The Heretic Scroll Read online

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘The hell you doing?’

  The man turned on him. Thirty or so, athletic build, his face grimy with soot. ‘This was murder,’ he said flatly. ‘Don’t you guys want a record?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Izzo. ‘Yes. Good. Thank you.’ He held out his hand for the camera. To his surprise, the man ejected the memory card without a word and gave it to him. He was about to ask his name and business when the first fire engine arrived. They stood back to let it go to work, turning the apron into a shallow lake whose surplus water cascaded over the edge of the escarpment to its foot thirty metres below.

  Izzo looked around for Lucia Conte. She was sitting against a wall, her face harrowed with grief and her skin livid with burns, being tended to by a young woman with lotion and bottled water. The first ambulance arrived. The paramedics got out to attend her. He caught her eye briefly as they helped her into the back. But she only stared blankly at him and then she was gone.

  ‘This is on you,’ said Taddeo Santoro, advancing angrily upon him. ‘I hope you’re proud.’

  ‘I scarcely think that—’

  ‘They wrote us a fucking letter.’ His face was blacked up with soot while his tie hung over his shoulder like a gallows noose. He wiped tears from his eyes with the heel of his left hand. ‘They pinned it to this gate. I begged you to find them. I begged you for more security.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Direttore. Truly. But it was only a letter. Anyone could have posted it. An angry resident. A kid having a lark.’

  ‘A lark? Does this look like a lark to you?’

  Izzo shook his head, respectful of Santoro’s grief, if not his logic. ‘No, Direttore.’

  ‘And that damned madwoman?’ Tears still kept leaking from his eyes. He fished a handkerchief from his pocket to dab them dry. ‘Did you even question her?’

  ‘Agnetta Gaudino? Of course. But the letter wasn’t her, I assure you. She can barely even read.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Yes. So I say. We know her well around here. She’s always getting into one scrape or another, often because she can’t read her mail. If you think she’s been putting up a front all these years…’

  ‘Very well. Your Camorra friend, then.’

  ‘The people I put in jail rarely consider me a friend.’

  ‘Have you even spoken to him?’

  ‘To Giovanni Bruno? About the letter? Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He denied it.’

  ‘Oh, he denied it, did he? That settles it, then.’

  ‘Hardly.’ The local Mafia boss Giovanni Bruno was by far the most likely suspect. He had a record of gruesome violence and stood most obviously to gain, seeing as he owned two dozen or so properties above the Villa site. For years now, he’d been trying to bully the American foundation sponsoring the excavations into paying for repairs to any structural problems. But the recent quakes had been on a different scale, so he’d duly upped the stakes, bribing his tenants to march on the Town Hall demanding that all excavation work be suspended until the houses were repaired, and culminating in Agnetta Gaudino’s viral rant. So it was more than plausible that he’d also had the death threat letter posted. Yet plausible wasn’t enough when dealing with such a dangerous man. ‘But we in the police need something called evidence before we make arrests.’

  ‘What about the letter? What’s that if not evidence? Have you consulted a handwriting expert yet, like I asked? Tested the ink? Traced the paper?’

  Izzo nodded politely. Il Direttore was too powerful to antagonise. Yet it rankled whenever such people demanded absurd pains be taken in their own cases, then squealed like trodden cats when it came to paying taxes. ‘We’ll do all we can,’ he said. ‘You have my word. But perhaps we might start by you telling me what you’re all doing here while activity is suspended.’

  ‘Excavation activity,’ said Santoro. ‘This was just a site visit.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  Santoro hesitated. A guarded look appeared in his eyes. ‘You know we found a new scroll after the earthquakes?’

