James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

Behind her, she heard the sound of footsteps and glanced back: Marco was following, torch in hand.

‘Keep going,’ he snapped. ‘I’m just here to make sure you do what you’re told.’

The staircase wound up the inside of the tower. For the first few steps, it felt extremely solid, but the higher she climbed the more unhappy Angela felt, realizing she was relying on bolts and fittings that had been in place for a very long time, without the benefit of any kind of maintenance or repair. She moved as close as she could to the wall, where she hoped the old metal might be stronger, and tested each step before she put her full weight on it.

The climb seemed endless, but eventually she stepped on to a platform that she guessed was virtually at the top of the main part of the tower, and looked around. Again, there was graffiti on the walls, which meant that other people had made the same climb fairly recently. There was no obvious hiding place at that level.

Marco appeared beside her within seconds. ‘I told you the bell had been removed,’ he said, pointing at a substantial beam that ran from one wall of the tower to the opposite side, and which had clearly been designed to support some heavy object.

‘I did hear something,’ Angela insisted.

She looked at the walls of the bell chamber, and at the bricked-up openings in the side walls, and shivered.

‘I suppose this was where he jumped from?’ she said quietly.

‘Who?’ Marco asked.

‘The mad doctor. If the story about him in that book was true, I mean.’

‘Nobody knows, and I don’t care.’ Marco looked all around them, quickly reaching the same conclusion as Angela. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said. ‘We need to get to the very top.’

Another short flight of stairs brought them to a second level, above the old bell chamber. And the stairs stopped there. Attached to one wall was a steel ladder, around which metal hoops had been bolted to prevent anyone climbing it from falling off. Like the spiral staircase, the metal looked old and rusty, and none too safe.

‘Keep going,’ Marco ordered again.

Angela swallowed hard. Heights didn’t particularly bother her, but she had a horror of falling, and even the metal hoops around the ladder weren’t much of a safe-guard against that happening. But she knew she had no option. She tucked both the torches into the waistband of her trousers, because she’d definitely need both hands free to make the climb, then reached up and began the ascent.

It wasn’t a long climb, perhaps twenty steps in all, and at the top she was faced with a wooden trapdoor set into the underside of a narrow platform. There was no bolt or catch, and the trapdoor swung open fairly easily as she pushed up on it. As it swung back against the wall with a dull thud, she took out one of the torches and shone the beam into the void above. Apart from an old broom, it appeared to be completely empty.

She reached up and placed both torches on the floor of the small platform, then heaved herself through the hole and stood up.

Angela could see that Marco was just beginning to make the same climb, and for a fleeting instant she debated dropping some heavy object down on to the top of his head, but then dismissed the thought. Even if she succeeded in hitting him, she would still have to contend with the men waiting on the ground floor down below, and if Marco didn’t reappear, she guessed that she wouldn’t leave the tower alive.

The platform was about eight feet long and three feet wide, and the walls appeared to be just as solid and featureless as those on the two platforms below her. As far she could see, there was nowhere here where anything of any size could be concealed.

Marco pulled himself through the trapdoor and stood next to her. ‘What now?’ he demanded. ‘Where is it?’

Angela shook her head in despair. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I can only tell you what I translated from the Latin text. That didn’t give any indication of where the document might be hidden, apart from mentioning this tower, and even that was far from explicit.’ She looked around at the featureless walls of the platform. ‘If it was ever here, maybe somebody found it and removed it, years ago.’

‘I’ve already told you: if it had been found, we would know about it. It must be here somewhere.’

‘But there’s no possible hiding place here.’

Then a thought struck her and she walked back to the trapdoor and peered down the square-sided shaft up which they had both climbed. She turned back to Marco.

‘How high do you think we’ve climbed?’ she asked.

‘Why?’

‘Because the walls are square,’ she replied. ‘At the top of this tower is a tall steeple. If we’d climbed to the very top of the tower, the walls would meet at a point above our heads. There must still be a space somewhere above us.’

Marco glanced down through the trapdoor, then looked around and nodded. ‘So where’s the access?’ he asked.

The ceiling of the space they were standing in was only about seven feet above their heads. Angela didn’t reply, but simply picked up the broom and began gently tapping its handle against the ceiling. It didn’t take long to cover the small space, and in one corner this technique generated a hollow-sounding thud.

‘Here,’ she said, and shone the torch beam at the ceiling. Almost invisible in the grubby whitewash that covered the ceiling was the outline of an oblong shape. If they hadn’t been looking for it, there was no way they would ever have seen it. At one end of it was a small hole, inside which a few strands of frayed material could be seen poking out.

‘What’s that?’

‘I think it’s the end of a length of rope, probably used to pull the trapdoor closed from here. And then they cut the rest off to hide the fact there was an opening in the ceiling. Just hold this,’ Angela snapped, the spirit of the quest taking over, despite the circumstances. She passed the torch to Marco, who looked surprised, but did as she had told him and aimed the beam where she indicated.

She pressed her hands firmly against one end of the oblong mark and pushed upwards. There was a creaking and tearing sound, the noise of old dry wood moving against a solid object, and the section of ceiling lifted a fraction of an inch. She changed position, and pushed again, but the panel wouldn’t budge.

‘You hold the torch and I’ll lift it,’ Marco told her.

Angela took a few paces backwards and aimed the beam of her torch at the ceiling. Marco raised his arms and shoved against the wood. Nothing happened, so he stepped back a few inches and tried again, his face contorted from the effort. With a final snapping sound, the panel suddenly gave way and flew upwards.

A cloud of dust and small pieces of wood cascaded down over his head. Angela looked on in horror as a skeletal arm, held together within a carapace of leathery skin, swung down, the bony hand seeming almost to grab for Marco. Above his head, framed in the dark opening, she found herself staring into the sightless eye sockets of a partially fleshed human skull.

Bronson steered the powerboat out of the end of the Grand Canal and swung the bow around to the south. Directly in front of him, on the opposite side of the Canale della Giudecca, lay the long and narrow, almost banana-shaped, island of Giudecca, with the much smaller triangular island of San Giorgio Maggiore to the left.

If he was right, and the men were heading for the southern part of the lagoon, a good place to wait for them to pass would be near the end of Giudecca. He stopped his turn and aimed for the Canale della Grazia which separated the two islands in front of him. Once he’d motored through the gap, he steered the boat over to the right, stopping alongside the southern coast of the island just below Campiello Campalto.