The Ancient Curse (22 page)

‘Maybe yes and maybe no. But if Reggiani calls there and you don’t answer he’ll smell a rat. They’ll be turning over the rubbish bins looking for you.’

‘Reggiani’s a smart guy and that agent sitting in the car is a sort of alibi for his conscience. I’m sure he knows I’m out somewhere and he also knows that trying to keep me in a cage is counterproductive.’

‘And the beast? Where do you suppose it is now? You know, since I saw it myself the other night, it hasn’t been easy to keep it out of my mind. I find myself thinking: where’s its den? What does it eat? Who’s in there with it?’

Fabrizio didn’t answer.

‘Don’t you wonder about that?’

‘I do. And maybe I’m starting to form an idea, but don’t ask me yet what it is. I need to get a few things straight first. What about you? Are you still so sure that these killings have nothing to do with the inscription and the finds inside the Phersu tomb?’

‘You believe that the human bones you found inside the Rovaio tomb belong to that Turm Kaiknas in the inscription, don’t you?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘I imagined as much. And you also believe that this stray dog that wanders around seeking prey at night is that creature reborn, the creature whose bones your friend Sonia is putting together.’

‘Yeah, something like that,’ said Fabrizio without batting an eye.

Francesca brought her hands to her face. ‘Christ, I feel like I’m living in some kind of graphic horror novel . . . Come on, Fabrizio, I understand that all these weird coincidences are pretty spooky. But that’s all they are. Coincidences. And when this whole thing is over, you’ll agree with me.’

Fabrizio didn’t speak. He seemed lost in thought, very far away from the present time and place. Francesca drove past the fortress and soon entered the city through the great stone arch.

V
OLTERRA
was deserted. Not a soul was on the streets. Even the bars were half empty; the rare customers inside sat playing cards and drinking wine in a smoky atmosphere. A carabiniere squad car passed them, its blue roof light slowly revolving to cast a spectral reflection on the ancient facades. Marcello Reggiani was keeping watch over that urban desert.

Francesca parked her Jeep at a corner, then they got out and went on foot towards the Caretti-Riccardi palace. They walked close to one another and close to the walls, as if they wanted to blend into the old city stones. Francesca held Fabrizio’s arm and his hands were plunged deep into his pockets. The cold wind blowing down the narrow streets of the medieval city made the telephone lines stretching from one building to another vibrate like a harp’s strings. In less than ten minutes, they’d arrived at the palazzo and Fabrizio gave the door a hard shove. It didn’t budge.

‘What did I tell you?’ asked Francesca. ‘That door has been bolted for years.’

She hadn’t finished speaking when a howl sounded in the distance. It was very faint, but Fabrizio’s ear was trained to sense that sound and he jumped, becoming visibly pale.

‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

Francesca shook her head, but then the howl rang out louder and more clearly, carried by the wind, and she could no longer pretend not to have heard it.

‘Do you hear it now?’

‘I heard something,’ admitted the girl. ‘But I’m not sure what it was. We can’t lose our heads, Fabrizio. We have to find an explanation for all this or we’ll go crazy.’

‘And that kid could be out there. Oh, holy Christ!’ said Fabrizio, as if she hadn’t spoken. His voice was shaking. ‘I have to find a way to get in here.’

He looked around, examining the wall of the facade. There was no name plate, no number, no bell or even any trace of there ever having been any, as if no one had ever lived between those walls. Heavy iron grilles covered the only two windows on the ground floor, but the openings had been walled up with bricks. The windows on the upper floors were covered by heavy wooden shutters with massive wrought-iron hinges. Huge time-blackened oak beams supported the fourth-floor roofing. There was a single distinctive feature at the centre of the facade: a stone shield with a badly worn and barely recognizable coat of arms.

‘It’s impossible that a building of this size has no owner and that that owner never comes by,’ commented Fabrizio.

‘Wait,’ said Francesca. ‘I have an idea. My laptop’s in the car and I’m practically sure I’ve downloaded the local land registry map. I just hope there’s enough power left. You stay here. I’ll be right back. Don’t move!’

