by James Becker
But he still couldn’t see Angela. Perhaps she’d already been taken up to ground level. Perhaps. But a knot of anxiety was forming in Bronson’s chest. He strode across the room to where Bianchi stood, issuing orders and directing his men.
‘Where’s Angela?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s my wife?’
Bianchi pointed back towards the other end of the cellar. ‘She’s in the last cell.’
Bronson shook his head. ‘No, she isn’t. Are you sure none of your men took her upstairs?’
‘Nobody has left here apart from some of my officers. She must be here.’
Then Bronson noticed something else. ‘One of them is missing,’ he said, pointing to the robed men.
‘Who?’ Bianchi demanded.
The cult members had had the hoods pulled clear of their faces. And as Bronson stared at each one in turn, he realized that the man who’d been directing operations wasn’t there.
‘The leader,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’
Bianchi snapped an order and two of his men immediately started to search the cellar.
Bronson stood there, thinking furiously. If Bianchi was right, and nobody had left the cellar up the spiral staircase, then there had to be another way out.
Somehow, the leader had managed to slip past everyone in the confusion of the police assault, and had grabbed Angela as he left.
Bronson groaned. He’d been so close, so sure that he’d managed to save her. But again she’d disappeared. And this time he had only the haziest idea where to start looking for her.
77
Bronson leaned against the wall of the cellar as he replayed the events that had just taken place. He’d seen Angela, seen exactly where she was, standing at the opening of the end cell. He’d heard her calling out his name.
Nobody had gone anywhere near her from that moment on. The attention of the hooded men had been entirely concentrated on the girl who’d been lashed down on the stone table. Then the shooting had started, and people had been moving all around the cellar, trying to take cover from the bullets, or firing themselves.
As Bronson recalled each of these events, he remembered something else: just before the screaming started, there’d been a noise like something heavy falling to the ground. But could it have been something else? Could it have been the sound of a stone door closing?
‘I think there’s another way out of here,’ Bronson said to Bianchi.
Bianchi looked doubtful. ‘An underground chamber is rare enough in the Laguna Veneta, and this is quite a big room on a small island. It’s very unlikely there are any other spaces down here.’
Bronson reached out and grabbed a torch from the assault vest of a police officer who was standing next to Bianchi. The officer tried to take it back, but the inspector stopped him.
‘Very well,’ he said, sighing. ‘But if you find a door, call me, and then we’ll assess the situation.’
Bronson ran over to the cell where Angela had been imprisoned. That was the obvious – in fact the only – starting point. But all that was there was the crudely made wooden bed, a thin mattress and a single pillow. Under the bed was a rusty metal bucket and a partially used roll of toilet paper. The only other object he could see was the steel chain lying across the mattress, one end attached to a large eyebolt screwed into the stone wall, the other end dangling down, the open handcuff resting on the floor.
Bronson turned to his right, towards the opposite end of the cellar from the stone table. If there was a hidden door – and this was the only explanation that made sense – it had to be somewhere beyond the line of cells.
He gave the outside wall of the cell a cursory glance, then directed the beam of the torch at the solid wall of the cellar as he walked across to it. The old stones looked damp and cold; and none showed the slightest sign of movement when he pressed against them. Bronson used both hands, pushing his palms firmly against each stone at about chest level as he worked his way slowly towards the back wall of the cellar. He reached the corner of the wall, glanced back briefly and then resumed his steady and methodical progress. Using the same technique, he crossed the back wall of the cellar with exactly the same lack of result. Every stone he’d pushed had seemed absolutely solid.
But Angela had been in the cellar, and now she wasn’t. She hadn’t gone up the spiral staircase, so there definitely had to be another exit. He’d tried the walls without result. Now he had to look at the floor.
Bronson directed the torch beam downwards and stared at the old flagstones, worn down by countless feet over the years. It didn’t look as if any of them had been moved in decades, possibly for centuries. He studied them anyway, looking for any sign of movement, of suspiciously clean edges or anything of that sort. Nothing.
He had to have missed something, some clue that would show him where the hidden entrance was located. Then he slowly became aware of something gnawing away at his subconscious. He’d seen something, or felt something – something that wasn’t quite right, something out of place. Bronson jogged back to the side wall of the cellar, and started walking slowly along the wall, staring at the stones and touching each one that he pressed against before. He reached the end, then started on the back wall. And then it struck him.
The stones on the side wall had looked and felt damp, as had those on the back wall, all except three of them in a horizontal line, about five feet from the junction of the two walls. Those stones were solid and cold, but not quite as cold as the stones on either side of them, and his fingers could detect no trace of damp.
He felt the stones above and below the three he’d detected, and they all showed the same characteristics: they were solid and cold but not damp. He’d found the hidden door. All he had to do now was work out how to open it.
Bronson shone the torch at the stones. Now that he’d identified the door, its shape was fairly obvious. He looked closely at the spaces between the stones. In an almost vertical line, from floor level up to about five feet above the ground, there was a straight edge where no mortar was visible.
