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.’
This 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.
Bronson turned right, the only way out, and ran up the path. The moonlight cast a pale white glow over his surroundings, and was sufficiently bright for him to see exactly where he was. The house was over to his right, and the ruined church almost directly in front of him. Near the house he could see several figures, clad in dark clothes and carrying weapons: obviously other Italian police officers, so he knew that his quarry wouldn’t have gone to the main landing stage in front of the house. In fact, the only place the leader could possibly have gone was to the old jetty, at the other end of the island, where Bronson had seen the small speedboat. It was his only viable avenue of escape.
Turning away from the house, Bronson started to run, but after only a few seconds he saw a dark shape lying to one side of the path.
Bronson stopped in his tracks and aimed the pistol directly at it. He took a couple of tentative steps forward, then muttered an oath. The police officer had obviously had time to draw his weapon, because Bronson could see a Beretta nine-millimetre pistol lying on the ground beside him. But the weapon had clearly done him no good at all, because he was dead, his throat ripped apart, his head resting in a huge pool of blood.
Fearing for Angela, his blood pounding in his ears, Bronson ran on, checking left and right as he did so, and occasionally glancing behind him, just in case his quarry had decided to double back. He heard a commotion some way back, and guessed that Bianchi and his officers had followed him out of the chamber, and had just found the dead policeman.
Then, perhaps fifty yards ahead, he saw a figure, a blacker shape against the darkness of the sky. He caught a sudden whiff of decaying flesh, and knew he’d guessed right. The man was making for the jetty and the speed boat.
Bronson stepped off the path and on to the grass at the side. The man was still much too far away for him to use his pistol, and he couldn’t see whether or not he had Angela with him.
Making maximum use of the moonlight to pick his route over the tussocky grass, Bronson ran on, closing the distance as quickly as he could. Then he saw a tumble of blonde hair on the right-hand side of the dark robe the figure was wearing, and knew the man was carrying Angela. She seemed to be unconscious or at least, as far as Bronson could see, her head appeared to be hanging limply.
He’d got within about twenty yards of them when the man clearly sensed his presence and glanced back at him. Bronson saw his face, saw the blood staining his mouth and chin. He brought the Browning up to the aim,
