understand everything. It’s the text of the slab of Volterra. Complete.’
As the lieutenant scanned the crumpled sheet in disbelief, Fabrizio bent down and carefully gathered the bones of the Phersu that Sonia had painstakingly separated from the animal’s bones. He walked towards the stairs.
Reggiani turned towards him, still shaking his head. ‘Where are you going now? Haven’t you got into enough trouble for one night?’
‘I’m going back down there,’ he said without turning. ‘I’m going to take Turm Kaiknas’s bones to the family tomb, so he can rest alongside his wife and his child. I’m certain about one thing at least. The statue of the young lad in room twenty above our heads, the one I came to study, comes from that tomb. Have all the entrances to the tunnel closed tomorrow in secret if you can. No one must ever disturb the sleep of Turm and Anait again, for any reason.’
Back up in the front hall, Fabrizio turned out the lights and set the alarm before leaving. ‘In a few days we’ll be asking ourselves if we dreamed it all. You know we’re going to forget this, don’t you? That’s what happens to the human mind when events are too difficult to accept. Anyway, I think we’ve done the right thing. And what counts is that your case is solved, isn’t it, Lieutenant?’
‘No, not completely,’ objected Reggiani as they walked towards the car. ‘We still don’t know where Angelo comes from.’
‘Maybe Ambra Reiter will tell you the next time you question her.’
‘You think so? I’m sure she’ll come up with the most obvious story possible. That when her first husband died he made her promise to bring the child to safety in Italy. She may even have an ID card, documents.’
‘Maybe . . .’ said Fabrizio as if talking to himself. ‘But the wounds of the past can come back to bleed again in the present. Sometimes they can even hurt. Debts have to be settled, sooner or later. The truth – if it exists – is buried deep in the mind of that little boy, lurking in his dreams, waiting for the shades of twilight to come calling.’
TWO DAYS LATER , Lieutenant Reggiani was back in his office at seven a.m. His expression gave no hint of the hellish events of the past fortnight. Instead, his face wore the perplexed expression that he got when he was trying to work his way through a complicated problem. He sat at his desk and began to sketch out a diagram with all the individuals who had played a role in the case and the relationships between them. After a couple of good nights’ sleep, his mind was functioning again as usual and was refusing to accept an explanation that had nothing rational about it. As time passed and he got over the shock of what he’d seen down in that tunnel, he wondered whether the case was solved after all. Might there not be another murder that very night, or in two or ten days’ time? In the end, all he had seen in the tunnel was a black mass on the ground that could have been anything. And a woman and child crying. He was startled from his thoughts by a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ he called out, without looking up from his chart.
Sergeant Massaro stepped in and saluted him respectfully. ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Good morning to you, Massaro. News?’
‘Big news, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We’ve been following Reiter, as you instructed, and we’ve received the information we requested from the database at headquarters and from Trieste as well, where she was first picked up for questioning. I think we’ve got this solved, sir.’
‘If that’s the case, Massaro,’ replied Reggiani, ‘I’m recommending you for a promotion. Let’s hear.’
‘The child, Angelo that is, may have a first and last name: Eugenio Carani. That’s the name of the child who disappeared from a household where Ambra Reiter had been employed as a housekeeper. When the child’s parents reported him missing, she was tracked down near Colloredo and arrested, but there was no trace of the child. She was interrogated at length but nothing came of it. She denied knowing anything about the boy’s whereabouts. What did become evident was that she was suffering from mental illness. She was diagnosed as borderline, with a dissociative disorder. Suspected schizophrenia, even. Her medical record is very complex.’
‘And the family she was working for never noticed anything?’
‘Apparently not. They said she was moody, but nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘So?’
‘So, after a three-month stint at a psychiatric clinic in Pordenone, she was released, and that’s where we lose track of her,’ continued Massaro. ‘I’m thinking that’s when she showed up here in Volterra. Even if she had the child with her at this point, no one recognized her, no one reported her. After all, there was no warrant out for her arrest, and the boy’s disappearance wasn’t front-page news any more. She must have kept him hidden somewhere while she was in the clinic. Maybe she had an accomplice.’
‘Or maybe the child was already here with Ghirardini. He had no children of his own and they say he was obsessed with having an heir. That would explain why Angelo told Castellani that his father was in the palace,’ mused Reggiani. ‘Continue.’
‘Well, I don’t know how to say this, but I think we were this far away from finding . . . the animal.’
‘What are you saying? The animal’s dead.’
‘Exactly. The other night, while you were out on operations, we stopped Ms Reiter as she was pulling up at Le Macine in her van. In the back she had a big cage, with iron bars as thick as my fingers, as if inside it she were keeping—’
‘That’s not possible!’ said Reggiani softly, taken aback.
‘We asked her what she kept in the cage and she said, “My dog.” I asked her where it was and she said it was dead, and that she’d buried it. She refused to tell me where.’
‘The van and the cage,’ Reggiani said to himself, ‘that would explain the tyre tracks near the murder sites. Castellani himself mentioned the sound of an engine making him suspicious. Didn’t you insist with Reiter?’
