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saying, Chris?” Angela asked.
    Bronson briefly translated what the officer had just told him.
    “Somebody burgled the mortuary?” Angela sounded incredulous. “Why on earth would anyone want to do that?”
    “Was anything taken?” Bronson asked. “And when did it happen?”
    “We think the break-in occurred at about two or three in the morning. No valuables were stolen, as far as I know, apart from a camera.”
    “Then I have no alibi,” Bronson said, “except that my partner is a very light sleeper, and if I had got up and left the room, I’m sure she would have heard me. What damage was done?”
    “You saw a corpse, I believe, on the Isola di San Michele, at the Cimitero Comunale?” Bronson nodded. “Whoever broke into the mortuary removed its head, and scattered all the other bones and pieces of pottery, as if they were looking for something. And they stole an expensive digital camera.”
    Bronson leaned forward. He’d guessed that it had to be something to do with the events of the previous night; otherwise he could see no possible reason why the Italian police would want to question him.
    “It wasn’t us,” he said firmly. “If you want to search our room, you’re very welcome to do so. We’ve got nothingto hide, and absolutely no reason to steal an ancient skull or take a camera.”
    The Italian officer shrugged again and closed his notebook with a snap. As he did so, his radio emitted a static-laden squeak, and he turned his head and pressed the transmit button to respond. For some reason the radio reception in the hotel wasn’t particularly good, but despite that Bronson was able to make out a few phrases of the message that the carabinieri control room was passing. One in particular seized his attention: “there’s been another, but we’ve found this one.” Taken in isolation, this phrase seemed innocuous enough, but it clearly meant something more to the sergeant, who immediately gestured to his companion to leave the room.
    “How long will you be staying in Venice?” he asked Bronson.
    “For the rest of this week.”
    “Good. We may need to speak to you again.”
    “So what the hell was all that about?” Angela demanded, when they were once again on their own.
    “I’ve no idea,” Bronson replied, “but I intend to find out.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’m going to follow those two. Something’s going on, and it must be linked to that corpse we saw in the cemetery last night.”

9
    Marietta Perini woke with a yelp of fear as something brushed across her face. Her eyes snapped open. She rubbed desperately at her cheeks, but whatever had touched her—a fly or spider, or whatever it was—had disappeared. The rattle of the chain that secured her left wrist to the wall, and the impenetrable blackness that surrounded her, only confirmed her terror. The nightmare of her dreams was her living reality.
    She ran her hands over her body, checking that no other insects were anywhere on her skin or clothes, because she now knew the source of the noise that had so alarmed her the previous night. It was the sound of dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny pointed feet moving across the flagstone floor and along the walls. The cellar was alive with cockroaches.
    She had screamed at the realization, and had immediately lifted her feet off the floor and onto the mattress, away from what she’d felt sure was a plague of insectsheading toward her. And then she’d heard a louder, more pronounced scurrying noise, and she’d screamed again.
    Cockroaches were bad enough, but that noise had then convinced her that there were also rats or mice down there with her in the darkness.
    Within minutes, the sound seemed to have spread all around her, and she’d created a terrifying mental image of tens of thousands of cockroaches swarming onto the bed and all over her, and rats gnawing at her flesh. But actually, the reality had been considerably less traumatic. She’d continued hearing the insects and