James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

She had screamed at the realization, and had immediately lifted her feet off the floor and on to the mattress, away from what she’d felt sure was a plague of insects heading towards her. And then she’d heard a louder, more pronounced scurrying noise, and she’d screamed again.

Cockroaches were bad enough, but that noise had then convinced her that there were also rats or mice down there with her in the darkness.

Within minutes, the sound seemed to have spread all around her, and she’d created a terrifying mental image of tens of thousands of cockroaches swarming on to the bed and all over her, and rats gnawing at her flesh. But actually, the reality had been considerably less traumatic. She’d continued hearing the insects and the rodents scurrying about, but not one creature had touched her or climbed on to the bed — yet.

She hadn’t expected to sleep, because of her fear and loathing of the other residents of the cellar, but the air down there was cold, and eventually she’d pulled an old and smelly blanket — the only piece of bedding provided — over her, simply to keep warm. And within a few minutes she’d drifted off into a fitful sleep, from which she had awoken, shivering and terrified, at intervals during the night.

Marietta had no watch on her wrist, but she guessed it was mid-morning, and she was ravenously hungry and really thirsty. She’d had nothing to eat or drink since the previous afternoon, and her throat was parched and dry.

She consoled herself with the thought that if her captors had intended to kill her, they would probably already have done so. And that meant that they wanted her alive. But why? It couldn’t be for ransom — her family wasn’t rich, and she had no money of her own. There must be something else. And if they didn’t want her to die, they would have to feed her.

Even as that thought gave her some slight comfort, she heard a grating and rumbling sound as the door at the top of the spiral staircase was opened, and the cellar lights snapped on.

Blinking in the harsh illumination, she stood up, shivering and waiting. Alone. And very frightened.

Bronson picked up the compact binoculars and small digital camera that he’d brought down from their room in readiness for their day of sight-seeing. He slipped both instruments into the pockets of his leather jacket.

‘Are you sure about this, Chris?’ Angela asked.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Bronson replied with a rueful smile. ‘Look, while I’m out following those two carabinieri , maybe you could have a look at the pictures you took of the grave. See if anything strikes you as being odd, apart from the decapitated body and the brick, I mean. It might also be worth trying to find out the name of the woman in the grave.’

He glanced through the window at the street outside, where the two policemen had stopped for a few moments. Bending down, he kissed Angela lightly on the lips, and then strode across the dining room and walked out of the hotel.

The two carabinieri were on foot, of course — Venice being a car-free zone — and were walking north-east along the street from the hotel, turning right at the end, and then left. It looked to Bronson, who was following about fifty yards behind them and taking frequent glances at the street map of Venice he’d picked up at the airport, as if they were heading towards the edge of the lagoon. This suspicion was confirmed when the two men walked on to the jetty by the Fondamente Nuove vaporetto stop. There he saw a police launch waiting for them, the engine running and two other officers already on board.

Although Bronson guessed that he would look just like any other tourist in the anonymous throngs already crowding the streets, he hung back, waiting for the vessel to depart. As soon as the sergeant and constable were sitting down in the launch, the driver freed the mooring line and gunned the engine. Bronson took out his binoculars and watched the vessel and its passengers. Once it had cleared the other water traffic that was manoeuvring near the vaporetto stop, the boat swung round to the left and headed north-east, accelerating across the lagoon towards the northern end of the Isola di San Michele — in other words, pretty much as he’d expected.

About ten minutes later, shortly after the police launch had reached the jetty on the island, in fact, Bronson boarded a number forty-two vaporetto and began the same journey himself.

The Isola di San Michele was reasonably large, about five hundred yards by four hundred yards, he guessed, and very popular with visitors to Venice, so he didn’t anticipate any particular difficulty in remaining unobserved once he got there.

He stepped out of the vaporetto on to the jetty more or less in the middle of a group of German tourists, and headed towards the part of the cemetery where they’d found the broken tomb the previous evening.

That was his first surprise. The tomb was covered in a heavy green tarpaulin, which was lashed down and held in place with a couple of orange polypropylene ropes. Clearly the authorities had decided to shield the broken structure from prying eyes. And there was no sign of any police officers. Whatever the carabinieri had come over to the island to investigate, it was obviously nothing at all to do with that grave.

Bronson looked round the vast cemetery, and over to one side he finally spotted a handful of police officers clustered around another grave. Feeling somewhat like a ghoul, he headed that way himself, taking a circuitous route so as not to make his approach too obvious.

Standing at the edge of the group of tourists that had gathered at the site, Bronson pulled his camera from his pocket, held it unobtrusively by his side and aimed it in the general direction of all the activity. The camera was equipped with a powerful zoom lens and had both still and movie modes, so he pressed the button that would provide him with a video record of what was going on.

The carabinieri had erected a temporary screen on the far side of the new grave. This, like the broken grave of the previous night, was another stone box with a slab covering the top, but as far as Bronson could see, it was completely intact. Instead, the police officers’ attention was directed towards the ground beside the tomb. As he watched, a man wearing a set of white waterproof overalls, cap, gloves and rubber boots, and carrying a large plastic toolbox, emerged from behind the screen. He paused for a moment to exchange a few words with a couple of the police officers, then walked over to a patch of grass on which several other cases had been left. Bronson had been involved with enough serious crimes to know what the man’s job was, and then, as the white-clad figure turned slightly towards him, he recognized the man as the same forensic pathologist who’d travelled out to the island the previous night. And that, he knew, meant that another body had been discovered.

If any confirmation was needed, it followed just moments later, when two men dressed in civilian clothes, and carrying a black body bag and a collapsible stretcher, walked behind the screen.

A few minutes later they emerged, carrying a zipped body bag on the stretcher. Before they moved away, however, one of the policemen halted them with a gesture, and unzipped the bag just far enough to allow him to see the head of the victim.

Bronson lifted the camera higher, pressed the zoom button and tried to get a close-up shot. A tumble of blonde hair filled the LCD screen, but it looked as if the face of the girl — and the victim was obviously a young woman — was invisible. Several of the tourists standing near him were also using their cameras, snapping away, and one of the carabinieri shouted angrily at them.