James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Bronson paused. ‘As far as I can tell, there’s no link between the two apart from their location. But there is one thing that intrigues me, something I overheard when that police sergeant received the radio message.’

‘I guessed you’d heard something when you decided to follow them.’

‘The dispatcher, or whatever they’re called in the carabinieri , said that “there’s been another, but we’ve found this one”. Then the two officers went straight out to the island. To me, that suggests young women have been disappearing, and only some of their bodies have been recovered.’

Angela sighed, got up from her chair and stretched. ‘In other words, it rather looks as if there could be a serial killer operating here in Venice.’ She turned to Bronson. ‘And you want to investigate, don’t you?’

Bronson stood up too and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’m not going to get involved, I promise. I’m just interested in what’s going on. Just like you’re interested in that vampire diary or whatever it is.’

Angela smiled gently. ‘Touche,’ she murmured. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing much. I thought I might just check the archives of the local newspaper and see if I can spot a pattern. That’s all. And what about you?’ he added. ‘Have you got anywhere with that thing yet?’

Angela gestured towards the small black leather-bound volume lying on the desk next to her laptop.

‘Not really. It’s in pretty poor condition, as you might expect. I still think it was put in the grave underneath the coffin when the woman was buried. That makes the most sense, especially if the people who buried her, her family or her friends, accepted her for what she was.’

‘That she was a vampire, you mean?’ Bronson said.

‘Well, to be accurate, she was a woman who believed she was a vampire, which isn’t exactly the same thing. But to honour her memory, as it were, they buried her diary with her, and those two small pottery jars as well. I still think they most likely contained blood, intended to sustain her. They probably just thought they were humouring her last wishes.’

‘But later on, somebody took her claim to be a vampire a lot more seriously, and they had a very different attitude to her.’

‘Exactly. It was someone who obviously believed absolutely in the vampire myth, and was probably appalled to think that the body of such a creature should be buried here in Venice. They went to enormous trouble to obliterate her name from the tomb, and to desecrate her body, to kill her off if she was a vampire, at the same time.’

‘So what have you found in the diary?’ Bronson asked.

‘I’ve only had a quick look at some of the early pages,’ Angela replied. ‘But the exciting thing is that I now know her name, because on one of the first pages she’s explained the purpose of the book. The translation of one phrase she wrote is “the record of the life of Carmelita Paganini”, and that ties up with the remains of the letter “P” I deciphered on the slab over her grave. I also tried to see if the lengths of the obliterated words from the slab more or less matched that name, and they do.’

Bronson picked up the book and opened it carefully, but the closely written text meant nothing to him. It was obvious that Carmelita had used different types and colours of ink over the years, because on some pages the writing was as clear and sharp as if it had been done the day before, while on others the ink had faded to a grey or reddish shadow.

‘Be careful with it, Chris,’ Angela said, taking it back from him. ‘It’s very fragile.’

‘I suppose you’re using the scanned images,’ he replied, ‘because the writing on some of these pages is virtually illegible.’

‘Oddly enough, because I could adjust the sensitivity of the scanner, the images in my laptop are a lot clearer than the original text. So, yes, I am working on the computer, and not from the book.’

Angela glanced at her watch. ‘Why don’t we go out for a bite of lunch now? And then I’ll do a bit more work on the diary, and you can amuse yourself digging around in some newspaper’s morgue, looking for clues, just like a real detective.’

‘I am a real detective,’ Bronson protested faintly, ‘but that’s a good idea. I’ll just see if I can find out anything, just to satisfy my curiosity, and then we can forget about it. And tomorrow we’ll go back on the sight-seeing trail.’

‘Officer down! Officer down!’

‘Get an ambulance! Right now!’

The cries of shock and alarm rang through the Campo Santa Maria Formosa and the neighbouring streets. The officers who’d been deployed on the stake-out at the cafe were at the scene in seconds. But by then, the well-dressed assassin had vanished into the crowds, leaving behind his grisly handiwork.

Within minutes the area was swamped by police officers and paramedics, and two ambulance launches were moored in the canals closest to the scene of the shooting, their engines rumbling quietly. But the reality was that they were too late. They were all a lifetime too late.

Inspector Filippo Bianchi approached the scene at a run, his identity card held in his left hand for all to see.

‘Who in God’s name is it?’ he shouted.

The uniformed carabinieri officer stationed some distance from the scene swung round as the senior officer approached. He recognized him immediately, and shook his head. ‘It’s the chief inspector, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s Lombardi.’

When he heard that name, Bianchi stopped in dismay. Around him, uniformed police officers, paramedics, technicians in civilian clothes and others wearing white coveralls milled about the scene. The obvious focus of their attention was the area right beside the edge of the canal. Temporary screens had already been erected in a rough square to protect the crime scene, and to hide the body from the curious glances of the Venetians and tourists who were passing down the opposite side of the canal, and looking over at the scene from boats and gondolas.

Inspector Bianchi was a solidly built man in his fifties, his fine aquiline features now darkly suffused with anger and disgust. As he walked closer to the body, several of the men nodded greetings, but none spoke to him. Their mood was clearly both subdued and very angry.

Carabinieri officers, like policemen everywhere, accept the inherent dangers of their job. They are on the frontline, the thin blue line that separates the criminal elements from the law-abiding citizens in their country. And in Italy there has always been the added menace and complication of the Cosa Nostra , the Mafia — the criminal organization that many maintain still holds the real power in the country. As many prominent officials have found to their cost over the years, Mafia godfathers are always prepared to remove — permanently — anyone who they believe is getting in their way. Judges, politicians, and, of course, police officers, have all paid the ultimate price for their desire to uphold the rule of law.

But Carlo Lombardi had not been involved, as far as Bianchi knew, in any anti-Mafia operations, at least not in the five years he had known him. Lombardi was Venetian born and bred, had spent all his working life in the city, rising to become one of the most senior officers employed there. And most of this time, all he and his men had had to deal with was the usual spate of bag-snatching and pick-pocketing, as criminal elements at the very bottom of the ladder preyed upon Venice’s annual influx of tourists. ‘Bottom feeders’ was the way Lombardi had usually referred to these criminals. They were an irritation, not a threat, and rarely targeted any of the local people.