Valerio Manfredi: The Ancient Curse

Fabrizio finished his coffee and took his leave.

Francesca Dionisi was waiting for him in the hall, as if she had guessed the reason for his meeting with the director.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What did the boss want? If I’m not being indiscreet…’

‘Nothing less than for me to excavate the tomb that was broken into last night.’

‘Ah. The Rovaio tomb.’

‘That’s the one. Listen, I hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes here. I came to Volterra for something completely different.’

‘I know. You’re here for the boy in room twenty.’

Fabrizio suddenly thought of the woman’s voice he’d heard the night before on the telephone: could it have been Francesca? But as much as he racked his brain, he could not connect the timbre of that voice with Francesca’s natural lilt.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, then, no, you’re not stepping on my toes in the least. Actually, you’re doing me a favour, and I know the director will be grateful for your assistance as well. He’s a man who doesn’t forget people who’ve helped him and I know he will appreciate your willingness to give us a hand.’

Francesca invited him into her office, where a green apple was sitting on a plate on her desk. A snack maybe, or even her lunch.

‘Listen, if I can I’ll come by the Rovaio site to see what’s coming out,’ she went on, ‘but don’t count on it, because I’ve got my hands full as it is. Ill sign the work order for the labourers. How many? One, two, three?’

‘Two will be enough.’

‘All right. Two.’

‘Francesca?’

‘What?’

‘There’s something I don’t understand. The director leaves headquarters in Florence for weeks to come and bury himself in this provincial office. What may be an intact tomb comes to light, probably a major discovery, and he doesn’t even take a look at it. He signs over the dig to someone who doesn’t even work for him, an academic to boot… This whole thing just doesn’t make sense and I was asking myself whether you…’

‘Whether I know something? Yes, I do, but make believe you don’t know that. It’s something big, much bigger than anything you can imagine.’

Fabrizio thought that if she’d wanted to silence his curiosity she would have simply answered that she knew nothing about it, so he continued to push his point. ‘Bigger than an intact tomb from, let’s say, the fifth or fourth century BC?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good grief.’

‘Good grief is right. Now, go ahead, collect your workers and excavate that tomb at Rovaio. Then tell me what you’ve found.’

‘How about tonight, over pizza?’

Francesca gave a half-smile. ‘Sounds like you’re asking me out.’

‘Well, you know, I’m new here. And I hate eating alone.’

‘I’ll think about it. In the meantime, be sure you do a good job. Balestra’s as fussy as they come.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

FABRIZIO went out to the street and waited for the workers to pull the truck round to the front, then he got in next to the driver. They were at the dig in less than half an hour and the cop on duty was more than happy to go back to headquarters to write up his report.

Fabrizio decided on a frontal excavation: that is, from the tomb’s main entrance. As soon as he had established the position of the facade, he began removing the earth that had accumulated over centuries as the hill behind the tomb eroded. He suspected that this might not be the only tomb in the area. Maybe Ronchetti and his buddies had chanced upon a new suburban necropolis outside the city of Velathri, the ancient Volterra. Exploring the area would take months, if not years.

They spent all morning and part of the afternoon clearing the front of the tomb. The structure was carved directly into the tufa and imitated the facade of a house, featuring a double door with big sculpted ring-shaped handles and a triangular pediment with the symbol of the new moon, or so it seemed to Fabrizio. But there was no suggestion, not a clue, as to who the bodies inside the burial cell might have been.

What also seemed quite strange was the lack of debris or objects of any sort at the ground level; there were no signs of human activity outside the chamber. The Etruscans were known to have visited their tombs frequently, holding any number of religious and memorial ceremonies there, and the first things you always found on a dig were the remains of rituals and sacrifices offered in honour of the dead.

It was already starting to get dark when he had finished clearing the area in front of the door and had taken all his measurements. Not a single object had come up anywhere at the ground level next to the tomb, not even when they were removing the sedimentary deposits. Fabrizio took a deep breath and stood there for a few minutes in silence, a trowel in his hand, facing that closed door, while a host of thoughts flitted through his mind, none of them pleasant. It was a relief to hear the voice of Francesca, who had just arrived.

‘Nice. Now all you have to do is open it.’

‘Right. Tomorrow, if everything goes as planned.’

A Finanza squad car drove up with a couple of men ready to stand guard.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Francesca.

‘Very. All I had for lunch was a sandwich and a glass of water.’

‘Let’s go, then. I know a nice place that’s not too noisy. We’ll take my car and I can drive you home after dinner.’

Fabrizio got in and was about to close the door, but then he stopped suddenly as if having second thoughts. He went over to where the policemen were standing. Both were kids of no more than twenty-five, one from the north, the other from the deep south.

‘Listen, guys, don’t take this lightly. This place gives me the creeps. Not because of them, poor souls,’ he said, pointing towards the tomb, ‘they won’t bother you. I’m worried about that thing that killed Ronchetti. It’s still on the loose, as far as I know.’

The two young men gestured at their machine guns and the 9-calibre Berettas resting in their holsters. ‘We’re locked and loaded, boss. Nothing’s going to happen here.’

Each lit up a cigarette and, when Fabrizio turned back, before the first bend in the road, to take a look, the embers glowed like the eyes of an animal lurking in the dark.

THE RESTAURANT was inside a farmhouse that had been converted into a bed and breakfast along one of the country lanes that branched off from the regional road to Pisa. The fare was rustic and very tasty, promised Francesca: local crostini, ribollita soup, salami made with wild boar and a mean Fiorentina T-bone on request.

As they were turning off the asphalt road, Francesca and Fabrizio were surprised by an Alfa Romeo carabiniere squad car darting by at top speed, its siren screaming.

‘Did you see that!’ said Fabrizio. ‘What is going on here? I thought I was going to end up in some sleepy little backwoods town…’

Francesca parked her Suzuki under an oak tree, then walked with Fabrizio into the restaurant and chose a table before answering, ‘Yeah, well, this place usually is a little dead. But now we’ve got a corpse to show for it. And maybe it won’t be the last…’

‘Let’s sit down and have them bring us some wine.’

‘Poor guy. Everyone knew him. Ronchetti, I mean. Here everyone knows who the tomb robbers are. Sometimes they’ve been at it for generations. Some of them get so caught up in what they’re doing that they even go back to school to brush up on their history!’

Fabrizio seemed amused and Francesca continued: ‘In general, they think of themselves as being better at their jobs and more efficient than we are at the NAS. From a certain point of view, they’re right. Since they’re not bound by scientific methods, they can get straight to work and dig out everything they need in a couple of minutes. Seriously, they are far superior to us in one thing: how well they know the territory. They’re familiar with every centimetre of the land. They leave no stone unturned, literally. Some of them even believe they’re the reincarnation of someone from Etruscan times. But I’m sure you’ve heard all this before…’