by James Becker
‘So what have you translated so far?’ Bronson asked.
‘I haven’t had time to do more than glance at a few of the pages. But I’ve already found several references to blood, to its healing and rejuvenating properties, and in a couple of places there are descriptions of rituals that seem to involve drinking blood. I really think this might be a vampire’s diary.’
Bronson groaned. ‘Does this mean that our sight-seeing holiday is now going to be replaced by the two of us sitting in this hotel room translating a two-hundred-year-old diary, written by someone who thought she was a vampire?’
Angela grinned. ‘Of course not. This is just a curio. Nobody knows we found it, and it’s frankly of little or no interest to anybody except someone like me, or an historian specializing in that period of Italian or Venetian history. It’s pretty fragile, so what I will do is scan the pages into my laptop so that the text will be preserved, even if the book falls to pieces. Then I’ll take it back to London and work on it in my spare time. As far as I’m concerned, we continue with our holiday just like before.’
She looked across at Bronson. ‘Speaking of which,’ she added, ‘isn’t it about time we had something to eat? That bar of chocolate we shared on the island seems like a long time ago.’
Bronson glanced at his watch and nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right. I feel a bowl of spaghetti coming on. That family restaurant on the corner might still be open.’
‘Good idea,’ Angela said, standing up. ‘I’ll just nip down to reception and see if I can borrow their scanner, and then I’ll be ready to go.’
7
Marietta Perini walked slowly towards the double wooden doors set into the front facade of the grey stone house. Her senses were acutely sharpened by the terror coursing through her, and she noticed that the ground-floor windows, on the right-hand side of the entrance door, were brightly illuminated. Through the old glass, she could see a pair of elegant chandeliers, brilliant clusters of cut glass studded with tiny electric lights. And she could also see figures in the room, perhaps three or four men in elegant evening clothes, moving about and talking and drinking.
She took another couple of steps towards the doors, then felt a tug on her arm.
‘Not that way,’ one of her captors snapped, pointing instead to a stone path that ran around the side of the house.
Marietta turned down the path, wondering about the scene she’d glimpsed inside the spacious salon. It looked to her like an upmarket reception, a social evening, or maybe even a group of wealthy men enjoying an aperitif before sitting down to a banquet.
But that didn’t square with what was happening to her. The men who had abducted her in Venice were malevolent, evil, she was certain. Though it didn’t make sense, perhaps they were nothing to do with the elegantly dressed men in the salon she was walking away from. Maybe the people inside the property could be her salvation?
Marietta took a deep breath and screamed her heart out, a shriek of agony and terror that bounced off the walls of the house.
As she had hoped, the sound clearly penetrated the windows of the lighted room and, as she looked back, all of the men turned to stare at her. A couple of them even walked across to the tall windows and looked out, straight at her.
One of her captors seized her and turned her to face the house, so the people inside could see her more clearly. The two well-dressed men by the window smiled at her, and one nodded approval. Then the man holding her started to laugh. In that instant, the terrified girl knew she was beyond any help, any hope of rescue.
She stared around her. Surely somewhere there was a place to hide, to get away from the three men behind her? But even if by some miracle she could manage to elude them, she would still be a prisoner on the island.
But she had to try.
Taking another deep breath, Marietta stepped off the path and ran for her life.
She heard a muttered curse, and then the sound of the men behind her. Almost immediately, one of them grabbed at her shoulder, but she ducked and swerved, and the man lost his grip.
Her bound wrists were a greater impediment than she’d expected, and in seconds she lost her footing on the uneven ground and tumbled sideways. Before she could even try to get to her feet again, the men reached her. Two of them grabbed her by the arms and pulled her upright.
‘I told you what would happen,’ said the man with the taser, his face dark with anger.
‘Be careful,’ one of the others warned. ‘She needs to be unharmed.’
The man adjusted something on the taser, then took a step forward. ‘Hold her still,’ he instructed, menace in every syllable.
Marietta shrank back. ‘No, please, no, don’t,’ she whispered.
The man looked into her eyes and smiled slightly as he rested the twin prongs on the thin material of her blouse.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Marietta had never felt such agony. It seemed as if every nerve ending in her body was on fire, or bathed in acid. She lurched backwards, and would have fallen but for the restraining hands of the other two men.
The man in front of her kept the trigger of the taser pressed for what felt like minutes, such was the pain surging through her, though in reality the current could only have flowed for a matter of one or two seconds, possibly even less than that. Finally, mercifully, the agony stopped, the men released her arms, and Marietta slumped to the ground.
They gave her a couple of minutes to recover her senses, then jerked her back on to her feet and marched her towards the rear of the house. This time they were taking no chances. One man walked on either side of Marietta, gripping her upper arm. There was no way she could free herself from their grasp even if she had had the energy or the strength to do so. In any case, the last charge from the taser had left her nerves jangling and screaming, and she knew that if her arms were released, she would probably not even be able to walk unaided. Running was out of the question.
