There was no point even trying to keep dry in water so deep. Carmen stripped down to her underwear, then pulled her boots back on. She fed herself feet first into the pipe and then through the hole, grabbing the wall to lower herself the other side, feeling for the water with her feet, only to receive another shock when it spilled in the top of her boots. ‘It’s hot,’ she told Lucia. ‘At least…’ She tested it again. ‘It’s warm. Very warm. Like a bath that’s been left to sit a minute.’
‘Vesuvius,’ said Lucia.
‘Yes.’ She lowered herself deeper, up to her hips, yet still hadn’t touched bottom. Her grip was increasingly awkward, twisting her shoulder. She let go altogether, trusting to the water to brace her fall. She sank up to her knees in a hot sludge of sand and grit atop a bed of loose stones and rocks. She tried to turn but the sludge was so thick she had to lift her knees high before her feet plopped free. Then they promptly plugged again. Her torch was still bobbing in the water, throwing out dizzying waves of yellow light. She grabbed it and turned it on Lucia as she appeared above her. ‘Can you get back out?’ she asked. ‘Without help, I mean?’
Carmen considered. She grabbed the Sabine woman’s outstretched arm, put a foot on her abductor’s heel, then hauled herself up. Water washed off her. She waved Lucia aside, grabbed the sides of the opening and made to pull herself back through. But there was no need. ‘Easy,’ she said.
‘Great. Then out my way. I’m coming down.’
‘What about your burns?’
‘That’s what the morphine’s for. And if you think I’m missing this…’ She passed through their packs, then turned round and lowered herself, tumbling inelegantly into the water, sending a wave splashing up the passage. But she righted herself easily enough, strapped her pack back on. The Sabine statue was angled across the passage. There was no way around it, so Carmen ducked beneath the horse’s belly. Lucia joined her a moment later. They squeezed between the huntsman horse and the colossus. Their feet kept sinking in the sludge. More statues followed, frozen in time like Pompeii dead. A matriarch with coiled hair and her chin lifted in disdain. A bearded, bald old man with a philosophical frown. A young serving girl with a bowl of fruit. A barbarian with a battleaxe. Carmen photographed them all. The passage ramped slowly upwards. The sludge came only to her shins, the water to her ribs. They passed beyond the last of the statues. A line of open doorways to their left, like arches beneath an aqueduct. To their right, by contrast, the bedrock was cut with niches like a wine rack, each one containing an amphora.
‘The cellar,’ murmured Lucia.
‘Shouldn’t that be beneath the house?’
‘Not when you build it right by the sea.’
The first doorway led into a large, low, windowless chamber waist deep in water. Anything that had ever been in here had long since rotted away. So too the second, third and fourth chambers. Then a flight of steps took them up out of the water altogether. The amphorae were now stacked rather than in alcoves, with the largest at the bottom, growing progressively smaller as they rose. Many had toppled over the centuries, some shattering into fragments, their innards dark with residue. She picked up an intact one. Its weight surprised her. She turned it around in her hands. Its seal was stamped with markings. A vintage perhaps. They continued on. The next chamber had large pits in its floor, each containing a huge earthenware jar packed in sand and covered by a round flat lid.
‘Grain,’ murmured Carmen. From Carthage, most likely, where the richest families had all owned estates. They went back out. The passage went on and on. Rome had been top dog for so long it was easy to forget how hard life could get. Invasions, uprisings, raids, riots and plague. So they’d taken food storage seriously, salting, smoking and honey-glazing their meat and fish, packing fruits and vegetables into barrels. The wealthiest had even cut great blocks of ice out of mountain glaciers to line the walls of special ice rooms to keep their supplies fresh and their drinks cold through the summer. And where better than here to protect their most prized belongings from Vesuvius? Perhaps that explained the St Paul scroll outside. Someone had been bringing it here for safekeeping, only to drop it in the pandemonium. Just as well. All this groundwater would have destroyed any scrolls centuries ago, maybe even reducing them to the hot sludge they’d been wading through.
A pair of cisterns next, with spiral steps around beehive mounds. They peered in through the open tops, torches reflecting dully off scummy water. Then came a room with hollows in its sandy floor, relics of where barrels had once been. Finally the passage ended in a wall half hidden behind more amphorae. But there was one last chamber to check out – an abattoir, with marble butchery tables, rusted hooks in its ceiling, and the floor carpeted with hides, bones and bleached white skulls with haunting eye sockets and grinning mouths. A shiver ran through Carmen at the sight, as though they’d been afforded a glimpse of their own fates if they didn’t hurry. She glanced at Lucia. Lucia nodded. They turned together to leave.
Valentina Messana looked at Izzo in bewilderment. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I thought Alberts confessed.’
‘He did,’ said Izzo.
‘Then…?’
‘He wanted to get shot,’ Cesco told her. ‘He needed to be considered dangerous and deserving of death.’
‘But why?’ asked Messana. ‘If he didn’t murder anyone, then why?’
‘This clears him of killing Conte,’ said Izzo. ‘Not of killing Santoro.’
‘Except he had an alibi for that, remember?’
‘Hardly a solid one.’ He scratched his forehead. ‘And if he’s innocent…’
‘He’d just destroyed a sacred scroll. Maybe he thought death fitting. Disgrace was certain. Excommunication, defrocking, loss of livelihood, vilification, prison. Add in his shame over a gay hook up that he feared would be discovered…’
‘Fine,’ said Izzo. ‘Then who did kill Santoro?’
‘The Americans,’ suggested Messana. ‘They realised Conte’s camera gave Santoro a hold over them, so they went back for it. He wouldn’t give it up so they tortured him with the stun gun. His heart gave out. They dressed it up like another death threat, then tried to open the safe anyway. Only our friend here arrived. So they zapped him too and fled.’
‘Can’t have been Harcourt,’ said Cesco. ‘She was in Turkey.’ He brought up Twitter to show them, only to discover that she’d just posted another selfie, waving farewell to Istanbul from an open-topped sports car. And Vernon, back in his chauffeur’s livery, was clearly visible over her shoulder.
‘God dammit,’ muttered Izzo. He turned to Messana. ‘Find out what flight they’re taking. Have them met.’ He beckoned Cesco to the window to let her work. ‘Not them, then. Which takes us back to Alberts, yes? How else do we explain the honey and the glazing brush? How else do we explain the knife?’ The stationery on his desk began suddenly to rattle, as if at a passing train. But the railway line was too far distant for that. It stopped again. They smiled relief at one another. Then it returned, far more violently. Car alarms went off outside, while the building itself shook so hard that books fell from desks and shelves. They both instinctively turned to the window, but thankfully the great volcano showed no—
A vast grey geyser exploded suddenly from its peak – except no, it was the peak itself that had exploded, an unimaginable quantity of rock pulverised in a millisecond and blasted straight upwards into the already jet-black skies.
‘Dear God,’ muttered Izzo. ‘My son.’
‘Carmen,’ said Cesco.
They glanced at one another, then at Valentina. Without another word, they sprinted for the stairs.