James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Bronson used Angela’s digital camera to record the operation.

‘What are you doing?’ she muttered in disapproval.

‘I’m making a record of what’s happening,’ he replied. ‘Just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

‘I don’t know, but this is a peculiar situation we’re involved in, and having a photographic record seems to be a good idea.’

With the first body removed, more photographs were taken, and then the operation was repeated to lift out the second corpse, and then the third. Once all three body bags had been closed, the unpleasant smell began to dissipate, and several of the Italian officers removed their face masks. Further checks were run on the tomb, and it was carefully searched for any other possible clues.

‘I’ll ask the sergeant whether we can go now,’ Bronson said at last.

With Angela beside him, he walked around the taped-off tomb and approached the investigating officers.

‘Is there anything else you need from us?’ Bronson asked in Italian.

The sergeant glanced towards the more senior carabinieri officer. ‘Inspector Bianchi?’

The officer glanced at Bronson and Angela, looked as if he was going to speak, and then shook his head.

‘You’ve both made statements,’ the sergeant said, turning back to Bronson, ‘and we know where you’re staying, so that’s it. Just try to keep away from graveyards for the rest of your time in the city. We really don’t need any more bodies.’

‘I’ll try,’ Bronson promised.

On the way out of the cemetery, they passed the vampire’s tomb and Bronson noticed immediately that the position of the ropes had changed. Obviously the site had been disturbed.

Motioning Angela to wait, he stepped across to the grave and lifted the base of the tarpaulin so that he could see inside the tomb. The few bits of wood from the coffin that had survived the passage of time were scattered around. There was even evidence of digging in the soil around the grave, and marks on the stone that suggested it had been hit by some hard metallic object, perhaps a hammer or a chisel.

Bronson dropped the tarpaulin back into place, and then rejoined Angela.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Somebody has searched that tomb,’ Bronson replied. ‘And I think we both know what they were looking for.’

The hotel management had been most apologetic. They had no idea when the thief had broken into their room, or how he had managed to get past the reception desk without being challenged.

Actually, Bronson thought that getting past the receptionist desk would be the easiest part of the operation, but he hadn’t said that to the duty manager who’d met them in the lobby with the unwelcome news.

They couldn’t stay in their original room, obviously, because the door would no longer lock, or even close, so they’d been given a slightly larger room on the floor above instead.

The following morning, at breakfast, Angela was subdued, but clearly angry.

‘Yesterday was horrible,’ she announced, as they finished the meal. ‘Do you really think that it was a random break-in?’

Bronson shook his head. ‘No, and nor do you. I think most robberies in hotels are carried out by the staff, because they’re the people who’ve got access to the room keys. Breaking down the door is rare, and it seems far too coincidental that our room was the only one in the building to be targeted.’

‘So you think they were looking for the diary?’

‘That seems the simplest explanation, yes.’

‘So what are we going to do about it? Should we give the book to the police?’

‘Definitely not. They’ve got their hands full, according to what I read in the local paper this morning. One of their most senior detectives was killed yesterday, gunned down in the street on his way to meet an informer. And in any case I’m not sure how interested the carabinieri would be in a two-hundred-year-old diary written by some woman who thought she was a vampire. In fact, I’m not sure why anybody, apart from perhaps a social historian, would have the slightest interest in it.’ Bronson shook his head. ‘But the reality is that somebody seems desperate to get their hands on it.’

‘Do you think it could have anything to do with the bodies of those three poor girls you found in that tomb?’

‘Frankly, no,’ Bronson replied, ‘apart from the coincidence of the two graves being quite close together. I don’t see what link there could be between a woman who’s been dead for two hundred years and a serial killer operating in Venice today.’

He drank the last of his coffee. ‘So what would you like to do today?’ he asked. ‘And, before you tell me, we’ll be sticking together. I’m not prepared to risk you being targeted because somebody wants that diary.’

‘That’s what I was going to suggest as well,’ Angela said. ‘We’ll take the diary and my laptop with us again. And something else struck me about this attempted robbery-’

‘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.’