Before Fabrizio could stop her, the girl had already dashed across the little square in front of the palazzo and had disappeared behind the corner and down the street. He found himself alone. All he could do was strain his ears to try to make out any growling in the silence of the night. Instead he heard the whir of helicopter blades and saw a spotlight scanning the terrain to the south-west. Reggiani must have heard the howl himself and sent out his scouts. Fabrizio wondered whether he might not give the go-ahead for the operation sooner than he’d promised. On the one hand, that wasn’t such a bad idea. If Angelo was still wandering through the countryside or if he’d found himself an unsafe shelter, say in a stable or sheep’s pen somewhere, maybe the carabinieri would get to him before the thing did.

Francesca was back in no time with her big leather bag. She sat on the kerb, pulled out her laptop, set it on her knees and switched it on. She opened the land registry file and soon zoomed in on the Caretti-Riccardi palace.

‘Here it is,’ she said, beginning to enlarge the grid. ‘Let’s see—’

‘Listen,’ Fabrizio interrupted her, ‘Signora Pina, the lady who owns the trattoria, told me that more than once, after dark, she’s seen light from down below, from the basement of the palazzo. If she’s right, that means that there are cellars down there and maybe an air shaft that connects them with the outside. That’s a pretty common feature in these ancient buildings.’

‘You’re right about that. And it might even be that illegal immigrants have found a way to get down there and are using it as a shelter. A lot of old, abandoned buildings are occupied. OK, here you go. The property belongs, or rather belonged, to Jacopo Ghirardini, a Volterra nobleman who hasn’t been seen or heard of in the last five years. Current whereabouts unknown. Apparently no heirs have come forward to make a claim.’

‘Five years ago,’ murmured Fabrizio. ‘Five years ago is when that woman suddenly showed up here, and Reggiani told me she had been working as a housekeeper in Volterra . . . Here, maybe?’ He vaguely remembered Signora Pina mentioning something of the sort that first time he’d eaten at the trattoria.

‘Seems strange to me. I’ve always seen it closed up. But I can try to find out. Someone must have lived here at one time. Here, see, take a look at this. This rectangle on the edge of the outside wall is certainly an air vent for the basement.’

‘It’ll be bricked up like the windows,’ mused Fabrizio. ‘Or closed by a grating.’

‘We’ll never know unless we go and look. Here, according to the map it’s on the right wall when you’re facing the facade, along Via Cantergiani.’ She closed the file, turned off the computer and slipped it back into her bag. ‘Shall we go?’ she said, getting to her feet and walking towards the right side of the building.

Fabrizio followed her and together they began to search the solid, windowless ground floor. The long limestone wall was braced every five or six metres by vertical ribbing. Just behind one of these protrusions, they found the air shaft. Its heavy iron lid had been removed and it lay vertically on the wall, secured by a rusty ring. The shaft was closed by a grating of heavy iron bars that looked like it hadn’t been moved in some time. Fabrizio tried to lift it but it wouldn’t give a centimetre.

‘I was afraid of this. It’s sealed into the foundation.’

Francesca knelt to take a look. ‘That seems strange to me. Usually these openings were also used for lowering barrels of wine into the cellars, or other foodstuffs that needed to be kept cool. Or anything they wanted to hide . . . Thank God there’s no one around,’ she added, sticking her hand in the grating. ‘If anyone saw us, Lord knows what they’d think.’

‘Especially if that someone was Signora Pina!’ said Fabrizio. ‘Fortunately, it looks like she’s closed tonight. I can’t see any lights on in the restaurant.’

‘Now that you mention it, you don’t have a torch, do you?’ asked Francesca.

Fabrizio rummaged through his backpack, found a torch and shone it at the grating and the edges of the hole, but the beam went straight down to the cellar floor.

‘Hey, look at that!’ he said.

Francesca peered at the muddy floor. ‘Footprints . . .’

‘Little ones, I’d say. It’s Angelo, I’m sure of it.’

‘So how did he get in?’

‘Through the bars.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘He’s small and skinny, I’m telling you.’

Francesca shook her head incredulously and continued to feel around under the grating.

‘Found it!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘There’s a chain.’

She unhooked it and Fabrizio was able to raise the grating.

‘I’m going first,’ said Francesca, and let herself drop down to the floor. Fabrizio heard her swearing and shone the torch on her. She had slipped when her feet touched the ground and she was sitting in the mud. She got up and cleaned herself off as best she could, then looked up at Fabrizio. ‘Pass me my bag with the computer. Drop it. Don’t worry, I’ll catch it.’