But what he still couldn’t see was how to get it open. He ran his fingers up and down the vertical edge, feeling for a catch or lever. He pushed against each of the stones in turn, in case one of them would work a hidden catch, but again without result.
There had to be a way of getting the door open. Almost in desperation, he pressed his left shoulder against the stones, braced his feet on the floor and started to push. His right foot started to slide, and he changed position. As he again put his weight on his right foot, he felt rather than heard a click under the sole of his shoe, and the stone door swung silently outwards.
Caught completely unawares, Bronson tumbled through the opening, and crashed to the ground on the other side. Immediately, powerful springs swung the door closed again, the solid structure clicking back into place with a muted thump, the same sound he had heard minutes earlier.
He scrambled to his feet, reached down and drew the Browning from his holster. Then he replaced the weapon. It was pitch black in the chamber, and if he couldn’t see, he couldn’t shoot. He needed light.
The torch had fallen from his hand as he’d tumbled through the doorway, and he crouched down and felt around on the floor, searching for it. His probing fingers touched something shrivelled and furry, and he recoiled. A dead rat, probably. In a few seconds, his hand closed around a cool metal tube, and he gave a sigh of relief.
But that feeling didn’t last long. When he pressed the switch on the end of the torch, nothing happened. He shook it, and could hear a faint rattling sound inside it. The bulb or something had obviously broken when he fell.
He would have to find his way around by feel. Having made sure his pistol was properly seated in the holster, because if he dropped it he might not be able to find it again, Bronson extended both arms in front of him and started walking forwards.
Then he stopped dead. Somewhere in the darkness ahead of him, he could hear the faint sound of movement.
* * *
>
‘What happened?’ Inspector Bianchi demanded.
The black-clad police officer shook his head. ‘I don’t really know, sir. One minute the Englishman was standing close to the back wall of the cellar, then I looked away for a few seconds. I heard a noise and—’
‘What kind of a noise?’
The police officer shook his head again. ‘A kind of thump, I suppose. And when I looked back to that end of the room, he’d disappeared.’
‘Right.’ Bianchi called out to a pair of police officers who were manhandling a battery-powered floodlight into the cellar. ‘Get that light on, and aim it at the back wall. We need to find where Bronson has gone – right now.’
78
Bronson was desperate for even the faintest scintilla of illumination that might allow him to see his surroundings. But there was nothing, no light at all. All he had to go on was what his ears could hear, or his probing hands could touch. The only possible good news was that if he couldn’t see anything, then neither could anyone else.
What he could hear sounded like something moving cautiously over a stone floor, a kind of swishing, pattering noise that didn’t seem to be very close. He swung his left arm around in a semicircle in front of him, then did the same with his right, and took a cautious step forward. Then he repeated the sequence of movements, making very slow, and very cautious, progress.
He estimated he’d covered about fifteen feet in total darkness before the faint noises he was hearing stopped altogether. Whoever – or whatever – was ahead of him was no longer moving.
* * *
Inspector Bianchi strode across the flagstone floor to the back wall of the cellar. The two officers had already positioned the battery-powered floodlight a few feet away and, as Bianchi approached, they switched it on. Instantly, that corner of the chamber was brightly illuminated, the white light bouncing off the old stones.
For a few moments, the handful of police officers stared at the wall. Then Bianchi turned to his companion. ‘Tell me again what you saw,’ he instructed.
Once more the officer explained the sequence of events.
‘And he couldn’t have left this room by the staircase?’
The officer shook his head.
‘OK, you two, examine this corner of the cellar. Don’t stop till you find the doorway.’
Then he went over to the group of handcuffed figures still sitting with their backs to the wall at the other end of the chamber. He looked at each in turn until he found the man who he’d cultivated in order to join the group.
‘Stefano,’ he said, crouching down in front of him. ‘You’re going to jail, probably for a very long time. I’m not going to offer you a deal, but if you answer my next question correctly, then I will at least tell the judge at your trial that you tried to help us when you were arrested. Now, we know that there’s a hidden door at the other end of this room. How do we open it?’
The man named Stefano spat. ‘Judas,’ he snapped. ‘I should have guessed you were too good to be true. A senior policeman wanting to learn our secrets and share in our triumph? A man who could misdirect any inquiries and provide us with some protection from the law? We should never have even talked to you.’
‘I’ll take that as a “no” then, shall I, you contemptible piece of shit?’
Bianchi motioned to two of his officers. ‘As soon as you’ve got the wounded men out of here,’ he said, ‘get this lot upstairs. Before you do that, separate them and ask them individually about a hidden door and a secret chamber. They probably won’t talk to you, but I suppose it’s worth a try.’
Then he walked back to the other end of the cellar, where his men were still examining the wall. ‘Have you found anything?’ he asked.
One of the officers turned round to face him. ‘We think we’ve spotted a doorway, sir. There’s a vertical line, here, between the stones, which could be the edge of a door, but we’ve still no idea how to get it open.’
