by James Becker
‘So what do we do now?’ Bronson asked.
‘It’s a shame we didn’t think to bring any refreshments,’ Angela replied, pointing at the people milling around them. Many were carrying bottles or flasks, and a few had even brought wicker picnic baskets with them, others clear plastic boxes containing food.
Angela had been absolutely right: it was obvious that Hallowmas or the Festival of the Dead was a major social and family event. Men, women and children were wandering around the graveyard, obviously determined to enjoy their evening in the somewhat unusual surroundings.
‘Well, I’ve got a bar of chocolate in my pocket if you want to share that,’ Bronson said, passing it over.
Angela snapped the bar in two and handed back one section. For a few moments they just stood there, enjoying their impromptu snack and soaking up the atmosphere.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Angela asked, after a minute or two, looking around at the noisy and cheerful crowds.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Here we are in a graveyard, walking above the decaying bones of hundreds or even thousands of long-dead citizens of Venice. This should be a place of sorrow or sombre reflection, but actually we’re in the middle of a huge party.’
Bronson grinned at her. ‘That just goes to show the importance of atmosphere. In those old Hammer films you used to be so fond of, the director would try to get the audience quivering expectantly just by showing them a couple of polystyrene tombstones with some fake mist swirling around them, while some suitably spooky music played in the background. And here we are, surrounded by the real thing, and everyone’s really happy, laughing and joking. The dead aren’t bothering them at all.’
But then, in the distance, they both heard a distant howl, the sound so faint that the animal – which Bronson presumed was an Alsatian or some other breed of large dog – clearly wasn’t anywhere near the Isola di San Michele.
‘What the hell was that?’ Angela asked, her face white and strained in the darkness.
‘It sounded like a hungry German shepherd,’ Bronson suggested. ‘But don’t worry – it’s a long way off and not about to rip out our throats.’
Angela laughed out loud, then stopped as the sound of a solid thump echoed from somewhere nearby, and a scream of pure, undiluted terror cut across the noise of the revelry with the awful finality of the fall of a guillotine blade.
2
On the Island of the Dead, the mist was thick, and visibility was reduced to a matter of only a few yards. To complicate things further, it was difficult to identify the direction from which the first scream had come. But by now, Bronson and Angela were surrounded by people in a hurry, and who seemed to be moving south, towards the centre of the island. So Bronson and Angela headed in the opposite direction, to where they thought the commotion had occurred.
Moving aside to avoid the sea of people rushing straight towards them, they threaded their way between the tombstones and, moments later, found themselves facing a group of men and women who were standing in a rough circle, staring at one of the larger tombs.
Bronson’s police training kicked in, despite the fact that he was about a thousand miles from his home beat. He switched to Italian and pulled out his British warrant card – he knew it would mean absolutely nothing to anybody there, but it would give him a thin veneer of authority while he found out what had so alarmed everyone in the cemetery.
‘Police. Let me through … Police officer,’ he kept repeating, waving the warrant card like a talisman as he pushed his way through the unmoving crowd, Angela following just a few feet behind him.
Almost reluctantly the people parted to allow him passage. Unusually for any group of Italians, they were almost silent, staring in fascination at something on the ground in front of them. And then Bronson reached the middle of the group, and could see precisely what had sparked the general exodus from the area.
The Festival of the Dead was in some ways a misnomer. The revellers who travelled to the cemetery were not there to celebrate the dead, but rather to celebrate the lives and memories of friends and relatives who had passed away. Absolutely the last thing they actually expected to see in the cemetery was a body. But that was the sight which now confronted Bronson.
And it wasn’t just any corpse.
‘Fascinating,’ Angela breathed as she stopped beside him and looked down at the tomb. ‘Though I can’t believe this was the cause of so much panic in the crowd.’
Bronson took a couple of steps forward to study the tomb.
It was clearly one of the older burial chambers in the cemetery, an oblong stone box about four feet high and topped by a flat stone slab. The sides were carved with symbols or scenes, but the old stone had weathered so much that it was difficult to make out exactly what was depicted, while the slab on top bore faint and virtually illegible marks – presumably an ancient inscription that gave the name and date of death of the occupant.
Bronson didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but one of the sides of the tomb had cracked into three pieces and then fallen out, and in doing so had dragged the upper slab of stone with it. That must have caused the sound they’d heard, he thought. And now, the previously sealed box was open to the elements, and the body inside exposed to view for the first time in what he guessed was at least a hundred years.
Unsurprisingly, the remains were mainly skeletal. Parts of the coffin had survived, but only as fragments of wood along both sides of the corpse. A few wisps of rotted cloth still clung to the long bones of the legs, and part of the rib cage was encased in leathery, dark brown skin. In short, the corpse looked almost exactly as one might expect a body to appear if it had been buried in a wooden coffin inside a sealed tomb for over a century. Except in two respects.
