by James Becker
Yet another man approached the table, a funnel and a small bottle held in his hands. He walked across to Benedetta’s head, placed one hand on her chin to force her mouth open, and pushed the funnel between her teeth. Then he removed the stopper from the bottle and poured a white liquid into the funnel.
Benedetta coughed and choked, but only when the bottle was empty did the man remove the funnel and step back.
Immediately, the girl started to scream again, spitting out some of the white liquid. But then the man who’d tightened the belt around her head produced a pad of white material, positioned it over her mouth and secured it in place with adhesive tape.
Terrified and nauseous, Marietta simply couldn’t take her eyes off the scene in front of her, at the wriggling helpless figure of a girl she barely knew, and the cold and haughty appearance of the men – and she’d now counted thirteen of them – who surrounded her. Men who were about to do something unspeakable to their innocent victim, and Marietta feared that she, too, would have to endure the same fate within minutes.
With Benedetta’s cries now reduced to little more than a whimper, the silent figures drew closer, so close that any of them could have reached out and touched her body. But clearly rape was not their objective, Marietta thought. That, at least, was a small mercy. Then even that assumption was shattered when the hooded man issued another quiet instruction to the man on his right, and he, in turn, pointed at two of the silent, robed men.
One of them bowed in response, handed his candle to the man next to him, then stepped out of the circle and pulled his robe over his head. Underneath it, he was naked apart from his sandals, and Marietta could see immediately that he was completely prepared for the act he was about to perform. He folded his robe to form a pad, placed it between Benedetta’s legs as a cushion for his own knees, pulled on a condom, climbed on to the stone table, lay on top of the girl and thrust himself into her.
Then the second man removed his robe as well, opened a small packet and took out a condom, clearly waiting for his turn on the table with the girl.
Marietta could hear Benedetta’s muffled howl even through the gag, but then her attention switched to the hooded man, who had moved for the first time since he’d joined the others at the table, and watched him walk over to the girl’s head. Behind him, another man followed, carrying what looked like a large white ceramic bowl. Marietta noticed that the attention of all the men around the table was not on the girl, but instead on what their leader was about to do.
She strained to see what was happening, but the old man bent down and his body completely blocked her view. What he did next provoked another agonized moan from Benedetta.
There was almost complete silence in the cellar, just the rhythmic pounding of the naked man riding Benedetta on the stone table, and her muffled cries of pain. Then Marietta heard a new sound, a kind of sucking noise.
And then, as the hooded man moved to one side and half-turned towards Marietta, she recoiled in shock. Even in the gloom of the cellar, illuminated only by the flickering light of the candle flames, she could clearly see the long pointed canine teeth gleaming white in his open mouth. They had to be false, inserted in his mouth for the ceremony, they just had to be. Marietta’s brain wouldn’t accept any other explanation.
For an instant she thought he had a beard, and then realized, with a further jolt of terror, that the dark, almost black, discoloration covering his chin and the sides of his mouth was fresh blood.
At last Marietta saw the appalling fate that awaited her. On the right-hand side of the other girl’s neck was a round wound, and her blood was flowing freely from it into the bowl beneath.
Marietta couldn’t help herself. She threw back her head and let loose a scream that was deafening in its intensity, a howl of absolute terror and utter dismay. The men turned as one to look at her, even the one lying on top of Benedetta, and their leader responded with an angry gesture.
One of the group walked swiftly over to Marietta, grabbed the front of her robe at the neck and ripped it forwards and down, the seams parting instantly to reveal her naked torso. He pulled out a taser from his pocket, held her around the throat so she couldn’t wriggle free, placed the electrodes of the device between her breasts and pulled the trigger.
A surge of current ripped through her body, sending her limbs into spasm, and a moment later she slumped backwards and fell to the ground unconscious.
31
Bronson had barely slept a wink. Every time he’d closed his eyes, a horrific full-colour image of Angela, blood streaming from a ragged wound in her neck, had flooded his consciousness. Just after six in the morning he gave up, climbed out of bed and got ready for whatever the day might bring.
He was keenly aware that there was nothing useful he could do. Angela’s fate was completely in the hands of the carabinieri, and what really bothered Bronson was that he was certain somebody in the police force was leaking information to whoever had taken her. But there was nothing he could do about that, either, because in Italy he had no official standing, and he was familiar enough with the labyrinthine ways of Italian bureaucracy to know that registering a complaint would achieve absolutely nothing, except to make any further cooperation with the carabinieri almost impossible to achieve.
As far as Bronson could see, the only thing he could do was again study the book Angela had retrieved from the tomb on the Isola di San Michele, and hope he could identify something in it, some clue, that would help him find her. He didn’t know much Latin, although he recognized that the Italian language he loved so much had been derived from it. But Angela had downloaded a Latin–English dictionary from somewhere on the web, and he supposed he’d be able to use that to translate some of the entries in the diary.
He switched on Angela’s laptop, checked the signal strength on his mobile phone, and left his room, locking the door behind him.
He was the first guest to step into the dining room for breakfast. He wasn’t hungry – he rarely had much of an appetite in the morning – but he knew he ought to eat something. He poured himself a cup of coffee and picked up a couple of croissants from the buffet, then carried them over to their usual table, and ate them while he stared through the window at the early morning bustle. Then he drank a second cup of coffee before returning to their room.