  ‘Another Philodemus, yes?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Santoro, though with the faintest flicker of his eyes. ‘And in remarkable condition. Far better than any of the still unopened ones. Good enough that we could unroll it, if we so chose, except we don’t do that any more. It causes too much damage. So my colleague Lucia Conte took it to Grenoble. They have one of the most advanced X-ray spectrometers in the world there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Izzo. Thanks to Lucia’s involvement, he’d been following the story closely. The spectrometer was a remote sensing device of such extraordinary sensitivity that it could not only distinguish each wrap of the scroll from the ones on either side, but also make out the writing on it, thanks to the infinitesimal extra thickness of the ancient ink, and the faint traces of minerals it contained. And because the scroll was in such good condition, the rumour was that they’d been able to reveal considerable sections of text. ‘I know how it works.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s a previously unknown work. Unknown but extremely exciting.’ He paused a moment, licking his upper lip and letting his gaze go distant, as if contemplating the scroll and just how remarkable it might prove – though Izzo had read enough Philodemus to doubt whether any of his writings could be that astonishing. But then Santoro frowned severely and brought himself back from wherever he’d just been. ‘Signora Conte therefore assembled a team of experts to help with the translation.’ He gestured at his two companions. ‘Professor Zeno D’Agostino I’m sure you recognise. My good friend and our city’s leading classical historian. But Rupert Alberts you may not know. A Canadian by birth, but in Rome so long now that you’d hardly know it, and a world-leading authority on… on this area. We’re delighted and grateful that he’s agreed to help us. This morning was his idea. He hadn’t visited the Villa for many, many years, and he wanted to see for himself where the scroll had been found. So we made an expedition of it, including having Raffaele Conte take photographs for when we go public with our findings. But Conte texted me earlier to say he couldn’t make it and would be sending his assistant Cesco Rossi instead.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But it must have happened this morning. Because he came out to see me last night on an unrelated matter and gave no hint of it.’

  ‘An unrelated matter?’

  Santoro sighed. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many artefacts my museum owns. We exhibit only a fraction at any one time. The rest we store in warehouses around the city, using a variety of cataloguing systems – even including paper index cards, God help us. A terrifying number have been broken, degraded or simply gone missing over the years. Frankly, my predecessors didn’t dare look too hard for fear of what they’d find. Tackling it was one of my first tasks. We’ve just finished building two new warehouses out in Villaricca. Now we’re transferring all our artefacts out there, cataloguing them as we go onto a single database that we plan to put online. A massive project, as you can imagine, especially as every piece needs to be photographed along the way. Don’t get me wrong, a few snaps with a digital camera is fine for most. But perhaps a quarter of them warrant proper studio photography.’

  ‘So you hired Raffaele Conte?’

  ‘Exactly. Phase one was nearly finished. He came out last night to discuss phase two.’

  ‘At your home? Not at the museum?’

  ‘Raffaele was a friend. He often came to visit.’ But his eyes flickered to Professor D’Agostino, and he added: ‘Besides, there were politics involved.’

  ‘What kind of politics?’

  ‘Nothing important, I assure you. Nothing to do with this.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Izzo. But he decided to let it go for the moment. He looked around. ‘How did he even get in? The gate is left locked, yes?’

  ‘He had a museum phone. A laptop too, for that matter. They come loaded with electronic keys that give access to the sites you’re author
ised to visit. They keep a record too, of course. Your GPS location, numbers called and texted, that kind of thing. Intrusive, I know. But we all have them, including me. We deal with enormous numbers of extremely valuable artefacts. We can’t risk any more going missing.’

  Izzo squinted at him. ‘Are you saying you have a record of Conte’s recent movements and phone calls?’

  ‘Only the metadata. But yes. I could have it sent through, if it would help?’

  ‘Thank you, please. So who knew about this morning’s visit?’

  ‘It was hardly a secret. Anyone at the museum or library, as well as our staff out here. We didn’t want them getting alarmed when they saw our cars. I mean they’re all jumpy from that damned letter. Which is another thing, of course. Do you remember what it said?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘It threatened us with punishments cherished by the ancients for their cruelty. The very first one was known as the Sicilian Bull. Victims were locked inside a brass bull, then roasted alive for all to hear their screams.’

