James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

‘The ambulance boat will be here soon,’ one of the men said. ‘You need to have that wound examined.’

Bronson shook him off. His head ached, but already the bleeding seemed to have diminished, and he was fairly certain there was no serious damage. In any case, he had other priorities.

Until that moment, he had thought they’d been dealing with two unrelated sets of incidents. A person or group of people obviously wanted the vampire diary that Angela had lifted from the tomb on the Isola di San Michele, and there appeared to be a serial killer operating in Venice. Now the appalling possibility hit Bronson like a hammer blow: suppose, just suppose, that the serial killer and the man looking for vampire relics were one and the same.

And now Angela might be in his clutches.

Bronson knew that scenario didn’t really make sense. Virtually all documented cases of serial killers showed quite clearly that they invariably worked alone, or at most as a pair. And the attack that had just occurred had involved three people — the decoy, the man who’d opened the door right in front of them and distracted Bronson, and then the two men who’d emerged from the building behind them.

The much more likely probability was that Angela had been grabbed because she had the diary, and once they’d taken that from her, the chances were that they’d let her go. Rationally, Bronson knew this made sense, but that didn’t help calm his almost frantic worry for her safety.

Now that he was on his feet, and able to talk, several of the people in the group started to drift away. But a couple of the men remained behind. For the briefest of instants, Bronson wondered if they’d actually been a part of the attack, but then he dismissed the idea as ridiculous. If they had been, there was always the chance that he might recognize one of them.

Again, Bronson shrugged off their concerns. He needed to call the police and find Angela. The sound of an approaching ambulance siren on the canal galvanized him into action. He knew his head wound needed treating, but this was very much a secondary concern. He picked up the padded bag containing Angela’s laptop — at least he still had that — which had dropped from his shoulder when he was attacked, and walked away from the scene as quickly as he could. The moment he was around the corner, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and called the police.

Ninety minutes later, Bronson was at the Ospedale Civile — the local hospital in the Castello district — sitting on a hard chair, his hands gripping the arm rests, as a young Italian doctor closed the cut on the side of his head with metal clips. When he’d arrived at the hospital, his wound had been cleaned, the hair around it cut off and that section of his scalp shaved. A couple of shots of local anaesthetic had been pumped into the torn and bruised skin, and then the metal sutures applied. Stitches, apparently, were rarely used these days, the metal staples — at least, that’s what they looked and felt like to Bronson — being the preferred way of closing up a wound.

The emergency operator had been more interested in the attack Bronson had suffered than in Angela’s disappearance, but Bronson’s insistence and concern had finally convinced her to connect him with an officer in the carabinieri . Bronson had given the man a brief description of Angela, and had explained the circumstances of the attack.

It helped that Bronson knew the ropes. He’d provided the best possible description he could of the man who had stepped out in front of them in the street. Unfortunately, though, he had only seen him for a matter of seconds, and his description — a man of medium height, average build, with dark hair, wearing glasses and dressed in a light grey suit — would probably fit several hundred men in Venice. And as for the men who had carried out the attack, he could offer no description at all, except for his impression that they were both about his height — around six feet tall — with dark hair.

Frankly, Bronson couldn’t care less about the three men. His only interest in them was as a possible route to finding Angela. The officer, who’d met Bronson at the Ospedale Civile and ensured his injury had been attended to as quickly as possible, had taken careful note of his description of Angela, and had radioed it to the dispatcher for immediate dissemination to all carabinieri officers in Venice and on the mainland.

‘We’ll find her, Signor Bronson,’ the officer said reassuringly, closing his notebook.

‘I’m sure you’ll try,’ Bronson snapped. ‘But what worries me is the number of young women who’ve vanished from the streets of Venice over the last few months, women who’ve left no trace, and who’ve never been seen again.’

The officer seemed surprised that Bronson knew what had been happening in the city.

‘That isn’t confidential information, is it?’ Bronson said sharply. ‘I checked the local newspaper archives, and about a dozen girls have disappeared over roughly the last eighteen months. And you can add another one to that total if you count the girl who vanished a couple of days ago, and one more if you include Angela. I want her found,’ he added, his voice cracking with the strain, ‘before some maniac dumps her body in a tomb on the Island of the Dead.’

The officer looked even more surprised. ‘How do you know about that?’ he asked.

‘I was the one who found them,’ Bronson said shortly. ‘Now, you know precisely where and when my partner was abducted. I know Venice has a lot of buildings, and a hell of a lot of places where a person could be hidden, but it’s also quite a small city. So please, please, do your best to find her for me.’

Bronson’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears, and it wasn’t just because of the doctor driving home the final staple into his scalp.

Marietta had barely touched the meal her captor had brought down for her at lunchtime. All she could think of were his last words. What lay in store for her that night? She felt physically sick with dread, her body numb with fear.

When the cellar door rumbled open some time later she absolutely knew that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. She still had no weapon to defend herself, nor any form of protection; all she could do was what she had done almost every time any of the men had entered the cellar: she sat very upright on the edge of the bed, staring towards the base of the spiral staircase, and waited to see who was coming towards her.

Whoever it was seemed to be carrying something heavy, because she could hear the confused sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs, rather than the measured tread she had grown accustomed to.

A sudden piercing scream, obviously a woman’s, tore through the still air of the cellar, and Marietta jumped. Then she heard a cracking sound that had become only too familiar — the sound of a taser being discharged — and the scream ended as suddenly as it had begun.

Moments later, the guard and one of the other men who’d abducted her stepped into view, dragging the unconscious form of a young woman between them. Neither man so much as glanced towards Marietta as they hauled the body past the end of her open room.

Because of her restricted view, Marietta couldn’t see where they took her, but the sounds she was hearing suggested they had entered the cell right next to her. There was a dull thud, which she presumed was the noise of the men dumping the unconscious girl on a bed, followed by a clanking sound and a click — the handcuff being secured around the girl’s wrist.

After a few seconds, the two men reappeared, and the guard stopped for a moment at the entrance to Marietta’s room.