The first thing he did was to read all the notes and translations that Angela had already prepared. He’d done the same thing the previous day, but nothing of importance had struck him. Then he started looking at some of the Latin sentences on later pages in the book. As Angela had said, most of the text seemed to consist of diary entries, but towards the back of the book he found a separate section that looked rather different. There were no dates or times or places listed, only paragraphs of closely written Latin text.
Bronson looked at these paragraphs for a few minutes, picking out the odd Latin word that he recognized, then decided it probably was worth trying to make a reasonable translation of the text. But he’d barely even begun when his mobile phone rang.
For an instant his heart pounded with anticipation. Could it be Angela, calling him to let him know she’d been released by her captors?
‘Chris Bronson,’ he said.
There was a pause and then a heavily accented voice spoke to him in English. ‘Signor Bronson. My name is Filippo Bianchi, and I’m a senior Venetian police officer. I may have some bad news for you.’
‘Tell me,’ Bronson replied in Italian, sitting down heavily on the bed.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but a body has just been found,’ Bianchi replied, switching to his native language, ‘and it matches the description you gave of your former wife. We would like you to come to the police station in San Marco, which is near the mortuary, to identify the corpse.’
Time suddenly seemed to stop, and Bronson had the bizarre sensation of the room closing in around him, constricting his chest and driving the breath from his body. For a few moments his mouth opened and clos
ed, but no sound emerged. A loud and continuous beep sounded in his ear.
Then he regained control and took a deep breath. He realized he was clutching the phone so tightly that his fingers were pressing down on some of the keys. He released his grip slightly, and the beeping sound ceased. He gazed at the wall opposite, a tumble of emotions coursing through him.
‘Give me the address,’ he said, and noted down what Bianchi told him. Then he ended the call.
For a few seconds, Bronson sat motionless on the bed, his mobile phone still in his hand. This really couldn’t be happening, he told himself. Angela simply could not be dead. Their week’s holiday in Venice – a simple break from the routine of England – had turned into a nightmare that seemed as though it would never end.
Then he roused himself. He didn’t want to go to the police station or the mortuary, but he knew he had no choice. Opening his map of Venice, he quickly found the location of the police station. He slipped the map into his jacket pocket and headed back down to reception.
Ten minutes later, Bronson stepped into the red-painted powerboat the hotel receptionist had arranged for him, started the engine, put it into gear and steered it away from the side of the canal.
It was still fairly early in the morning, and the water traffic was light, though as usual the streets around the canals were crowded with pedestrians, many of them obvious tourists. Less than a quarter of an hour after he’d set off from the hotel, he moored the boat in a canal about a hundred yards from the police station and walked slowly over to the building, subconsciously delaying the moment of his arrival there, as if that could possibly make the slightest difference to the outcome.
The mortuary was in an adjacent building, and Bronson was led there by Bianchi himself, who’d been waiting for him near the reception desk in the station. Bianchi was a bulky, heavily built man in his mid-fifties, and Bronson recognized him at once – he’d been the senior investigating officer who’d appeared on the Isola di San Michele to investigate the three dead bodies that he and Angela had found in the tomb there.
It wasn’t the first time Bronson had visited a mortuary, though he’d never before been in the position he was in now. Normally, he was the presiding police officer, waiting for an anxious relative to confirm the identification of the body lying under a white sheet. He saw immediately that the Italians did things in much the same way as the British.
The viewing room was cold, much colder than the air-conditioned chill he’d experienced when they’d walked through the doors and into the mortuary, but it wasn’t just the chill in the air that made Bronson shiver. It was a small oblong space, three walls painted white and the fourth entirely invisible behind a deep purple curtain, behind which he knew would be the fridges that held the bodies. A large but simple crucifix adorned the wall beside the door, and a row of half a dozen uncomfortable-looking metal and plastic chairs lined the adjacent wall.
He registered all that as soon as he walked in, but what gripped and held his attention was the sheeted corpse lying on a trolley directly in front of him, in the middle of the room.
Bianchi strode across to one end of the body and positioned himself there, a mortuary attendant beside him. Bronson stepped closer to the trolley.
‘Are you prepared, Signor Bronson?’ Bianchi asked.
Bronson took a deep breath and nodded.
The police officer gestured to the attendant, who released a safety pin from the sheet covering the body, and gently pulled back the material that covered the face of the corpse.
Bronson noticed the hair first. Blonde and about shoulder-length, the way Angela normally wore it. Then his gaze moved slowly down her face, noticing the closed eyes, small nose and wide, generous mouth. He took a step closer to the trolley, to the midpoint of the dead body, and for a long moment stared down at the woman’s pale face, her skin white and waxy.
‘Signor Bronson, can you confirm whether or not this young woman is your wife?’ Bianchi asked quietly.
Bronson looked up at the police officer and the silent, unsmiling mortuary attendant standing next to him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can.’
32
Marietta awoke slowly in the darkness of the cellar. For a few seconds she had no recollection of where she was, but then she moved her left arm and the rattle of the chain and handcuff brought the hideous knowledge flooding back.