Above the rib cage the neck terminated in a single shattered vertebra. The head of the body which, like the rib cage, was still partially covered in skin, and even had a few tufts of white hair clinging to it, was positioned centrally between the bony feet. That was unusual enough in itself, but to add a further layer of the macabre to the scene, the mouth of the skull had been levered open and a thin half brick jammed firmly between the jaws.
For a few seconds, Bronson stared at the desiccated – and desecrated – corpse, then he glanced sideways at Angela. ‘What did you mean when you said “fascinating”?’ he asked.
‘I’ll explain later,’ she said. ‘This is something I’ve heard about and read about, but I never thought I’d actually get to see an example of it.’
She opened her handbag, pulled out a compact digital camera and started snapping pictures of the scene before them. She moved closer to the corpse, and took several shots of the severed neck and the head with its bizarre mutilation.
There was a further commotion behind them, and Bronson turned to see two uniformed carabinieri approaching. Behind him, Angela was still snapping away, recording the scene.
The two carabinieri looked closely into the open tomb. One of them crossed himself and muttered something that could have been a short prayer.
‘Your name, please, signor?’ the other officer asked.
Bronson pulled out his passport and gave it to him.
The officer wrote down Bronson’s name and passport number, handed back the document, and then asked, in halting English, what he was doing in Venice. Bronson replied in fluent Italian that he was on holiday with a friend. They had heard shouts and screams from the vicinity of the tomb and had come to investigate. He also produced his warrant card and explained that he was a British police officer, and his former wife – the woman who was still taking pictures of the open tomb behind them – worked for the British Museum.
The policeman glanced at her. ‘And why is she taking so many pictures of that skeleton?’ he asked.
Bronson raised his voice slightly, and repeated the question to Angela, in English.
‘It’s not actually the bones I’m interested in,’ she replied, ‘but these pottery vessels in the tomb
. They’ve been broken, but I think they were probably intact when they were put in beside her.’
‘How do you know that the skeleton is female?’ Bronson asked.
‘The pelvis is fully exposed, and the male pelvis and female pelvis are very different in shape. This skeleton is definitely that of a woman.’
Bronson translated what she’d told him to the police officer.
‘It’s very strange, what’s happened to that body,’ the Italian said. ‘Perhaps it was done by vandals, a couple of centuries ago.’
‘What will you do with it?’ Bronson asked.
‘Eventually, I expect we’ll bury it again, but for the moment we’ll have to take it into custody. Our orders in this kind of circumstance are quite clear. It’s the body of the human being, and because it’s skeletal we will need to get a forensic pathologist out here to inspect the scene and ascertain its age. Then we’ll transport it back to the mortuary for examination, just in case any kind of crime has been committed.’
‘Well, whoever did that to her head is certainly guilty of a crime.’
Privately, Bronson thought that transporting the body to the local morgue was a complete waste of everyone’s time and effort, but he fully understood the position of the Carabinieri. Police forces in Britain had similar regulations governing the handling of both corpses and skeletal remains. It was not unknown for murderers to conceal the bodies of their victims inside existing graves.
A few of the onlookers had started to drift away, many of them taking pictures of the tomb and its occupant as they left, but others, curious at the presence of two police officers beside an ancient open grave, were beginning to appear.
‘I don’t know if it would be of any help to you,’ Bronson said, ‘but my partner is an expert on pottery. If you have a problem dating the burial – if the inscription on the tomb can’t be read, I mean – then she can probably help by analysing those pottery shards.’
‘Thank you for the offer, Signor Bronson. Which hotel are you staying at?’
Bronson told him, as Angela finally finished her photographic record and stepped forward to join him.
The second police officer was already speaking into his radio, organizing transport for the forensic pathologist from Venice out to the Isola di San Michele.
While they waited for the boat to arrive, Bronson and Angela provided the two carabinieri with brief written statements of their recollection of the events of the evening.
Almost half an hour passed before three new figures emerged from the mist, accompanied by one of the police officers who had gone to the vaporetto stop to wait for the boat. One carried a collapsible stretcher, another a black body bag and the third, a grey-haired, stooped man in his fifties, carried a large plastic equipment box. Quickly, they donned gloves, plastic overshoes and white coveralls. The older man – the pathologist, Bronson assumed – stepped forward and looked at the grave and the corpse from a few feet away. He gestured to one of the men who’d accompanied him to take a series of pictures, and stepped back to talk to the carabinieri who were still waiting by the grave. Then he moved forward again and examined the skeleton closely, before issuing further instructions and peeling off his protective clothing.
The two men with him transferred the remains of the corpse from the shattered tomb to the body bag, taking particular care with the head to ensure that the brick remained in place. They also removed all the pieces of broken pottery. Finally, they used torches to scan the interior of the tomb to make sure they hadn’t missed any last small bones or fragments, placed the bag on the stretcher, and vanished in the direction from which they’d arrived, accompanied by both police officers.
‘Is there anything else you want to see?’ Bronson asked Angela, watching as the short procession vanished into the mist.
