The Nosferatu Scroll (10 page)

“Could you make out any part of the inscription?” Bronson asked.

“I thought her surname began with the letter ‘P,’ but I couldn’t even swear to this with what I found on the tomb. There’s a short gap where none of the stone has been chipped away, which I assume was the space between her first name and her family name, and in one of my photographs you can just about see the upper half of the letter carved into the stone. But it could also be the letter ‘R,’ ‘B’ or even a ‘D’—not much to go on.”

“Can I see it?”

Angela turned the laptop so that Bronson could see the screen easily.

The display showed a grayish stone, the surface marked with patches of lichen in faded reds and greens. On the right-hand side of the frame was a faint semicircular mark, barely visible, with a straight line on the left-hand side of it. It looked like the upper part of the letter “P.” Above and around the marks, several parallel scratches could be seen.

Angela pointed at them. “You can’t see it terribly well in this picture,” she said, “but that area is lower than the surrounding stone, and I think those marks were left by the chisel that hacked away that piece of stone.”

“So why didn’t the person who did this chip off the rest of the letter?”

“They did,” Angela said shortly, “or they tried to. Most inscriptions on masonry use a V-shaped cut to form the letters, and that was done here. The upper part of the letter was removed, and what we’re seeing in this picture is the deepest cut made by the mason’s chisel, the very bottom of the V-cut that formed the letter. This is the only picture that shows it, and I think that was just luck. The camera angle meant that the flash just managed to pick it out.”

Angela looked away from the screen and up at Bronson. “And where did you get to? You’ve been gone for hours.”

“I know. Oddly enough, I went back to the Isola di
San Michele. I followed those two carabinieri to the edge of the lagoon, where there was a police launch waiting for them. I watched them head out to the island; then I hopped on a vaporetto and followed them.”

“They went back to the grave, you mean?”

“That was my assumption too, but they went to a different part of the cemetery because another body had been found there. A fresh corpse, I mean, not another old burial.”

Bronson explained to Angela what he’d seen, not mentioning the video and still images he’d taken at the scene, because he was, in truth, still a little embarrassed about what he’d done.

“So that’s an entirely separate crime,” Angela said.

“Actually, I don’t even know if it was a crime. All I saw was the body of a girl with long blond hair being carted off, presumably for forensic examination and an autopsy. She could easily have been the victim of accidental death. All I saw, really, was her hair.”

“So the fact that her body was on the island, not far from the broken grave, is just a coincidence,” Angela said, looking skeptical. “You think that the two incidents are entirely unconnected.”

Bronson paused. “As far as I can tell, there’s no link between the two apart from their location. But there is one thing that intrigues me, something I overheard when that police sergeant received the radio message.”

“I guessed you’d heard something when you decided to follow them.”

“The dispatcher, or whatever they’re called in the carabinieri, said that ‘there’s been another, but we’ve found this one.’ Then the two officers went straight out to the island. To me, that suggests young women have been disappearing, and only some of their bodies have been recovered.”

Angela sighed, got up from her chair and stretched. “In other words, it rather looks as if there could be a serial killer operating here in Venice.” She turned to Bronson. “And you want to investigate, don’t you?”

Bronson stood up too and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m not going to get involved, I promise. I’m just interested in what’s going on. Just like you’re interested in that vampire diary or whatever it is.”

Angela smiled gently. “Touché,” she murmured. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing much. I thought I might just check the archives of the local newspaper and see if I can spot a pattern. That’s all. And what about you?” he added. “Have you gotten anywhere with that thing yet?”

Angela gestured toward the small black leather-bound volume lying on the desk next to her laptop.

“Not really. It’s in pretty poor condition, as you might expect. I still think it was put in the grave underneath the coffin when the woman was buried. That makes the most sense, especially if the people who buried her, her family or her friends, accepted her for what she was.”

“That she was a vampire, you mean?” Bronson said.

