The Ancient Curse (18 page)

‘What are you going to do with this fourth corpse?’ asked Fabrizio.

Francesca noticed a moment of hesitation on Reggiani’s part. She downed the last drops of coffee from her cup and got up to leave. ‘I have things to do,’ she said at the door. ‘I’ll see you later, Fabrizio.’

Reggiani sighed. ‘We haven’t let the news filter out yet. Montanari lived alone in that isolated house in the middle of the countryside. People were used to him disappearing for relatively long periods of time. He would go off looking for seasonal jobs or work of a more dubious nature. He’s spent plenty of time in jail. No one will notice he’s gone. At least for a while. I guess that’s lucky for us, but we can’t go on like this. I’ve spoken to my superiors and we’re organizing a hunt with hundreds of men, dozens of dogs, helicopters and off-road vehicles, infrared equipment . . .’

‘You’ll draw a hell of a lot of attention to yourselves. You’ll have the press of half the world on your backs. A story like this . . . I can just imagine.’

‘I know. But at this point we have no choice. Especially because you’re not being of any help. For example, what were you doing at the Montanari house?’

‘You were the one who told me that those mysterious phone calls were coming from there. And are you aware that Balestra is studying an exceptionally important and very rare Etruscan inscription?’

‘Of course. The guys over at archaeological heritage protection told me about it. The slab from Volterra. They were the ones who recovered the piece from an old riverbed, but it had been moved there from somewhere else, if I remember correctly.’

‘You’re right. That was just a temporary hiding place. It was Montanari who reported it to the NAS, saying that he’d dug it up while working in the fields. Balestra immediately ordered further investigations but they turned up nothing. This tipped them off; an inscription that important cannot be devoid of any archaeological context. It was evident that Montanari was lying and that he must have known where it had really been found and where the missing portion of it was. I thought I could get him to talk and that’s what I was doing there.’

‘Without saying anything to me,’ commented Reggiani.

‘I would have told you if I’d been successful. Anyway, you were following me.’

‘That doesn’t justify your behaviour. Go on.’

‘What’s more, inside Montanari’s house I saw a fragment of the same bucchero pottery with the swastika that I found near the Phersu tomb and I realized he must be connected to that find as well. Ill bet you he’s the one who told the tomb robbers where the Rovaio tomb was.’

‘And what about your colleague Dr Dionisi? What was she doing last night at La Casaccia?’

Fabrizio hesitated a moment, looking into the bottom of his cup, then said, ‘She had something urgent to tell me.’

‘What?’ Reggiani pressed.

‘It concerns a discovery she made . . . a scientific discovery.’

‘That was so important it couldn’t wait for today? It must have been very urgent indeed.’

‘It was, but I can’t tell you any more. Give me a couple of days to work on it before you order a full-scale search operation.’

‘So it has something to do with this.’

‘I’m not really sure but maybe it does . . . Give me the chance to find out.’

‘I can’t promise you anything but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try to put off the operation for as long as I can, but then I’ll turn this whole place inside out. I’ll find that thing and fill it full of lead, then stuff it myself so I can see it hang in some museum. I saw this film the other night, a DVD that I rented.’

‘Yeah? What film was it?’

‘The Ghost and the Darkness.’

‘I remember that one. With Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. The story about those two lions that devour a hundred and thirty workers on a railroad project. In Africa, at the end of the 1800s. Is that the one?’

‘Yes, that’s it. You know, the film is based on a true story. Everyone thought the two man-eaters were spirits, ghosts in the shape of lions who couldn’t be defeated. Well, you know what? They’re now sitting stuffed in a window display in a museum in Chicago. I saw them.’

‘You saw them? In Chicago?’

‘No. I downloaded the image from the Internet. One of the new guys can navigate the web like a real sea wolf. So, you know what else? They don’t even look scary. They are small and scraggly-looking. Doesn’t that console you?’

‘Not in the least,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘I’ve heard the phenomenon explained by animal-behaviour specialists. A predator, for some reason, becomes disabled. He can’t run as fast as the others, or isn’t as strong, and he gets kicked out of the pack. At some point, by pure chance, he kills a human being and immediately realizes that man is a slow, easy prey and, let’s say, has high nutritional value. From that moment on, he hunts and eats only people. Now, would you say that our creature is disabled in some way, or is killing out of hunger?’