  ‘I know what the letter said.’

  ‘Yes. But did you realise that Conte drove a Lamborghini? A Lamborghini Gallardo, to be precise?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Lamborghini name their models after bulls. That’s why they use one for their marque. So what happened here this morning, Detective, is that someone locked my good friend Raffaele Conte inside a metal bull, then set it on fire as we arrived so we’d hear his screams. That is to say, they murdered him exactly as they threatened in that letter.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘And that was only the first punishment named. The first of seven. So tell me this, if you please. What if Raffaele is only this bastard’s first intended victim? What if there are six more of us yet to die?’

  Chapter Four

  I

  It was barely five kilometres from the Villa to Torre Del Greco Hospital, but the roads were narrow, busy and so winding that Lucia found herself rolling this way and that on the bolted-down trolley, even as the handsome young paramedic set about her treatment, putting her on fluids and morphine before cutting away her sleeve to better inspect the flesh beneath. The grimace that he gave when he saw her left forearm prompted her to take another look. Her skin was bubbled, mottled and flaky, and already turning such lurid colours that it filled her with a perverse pride. He touched her chin to steer her eyes to his, to gauge her state of mind.

  ‘Name?’ he asked.

  He was absurdly handsome, with light stubble, a strong chin and eyes of intense clear blue. She found herself faltering a little. ‘Lucia Conte.’

  ‘Age?’

  Another microsecond of hesitation. ‘Forty-four.’

  ‘Do you know what just happened?’

  ‘Do I look like an idiot?’

  He nodded, pleased. The morphine began to work, reducing the pain from hellish screech to manageable wail. It worked in another way, too, for when she closed her eyes it was only to see again her brother’s car as the fire started, the fawn blanket across its front seats, with the same crude yet evocative shape as those plaster casts of victims from Pompeii. The shock when he’d sat up, his hair matted, his mouth crudely sealed with tape and his wrists cuffed to the steering wheel by bracelets of steel wire. His eyes had still been blessedly groggy, but the flames had seared him awake to knowledge of his fate. And now she heard again his gagged screams of pain and rage as he’d squirmed this way and that in an effort to get free, twisting the blanket round himself as he did so, revealing the five-litre containers on the floor, their plastic melting even as she attacked the driver’s window with a rock, erupting into an inferno so fierce it had driven her backward despite knowing she was his one hope, watching helplessly as her beloved brother burned like the wick of a grotesque lamp.

  Another sharp right turn almost hurled her from the trolley. Her medic grabbed her by her shoulder. They sped up a short hill and screeched to a halt. The siren stopped. The rear doors flew open. Two more nurses unloaded her trolley and hustled her beneath the maroon portico of A&E and inside, past everyone in reception, clutching their numbered tickets like customers at a deli counter. A woman in a white coat appeared from nowhere to walk alongside, examining her arms, throat and face. She’d be her doctor, she explained. Dear God, but she was young. They were all so young. What had happened to her life? And pretty, too, despite the slight upwards curl of her chin, like a Persian slipper. Despite her youth, she spoke with reassuring authority, explaining that Lucia’s chest, right arm and her face appeared to have taken shallow first-degree burns that would hurt for a few days but which should heal without significant scarring. Her left arm, unfortunately, was another matter. It required prompt attention. Did she have any diseases, allergies or other conditions she needed to know about? Lucia looked at her blankly, the question taking her by surprise. The doctor repeated it. Lucia concentrated hard. She was pre-diabetic, she told her, and on the pill. She thought she might be allergic to nuts; but she’d stopped eating them rather than being tested. The doctor nodded. She’d need IV, supervised pain medication and regular dressing changes for the necrotic tissue to be debrided, and antibiotics and silver sulfadiazine to be applied. She should expect to stay in the hospital at least one day, probably two, perhaps three. It was possible she’d need a graft or cosmetic surgery at some stage, though they wouldn’t know that for a while yet. But mostly she needed to keep hydrated and to sleep. Did she understand? Did she have any questions?