Instinctively she glanced down at her wrist, but her watch had been taken, so she had no idea what time of day or night it was. The last thing she recalled was the surge of current from the taser, a bolt of electricity so powerful that she’d lost consciousness. But she also knew, because of her previous experiences with the weapon, that she recovered quite quickly from it. So something else must have happened to her afterwards, because the cellar was now still and quiet and absolutely dark, and she couldn’t see any sign of the silent and malevolent figures who’d so terrified her.
And what of Benedetta? The last image, burned indelibly into her brain, was of the girl strapped down on the table, one man violently raping her while another collected the blood pouring from the wound on her neck. Had she survived? Or was she lying dead, her body even then growing cold on the stone table, or on the rough wooden bed in the adjacent cell?
‘Benedetta?’ Marietta whispered. There was no response. She repeated the name, raising her voice. Still there was no reply. As the echoes of her calls died away, a deep silence fell once again. It sounded as if Marietta was entirely alone.
Tears filled her eyes, and panic gripped her as she remembered the way Benedetta had suffered at the hands of their captors. And with that memory came a sense of confusion. Because they’d both been prepared for the ‘ceremony’, Marietta had assumed that, once the men had finished with Benedetta, she would have suffered the same fate.
She reached up and felt her neck, her sensitive fingertips tracing the skin on both sides. It felt bruised. This didn’t surprise her – the memory of the man with the taser grabbing her throat was still very vivid – but she could feel no evidence of a wound or any other damage. And she knew that she hadn’t been violated. So when they’d finished with Benedetta, they hadn’t come for her. Why not? And why had she remained unconscious for so long?
With her right hand, Marietta gently explored her body. She was naked – the white robe must have been ripped off after the taser hit her – and somebody had then dumped her on the bed and tossed the rough blanket over her body. She felt her left arm. Where the veins ran close to the surface of the skin, in the crook of her elbow, it was sore, and she guessed that she’d been given an injection to knock her out.
But this didn’t explain why she, too, hadn’t been raped and her lifeblood drained. Had the men been interrupted? But that was pretty unlikely, because they were on a remote island in the Venetian lagoon, where the only access was by boat or possibly helicopter. There was almost no chance, she knew, of anyone appearing there unexpectedly.
In fact, she could only think of one reason why she was still in the cellar and still alive: the hooded men must have got enough blood from Benedetta to satisfy their repulsive desires and hadn’t needed hers as well. In which case, Benedetta must surely be dead.
Marietta shuddered. She’d been granted a temporary reprieve, but her prolonged and violent death would surely follow, as inevitably as night follows day. In fact, she guessed she had less than twenty-four hours to live.
The realization hit her hard. Ever since she’d been abducted, she’d been clinging to the hope that somehow she’d be able to escape. But what she’d witnessed just hours before had finally extinguished even this faint comfort.
Shaking with fear, Marietta curled up into a ball underneath her coarse, damp blanket and squeezed her eyes tight shut, sobs racking her body as she gave way to the utter despair that overwhelmed her.
33
In the mortuary, the three men stood in a rough circle around the trolley, staring down at the violated body lying on it, but their thoughts
and feelings very were different. Bianchi was professionally distant and reserved, concerned only with the proper identification of the young woman whose death he would now have to investigate. The attendant was bored, if anything. But Bronson was trembling with emotion, so much so that he barely heard Bianchi’s next words, and the inspector had to repeat himself.
‘So you can confirm that this is the body of your wife, Angela Lewis?’ he again asked softly.
‘No,’ Bronson said, a lot more firmly than he felt. ‘I can confirm that I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. This is definitely not my wife.’
‘But I thought … I mean, your description? Her hair, eyes, skin colour?’
‘It’s a good match, but this is definitely not Angela.’
Again Bronson looked down at the body lying in front of him, then he reached forward, towards the neck of the corpse, around which a padded bandage had been placed, and tugged down on the material. Immediately, the mortuary attendant pushed him back and started smoothing the bandage back into position, but by then Bronson had seen enough.
The girl’s neck bore a large oval wound, the flesh cut and bruised around it, the blood faded to a dull red-brown colour.
‘Signor Bronson,’ Bianchi snapped, ‘kindly remember where you are. Do not try to touch the corpse.’
Bronson looked at him levelly. ‘Her skin’s very pale,’ he said. ‘Was she killed like the others? Her blood drained from that wound in the side of her throat? Is that why you’ve put that dressing there?’ He pointed at the bandage the attendant was still repositioning around her neck.
Bianchi stared at him in a hostile manner. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I was the man who found the three bodies dumped together in the tomb on the Isola di San Michele, the corpses you were sent out there to investigate,’ Bronson replied. ‘I’m a policeman, and when I smelt rotting flesh, I took a photograph through the hole in the slab covering the tomb. When I looked at the picture afterwards, I could clearly see a mark just like that’ – he pointed down at the sheeted corpse – ‘on the neck of each of those girls. And I saw the same thing on the body of the other girl your men found out on San Michele. I didn’t find her, but I was out there, watching, when her body was removed from the scene.’