The path ran beside the house, then curved around in a circle towards the back door of the building. Marietta assumed this was their destination, but instead she was led towards another, smaller structure hidden behind the house. It had also been solidly constructed of grey stone, and just one glance was enough to tell her that it had once been a small church or chapel. Most of the steeply pitched roof was missing, but all four walls were still standing, and looked to be in a reasonable state of repair. Strangely, even the old wooden church door was still in place, and both the windows in the end wall contained stained-glass panels.
One of the men lifted the latch on the door and swung it open, the well-oiled old hinges making no sound. Marietta was pushed through the doorway into the open space beyond. Above her head, about half of the original supporting timbers for the roof were still in place, a dimly visible skeleton, showing black against the evening sky.
The men led her down what was once the church’s central aisle, and across the space where the altar would have stood; a few broken slabs of stone were all that remained of the original structure. She was marched across to the far side of the building and shoved against the wall. The man behind her stepped over to one side, and Marietta briefly lost sight of him as the other two stood beside her, blocking her view. Then she heard a faint rumbling sound, and a section of the wall a few feet away from her swung open like a door. The third man reappeared, reached into the black opening in front of her, and clicked a switch. Naked bulbs sprang into life, illuminating a narrow spiral staircase that curved down to the right.
Marietta stopped dead. She’d always loathed cellars and any other sort of underground space. It wasn’t just simple claustrophobia, though this was a part of it. She’d always thought that a cellar smelt like a tomb.
‘Keep going,’ one of the men ordered.
‘No,’ Marietta said.
She felt the twin prongs of the taser pressing into her back, and knew she would do anything to avoid suffering that pain again. Fighting back tears of terror and frustration in equal me
asure, she stumbled forward, and started down the stone staircase, the sound of her footsteps echoing off the walls.
It wasn’t a long staircase — for obvious reasons, deep cellars were almost unknown in Venice and on its islands — and after about twenty steps the staircase ended at a flagstone floor. Again, one of the men clicked a switch and a single bright light came on at one end of the room, enabling Marietta to see her surroundings.
It was a long and wide cellar, possibly extending to exactly the same floor area as the ruined church building that stood above it. By the foot of the staircase was a cleared circular area, in the centre of which was a large oblong stone table, looking something like an altar. Marietta guessed that it was positioned directly below the broken altar in the church above. When she looked at it again, she realized that it wasn’t a perfect oblong, because it had a small square extension in the middle of one of the two shorter sides, and at each corner a hole had been drilled through the stone. Behind that table was another table, also made of stone but much smaller.
Along one side of the cellar were four short stone walls which extended from the floor up to the low ceiling and created a line of small, open-fronted rooms that had possibly been used as storerooms originally. The three men led Marietta into the first of these and hustled her across to the back wall. There she saw a rough wooden bed covered by a thin mattress and, bolted firmly to the wall above it, a new steel ring. A single metal handcuff dangled from the ring on the end of a metal chain.
The men pushed Marietta on to the bed. One of them reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pair of pliers, which he used to sever the plastic ties holding her wrists together. The moment he did so, another man snapped the handcuff around her left wrist, chaining her to the wall. It didn’t matter that there was no door to her room. She would not be leaving.
‘Please, no,’ Marietta shouted after the men as they walked away. ‘Don’t just leave me here. Please.’
Moments later the light clicked off, and she was left in the Stygian blackness and utter silence of the cellar.
For several minutes Marietta just sat motionless on the hard mattress, eyes wide, willing them to adapt to the dark, to allow her to see something, anything. She sought a glow, a chink of light — something, however small, to provide her with a frame of reference. But there was nothing. Not even the faintest scintilla of illumination penetrated the blackness.
She gave way, and for a few minutes sobbed out of fear and frustration, but then she started to pull herself together. She tried to slide the handcuff off her wrist, but it was clamped too tightly. She tugged on the chain attached to the ring in the wall, but it was new and strong, and the ring was completely immovable.
When she finally accepted that there was no way she could get free, she set about exploring her immediate surroundings. Before the light had been extinguished, she’d seen the wooden bed, but hadn’t noticed anything else. Now, she walked to the limit of the chain, and then, with her right arm stretched out in front of her, she moved first left and then right, feeling her way through the blackness. All she found was empty space, and the cold and damp stone walls of her underground prison.
As she walked back to the wooden bed, her shoe hit something beneath it, and she bent down, her fingers probing. Moments later, she realized it was a metal bucket shoved under the bed, the purpose of which was fairly obvious. There was even a half-used roll of toilet paper on the floor beside it.
For a few minutes, she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of what had happened to her, and listening intently, alert for the slightest sound.
And then she heard a noise. Very faintly, and from somewhere at the far end of the cellar, it was like a distant whispering of several people, a sound which seemed to be getting slightly louder, though Marietta wasn’t even sure of this.
‘Who’s there?’ she yelled at last, in as strong and determined a voice as she could muster.
There was no response, except for a slight and temporary reduction in the volume of the sound, which then continued just as before.
Marietta listened again. What was it? Where could it be coming from?