‘There should be some tools in one of the boats. One of you, go out and see if you can find a hammer and chisel or a crowbar. If we can’t work out how to open it, maybe we can break it down.’
Bronson took a deep breath and then held it to minimize the sound of his own breathing, the better to hear what was happening.
There was a scuffling sound from his left, a noise that rose and fell erratically. He heard an angry squeal from the same direction, and guessed he was probably hearing a family of rats moving about. Then there was another noise, from somewhere to his front. Not loud, but unmistakable. He could hear the sound of beating wings, and then his ears, the only sense organs that were of any use to him at that moment and in that place, detected several faint squeaks.
Bronson relaxed slightly. As well as the rats, it sounded to him as if he was sharing the space with bats. And that was actually good news, because it meant there had to be a way out of the cellar to the open air, though how the hell he was going to find it in the pitch darkness was another matter.
And then he heard a noise that electrified him. A yell of pain, suddenly cut short, sounded through the cellar, not close but very clear. In that instant Bronson knew that Angela was somewhere in the darkness ahead of him.
His every instinct told him to run, to find her as quickly as possible, but instead he stayed where he was, trying to pinpoint the exact direction from which the sound had come. Then he started moving, just as slowly and carefully as he’d done previously, because in the blackness that was the only way to ensure that he didn’t run headlong into a wall or trip over something.
Bronson stopped again. He’d sensed movement, somewhere near him. It wasn’t something he’d heard so much as a subtle change in the air, a faint waft across his face. And then he smelt something rancid and deeply unpleasant that appalled him. It took him a moment to place it amid the other smells of damp and decay that filled the air. Rotting meat. The smell of decomposing flesh. He was sharing this chamber with a dead body.
But what he didn’t understand was why the smell was getting stronger. He’d stopped moving, so the foul odour should have stayed more or less constant. But it wasn’t. It was definitely increasing, which only made sense if he was getting closer to the corpse.
A horrifying thought struck him. Bronson took a couple of steps backwards, but still the stench grew stronger. Something – something foul – was near him, and getting closer.
He could still see nothing, but the feeling of revulsion was growing stronger by the second, and he knew he had to do something.
Almost without thinking, Bronson drew the Browning from his holster, aimed the pistol towards the roof of the chamber, and pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot was deafening, and the bullet ricocheted off the concrete ceiling and smashed into the floor a few feet away from him.
Bronson flinched, but his reaction had nothing to do with the firing of his weapon. What stunned him was the sight that had been illuminated for the barest fraction of a second by the muzzle flash of his pistol. Less than six feet in front of him, he’d seen the appalling spectre of the leader of the group who had abducted Angela, his arms outstretched and his hands formed into clutching claws as he felt around for his prey. The hood of his robe was thrown back to reveal his totally bald head, black eyes deep sunk into their sockets, and his mouth open to reveal a row of pointed teeth, the two canines so long they extended beneath his lower lip.
It was an image that burned itself into Bronson’s brain.
He lowered the pistol, aimed it where he thought the figure should be, and pulled the trigger.
On the other side of the stone wall, Inspector Bianchi and his men clearly heard the shot. He now had four men inspecting the wall, probing for a catch, and pressing on the old stones, all without result.
‘Find that bloody lever,’ Bianchi shouted, ‘and quickly. If Bronson could find it by himself in the dark, I can’t think of any good reason why the four of you can’t do the same thing. At least you can see what you’re doing.’
Th
is time the muzzle flash of the Browning revealed nothing apart from the darkness of the cellar. Bronson stepped backwards, turned to his right and fired the pistol again, with exactly the same result. The nightmare figure had vanished. And the stench, the rotting corpse smell, was now little more than a disgusting memory in his nostrils.
There was a sudden creaking sound from somewhere ahead, and almost immediately a faint light illuminated the oblong shape of a doorway perhaps thirty feet in front of him. A door to the outside had obviously been opened. And almost simultaneously, Bronson heard a dull thud from behind him as one of the Italian police officers finally stood on exactly the right stone in the cellar. Instantly, light from the battery-powered floodlight poured in, and for the first time he could see his surroundings.
He was standing in a chamber about half the size of the one used for the ceremonies, but this one was devoid of all structures and furnishings. Rats, frightened away by the sound of the shots, were now reappearing, scuttling around the perimeter of the chamber, and a handful of small bats wheeled and banked near the ceiling.
Now Bronson could see what he was doing, he ran forward, straight towards the doorway in the opposite wall. He could hear Inspector Bianchi calling out for him to stop, but that wasn’t an option.
Bronson slammed to a halt beside the doorway. Ahead of him was a short, empty passage, two doors opening off it on the left-hand side, and a heavy wooden door, half open, at the end. He guessed that the leader had probably gone through that door to the outside of the building. With Angela.
He wrenched open the outside door. In front of him, the waters of the Venetian lagoon, black in the moonlight, lapped at a small muddy beach. He glanced quickly in all directions, but there was nobody in sight. A path, little more than flattened grass and compressed earth, led away to his right. On his left, an almost vertical bank rose, blocking his way.