Reggiani shook his head, discouraged. ‘I have to admit you’ve got a point there. In any case, I still intend to hunt it down and take it out.’

They heard the sound of an engine outside. ‘That must be Massaro,’ observed Fabrizio.

Reggiani got up and went to the door.

‘Listen . . .’ Fabrizio began.

‘I’m listening,’ said the officer with his hand on the door handle.

‘Nothing . . . I have to check out this thing first and then I’ll let you know, I promise.’

‘I hope so,’ said Reggiani. ‘For your sake.’ He started out, then turned back again. ‘You know, I was wondering . . . that colleague of yours . . .’

Fabrizio couldn’t help but smile. ‘Francesca?’

‘No, the other one.’

‘Sonia?’ asked Fabrizio with pretended nonchalance.

‘Yeah, I think that’s her name. You two aren’t . . . together, are you?’

‘No. We’re not.’

‘If I wasn’t in the shit up to my eyeballs, I wouldn’t mind having a go. Good God, someone like her can’t just spend all her time with bones, right? She must like flesh as well, I hope.’

‘I imagine she does,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘I’d bet on it actually.’

He closed the door behind Reggiani, went back to the table and switched on the computer.

12

H
E HAD JUST
sat down when the telephone started to ring. He raised the receiver after a moment of hesitation and said firmly, ‘Hello.’

‘This is Signora Pina,’ said the voice on the other end.

‘Signora! What can I—
’

‘It was you, Doctor, who told me to call you if I saw anything that . . .’

‘Oh yes, of course, of course. You’re not disturbing me at all. I was just about to start working.’

‘Well, I wanted to let you know that I heard noises last night.’

‘What sort of noises?’

‘I really couldn’t say . . . And I saw that light glowing again from down in the cellar.’

‘Did you see anything else?’

Signora Pina fell silent for a moment, then spoke up again. ‘Nothing. I didn’t see a thing. The house went pitch dark afterwards and as silent as a grave.’

‘I see. Thank you, Signora Pina. Be sure to keep me informed if it happens again.’

‘You can count on it, Doctor. Nothing escapes me from here.’

Fabrizio lowered his head and sighed. He was lost in thought for a few long moments, then he shook himself and went back to work.

He scanned the sequence image by image, passage by passage, until he had the entire inscription saved on his computer. He opened a program in which he could divide the screen into three parts and inserted the Etruscan version on the right and the Latin version on the left, leaving the centre open for his translation. He plugged in his laptop alongside, turned it on and connected it to the largest, most complete Latin dictionary that existed on the planet, the
Thesaurus Academiae Internationalis Linguae Latinae,
as well as to the
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
and the
Testimonia Linguae Etruscae.
He took the phone off the hook, turned off his mobile phone and focused on the task at hand.

He worked for hours and hours with no interruption and without even getting up. He sipped at a glass of water, as he was accustomed to doing when he was dealing with a particularly thorny intellectual challenge. On the wall in front of him was a blow-up of the lad of Volterra, which seemed to fill the empty kitchen with its melancholy aura. He didn’t stop until he was utterly exhausted, at nearly two a.m. He got up to stretch his stiff limbs and contemplated the screen with satisfaction. The central column was slowly filling up with Italian words, nursed along by the Etruscan and Latin texts. Word after word, the past was coming alive, one scrap at a time. He sat down again and went back to work. There were still a number of gaps, some longer than others, empty spaces that interrupted the flow, and as his frustration grew, so did his excitement. But he was feeling utterly drained and fatigue was setting in.

He got up, took an amphetamine and put on a Mahler symphony to buoy up his emotions, which were taking off every which way. The hours passed as the text was pieced together, taken apart and reassembled in an uninterrupted series of interpretative hypotheses. Streams of data filled the laptop’s plasma screen: word lists, tense sequences, exemplifications, hundreds of alphabetical symbols representing all the possible variants. In Latin, in Greek, in Etruscan. Fabrizio paused only to watch the sun rising over the forested hills that loomed to the east with their curving, undulating shapes. Then, forgetting how early it was, he called Aldo Prada, his linguist friend, to consult with him about all the doubts that had emerged in his long night’s work.

