by James Becker
14
‘Officer down! Officer down!’
‘Get an ambulance! Right now!’
The cries of shock and alarm rang through the Campo Santa Maria Formosa and the neighbouring streets. The officers who’d been deployed on the stake-out at the cafe 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 round 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 frontline, 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 pick-pocketing, 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 centre of the screened-off area, three bullet holes in his body, and his dark blood staining the old stones on which he lay.
A plain-clothes 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-calibre pistol, probably nine millimetre. 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 line-up.’
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 got himself involved with that could lead 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 end-game was so close, he couldn’t take that chance.
For the moment, all he could do was wait.
15
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 amongst 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.
The results were generated almost immediately, and he printed out the relevant stories as each one appeared on the screen in front of him. Within a matter of minutes, Bronson realized that there had been a spate of disappearances from Venice and the surrounding area, including a couple of girls who had been reported missing from the mainland. The only common factor, as far as he could tell, was that no trace of most of the young women had been found — in fact, only two bodies had turned up. It was as if the other girls had simply vanished.
The Italian police, of course, had been informed, and had carried out interviews with friends and relatives of the missing girls, but with no clues, and without any bodies to analyse and investigate, there was little they could do. It was even suggested that the girls might have become romantically involved with somebody, or that perhaps they had just run away.
These suggestions irritated and angered the parents involved, who all believed that, even if their daughters had eloped or run off, they would still have written or telephon
ed to confirm that they were alive. The continued lack of any form of communication from any of the young women was distressing for all concerned, but there was still little that the police could do, simply because they had nothing to go on.
Bronson totted up the total number of disappearances, and realized that at least a dozen girls had vanished over the previous eighteen months, six of them recently. Prior to that, there had been reports of a couple of women who had gone missing, but in both cases there appeared to be good reasons for them to have left their families. And both had later reappeared, alive and well. So unless there was something about these twelve girls that the journalists had failed to report, it looked very much to Bronson as if a serial abductor, who was almost certainly a serial killer as well, was operating in Venice. And operating with impunity.
This was interesting, but that was all, because Bronson knew that if he could deduce this from reading a handful of newspaper articles, the Italian police, who would have had access to those same articles plus all the other reports relating to the disappearances, must have come to exactly the same conclusion. And perhaps, if the body found in the cemetery on the Isola di San Michele was that of a girl who had disappeared — and a very recent edition of the local paper reported another disappearance the previous week — the police would now have plenty of clues to work with. In Bronson’s experience, the dead could speak, and often produced a wealth of information about the manner in which they’d died, and sometimes a lot about their killers as well.
Almost as an afterthought, he did another search of the archives, this time looking for articles on a totally unrelated subject — the vandalizing of graves. He was somewhat surprised to discover that there was plenty of information in the back numbers of the newspaper about this as well. Again, he printed a series of articles so that he could read them at his leisure back to the hotel.
What he’d found surprised him so much that he decided to run a third search, which produced a single result. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Venice, but Bronson took a copy of this as well. You never knew, he thought, what information might prove valuable. Especially when it related to vampires.
16
‘It’ll be dark in three or four hours,’ Angela objected. ‘Are you sure you want to go back there again today?’
They were back in the hotel room, the newspaper printouts Bronson had obtained spread across the bed.
‘I’m not bothered about the dead girls,’ Bronson said. ‘Investigating those disappearances is a police matter, without question. It’s nothing to do with us. But these other stories I found, about the vandalized graves out on the island, are really interesting. I just thought I’d like to go over there and see what sort of damage had been done, and also find out the age of the tombs that had been targeted.’
‘Why?’ Angela was already putting on her boots, Bronson noted, and had selected a heavier coat for the journey across the water.
‘It’s your talk about a vampire cult that’s got me interested. I was wondering if all the graves were from the nineteenth century, and if their occupants were all female. I’d also like to know if the tombs were opened, or if the vandals had sprayed graffiti on them, for instance. Was it genuine vandalism, or were the people involved trying to open the graves because they were looking for something?’
Angela smiled. ‘Oddly enough, I want to go back to the Isola di San Michele as well, but for a completely different reason. While you were out, I translated some more of the Latin text in that book, and there’s a reference in it that I’d like to look at.’ She pointed at the black leather-bound book. ‘In fact, there are several references to the same thing. According to that diary, somewhere in the graveyard, in the “tomb of the twin angels”, as the writer calls it, is the “answer”. Now, I haven’t got the slightest idea what she means, but I’d be very interested in finding out.’
‘Right then,’ Bronson said, zipping up his leather jacket. ‘Let’s go.’
