The Nosferatu Scroll (11 page)

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 analyze 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 telephoned 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 at 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.

“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, toward 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 more than 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 jimmy 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.

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 toward 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 around 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.

It was late afternoon, and once again the Island of the Dead was shrouded in shadows as the sun sank slowly toward 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.”

For a few moments they both stared at the structure in front of them.

“I don’t know about you, Chris,” Angela said, “but I don’t see much evidence of damage. In fact, it looks untouched.”

“You’re right.” Then Bronson noticed something, and pointed at the base of the slab covering the top of the grave. “I think somebody lifted off that slab,” he said. “Look, the cement holding it in place is fresh. You can see that clean line running all the way around it.”

Once he’d pointed it out, the new cement was very obvious. And when they found the second tomb, it was precisely the same story, except that on this grave the slab had obviously cracked when it had been levered off, and the repair work on the damaged slab also included a couple of metal pins to hold the two sections of it together.

“Well,” Bronson said, “I think it’s obvious that we’re not looking at the work of your average vandal here. Both
of these graves were opened by people who were clearly searching for something, and I’ll bet that if we located all the other tombs that have been attacked, we’d find the same thing. The other point that strikes me is that both of these graves date from the early nineteenth century, so they’re about the same age as your vampire’s tomb.”

“Which does make you wonder what, exactly, they were looking for,” Angela said. “There’s not likely to be a hell of a lot left inside a two-hundred-year-old tomb, unless the grave was sealed completely, or they used a lead coffin. Do you want to try to find any of the other graves mentioned in the newspaper stories, or are you satisfied with what you’ve seen here?”

“No, I’m happy that we know what happened, even if we don’t know why. These graves were opened by people who were looking for something specific. Let’s try to find the twin-angels tomb you’re interested in.”

“The book describes it as the ‘tomb of the twin angels,’ so presumably we’re looking for a grave that’s marked by a couple of carved stone angels,” Angela said, looking around at the mass of tombs that surrounded them. “The problem is that the two most common symbols on all these graves are the crucifix and angels, single or multiple. I suppose we just have to hope that there’s something very obvious about the one we’re looking for.”

“And if we find it?” Bronson asked. “Are you planning another session of grave robbing?”

“I’d just like to find the tomb to prove that my translation
of the Latin is accurate. I mean, this is just an intellectual exercise, not a treasure hunt or anything like that.”

“Why don’t we split up? That way we can cover more ground. Just make sure we don’t get too far apart. We don’t want to have to spend hours tramping around here looking for each other.”

“It’s not that big a place, Chris,” Angela pointed out. “And what we’re looking for is quite specific. Because of the date of the diary, the tomb has to be dated no later than about eighteen hundred, maybe eighteen ten, and because the diary uses the expression ‘twin angels’ every time the topic is mentioned, I think the carving will be of two identical angel figures, not just two different stone angels on the same grave.”

“OK,” Bronson said, and turned to his right. “I’ll head over this way.”

For the next hour or so, they both looked at a wide variety of graves, all of which exhibited some of the characteristics they were searching for. In all, they found more than a dozen tombs that were about the right date, and that were decorated with the stone figures of angels.