  ‘No more morphine,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You’ll find the pain is—’

  ‘I don’t care. I need to talk to the police first.’

  ‘You need to rest. You need to manage your pain. The police can wait until—’

  ‘My brother was just murdered. I need to tell them what I know. And I can’t possibly stay here two days, let alone three. I have too much work to do. Important work.’

  ‘There’s no work more important than your health.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Lucia told her, with absolute certainty. ‘This is.’

  They emerged from a large lift she hadn’t even realised they’d gone into, then hurried along a wide corridor. Its left-hand wall was almost entirely made of glass, through which she could see the hospital’s psychiatric wing a short walk away up the hillside. All the white-robed patients were out on the balconies, summoned by her own siren. It brought back painful memories. Her mother had spent her last few weeks up there before hanging herself with a sheet. She and Raffaele had come to visit her after school. He’d been just twelve years old then, locked in gruelling combat with dyslexia until their Sicilian uncle had given him a cast-off camera for his birthday and transformed his life.

  The patients at the psychiatric unit had fascinated Raff. Their ruined faces, their empty or overly expressive gazes. After their visits were over, he’d made Lucia miss bus after bus home to wait for a siren ambulance while the light was just so in order to capture those ghostly figures as they came out onto their balconies. How she’d moaned at him! How relieved she’d been when he’d finally got his shot. He’d printed up copies himself in the school darkroom, back when they’d had such a thing. She could still remember the envious lurch of her heart on first seeing them and realising that he wasn’t some weakling pet for her to nurse, but rather – and despite her own accomplishments – the one with true talent.

  For a moment, she almost managed a proud smile. Then she recalled that the person she loved most in the world, the one who gave her joy, was lost to her for ever, and the howl of anguish she let out echoed through and through the building.

  II

  More police arrived at the Villa, both uniformed and plainclothed, to seal off the site, take statements, gather evidence. Cesco moved his Harley out of their way. Carmen came to join him. She looked distraught. Without a word, he took her in his arms and hugged her long and tight, their own recent strife rendered trivial by the morning’s tragedy.

  �
�Truce,’ she murmured.

  ‘Truce,’ he agreed.

  A plainclothes woman officer with spiky dyed red hair and humourless green eyes waited with strained patience for them to disengage. She introduced herself as Detective Valentina Messana and asked them for their statements. Her Biro refused to work properly. She kept scribbling it upon her pad to get the ink flowing again. Then she’d ask them to repeat whatever they’d just told her. A portly man in stained blue overalls approached. He had a tablet in his left hand and an expression that suggested he had something important to contribute. Messana invited him to speak. He owned the property next door, he told her, gesturing at the roofs of the grey polythene greenhouses visible over the site’s perimeter wall. He’d had trouble with vandals last year, so he’d put in CCTV. After learning of this morning’s tragedy, he’d checked his footage of the lane. He turned his tablet round, set it playing. Three seconds passed. A sports car drove by. The light was poor, the resolution modest, the footage black and white; but it was Raff’s Lamborghini for sure. You couldn’t see the driver, thanks to the angle and tinted glass, but you could make out its plate. The time stamp put it at 7:44.

  Messana had him fast-forward, pausing to note down the licence number of every car that passed until Taddeo Santoro arrived in his Discovery some thirty-five minutes later, followed by Cesco on his Harley. She thanked him, gave him a card, asked him to email the footage through. Then she turned to Cesco. ‘That text Conte sent you this morning. What time?’

  Cesco held up his phone for her to see. ‘Seven thirteen,’ he said.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Central Naples. Rione Sanità.’

  She did the calculation in her head, as they all did. Twenty kilometres, give or take. The roads were good, and he’d been going against the weight of traffic; but thirty-one minutes was still fast. ‘He must have set out right after,’ she murmured.