James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Bronson looked at these paragraphs for a few minutes, picking out the odd Latin word that he recognized, then decided it probably was worth trying to make a reasonable translation of the text. But he’d barely even begun when his mobile phone rang.

For an instant his heart pounded with anticipation. Could it be Angela, calling him to let him know she’d been released by her captors?

‘Chris Bronson,’ he said.

There was a pause and then a heavily accented voice spoke to him in English. ‘Signor Bronson. My name is Filippo Bianchi, and I’m a senior Venetian police officer. I may have some bad news for you.’

‘Tell me,’ Bronson replied in Italian, sitting down heavily on the bed.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but a body has just been found,’ Bianchi replied, switching to his native language, ‘and it matches the description you gave of your former wife. We would like you to come to the police station in San Marco, which is near the mortuary, to identify the corpse.’

Time suddenly seemed to stop, and Bronson had the bizarre sensation of the room closing in around him, constricting his chest and driving the breath from his body. For a few moments his mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. A loud and continuous beep sounded in his ear.

Then he regained control and took a deep breath. He realized he was clutching the phone so tightly that his fingers were pressing down on some of the keys. He released his grip slightly, and the beeping sound ceased. He gazed at the wall opposite, a tumble of emotions coursing through him.

‘Give me the address,’ he said, and noted down what Bianchi told him. Then he ended the call.

For a few seconds, Bronson sat motionless on the bed, his mobile phone still in his hand. This really couldn’t be happening, he told himself. Angela simply could not be dead. Their week’s holiday in Venice — a simple break from the routine of England — had turned into a nightmare that seemed as though it would never end.

Then he roused himself. He didn’t want to go to the police station or the mortuary, but he knew he had no choice. Opening his map of Venice, he quickly found the location of the police station. He slipped the map into his jacket pocket and headed back down to reception.

Ten minutes later, Bronson stepped into the red-painted powerboat the hotel receptionist had arranged for him, started the engine, put it into gear and steered it away from the side of the canal.

It was still fairly early in the morning, and the water traffic was light, though as usual the streets around the canals were crowded with pedestrians, many of them obvious tourists. Less than a quarter of an hour after he’d set off from the hotel, he moored the boat in a canal about a hundred yards from the police station and walked slowly over to the building, subconsciously delaying the moment of his arrival there, as if that could possibly make the slightest difference to the outcome.

The mortuary was in an adjacent building, and Bronson was led there by Bianchi himself, who’d been waiting for him near the reception desk in the station. Bianchi was a bulky, heavily built man in his mid-fifties, and Bronson recognized him at once — he’d been the senior investigating officer who’d appeared on the Isola di San Michele to investigate the three dead bodies that he and Angela had found in the tomb there.

It wasn’t the first time Bronson had visited a mortuary, though he’d never before been in the position he was in now. Normally, he was the presiding police officer, waiting for an anxious relative to confirm the identification of the body lying under a white sheet. He saw immediately that the Italians did things in much the same way as the British.

The viewing room was cold, much colder than the air-conditioned chill he’d experienced when they’d walked through the doors and into the mortuary, but it wasn’t just the chill in the air that made Bronson shiver. It was a small oblong space, three walls painted white and the fourth entirely invisible behind a deep purple curtain, behind which he knew would be the fridges that held the bodies. A large but simple crucifix adorned the wall beside the door, and a row of half a dozen uncomfortable-looking metal and plastic chairs lined the adjacent wall.

He registered all that as soon as he walked in, but what gripped and held his attention was the sheeted corpse lying on a trolley directly in front of him, in the middle of the room.

Bianchi strode across to one end of the body and positioned himself there, a mortuary attendant beside him. Bronson stepped closer to the trolley.

‘Are you prepared, Signor Bronson?’ Bianchi asked.

Bronson took a deep breath and nodded.

The police officer gestured to the attendant, who released a safety pin from the sheet covering the body, and gently pulled back the material that covered the face of the corpse.

Bronson noticed the hair first. Blonde and about shoulder-length, the way Angela normally wore it. Then his gaze moved slowly down her face, noticing the closed eyes, small nose and wide, generous mouth. He took a step closer to the trolley, to the midpoint of the dead body, and for a long moment stared down at the woman’s pale face, her skin white and waxy.

‘Signor Bronson, can you confirm whether or not this young woman is your wife?’ Bianchi asked quietly.

Bronson looked up at the police officer and the silent, unsmiling mortuary attendant standing next to him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can.’

Marietta awoke slowly in the darkness of the cellar. For a few seconds she had no recollection of where she was, but then she moved her left arm and the rattle of the chain and handcuff brought the hideous knowledge flooding back.

Instinctively she glanced down at her wrist, but her watch had been taken, so she had no idea what time of day or night it was. The last thing she recalled was the surge of current from the taser, a bolt of electricity so powerful that she’d lost consciousness. But she also knew, because of her previous experiences with the weapon, that she recovered quite quickly from it. So something else must have happened to her afterwards, because the cellar was now still and quiet and absolutely dark, and she couldn’t see any sign of the silent and malevolent figures who’d so terrified her.

And what of Benedetta? The last image, burned indelibly into her brain, was of the girl strapped down on the table, one man violently raping her while another collected the blood pouring from the wound on her neck. Had she survived? Or was she lying dead, her body even then growing cold on the stone table, or on the rough wooden bed in the adjacent cell?

‘Benedetta?’ Marietta whispered. There was no response. She repeated the name, raising her voice. Still there was no reply. As the echoes of her calls died away, a deep silence fell once again. It sounded as if Marietta was entirely alone.

Tears filled her eyes, and panic gripped her as she remembered the way Benedetta had suffered at the hands of their captors. And with that memory came a sense of confusion. Because they’d both been prepared for the ‘ceremony’, Marietta had assumed that, once the men had finished with Benedetta, she would have suffered the same fate.

She reached up and felt her neck, her sensitive fingertips tracing the skin on both sides. It felt bruised. This didn’t surprise her — the memory of the man with the taser grabbing her throat was still very vivid — but she could feel no evidence of a wound or any other damage. And she knew that she hadn’t been violated. So when they’d finished with Benedetta, they hadn’t come for her. Why not? And why had she remained unconscious for so long?

With her right hand, Marietta gently explored her body. She was naked — the white robe must have been ripped off after the taser hit her — and somebody had then dumped her on the bed and tossed the rough blanket over her body. She felt her left arm. Where the veins ran close to the surface of the skin, in the crook of her elbow, it was sore, and she guessed that she’d been given an injection to knock her out.