The Ancient Curse (13 page)

Reggiani shrugged. ‘Coincidence. What else? Ghosts – even animal ghosts – don’t go around mauling people. And in my mind, an animal that kills can be killed. We have to find the den, that’s all, and fill it with lead. You’ll see that that will solve our problems.’

‘There’s something else,’ said Fabrizio. ‘She called again.’

‘That voice on the phone?’

‘Right. Ten minutes before this whole disaster happened. I tried to keep her on the line so the call could be traced, but she hung up immediately.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was yelling. “I told you to leave the boy in peace! I warned you.” Her tone was very threatening, very aggressive. That’s all she said. I realized that she had to be somehow looking at my computer screen, and that meant she had to be somewhere close by, or maybe was using binoculars. So I ran out to search the place. That’s when I heard the growling and then the howl of that beast. Christ, I swear it made my blood run cold. I ran back to the house, but then from my window I saw those bicycle lights travelling down the state road and I knew I had to warn the guy. That’s when I called you on my mobile. But it was too late . . . You know better than I do what happened then.’

‘You know, they may have managed to trace the call. The equipment they’re using is very sophisticated. Ill let you know tomorrow if there’s a lead. Now try to get some sleep. I’ll put two guardian angels outside your door. I should already have thought of that. These two are quick off the mark, you—’

‘No, really, it doesn’t matter. I can take care of myself, you’ve seen that.’

‘Right, but you have to sleep sometime, and when you’re sleeping, you’re sleeping.’

‘OK, thank you, then.’

Reggiani was getting up to leave when Massaro called him again over the radio. ‘The special ops guys have come back, sir, and they’re ready to make their report.’

‘I’ll be there right away,’ said the officer. Then, turning to Fabrizio: ‘I was forgetting to say, you were good out there. It’s hard to find people with balls these days. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ repeated Fabrizio, and closed the door behind Reggiani.

Reggiani went back to the site of the massacre and saw that a couple of stretcher bearers were moving the corpse off the road after having closed him up in a bag. The public prosecutor was standing to the side, taking notes.

The head of the ROS special operations group that had been patrolling the forest came over to Reggiani. He was a young sergeant named Tornese who had distinguished himself in a number of brilliant operations.

‘Well, Sergeant?’ asked Reggiani, bracing himself to hear about their failure.

The warrant officer put his hand to his cap. ‘Sir, something very strange happened. The heli signalled the spot where the objective had been located and I had all my men and dogs converge at that point. It’s a woody ridge that extends towards the Mottola wasteland. The surface is solid enough, but not hard. When we were fairly close we held back the dogs and went forward ourselves to look for tracks.’

‘Excellent choice, Sergeant,’ said Reggiani approvingly. ‘And?’

‘We found them, measured them, but . . . I’m not sure how to say this. At a certain point they just disappeared.’

‘What do you mean by disappeared?’

‘The footprint trail just ended. There were no more tracks in any direction. In the area we’re talking about, there’s a steep wall of sandstone that was about to create problems for our helicopter. That’s where the forest ends. On the left there’s wasteland, and on the right there’s a dense thicket of brambles which is practically impenetrable. In between is a path, more of a trail really, that herders use. They take their swine through there to graze under the oak trees. The ground is stony, so if the animal went that way he certainly wouldn’t have left tracks, but right beyond there’s a bed of clay, the same soil as near the furrows.’

‘And you saw nothing there?’

‘Nothing. Just tyre tracks. But that’s a place where couples go to park, driving up from the other direction, from the Santa Severa slope. Not lately, obviously.’

‘Were the tyre tracks fresh?’

‘Looked like it.’

‘They were left by someone who’s not afraid of driving around at this time of night, in this area, with that beast running around loose. That’s a person I’d like to talk to. Did you take casts of the prints?’

‘No, sir. We didn’t know we’d need that gear. We came kitted out for a search party.’

‘I understand, but I want you to put someone on that right away, Sergeant. I’ll expect a full report from you tomorrow. I want to know every last detail. Sorry, but I’m afraid you won’t be getting much sleep tonight.’