“Well, to be accurate, she was a woman who believed
she was a vampire, which isn’t exactly the same thing. But to honor her memory, as it were, they buried her diary with her, and those two small pottery jars as well. I still think they most likely contained blood, intended to sustain her. They probably just thought they were humoring her last wishes.”

“But later on, somebody took her claim to be a vampire a lot more seriously, and they had a very different attitude to her.”

“Exactly. It was someone who obviously believed absolutely in the vampire myth, and was probably appalled to think that the body of such a creature should be buried here in Venice. They went to enormous trouble to obliterate her name from the tomb, and to desecrate her body, to kill her off if she was a vampire, at the same time.”

“So what have you found in the diary?” Bronson asked.

“I’ve only had a quick look at some of the early pages,” Angela replied. “But the exciting thing is that I now know her name, because on one of the first pages she’s explained the purpose of the book. The translation of one phrase she wrote is ‘the record of the life of Carmelita Paganini,’ and that ties up with the remains of the letter ‘P’ I deciphered on the slab over her grave. I also tried to see if the lengths of the obliterated words from the slab more or less matched that name, and they do.”

Bronson picked up the book and opened it carefully, but the closely written text meant nothing to him. It was obvious that Carmelita had used different types and colors
of ink over the years, because on some pages the writing was as clear and sharp as if it had been done the day before, while on others the ink had faded to a gray or reddish shadow.

“Be careful with it, Chris,” Angela said, taking it back from him. “It’s very fragile.”

“I suppose you’re using the scanned images,” he replied, “because the writing on some of these pages is virtually illegible.”

“Oddly enough, because I could adjust the sensitivity of the scanner, the images in my laptop are a lot clearer than the original text. So, yes, I am working on the computer, and not from the book.”

Angela glanced at her watch. “Why don’t we go out for a bite of lunch now? And then I’ll do a bit more work on the diary, and you can amuse yourself digging around in some newspaper’s morgue, looking for clues, just like a real detective.”

“I am a real detective,” Bronson protested faintly, “but that’s a good idea. I’ll just see if I can find out anything, just to satisfy my curiosity, and then we can forget about it. And tomorrow we’ll go back on the sightseeing trail.”

“Officer down! Officer down!”

“Get an ambulance! Right now!”

The cries of shock and alarm rang through the Campo Santa Maria Formosa and the neighboring streets. The officers who’d been deployed on the stakeout at the café were at the scene in seconds. But by then, the well-dressed assassin had vanished into the crowds, leaving behind his grisly handiwork.

Within minutes the area was swamped by police officers and paramedics, and two ambulance launches were moored in the canals closest to the scene of the shooting, their engines rumbling quietly. But the reality was that they were too late. They were all a lifetime too late.

Inspector Filippo Bianchi approached the scene at a run, his identity card held in his left hand for all to see.

“Who in God’s name is it?” he shouted.

The uniformed carabinieri officer stationed some distance from the scene swung around as the senior officer
approached. He recognized him immediately, and shook his head. “It’s the chief inspector, sir,” he said. “It’s Lombardi.”

When he heard that name, Bianchi stopped in dismay. Around him, uniformed
police officers, paramedics, technicians in civilian clothes and others wearing white coveralls milled about the scene. The obvious focus of their attention was the area right beside the edge of the canal. Temporary screens had already been erected in a rough square to protect the crime scene, and to hide the body from the curious glances of the Venetians and tourists who were passing down the opposite side of the canal, and looking over at the scene from boats and gondolas.

Inspector Bianchi was a solidly built man in his fifties, his fine aquiline features now darkly suffused with anger and disgust. As he walked closer to the body, several of the men nodded greetings, but none spoke to him. Their mood was clearly both subdued and very angry.

Carabinieri officers, like policemen everywhere, accept the inherent dangers of their job. They are on the front line, the thin blue line that separates the criminal elements from the law-abiding citizens in their country. And in Italy there has always been the added menace and complication of the Cosa Nostra, the Mafia—the criminal organization that many maintain still holds the real power in the country. As many prominent officials have found to their cost over the years, Mafia godfathers are always prepared to remove—permanently—anyone who they believe is getting in their way. Judges, politicians, and, of course, police officers, have all paid the ultimate price for their desire to uphold the rule of law.