Fabrizio dangled the bag as low as possible, then called out to her and let it go.

‘Got it,’ rang out Francesca’s voice underground.

Fabrizio lowered himself down as well and the two of them looked at each other without speaking for long instants in the dim light raining down from the street.

‘Let’s hope no one falls in,’ said Francesca. ‘Leaving the grating open turns this into a real trap. If someone stumbles over it, they’ll kill themselves.’

‘Who do you think is roaming the streets at this hour of the night? You saw for yourself. There’s not a living soul out there.’

‘Well, I’d also like to know how we’re going to get out.’

‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes. We could go through the front door – the place looks like it could use some airing out.’

Fabrizio was trying to make light of a fairly grim situation. The air was heavy in the intense darkness of the underground chamber and there was a strong musty odour. He pointed the torch at the walls and ceiling to get an idea of the dimensions and characteristics of the room and found another wall that crossed it from one end to the other, interrupted by a couple of round arched doorways made of big hewn tufa stones oozing dampness and covered with grey mould.

‘Definitely ancient,’ observed Francesca.

‘Etruscan,’ concluded Fabrizio, shining the ray of light from one end to another. He swept the beam across the floor to light up the line of small footprints leading away from them under the arch.

Francesca took out her laptop and turned it on. ‘These cellar rooms may even be included on the map,’ she said. ‘The registry date is old enough. It goes back to the age of the Leopoldo dukes, if I’m not mistaken. OK, look at this . . . See . . . This is the wall with the arches, right? Good, we’re here . . . Let’s go on, this way.’

They proceeded about ten metres or so until they found themselves in front of an iron railing which flanked a ramp of stairs leading downward.

‘Is this on your map?’ asked Fabrizio, peering at the screen.

‘No,’ said Francesca, ‘it’s not. At least, I don’t think it is.’

They descended seven grey stone steps until they found themselves in a completely empty room whose walls still displayed traces of colour and peeling plaster. At the corner opposite the bottom of the stairs was a sloping ramp. They continued down despite the fact that they could no longer make out any footprints on the stone slabs. There was no way of telling whether Angelo – if the prints they’d seen had truly been his – had continued in this direction.

‘I can’t believe the only way we can go is down. There must be a point where we can get up into the main building, right?’ asked Francesca, as if thinking aloud.

‘Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing,’ admitted Fabrizio. ‘But it doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice.’

They stopped and took a look around. The entire room had been roughly carved out of a bank of tufa and Fabrizio made his way forward laying one hand after another on the damp surface.

‘Do you realize where we are?’ he asked all at once.

‘We’re at the ground level of the ancient city,’ replied Francesca. ‘The two archways we came across earlier must be from a section of the Etruscan city walls.’

‘Well, we’ve reached the end of the line anyway,’ said Fabrizio. ‘There’s no one and nothing here.’

They fell silent for a few moments, watching their breath as it condensed into little puffs of steam. They stared up and around at the walls and ceiling.

‘Come on. Let’s turn back,’ said Fabrizio. ‘I feel like I’m suffocating down here.’

Francesca nodded and followed him up the stairs until they reached the big underground chamber where they had lowered themselves down from the air vent. They examined the wall minutely with their hands until they discovered a narrow stairway enclosed and partially hidden between two brick walls. Fabrizio started up, followed by Francesca, but the feeling of oppression he’d experienced down below only increased as they made their way to the ground floor. They ended up at a little door clad with iron studs that let them into the palazzo’s central hall, but as they raised their eyes towards the ceiling they were amazed by the vision of a spiral staircase reaching up several storeys all the way to the ceiling, free-standing in the middle of the space, without any central support.

‘My God!’ exclaimed Francesca. ‘This is incredible! I’d heard this existed but I’d never seen it. It’s absolutely perfect, a masterpiece! I believe it’s attributed to Sansovino.’

Fabrizio pierced the elliptical cavity of the daring staircase with his torchlight, all the way up to the ceiling beams. ‘Christ! It may be a masterpiece, but there’s something really disturbing about it. It reminds me of the coils of a gigantic snake or the circles of hell! If you stare at it long enough, it looks like a monstrous screw. Isn’t that strange?’