Valerio Manfredi - The Ancient Curse

He said, ‘Nice work. Where do we go from here?’

‘I’ve put a bug on the line and we’re checking the area for suspicious activity. I’ll keep you informed.’

Francesca had already opened the door and turned on the switch in the hall. As he drew close, the light on inside the house and the girl’s smile warmed his heart.

‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’ll get that ice for you.’

FRANCESCA TOOK SOME ice cubes from the freezer and put them in a plastic bag, which she wrapped in a towel and handed to Fabrizio. He placed it on his forehead where it hurt and she started on dinner.

Francesca lived in a converted farmhouse and the big kitchen preserved all its old-fashioned charm. The stove was built into the masonry and a hearth stood at the centre of the main wall, with copper pots and pans hanging on either side of the chimney breast, as bright and shiny as if they had just been polished. The table in the middle of the room was very old and designed for a big traditional family. Francesca set it for two, placing a couple of mats, plates and cutlery at one end. The wind was picking up outside and they soon heard the tapping of rain on the porch roof and on the windowpanes.

‘We needed this water,’ said Francesca as she stirred the tomato sauce. ‘My grapevines were dying of thirst.’

‘I didn’t know you had a vineyard,’ said Fabrizio.

‘It’s my father’s actually, but I’m an only child and he’s quite elderly. He’s been retired for years and lives with my mother in Siena. I try to take care of this place as best I can, but I don’t have much time, as you know.’

Fabrizio watched her lift the pot’s lid to check the boil and measure out the spaghetti.

‘How hungry are you?’ she asked, turning.

‘Very,’ said Fabrizio. ‘All I had for lunch was a little prosciutto with some vegetables.’

‘How’s your head?’

‘Better.’

‘Good. Watch the pot while I go and change out of these dusty clothes. There’s wine in the fridge. Help yourself, and pour a glass for me too.’

She disappeared down the hall and he could hear the sound of a door opening and closing and then the shower running. Fabrizio surprised himself by imagining her nude under the pounding water and he smiled: maybe there would be something between them after all. Or maybe there already was and he hadn’t noticed. He could still taste her lips, smell the light, clean, girlish fragrance that had remained with him after their embrace in the dark. He thought of how lovely it would be to become intimate with her, in that country house that smelt of lavender, in a bed decorated with painted flowers and mother-of-pearl where her parents and grandparents had slept before her. And how lovely to wake up beside her on a sunny morning and breathe in the aroma of freshly made coffee.

He suddenly said to himself, ‘Francesca, my love,’ just to see what it would sound like when the day came for him to pronounce those words. It sounded good. He longed for the kind of simple feeling that would fill his soul, drive out the terror coiled just below the surface of his emotions, ready to spring and unleash such a crazy, irrational reaction in him.

The water was boiling. He set the bag of ice on the table and dropped the pasta in the pot just as Francesca reappeared at the door. Her hair was damp and combed straight back and she’d put on a light dress that fitted her nicely without clinging and showed her legs a little above the knee. He wanted to pay her a compliment, but he couldn’t think of anything that sounded right and so he changed the topic rather than saying something stupid.

‘What was so important that it had you driving around at night searching for me?’ he asked.

Francesca drained the pasta and was enveloped in a cloud of steam for an instant. She tossed the spaghetti with the tomato sauce, added a few basil leaves and transferred it to their plates. She put a piece of Pecorino and a grater on the table and sat down facing Fabrizio.

‘I managed to get into the director’s archives,’ she said, grating a little cheese on Fabrizio’s pasta and then on her own, ‘and I found out where the inscription that Balestra is studying comes from. A place called La Casaccia, the property of a certain Pietro Montanari.’

Fabrizio, who had been about to bring the first forkful of spaghetti to his mouth, stopped in mid-air.

‘Does that name mean something to you?’ Francesca asked.

Fabrizio put the fork in his mouth and relished the flavour of the fresh tomato and cheese. ‘Delicious,’ he said. And then, right away, ‘No, nothing at all. Why?’

‘I don’t know. You seemed surprised. Anyway, this Pietro Montanari has served time for petty theft and it was he who reported finding the inscription. The NAS has never made this public and Balestra has never announced the find, because he’s convinced there’s a fragment missing, the seventh piece, and that by keeping this quiet, it might turn up. Although nothing has come to light yet.’

‘Right. Balestra spoke to me about it that day I saw him in his office, remember?’

‘You bet. That day you told me to stay the hell away from you.’

‘People say things they don’t mean.’

‘That’s good to know. So, then, Balestra will also have told you that although they’ve explored the area nothing has emerged. No trace of a historical context, much less the missing piece.’

‘Yes, that’s what he said.’

‘And that he’s going mad because he can’t find this final fragment.’

‘I imagine he is. I’d feel the same way in his shoes.’

‘Good. So… I think I have a present for you.’

‘Don’t tell me…’

Francesca pulled a little box out of her briefcase and handed it to him.

‘This is the original text of the inscription.’

‘Francesca, I… How can I… How did you do this? Did you get into the file?’

‘Not in a million years. The protection is uncrackable.’

‘I don’t get it… How did you manage?’

Francesca’s hands disappeared back into her briefcase and came up with an object not much bigger than a cigarette packet.

‘See this? It’s a digital video camera that I can operate using a remote control. Whenever Balestra goes into his office and locks himself in, saying he doesn’t want to be disturbed, it means he’s working on his inscription. I switch on the camera that I hid on a shelf of his library. It focuses on the computer screen exactly. And so I’ve filmed the whole text. What I’ve given you is a video tape, not a disk.’

‘You’re a genius,’ marvelled Fabrizio. ‘I would never have thought of this… Did you manage to…’

‘Read it? No, I can’t make head or tail of it. His transcription is still very fragmentary and very rough. There’s no way I can understand it. You’ll have to transcribe it yourself. Do you have a video recorder?’

‘Sure. I brought a VCR with me so I’d be able to watch films, but who’s had time?’

Francesca put the bowls in the sink and opened the fridge. ‘All I have in here are a couple of mozzarellas and two tomatoes.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Fabrizio.

‘What were you doing out at that place?’ asked Francesca as she put the food on the table and took a packet of crackers from the cupboard.

Fabrizio didn’t answer at first.

‘If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,’ she said in a tone that meant exactly the opposite.

‘At this point there’s no sense keeping secrets. I met that woman.’

‘The one who’s been making the mysterious calls?’

‘The same. Someone left a sealed envelope for me at the museum. There was an address inside. I had no doubt it was her and I was right.’