and have plenty of their own headaches to worry about. As far as this situation is concerned, it has already slipped out of our control! We have two cadavers at the mortuary that have been clawed to pieces and no reason to think there may not be more coming.’
‘That’s impossible!’ shouted the public prosecutor. ‘It’s only an animal, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got dogs, vehicles, helicopters, scores of men.’
Reggiani lowered his head to hide his anger and took a deep breath before he answered. ‘You see, sir, all of the means that you’ve just mentioned have been used without achieving the slightest result. I’ve put my best men out in the field and on investigations. This is not just any old case. There are other matters that concern me as well and I need your help.’
The public prosecutor nodded, with an air of condescension.
‘I would like you to make a personal call to the directors of all the local papers and ask for a news blackout. I’m sure you can convince them that this is necessary due to the unique, extremely serious nature of the matter. I will arrange to inform local residents regarding the nature of the threat and the precautions to be taken. A lot of unverified stories are already going around. I’ll tell them the truth. Luckily, this isn’t a big city. There are a given number of families that must be informed. At the same time I will reorganize my investigation, starting from another angle.’
‘What angle might that be?’ asked the public prosecutor.
‘I want to start from the tomb,’ replied Reggiani. ‘From the man who opened it and excavated it. I think that’s where all this began.’
FABRIZIO took a bunch of keys from the hook and went down into the storeroom. Sonia had been so excited at seeing the pictures that she was eager to start immediately. He wanted to make sure that all the material would be ready for her to begin her work. If he got this out of the way, he’d be free to return to his own studies and forget about the rest. If that was an option.
He descended a couple of floors from street level and realized he was in the middle of the ancient city: tufa walls, old substructures in ruins, foundations made of huge blocks, surely from the Etruscan age. He switched on the light and walked down a long corridor covered by a barrel vault ceiling. On either side lay the dusty odds and ends typical of the cellars of the museums and NAS facilities all over Italy: chunks of marble and stone, column segments, fragmented sculptures waiting patiently to be restored, handles and necks of vases, floor tiles and boxes. Hundreds of boxes. Yellow and red plastic stacks, each with its own label reporting the name of the excavation, the sector and the layer where the finds contained inside had been found.
The materials from the Rovaio dig, except for the alabaster sarcophagus, which had been taken to another warehouse outside the city, were at the end of the hall, sitting on top of a shelf carved of stone which created a niche in the wall. Fabrizio laid a plastic sheet on the floor and started first of all to pick out the more scattered and splintered pieces of the human skeleton. He taped to the wall an enlargement of the digital shot he had taken inside the tomb, then switched on a portable mechanic’s light and began to gather the fragments, one after another, piecing them together with difficulty, seeking the lines of recomposition of a body almost disintegrated by a ravaging fury.
He patiently reconstructed shoulder and collar bones, lined up the phalanges of the fingers which were strewn in every direction. Every now and then he would glance at the blown-up photo on the wall and that awful image, that horrible tangle of bones and fangs, created a mounting sense of anxiety in him that he tried in vain to overcome. His fingers seemed to move on their own, brushing the man’s skull, part of the temporal bone still bearing a strip of the sack in which his head was enclosed during the cruel ordeal. The emotion that had been simmering inside of him exploded with uncontrollable force. Those bare bones electrified him, filled him with a clear, distinct vision of those atrocious moments: suffocated, breathless panting, the crazed beating of a heart gripped with terror. Fangs sinking into live flesh as the man screamed in pain, writhing about blindly, futilely wielding the sword tight in his fist. Blood that with every bite spurted out more copiously, soaking the ground, blood that made the animal more and more excited and aggressive, feeding its thirst for slaughter. He heard the sinister crunching of bones, yielding abruptly to those steel fangs, smelt the nauseating odour of intestines ripped from the man’s belly and devoured still throbbing, while he was alive and screaming, shaking violently in the throes of agony.
Dripping with sweat, Fabrizio could not control the furious beating of his own heart, nor the tears that were pouring from his eyes and running down his cheeks, nor the convulsive fluttering of his eyelids, which were fragmenting that tragedy into thousands of bloody shards that were pricking every centimetre of his body and soul.
He cried out in a hoarse, suffocated voice, the scream of a man dreaming, and he had the impression that his cry had snuffed out the bulb, abruptly plunging him into the gloom of the underground chambers. But soon that silent darkness was pierced by a mournful dirge and became animated by shadowy, sinister presences: ghosts cloaked in black carrying a litter which bore the bloody tatters of a large dismembered body. Behind them growled the beast, its eyes phosphorescent in the dim light and its mouth foaming, held tight by ropes and tethers, yanking its keepers this way and that with immense strength. They were dragging it to its final destiny: to be buried alive with the human meal that would have to satiate it for all eternity.
Fabrizio screamed again and then, tired of fighting it off, let himself sink into a well of silence.
HE WAS unaware of how much time had passed before a light stung his eyes and a voice shook him fully awake: ‘Professor! Professor! Good Lord, what has happened? Are you ill? Shall I call a doctor?’
Fabrizio got to his feet and wiped his forehead. The confused image peering out at him slowly took on the familiar features of a person he knew well: Mario, the security guard.
‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘There’s no need. I must have fainted. There’s nothing wrong, I feel fine, I promise you.’
Mario looked sceptical. ‘Are you sure? You look pretty awful.’
‘Perfectly sure. I was working down here, but it’s so damp and there’s no air…’
‘You’re right. This is no place for you to be working.’ The security guard lifted his eyes to the blown-up photo on the wall. ‘Good heavens! What on earth is that?’
‘It’s nothing, Mario,’ said Fabrizio, swiftly rolling up the enlargement. ‘Just bones. Lord knows how many you’ve seen.’
Mario got the hint and changed the subject. ‘Listen, they’re looking for you upstairs.’
‘Who’s looking for me?’
‘That carabiniere lieutenant. His name’s Reggiani.’
‘Do you know what he wants?’
‘He says it’s just to talk with you… I’ll bet you anything it’s about that second bloke they found murdered. He’s already asked me not to breathe a word about it. I don’t know how he knew that I know.’
‘That’s his job, Mario.’
‘Anyway, I haven’t spoken to a soul, but people know about it. Word gets around. People are scared.’
‘That’s understandable.’
‘You said it. So should I show him to your office?’
‘Yes, do that. Tell him I’ll be right there.’
Mario walked back up the stairs and Fabrizio turned to look at what he’d accomplished. Only the upper part of the human skeleton was reassembled, and only partially. He realized he might have to ask for help from a technician with expertise in osteology or he’d never manage to finish the job. There was still a lot of work to do, especially on the small fragments that were difficult to identify, and he hadn’t even started on the animal, whose entire skeleton seemed to be present and was in near-perfect condition, except for some cracking and splintering probably due to exposure to freezing temperatures through the millennia. Fabrizio bent over the bones and saw that one of the four huge canine teeth had become detached from the top jaw, most likely jolted loose during transport. He picked it up and slipped it into his pocket, with the intention of observing it carefully and measuring it. He then walked up the stairs, switched off the light and closed the door behind him.
Lieutenant Reggiani was waiting in his office. When he entered, the officer got to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Dr Castellani,’ he started. His expression made it clear that this was no courtesy call.
‘Hello, Lieutenant. Please make yourself at home,’ said Fabrizio in greeting, forcing himself to appear normal. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? From the dispenser, I mean.’
‘That’s fine with me,’ said Reggiani. ‘It’s not as bad as it used to be.’
Fabrizio left the room, then returned a few moments later with two espressos and two packets of sugar. He sat