‘That’s all right, sir. We’re used to it. Trust me, we’ll do everything we can.’ He saluted the officer and went back to his men.

The public prosecutor approached. ‘I’d say we can leave at this point. Have you arranged for surveillance for Dr Castellani?’

‘I have. I’m putting two of my best men on it. But my gut feeling is that nothing further will happen. I think we’ve seen all the action we’re going to see for tonight. Goodnight, sir.’

‘Goodnight to you, Lieutenant. You know, I noticed you lighting up earlier. I didn’t know you were a smoker.’

‘I smoke one a day.’

‘Interesting. When?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what, if I may ask?’

‘On how pissed off I am.’

9

S
ONIA ENTERED
the museum library shortly before ten and wandered among the shelves until she found Fabrizio intent on consulting a catalogue of ancient bronze objects.

‘Is it true that another poor bloke has been killed?’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I guessed. Everyone’s saying that the carabinieri were out on a man hunt last night, right around where you live if I’m not mistaken. They say there was a lot of shooting – doesn’t sound like a picnic’

Fabrizio put the book down on a table. ‘No, it wasn’t. It was horrible. But don’t tell anyone I said that.’

‘Will you come down for a cappuccino at the cafe?’

‘Sounds good. Did you manage to find what you were looking for?’

‘Maybe. Something . . . I’m not sure.’

‘How are you coming along with the skeleton?’ he asked as they went down the stairs and out of the museum.

‘Well, I’m assembling the spinal column. It’s the most exciting work I’ve done in my whole life. Almost better than sex.’

Fabrizio shook his head but could not even manage a smile.

They sat in a corner of the cafe and waited for their coffee to be served.

‘So it was awful?’ asked Sonia.

‘Worse than awful,’ replied Fabrizio, mixing sugar into his cappuccino. ‘It was a bloodbath. You have no idea. But I saw it.’

Sonia widened her eyes. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘As I’m seeing you now. No further than seven or eight metres away. I had a gun and I shot at it, but it was already gone. They spotted it again from a helicopter but lost it as soon as they found it.’

‘And what did it look like?’

‘You’re not going to believe this, but just like your virtual reconstruction. It felt like being in a video game. Or a nightmare . . . I couldn’t say which. I only know I thought my heart was going to burst. So, what have you found out?’

‘I’m still searching through all the archives. I’ve even emailed colleagues in a number of universities abroad. I believe there is a chance, albeit a small one, that I’ll be able to identify the animal.’

‘So far what have you got?’

Sonia took a folder out of her bag and extracted a black-and-white print depicting a menacing dog with gaping jaws. It looked like an ancient bronze. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

Fabrizio observed it carefully while munching on a sweet roll. ‘It resembles your reconstruction quite a lot,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a bronze sculpture from Volubilis, in Morocco. It may represent a race of gigantic, ferocious dogs that the Phoenicians had imported to Mauritania from a mysterious island in the ocean. They’ve been extinct for thousands of years.’

‘Good try, but it sounds like a lot of other stories that have come down from ancient times – devoid of any basis in fact.’

‘I don’t think so. A passage from Pliny reports that King Juba of Mauritania used them for hunting. They were said to be gigantic.’

‘So how did one of them end up in Volterra, a good four centuries before King Juba discovered them?’

‘That I don’t know. But I’ve found evidence that the Etruscans – towards the end of the fifth century
BC
– asked the Carthaginians to join them in colonizing an island in the ocean. Don’t you think there might be a connection?’

‘You may be right. Pretty nice work for a techie who doesn’t read Greek! But how could this animal still exist and be roaming the countryside, looking for people to tear into?’

‘You’re asking too much. I’ve come up with this information and it seems plausible to me, that’s all. As far as existing breeds, I’ve found nothing that resembles the skeleton, taking into account both size and structure. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how to explain that.’

‘There’s got to be an explanation.’

‘The only possible thing I can think of is that . . .’

‘What?’ Fabrizio urged her.

‘It’s a chimera.’

‘Come on, Sonia.’