A few minutes later they walked out of the hotel and turned north, towards the vaporetto stop. Angela had her handbag slung over her shoulder, while Bronson was carrying her laptop bag. She had insisted on taking her computer and the diary with them while they explored the cemetery, just in case she needed to refer back to the Latin text.
Ten minutes after they’d left, a man appeared at the reception desk, produced identification that showed he was a senior carabinieri officer, and demanded to see the hotel register. He explained that it was just a routine check, as part of a confidential statistical analysis that the Venetian authorities were carrying out into hotel occupancy by non-Italian guests.
The receptionist handed over the register without comment.
The carabinieri officer made some notes, thanked the receptionist, and then left the building.
A little over half an hour after that, two middle-aged Italian men, both wearing business suits and carrying briefcases, marched straight into the hotel lobby, deep in conversation, and climbed the stairs to the upper levels. The receptionist didn’t recognize them, but there were a number of new guests at the hotel, and he assumed that the men were new arrivals.
Once they were out of earshot of the reception desk, the two men fell silent. At the top of the stairs, they walked down a corridor and stopped outside one particular room. While one of them watched for any sign of movement, the other man removed a small jemmy from his briefcase, slid the point between the door and jamb, and gave a hard shove. Moments later, they were both inside.
They left the hotel about fifteen minutes later, still talking together and still carrying their briefcases. Again the receptionist ignored them.
17
Without a watch, Marietta had no idea of the time, or even if it was day or night. She’d been given another tray of food about three or four hours ago, just bread, ham and cheese and a cup of coffee, which she presumed was her lunch. Since then she’d neither heard nor seen anyone or anything. Despite being terrified about her predicament, she was also thoroughly bored.
Her other problem was the cold. The cellar was obviously damp, the walls moist to the touch, and the very air chilled her bones. The only way she could keep warm was by sitting on the bed and wrapping the blanket around her.
Hours later, she heard the rumble of the cellar door opening again, and the guard reappeared with another tray, which he placed on the floor near her bed. A waft of even colder air seemed to swoop down the staircase, reducing the temperature in the cellar still further. Marietta guessed that it was already late afternoon, and the temperature was dropping.
She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched as he swapped the trays round and turned to leave. Then, as he started walking away towards the spiral staircase, Marietta heard a sound that chilled her even more than the cold of her surroundings. Through the open door to the ruined church above the cellar, she suddenly heard a loud and mournful howl.
Somehow she knew it wasn’t a dog, an Alsatian or anything like that. There was something different about that noise, something that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. It sounded almost primeval, an ancient human nightmare come terrifyingly to life.
And it was close — really close. Definitely somewhere on the island.
‘What’s that?’ she demanded, as the guard continued to walk away from her.
He stopped, turned round and looked back at her, a malicious grin working its way across his face. ‘Just one of our little pets,’ he said. ‘A playmate for you, perhaps, a bit later on.’
‘But what is it?’ she asked again. ‘A wolf?’
‘You’ll find out,’ the guard said. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to meet it.’
A few seconds later, the cellar door rumbled closed and Marietta was alone once more with her thoughts and fears.
At first, she ignored her meal and just sat on the bed, looking across the cellar to the base of the spiral staircase. Over and over again, in her mind, she replayed the sound she’d heard,
and the guard’s thinly veiled threat.
She was never going to escape from this island. She knew that with a kind of dull certainty that settled in her mind like a cold and heavy weight. There was no hope for her.
Marietta toppled onto her side, pulled the filthy blanket over her head, and let the tears flow.
18
It was late afternoon, and once again the Island of the Dead was shrouded in shadows as the sun sank slowly towards the western horizon.
‘Let’s start with your vandalized graves, Chris,’ Angela suggested as they walked away from the vaporetto stop. ‘What do the newspapers say about them?’
Bronson shrugged. ‘Like most newspaper stories, they’re heavy on sensation and light on details. According to the best report, two graves were interfered with on one night, and they were very close to each other, down at the southern end of the cemetery.’
‘So let’s make a start there, then.’
They walked between the ranks of tombs down to the south of the island, looking at the names on the graves as they passed them. Bronson spotted an area where most of the tombs appeared somewhat older than the majority.
‘This report also says that one of the graves was over four hundred years old,’ he said. ‘Those graves over there look pretty old to me.’
Despite the enormous number of tombs, it didn’t take them that long to find the first of the two graves the newspaper claimed had been attacked by vandals. It was a similar structure to the one Angela had taken to calling the ‘vampire’s grave’ — another stone box topped with a flat stone slab that bore the name and dates of the deceased entombed within.
‘Here it is,’ Bronson said. ‘That’s the name that they give in the paper.’