‘I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say,’ Bronson interrupted. ‘The only people who knew that we had been at the scene of that first vandalized tomb were the carabinieri. I talked to two of them in the cemetery that night, and then two other officers appeared here at the hotel the following morning. As far as I know, nobody outside the Venetian police force has any idea who we are or how we’re involved.’
‘Exactly. And that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.’ She sighed. ‘I still wish I knew why somebody wants that diary.’
‘I might have a theory about that as well,’ Bronson said, and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a folded sheet of paper. ‘I found this story in the newspaper archives, in the international news pages. Apparently there was some kind of a road improvement scheme on the outskirts of a Czech town called Cesky Krumlov. When the workmen dug up a piece of land as part of their road-widening operation, they found an early eighteenth-century grave containing eleven bodies. That’s not unusual, but what puzzled them was the way three of the corpses had been buried.
‘According to this article, bodies were usually laid to rest lying in an east-west direction, but these three had been positioned so that they lay from north to south. And one skeleton had been treated in exactly the same way as the body we saw in the grave on the Isola di San Michele: it had been decapitated, the skull placed between its legs, and a stone rammed into its mouth. All three of the skeletons had been pinned to the ground with heavy, flat stones, and another one had a hole in the left side of the chest directly above where the heart would have been, which was consistent with the sternum having been pierced by a sharp object. The article doesn’t actually say that it was a wooden stake, but that’s pretty obviously what they think did the damage.’
Angela nodded, staring at the picture that accompanied the story. ‘It sounds like a typical vampire burial. Quite a few of these have been recorded, most often from places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary.’
‘And there’s an interesting postscript to the story you’ve got in your hand. In the last paragraph it says that they took the skeletons to Prague, but before the remains were transported, somebody broke into the building where they were being kept and stole several bones from each body. Someone seems to be collecting vampire relics – those bones in Czechoslovakia, the head from the grave here in Venice – and they’re obviously after that diary as well.’
‘You’re talking like there’s some kind of vampire conspiracy,’ Angela said, smiling.
‘Well, it’s the only explanation that seems to fit the facts. Look,’ he leaned forward across the table, ‘you and I both know that the vampire myth is exactly that – a myth. But I’m beginning to think that there are people right here, in this city, who not only think vampires were real creatures of flesh and blood, but who are actively trying to collect relics from them. And maybe they’re even trying to become vampires themselves. It bothers me.’
‘You and me both,’ Angela said. ‘You really think there are people who are that deluded?’
‘Well, somebody’s certainly collecting relics, and they’re doing it now. That’s unarguable.’
Angela shivered. ‘I’m beginning to think that coming to Venice for a holiday was a really bad idea. We might have had a quieter time in Transylvania, the way things are going.’
Half an hour later, they left the hotel together, and made their way through the streets towards the city centre. They’d decided to walk first over to the Piazza San Marco, and then explore the Castello district, before picking up a vaporetto from the Celestia stop that would take them back to their hotel.
Bronson was very aware of their surroundings as they walked through the narrow streets of the Cannaregio area, but he saw nobody who concerned him.
They crossed over the Grand Canal into the Santa Croce district on the Ponte degli Scalzi, which literally translated as the ‘bridge of the barefoot monks’ and was one of only four bridges which spanned the Canal Grande. Suddenly, the door of one of the tall houses that lined the street was pushed open directly in front of them and a man stepped out. He was so close that Bronson and Angela had to step quickly over to the left to avoid walking into him. The man turned towards them, his face and voice full of apology.
But even as Bronson tried to wave aside the man’s explanation, he was suddenly aware of two other figures emerging through the open doorway behind them. He reached out to try to protect Angela, but before he could pull her to him, something crashed into the side of his head, and he fell senseless to the ground.
21
Marietta Perini stared in horror at the cockroach climbing up the wooden leg of her bed. It was almost the size of a rat, easily the biggest insect she had ever seen. She lay still, clutching the filthy blanket in both hands, paralysed with terror, because that was just the vanguard of the attack. From the other side of the bed, by the stained concrete wall, dozens of enormous insects were climbing up towards her. She could see their probing antennae above the edge of the mattress, could hear their feet scratching as they drew closer to her.
Then the first cockroach reached her feet and, with a sudden spurt, ran straight under the blanket, heading for her bare legs. She felt the insect’s horny carapace rubbing along the side of her calf, felt the movements of its legs as it moved up her body, but she simply couldn’t move an inch. Then a tidal wave of cockroaches swept across the edge of the mattress, heading straight towards her, and finally she found her voice.
She screamed, the noise echoing off the walls of the cellar, and suddenly found she could move. She threw the blanket from her body and jumped off the mattress on to the floor, the chain attached to her left wrist wrenching her arm back as she did so.
And then she woke up. For a few seconds she stood stock still, panting with terror, eyes wide as she stared around her, looking at the nightmare that had become her reality. There were no giant cockroaches, of course, but there were three or four of the insects scuttling about on her bed.
With an expression of disgust, Marietta flicked them off with the blanket, and checked the mattress and her clothing carefully before she got back on to the bed. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, her mind whirling with images of insects and rats, and whatever that nameless creature was that she’d heard howling the previous night, and what sleep she’d got had been restless and disturbed, punctuated by vivid and disturbing images.
Then her thoughts shifted, changing direction, and an image of her boyfriend’s face swam into her mind. He would be worried sick about her. He had always been possessive, perhaps too possessive, forever wanting to know where she was, where she was going and who she was with. In the past she’d found it slightly irksome – she was, after all, a liberated Venetian woman – but right then she thanked her stars for Augusto’s personality. He would, she knew, have tried to contact her, to call her mobile, when she hadn’t arrived at his apartment that evening as they’d arranged. Then he would have called her parents, and after that he would have raised the alarm.
Somewhere out there, beyond the island, the search would already have begun. People – a lot of people – would be out looking for her by now, of that she was certain.
She thought of her parents, sitting in their small apartment at the north-western end of Venice, near the railway station, worrying about her, wondering where she was and – knowing them as she did – probably fearing the worst. More than anything else, she wished she could see them again, or at least talk to her mother one last time. But that, she knew, wasn’t going to happen.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wiped them away angrily, because she’d just heard the cellar door rumble open. She didn’t want to show any sign of weakness, of emotion, to her captors. It wouldn’t make any difference to her fate, but keeping up her calm facade gave her something – some tiny bit of pride and strength – to hang on to.
One of the guards stepped into the cellar and walked across to her, a plastic tray in his hands.
‘Why are you keeping me here?’ Marietta asked, as the man lowered the tray to the floor and turned to walk away.
‘You’ll find out,’ the guard snapped, as he’d done on every previous occasion. But this time, as he turned to leave the cellar, he looked back towards her for the briefest of instants with something like pity in his eyes, and added a single bleak sentence that drove all other thoughts from her mind. ‘You’ll find out tonight, because we’ve just found the second one.’
22