‘No, you don’t understand. I’m not talking about a mythological creature. In biological terms, chimera means the product of genetic mutation, a fusion of two distinct sets of genes. It happens entirely by chance and cannot be replicated. It can occur in any species, animal or vegetable.’

‘Like a white tiger, for instance?’

‘No, that’s just a lack of pigmentation, what we commonly refer to as an albino. I’m talking about a deep mutation of the genes that results in distinctive physical characteristics, particularly in terms of shape and size. Veterinarians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came up with the term to describe a calf with two heads or a goat born with one horn instead of two. Today we can get similar results through genetic manipulation, but sometimes the same thing occurs by chance, spontaneously.’

Fabrizio fell silent for a few moments as he looked out of the window. The weather was overcast and humid, and the light filtered in dimly through the window. Inside the cafe-goers came and went, took a look at the paper, even stopped to play a hand of cards. Everything seemed normal and yet the people around him seemed suspended in a false, temporary dimension: like extras in a film that he didn’t know the beginning or the end of. He saw their lips moving but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be hampered in their actions, to be moving in slow motion, as if the atmosphere of the cafe and the city itself had become as dense as water.

‘Are you listening to me?’ asked Sonia, placing a hand on his arm.

‘Yes, of course. It’s the coincidence that’s not explicable. The live animal is identical to your virtual reconstruction. If you had seen it, I would have thought it had conditioned your work.’

‘Chance events,’ said Sonia in a less than convinced tone, ‘can really surprise you at times.’

You could see that she didn’t believe what she was saying, but Fabrizio pretended to agree. He paid the bill and they left to walk over to the museum. They parted at the entrance, Sonia heading downstairs and Fabrizio climbing the stairs to his second-floor office. He ran into Francesca as she left the restoration lab and raised his eyebrows as if to ask, ‘Anything new?’

The girl shrugged and shook her head.

Fabrizio entered his office, gathered his notes and returned to the library. He’d had an idea he wanted to check out, so he headed straight for the museum catalogue and turned to the section about excavations to search for details on how the statue of the boy had been discovered. He began to read avidly, taking hurried notes now and then. When he finished, he realized that it was lunchtime and that he was alone in the library.

He looked over his notes and consulted the description of the excavation site. The brief report referred to a property owned by the Ghirardini counts, reminding Fabrizio of Signora Pina’s story about the palace in town, but did not give a specific location. Strange, this lack of precision in such a serious scholarly publication.

He went to the catalogue of topographical maps, picked one out and photocopied it. He placed it in his briefcase and walked towards the exit, stopping on the way to pick up his messages. It was almost two o’clock and he walked over to Pina’s trattoria, after stopping to buy a couple of newspapers.

‘What will you have to eat, Doctor?’ asked the signora solicitously.

‘Some vegetables will be fine, with a little prosciutto. And mineral water.’

‘I’ll bring you a nice light lunch,’ Pina said approvingly.

Fabrizio took the newspapers he’d bought from his briefcase: a national daily and a local paper. In the former all he found was a short piece in the middle somewhere with the headline ‘Mysterious deaths in the Volterra countryside – police investigations turn up no leads’. About twenty lines followed, containing very little information; the victims were identified by their initials.

Nearly half a page was dedicated to the case in the local rag, although it spoke of two, not three, deaths. Reggiani must have managed to keep the reporters away for the time being. The article reported the two murders at length, but it was evident that whoever had written it didn’t know the details and that he’d been fed a line about a settling of accounts among Sardinian shepherds who frequented the area. People without family ties to the locals whose passing would not be a strong blow to the community.

Although the authorities had succeeded in keeping the situation quiet, holding back on the truth, with all its traumatic implications, the fear hovering through the city streets was palpable. People gathered in small clusters, speaking in low tones. The news would soon be out; there was no way to keep it under wraps for much longer.

He felt guilty about Francesca. He had asked her for such a huge favour but had hardly spoken to her since. He hated to think he’d involved her in such a dangerous situation and realized it was best that the two of them not be seen together too frequently. He promised himself to call her as soon as he could.