‘Of course, but it was like talking to the wall. I sent a couple of guys out looking, but they haven’t turned up anything yet. Anyway, that lady is a real nutcase, sir. She goes on and on about spirits, reincarnation, paranormal powers. When she looks at you with those wild eyes, it’s like she’s possessed or something. Then she clams up completely, turns totally blank. Sometimes she seems perfectly normal. But her normality is even scarier than her craziness, if I may say so.’
Reggiani nodded in silence.
‘What shall we do?’ asked Massaro. ‘She’s still under close surveillance.’
‘We can’t risk her disappearing on us. She’s dangerous. We need to get her committed. Start working on the papers.’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sure that’s the best course of action. Permission to leave, sir.’
Massaro saluted and went to the door. Reggiani called out a moment before he’d closed it.
‘Massaro.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘By any chance, did you ask Ms Reiter when her . . . dog . . . died? I know it’s a silly question.’
‘No, it’s not silly at all, sir. Of course I asked her.’
‘And?’
‘She said it happened the day before yesterday, in the evening. About eight p.m. All she said was that he died very suddenly. And she had tears in her eyes.’
‘Thank you, Massaro. You can go now.’
Reggiani remained alone, mulling over those words. The day before yesterday. In the evening. Eight p.m. That would have been just about when Francesca and Angelo were down in the tunnel and Fabrizio was down under the museum with his skeleton. Crazy coincidence. But at least now he had the option of choosing not to believe in spirits. He sighed, then opened his appointment book to see what the new day would bring.
EPILOGUE
SOME TIME LATER in Siena, Fabrizio and Francesca received an invitation from NAS director Balestra to attend the press conference formally announcing the discovery of the slab of Volterra, the most complex example of Etruscan epigraphy ever found.
At nearly the same time, they received an email from Lieutenant Reggiani which said, among other things:
Our investigation into the origins of little Angelo has produced positive results. Ambra Reiter kidnapped the child from a couple in Trieste who she was working for at the time. The abduction had been commissioned by Count Ghirardini, who wanted an heir at any cost and contacted a criminal organization who arranged illegal adoptions. The child, I’m told, has been reunited with his parents. He has adapted well to his new/old family and is happy, according to the reports I’ve received. I’m enclosing a photo.
Fabrizio observed the image that pictured a fit, handsome man of about forty-five and a striking, elegantly dressed woman about ten years younger. Angelo was standing between them and smiling broadly.
The email continued:
His real name is Eugenio and he’s promised to come to visit as soon as he can, with his parents. As you may have learned, I delivered the final fragment personally to the NAS director, along with a complete report on all of the objects found in the underground hide at Le Macine. I think I can say that everything’s gone as smooth as silk. The animal that held us, and all of Volterra, in its thrall is dead. In one way or another, or in both ways, it’s dead. We’ve spoken about this on the phone and I’m sure you’ll soon come around to my way of thinking. Give me a call when you can, Marcello.
A PS followed:
Sonia has requested a transfer to the NAS offices of Florence and she hopes to be assigned to the Volterra museum. If that should fall through, I’ll ask to be transferred to regional headquarters in Bologna.
Fabrizio looked at the photo again. ‘I would have kept Angelo, if they’d let us,’ he said.
‘That would have made me happy too,’ replied Francesca. ‘He’s a very special child. So sweet, sensitive, bright.’
‘Do you have any idea of what Balestra’s translation is like?’ asked Fabrizio, turning the director’s invitation over in his hands.
‘More or less . . .’
‘And?’
‘From what I know, it will be a partial, hypothetical version . . . and no announcement of the opisthographic text will be given, at least not yet. The inscription will be hung on the wall in the museum and show only the Etruscan side. The complete translation is in the hands of a notary, who will keep it locked up in a safety deposit box for some time.’
‘For how long?’
Francesca smiled. ‘Long enough for all of us to accept a natural explanation for the events we lived through. Don’t worry. Your friend Aldo Prada won’t say anything. He won’t want people thinking he’s a crackpot.’
‘Do you think it will be possible to keep it quiet?’
‘Why not? If those who could speak up decide not to, everything will return to normal. As if nothing ever happened. You’re the only person who stands to suffer. I don’t believe you’ll ever publish your findings about the statue of the lad of Volterra.’
‘Well, Sonia won’t ever publish her skeleton either . . . The official explanation is that it was destroyed in a fire caused by a short circuit. But at least I found you.’
‘You really were fond of that little boy, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Francesca smiled again, this time with a teasing expression. ‘Then we’ll have to call ours Angelo,’ she said. ‘He’ll be the only real thing to come out of this whole story.’
THE ANCIENT CURSE
Also by Valerio Massimo Manfredi
Alexander: Child Of A Dream
Alexander: The Sands Of Ammon
Alexander: The Ends Of The Earth
Spartan The Last Legion
Heroes (formerly The Talisman Of Troy)
Tyrant
The Oracle
Empire Of Dragons
The Tower
Pharaoh
The Lost Army
The Ides Of March
To ANNAMARIA
First published 2010 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-2
30-75289-4 PDF
ISBN 978-0-230-75288-7 EPUB
Copyright © Valerio Massimo Manfredi, 2001
Translation copyright © Macmillan 2010
First published in Italian 2001 as Chimaira by
Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano
The right of Valerio Massimo Manfredi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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The Ancient Curse Page 24
