Free The Nosferatu Scroll by James Becker Page A

or less in the middle of a group of German tourists, and headed toward the part of the cemetery where they’d found the broken tomb the previous evening.
    That was his first surprise. The tomb was covered in a heavy green tarpaulin, which was lashed down and held in place with a couple of orange polypropylene ropes. Clearly the authorities had decided to shield the broken structure from prying eyes. And there was no sign of any police officers. Whatever the carabinieri had come over to the island to investigate, it was obviously nothing at all to do with that grave.
    Bronson looked around the vast cemetery, and over to one side he finally spotted a handful of police officers clustered around another grave. Feeling somewhat like a ghoul, he headed that way himself, taking a circuitous route so as not to make his approach too obvious.
    Standing at the edge of the group of tourists that had gathered at the site, Bronson pulled his camera from his pocket, held it unobtrusively by his side and aimed it in the general direction of all the activity. The camera was equipped with a powerful zoom lens and had both still and movie modes, so he pressed the button that would provide him with a video record of what was going on.
    The carabinieri had erected a temporary screen on the far side of the new grave. This, like the broken grave of the previous night, was another stone box with a slabcovering the top, but as far as Bronson could see, it was completely intact. Instead, the police officers’ attention was directed toward the ground beside the tomb. As he watched, a man wearing a set of white waterproof overalls, cap, gloves and rubber boots, and carrying a large plastic toolbox, emerged from behind the screen. He paused for a moment to exchange a few words with a couple of the police officers, then walked over to a patch of grass on which several other cases had been left. Bronson had been involved with enough serious crimes to know what the man’s job was, and then, as the white-clad figure turned slightly toward him, he recognized the man as the same forensic pathologist who’d traveled out to the island the previous night. And that, he knew, meant that another body had been discovered.
    If any confirmation was needed, it followed just moments later, when two men dressed in civilian clothes, and carrying a black body bag and a collapsible stretcher, walked behind the screen.
    A few minutes later they emerged, carrying a zipped body bag on the stretcher. Before they moved away, however, one of the policemen halted them with a gesture, and unzipped the bag just far enough to allow him to see the head of the victim.
    Bronson lifted the camera higher, pressed the zoom button and tried to get a close-up shot. A tumble of blond hair filled the LCD screen, but it looked as if the face of the girl—and the victim was obviously a young woman—was invisible. Several of the tourists standingnear him were also using their cameras, snapping away, and one of the carabinieri shouted angrily at them.
    Bronson stepped back and tucked the camera into his pocket, a flush of embarrassment warming his cheek. He’d never liked the salacious attitude of the public—and especially of the British press—about accidents and crime, and he didn’t much like the feeling of being on the other side of the crime-scene tape, of being one of the morbid spectators.
    And, he admitted to himself, he was probably just wasting his time. He had no idea whether the girl who was being carried away from the tomb had died by accident or from some other cause. About the only thing he was sure of was that it had nothing to do with the ancient mutilated corpse they’d seen the previous evening.
    Turning away, he walked quickly through the graveyard toward the Cimitero vaporetto stop. He would go back to Angela, he decided, and they would resume their holiday and try to forget all about the vampire’s tomb and the dead girl he’d just seen.
    But as the vaporetto cut