With a sudden start she’d realized what it was.
And then she screamed.
8
The following morning, Bronson and Angela lingered over breakfast. Sitting at a corner table in the hotel’s small dining room, surrounded by the remains of their meal, they were trying to decide where to visit next in Venice. They’d already been to some of the principal attractions in the centre of the city, and had spent an expensive but pleasant afternoon wandering around the Piazza San Marco, climbing to the top of the Campanile to take in the spectacular views which that vantage point offered. In fact, they both decided that they preferred the much smaller Piazzetta San Marco, the open space which lay on the south side of the piazza, near the Doge’s Palace, and which served as a connection between the piazza and the waters of the Grand Canal.
‘How about Murano?’ Bronson suggested. ‘Glass-making has always fascinated me. According to this guidebook, the demonstrations there are free, and that’s not a word you normally associate with Venice.’
‘That’s this island here, isn’t it?’ Angela asked, pointing at the map in her own book.
Bronson nodded. ‘Yes, though it’s actually a group of six islands, not just one. And apparently there are lots of interesting little shops and boutiques there which you can have a root around in. We can take a number forty-one or forty-two vaporetto from the Fondamente Nuove stop, and it’s not that far away — the next stop after San Michele, in fact.’
But a few moments later, it became obvious to both of them that they weren’t going to be able to visit Murano or, at least, not that morning.
The dining-room door swung open, and the hotel receptionist peered inside. Spotting Bronson and Angela, she pointed them out to somebody waiting just outside. A moment later, two Italian police officers walked in, and crossed briskly to the table where they were sitting.
‘Signor Bronson?’ the first officer asked.
From the insignia on his uniform, Bronson guessed he was the equivalent of a sergeant, and the other man probably a constable. He nodded.
The officer pulled out a notebook, flipped through it until he found what he was looking for, and glanced at something written on the page.
‘I understand you speak Italian,’ he said, and Bronson nodded again. ‘Where were you last night?’
‘What?’
‘I asked where you were last night,’ the police officer repeated.
‘I understood what you said,’ Bronson said, ‘but I don’t know why you’re asking me this.’
‘There was an incident, and we are trying to establish the movements of anybody who might have been involved. It’s routine.’
Bronson didn’t like the sound of that. In his experience, whenever a policeman assured a suspect that a particular line of questioning was ‘routine’, it usually meant that it was anything but.
‘What sort of incident?’ he asked, deciding to play along. He knew he had absolutely nothing to worry about, whatever the ‘incident’ might be. ‘I was here, in this hotel, after we got back from the Isola di San Michele. Then we went out for a late dinner, probably at about nine, and returned to the hotel just after eleven. We were in our room all night until about an hour ago, when we came down for breakfast.’
The carabinieri officer noted down Bronson’s answer, then looked at him again. ‘Can anyone substantiate your account, Signor Bronson?’
‘I paid for the meal at the restaurant with a credit card,’ he replied, ‘so that will establish where I was between about nine and eleven. After that, Angela and I were together, and as far as I’m aware nobody else saw us after we came back to the hotel.’
The officer frowned, and Bronson could tell that his answers hadn’t satisfied him.
‘If you can tell me what incident you’re talking about, and the time it took place, we might be able to
help.’
The officer shrugged. ‘There was a break-in at the mortuary last night, and some damage was done.’
‘What’s he saying, Chris?’ Angela asked.
Bronson briefly translated what the officer had just told him.
‘Somebody burgled the mortuary?’ Angela sounded incredulous. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to do that?’
‘Was anything taken?’ Bronson asked. ‘And when did it happen?’
‘We think the break-in occurred at about two or three in the morning. No valuables were stolen, as far as I know, apart from a camera.’
‘Then I have no alibi,’ Bronson said, ‘except that my partner is a very light sleeper, and if I had got up and left the room, I’m sure she would have heard me. What damage was done?’
‘You saw a corpse, I believe, on the Isola di San Michele, at the Cimitero Comunale?’ Bronson nodded. ‘Whoever broke into the mortuary removed its head, and scattered all the other bones and pieces of pottery, as if they were looking for something. And they stole an expensive digital camera.’
Bronson leaned forward. He’d guessed that it had to be something to do with the events of the previous night; otherwise he could see no possible reason why the Italian police would want to question him.
‘It wasn’t us,’ he said firmly. ‘If you want to search our room, you’re very welcome to do so. We’ve got nothing to hide, and absolutely no reason to steal an ancient skull or take a camera.’
The Italian officer shrugged again and closed his notebook with a snap. As he did so, his radio emitted a static-laden squeak, and he turned his head and pressed the transmit button to respond. For some reason the radio reception in the hotel wasn’t particularly good, but despite that Bronson was able to make out a few phrases of the message that the carabinieri control room was passing. One in particular seized his attention: ‘there’s been another, but we’ve found this one’. Taken in isolation, this phrase seemed innocuous enough, but it clearly meant something more to the sergeant, who immediately gestured to his companion to leave the room.