‘I’m so sorry!’ said Fabrizio when he realized he’d woken his colleague up. ‘I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘What are you doing?’ asked Prada, immediately intrigued and not at all sleepy.

‘I’m . . . trying to read an inscription.’

‘Unpublished, right? Where did you find it?’

The telephone call was turning into an uncomfortable interrogation.

‘It’s not the inscription from Volterra, is it? Isn’t that where you said you were going? I’ve heard about it, although no one has any details. I was talking to Sonia the other day and—’

‘Aldo, what I need is your help, not your questions. This thing I’m working on is important and urgent but I’m afraid I can’t explain.’

‘You’ll name me in the publication, though, right? Or we can publish it together. What do you say? You are going to publish it, right?’

‘No. I’m not going to publish it. It isn’t mine to publish.’

‘Ah,’ sighed his colleague in a tone both disappointed and suspicious.

‘Listen,’ said Fabrizio impatiently. ‘We’ve always been friends, haven’t we? That’s why I thought of you. If you think you can help me, say so, otherwise forget it. I’ll stumble through it on my own, as I have been doing.’

‘Don’t get angry. I was just curious . . . It’s not every day you hear about an unpublished inscription. Let’s start from scratch. If you’re calling me, it must mean you’re stuck – that is, the expressions you’re trying to translate are not in established sources.’

‘That’s it. You’re the only person who can help me right now. I’ll be eternally grateful and, as soon as this thing is over, I’ll tell you the whole story. I promise you that I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m just dead tired right now and I’m not connecting. If you don’t help me, I’m afraid I won’t work my way out of this. But if you can’t, that’s all right. I’ll survive, you know.’

‘All right, I get it. You don’t want to tell me anything, even though I’m an old friend. OK, don’t worry about it. Tell me what the problem is. Although without seeing what we’re talking about, I don’t know—’

‘Is your computer on? I’ll send the parts I’m having trouble with and give you a few minutes to look at them. Then I’ll call you back and we can go through them together. All right?’

‘Sure. Send it right away, then.’

Fabrizio sent the file, waited nearly an hour and then called back.

‘Got it!’ said Prada.

‘Well? What do you think?’

‘Good God! This stuff is incredible.’

‘It is.’

A few moments of silence, then his friend’s voice rang out: ‘Know something? You’re pretty close. It’s only that you haven’t considered . . .’

What?’

‘Several variations in the formulation of diphthongs in the archaic form of the genitive, and a morpheme which I would classify as an
apax
because—’

Aldo, please. I have no time for theory. Just correct whatever is wrong with my fucking translation before I faint or have a heart attack because I’m so exhausted I can’t think straight any more. Is that clear?’

‘Clear as can be. Hold on, though, yeah, I think I’m right about that, there’s a diphthong formulation here that . . .’

Fabrizio let him run on because he knew that Aldo Prada’s mind was the most powerful machine in the world as far as phonetic and morphologic processing was concerned. If he couldn’t manage it, no one could. Even Balestra must have had a lot of problems, if he’d been holed up in his office so long without ever appealing to anyone for assistance or collaboration.

‘Give me a couple of hours,’ Prada said suddenly. ‘You’ve taken me by surprise here. I don’t want to make a mistake. No one’s ever seen a bilingual text before. What’s strange is that the Etruscan is so clear and the Latin is so fuzzy. It looks more like spots than letters. But better than nothing, that’s for sure. Good heavens, I can only imagine the clamour this will create when it’s announced. If only I knew a little more about the context . . .’

‘Don’t even think about it. I can’t tell you where it was found. You’ll have to manage with what you have. Do it as a favour to me. You won’t be sorry, I promise you.’

‘OK. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve finished.’

Fabrizio closed the shutters and lay down on the couch to try to recover some lucidity. He was light-headed with hunger. The strain of working through the night, along with the pill he’d swallowed, made him feel wide awake but sluggish. He felt like he was moving in slow motion, and his muscles were cramping up, along with his stomach. The sounds of early morning wafted in from outside: the rumble of cars on the regional road and the chirping of sparrows. The roosters saluted the dim light of another dreary day from farmhouses scattered around the countryside.