Free The Nosferatu Scroll by James Becker

the rodents scurrying about, but not one creature had touched her or climbed onto the bed—yet.
    She hadn’t expected to sleep, because of her fear and loathing of the other residents of the cellar, but the air down there was cold, and eventually she’d pulled an old and smelly blanket—the only piece of bedding provided—over her, simply to keep warm. And within a few minutes she’d drifted off into a fitful sleep, from which she had awoken, shivering and terrified, at intervals during the night.
    Marietta had no watch on her wrist, but she guessed it was midmorning, and she was ravenously hungry and really thirsty. She’d had nothing to eat or drink since the previous afternoon, and her throat was parched and dry.
    She consoled herself with the thought that if her captors had intended to kill her, they would probably already have done so. And that meant that they wanted her alive. But why? It couldn’t be for ransom—her family wasn’trich, and she had no money of her own. There must be something else. And if they didn’t want her to die, they would have to feed her.
    Even as that thought gave her some slight comfort, she heard a grating and rumbling sound as the door at the top of the spiral staircase was opened, and the cellar lights snapped on.
    Blinking in the harsh illumination, she stood up, shivering and waiting. Alone. And very frightened.

10
    Bronson picked up the compact binoculars and small digital camera that he’d brought down from their room in readiness for their day of sightseeing. He slipped both instruments into the pockets of his leather jacket.
    “Are you sure about this, Chris?” Angela asked.
    “I’m afraid so,” Bronson replied with a rueful smile. “Look, while I’m out following those two carabinieri, maybe you could have a look at the pictures you took of the grave. See if anything strikes you as being odd, apart from the decapitated body and the brick, I mean. It might also be worth trying to find out the name of the woman in the grave.”
    He glanced through the window at the street outside, where the two policemen had stopped for a few moments. Bending down, he kissed Angela lightly on the lips, and then strode across the dining room and walked out of the hotel.
    The two carabinieri were on foot, of course—Venicebeing a car-free zone—and were walking northeast along the street from the hotel, turning right at the end, and then left. It looked to Bronson, who was following about fifty yards behind them and taking frequent glances at the street map of Venice he’d picked up at the airport, as if they were heading toward the edge of the lagoon. This suspicion was confirmed when the two men walked onto the jetty by the Fondamente Nuove vaporetto stop. There he saw a police launch waiting for them, the engine running and two other officers already on board.
    Although Bronson guessed that he would look just like any other tourist in the anonymous throngs already crowding the streets, he hung back, waiting for the vessel to depart. As soon as the sergeant and constable were sitting down in the launch, the driver freed the mooring line and gunned the engine. Bronson took out his binoculars and watched the vessel and its passengers. Once it had cleared the other water traffic that was maneuvering near the vaporetto stop, the boat swung around to the left and headed northeast, accelerating across the lagoon toward the northern end of the Isola di San Michele—in other words, pretty much as he’d expected.
    About ten minutes later, shortly after the police launch had reached the jetty on the island, in fact, Bronson boarded a number forty-two vaporetto and began the same journey himself.
    The Isola di San Michele was reasonably large, about five hundred yards by four hundred yards, he guessed, and very popular with visitors to Venice, so he didn’t anticipateany particular difficulty in remaining unobserved once he got there.
    He stepped out of the vaporetto onto the jetty more