Angela shook her head. ‘No. I think I’ve got enough. Those pottery shards are interesting and unusual, and I’d like to take a proper look at them, but in a laboratory, not out here on site. Actually, there was something much more interesting than them in that grave.’ She patted her pocket, and smiled at him, her eyes shining. ‘And unlike the pottery, which, of course, I had to leave in situ, I’ve got it with me.’
3
Marietta Perini stepped off the vaporetto at the Accademia stop on the southern side of the Grand Canal and walked briskly north across the Ponte dell’Accademia towards central Venice. Her route took her through the dog-leg shape of the Campo San Vidal and on into the Campo San Stefano, one of the biggest squares in Venice, second only to the Piazza San Marco. Both squares were busy with people: old men with small dogs on leads, women with children in prams and pushchairs, Venetians returning home after work or just couples and families strolling around with each other. Church bells rang out across the Campo San Stefano, sending peals of sound across the open space, almost drowning out the buzz of conversation from the cafés and restaurants that lined the square.
Everywhere and in all directions, people walked and talked, arms flying in extravagant gestures as they illustrated some point they were trying to make.
Marietta paused for a few moments by the monument in the centre of the square. Known irreverently to Venetians as the Cagalibri or ‘book-shitter’, it commemorated the life of the nineteenth-century writer and ideologue Nicolò Tommaseo, his studious career represented by the large pile of books positioned just behind him, and which had given rise to the statue’s nickname. As usual, there was a pigeon sitting on his head, and the colourful organic decoration that had been applied to the statue’s head and shoulders suggested that this was a favourite perch for some of Venice’s innumerable feathered residents.
Over to one side of the square was the reason Marietta had not continued straight across towards her destination. She had a weakness for ice cream, and just a few yards away was one of her favourite gelaterias. She glanced at her watch, checking she had enough time, then gave way to temptation, strolling across and choosing a large cornet, into which the smiling, dark-haired waiter inserted three balls of ice cream in her choice of flavours.
Then she walked on, taking small and delicious bites from the top of the cornet, and savouring each morsel, moving it around her mouth with her tongue before finally swallowing it. She moved slowly across the square, concentrating far more on what she was eating than on where she was going or on her surroundings.
Marietta was completely unaware that two men were following her, and had in fact picked her out even before she’d boarded the vaporetto at the Arsenale stop on the east side of Venice.
She wasn’t a random target. The two men had been sent out that evening to find her, and her alone. One of them was holding a folded sheet of paper in his hand. On it was a full-face photograph of their quarry, plus her address, and details of the company for which she worked. And there was a very specific and compelling reason why she had been chosen.
As she left the Campo San Stefano, Marietta took one of the narrow streets to the right, and almost immediately the press of people reduced, and she found herself walking along with just a handful of other pedestrians.
Then she took another turning, moving further and further from the crowded thoroughfares and closer to her destination: her boyfriend’s apartment near the centre of the old city. And only then did she wonder if the two men were following her.
Marietta didn’t feel concerned, not at first. Venice was a crowded city and it was almost impossible to walk down most of the streets at any time of the day or night without finding other people there. But when she took another turning, and the men continued to follow her down this narrow – and conspicuously empty – street, she glanced behind her again and then quickened her pace.
Immediately, both men started running and in a few seconds they had caught up with her. One of them slammed Marietta back against a wall. She opened her mouth to scream, but then collapsed to the ground when the second man produced a black pistol-like object from his pocket, pressed it against her stomach and pulled the trigger. T
he taser sent a charge of over one hundred thousand volts through her body, rendering her senseless for a few minutes.
This was all the time the men needed. One of them swiftly applied a sticking plaster gag to her face and lashed her wrists together with plastic cable ties, while the other man unzipped the bulky bag he was carrying, and pulled out a folded lightweight carpet – an old, but still very effective, way of concealing a body. He dropped it flat on the ground and, working together, they rolled the girl’s unconscious body into it. In moments, the bigger of the two men had hoisted the carpet on to his shoulder, and the two of them walked down the street towards one of the canals that penetrated central Venice from all sides. The other man took out a small mobile phone and spoke urgently into it.
When they reached the bank of the canal, they stopped and peered to their right, towards the junction with the encircling Grand Canal. A dark blue speedboat was heading towards them, a single figure at the controls. The vessel came to a halt at the landing stage in front of the two men. The driver climbed out, holding a mooring line which he wrapped around a vertical wooden post, and held the boat steady while the two men embarked in it. Then he released the rope and climbed back aboard himself, swung the boat around in a half circle and headed back the way he’d come.
The bundle in the carpet began moving, and one of the men unrolled it just enough to reveal the girl’s terrified face. He held the taser in front of her eyes and squeezed the trigger. A vicious high-voltage spark leapt between the two electrodes with an audible crackle.
‘Shut up and lie still,’ he hissed in colloquial Italian, ‘or I’ll give you another dose of this.’
Then he flipped the end of the carpet back over Marietta’s face.
‘You need to be careful with that thing,’ his companion murmured. ‘Hit somebody too often with it and you can kill them. And we need her in prime condition.’