But Carlo Lombardi had not been involved, as far as Bianchi knew, in any anti-Mafia operations, at least not in the five years he had known him. Lombardi was Venetian born and bred, had spent all his working life in the city, rising to become one of the most senior officers employed there. And most of this time, all he and his men had had to deal with was the usual spate of bag-snatching and pickpocketing, as criminal elements at the very bottom of the ladder preyed upon Venice’s annual influx of tourists. “Bottom-feeders” was the way Lombardi had usually referred to these criminals. They were an irritation, not a threat, and rarely targeted any of the local people.

And never, in Bianchi’s experience, had any one of these “bottom-feeders” carried a firearm. But now, Chief Inspector Carlo Lombardi lay dead in the center of the screened-off area, three bullet holes in his body, and his dark blood staining the old stones on which he lay.

A plainclothes officer looked up as Bianchi came to a stop beside the feet of the dead man.

“A bad business, Filippo,” the officer said.

Bianchi nodded. “What happened, Piero? Any witnesses?”

“He was executed. That’s what happened,” Inspector Piero Spadaccino replied angrily. “He was shot down in cold blood, right here in the middle of Venice. It looks like the first bullet hit his stomach, because of the position
of his hands. And either of the second two in his chest would have been enough to kill him. The doctor thinks both those bullets probably went through his heart. I tell you, Filippo, this looks to me like a gangland killing.”

“Any witnesses?” Bianchi asked again.

Spadaccino nodded. “Several,” he replied shortly. “None of them saw the first shot, though they all heard it. A medium-caliber pistol, probably nine millimeter. That took Lombardi down, and they all turned to look. Then the killer walked over to him, lying here on the ground, said something to him, and then fired the other two shots. An execution; nothing more, nothing less.

“All the witnesses describe a man in a dark suit with black hair, dark eyes and a tanned complexion, no distinguishing features. About the only point of interest in the descriptions is that a couple of people said the man was very casual—no hurry, no sign of stress. He just walked over, shot the chief inspector and then walked away. One man told me he actually thought it was part of a film, and he spent a few seconds looking around to see where the cameras were. I’ve got my men taking full written statements from the witnesses now, and obviously we’ll do follow-up questioning as well, but I don’t think any of them will be able to give us a photofit for this guy, or pick him out of a lineup.”

Spadaccino paused, and he and Bianchi both looked down at the crumpled figure lying on the stones between them.

“You worked with him, Filippo,” Spadaccino said softly. “What the hell could he have gotten himself involved with that could have led to this? I mean, was he investigating organized crime?”

Bianchi shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

In fact, Inspector Bianchi had a very good idea who had ordered the assassination of his superior officer. The trouble was, if he said anything, the plan he was working on would probably come to nothing. And now the endgame was so close, he couldn’t take that chance.

For the moment, all he could do was wait.

Bronson had visited various newspaper morgues in Britain over the years, and he was all too familiar with the unmistakable smell of musty newsprint that seemed to infuse such places, even those that had embraced modern technology to the extent of installing microfiche machines.

The Venice newspaper office had taken a step further into the twenty-first century, and had scanned all their previous copies into a series of hard drives that were accessible through a couple of PC terminals. The newspapers printed more than twenty years earlier had simply been scanned as images, and searching through those would be a laborious process, just like searching microfiche records. To find anything relevant among those copies would really require a fairly accurate date, so that the appropriate edition could be inspected.

But the articles and stories in the more recent newspapers had been stored as text files, as well as images, which
meant that Bronson was able to search for a specific word or phrase. He really had no clue when any other young women’s disappearances had been reported—or even if there had been any such disappearances—but, because of this facility, he was able to carry out extensive and detailed searches without much difficulty.