Chapter 9 - The Tomb

High heels clacked on the tiled floor of the hotel bar. Ike craned over her neck to check out the newcomer.

Shalon.

"May I join?" she asked. "I can't just go to bed. I keep thinking about that poor woman."

"Welcome to the club," Ike said and felt guilty because the arrival of the other guide gave her the perfect excuse to order a second glass of wine. And she really should walk the poor dog.

Shalon grabbed a beige beanbag from the neighbouring table and dropped on it from a great height. Ike twitched aside, expecting the bag to explode and shoot styrofoam pellets in all directions. But despite being roughly of the same shape and size, Shalon appeared to be a lot lighter than she was.

"Gals that sure counts as the worst day in my life."

"Unfortunately, I know exactly what you're talking about." Ike speared an olive from the fresh pot the waiter had delivered with the second round.

"Is everything sorted?" Brigitte asked.

"Well, as far as possible. The embassy is involved, next of kin informed, what else can I do? If only my boss weren't such a . . . Well, he's not very understanding. He'll probably sack me for gross negligence."

Brigitte looked up from her fizzy water. "Ah, bah. Try not to worry so much. Is the guy here in Rome?"

"Oh no, he's got plenty of tours to organise. Doesn't get to travel a lot himself. He had a motorcycle accident as a teen and can't walk so well. These days, he's mostly in a wheelchair. Doesn't stop him from hitting on me. "

Shalon's eyes, blue rather than Ike's brown-flecked green, narrowed. A small pout formed on her rosebud lips. Another difference between the American and her: Ike knew her mouth was too generous, but then she had plenty of use for it.

"See, that's the other problem. He wants me, but I don't want him back. He'll ditch me eventually, just because of that."

"Men," said Ike and two heads nodded their understanding. Unfair on Gary perhaps who might be a tick cucumberish (quite a lot actually) but at least he wasn't a total tosser which Shalon's boss seemed to be. His lordship also wasn't Ike's boss and overall not a bad bloke. If he only would relax once in a while. But he was dependable, intelligent—everything Ben, her blasted ex, hadn't been. But then, one didn't get attracted to a man only because he made such a great backup.

And smelled nice. Kind of spicy.

Ah bah, as Brigitte would say.

Ike reigned in her rambling thoughts, just in time to hear a male bass rumbling above her. "Good evening, ladies." Viktor, the German archaeologist, had arrived.

Boris dashed towards him with a happy yip. The big man bent down and fondled his paws. "Hey there, how are you doing, doggie?"

Over his bent back, a second male shape hovered, that one much smaller: Graziano, his Italian colleague.

Ike leaned backwards in her chair and craned her neck at the hunk blocking the light. "Don't tell me the cop took that long to interrogate you?"

White teeth materialised somewhere in the middle of Viktor's bushy beard. "Nothing to worry about. I told that detective chappie what I remembered, Graziano did likewise, and we were out pretty fast."

Interesting. That didn't quite tally with Ike's experience.

"He's arrested by Mr Baxter," Shalon said indignantly. She still carried a frown on her smooth forehead, indicating Brigitte and Ike were not forgiven their lapse.

Graziano dived under a ham-like sleeve featuring a lumberjack check pattern and came closer. "Yes. I asked about that but Guidetti, he—how do you say? Mussled up?"

"Clammed up," Shalon and Ike chorused.

"Grazie. This is not why we are here, though. Are you ladies ready for a little adventure?"

Brigitte raised an elegant eyebrow. Shalon did that rosebud thing with her mouth again.

Ike emptied her glass. "It's almost eleven o'clock. If you mean, are we ready for some nightlife the answer is no. At my age, I need my beauty sleep."

Brigitte raised the other eyebrow. "Where does that leave me? At my age one doesn't sleep anymore, non?"

Viktor's beard issued two brief barks, his way of expressing hilarity. "Not offering you nightlife, ladies. Graziano wants to return to the catacombs and needs a few more pairs of eyes. He spotted something in the tomb."

###

Graziano flipped a switch, and the strip lighting in the catacombs flickered into buzzing life. For a moment, shadows danced over the empty alcoves in the wall, then, as the brightness increased, they disappeared into the gaping mouths of the ledges that once sheltered the shrouded bodies of dead Christians.

The earthy, musty odour Ike had noticed earlier was overlain by the more pungent smells of sweat and chemicals left behind by the police. Another sign of their presence was the plastic band stretched across the entrance to the domed room with the marble walls.

"Uh," Ike said. "What if the cops find us here?"

And what if Boris found a bone? So far, he had been exceptionally well behaved and had to be in scent-heaven. But one never knew.

"They're gone," Graziano said. It sounded like gonna.

How she would have loved to be a goner herself. One day she would learn not to act on instinct. What she should have done was politely decline the kind offer of a ministry visit at the witching hour. Like Shalon. What she had done was change her clothes and join the ride in Graziano's clapped out van. It had zipped through a nighttime Rome, its streets busier than ever, while a whiffy Boris panted on her lap. Well, at least Brigitte was in on the trip. And she would have to get up a lot earlier.

Somehow, neither the early start nor their spooky environment seemed to bother the intrepid Frenchwoman. "So, this room is where Mrs Baxter fell?"

"No," Graziano said. "That's a few metres on. Follow me, please. And do stick to the walls as close as you can. The last thing we need is more people crashing through the floor. That policeman had a go at me. Told me, I was irresponsible."

"You're not," Viktor said in a soft tone that sounded odd coming from the giant. "Back on Castle Frankenstein, we're struggling with the same problems. People think danger signs are a joke and can be ignored. Blame it on the Play Stations. If you die, you can always go back one level. Not so in real life."

Mrs Baxter had not belonged to the generation play station, but that was neither here nor there.

They bent under the white and blue plastic tape that blocked the entrance to the dome room. Ike's glance flitted across its marbled interior, but other than the marks of many a booted foot in the soft dust on the ground and some stacked Starbuck's coffee carton in one corner not much evidence betokened a police investigation. Next, her gaze fell on the wooden fence Mrs Baxter had climbed over. It stood pushed against one wall and was covered in a darkish powder with little numbers stuck on the wood.

"Is that the barricade Mrs Baxter climbed across?" Brigitte asked.

"Yes," Ike responded. "Looks like the police have been trying to work out whether she climbed or was pushed. My bet is on the former." Ike pointed at the pattern of a sturdy sole showing on the top plank decorated with a sheet of paper featuring the number one.

"What if the cops come back?" Brigitte had a knack of putting Ike's thoughts into words. Especially those she tried to shove down that big blank sinkhole in her mind.

"No, no," Graziano said. "My friend at the ministry told me when they went. And they said they were finished, only needed to clear up. Tomorrow. Well, today actually. But later. Nothing to worry about."

He stepped towards one side where planks had been placed on the ground, covered in dusty footsteps. More plastic tape, upheld by metal poles drilled into the planks formed a flimsy handrail and barred access to the fragile footing in the corridor's central part. On the left and the right, the tombs towered and seemed to lean towards each other at the ceiling, as if undecided whether or not to collapse in a heap and bury the late-night visitors.

Single file, they followed Graziano, their footsteps scuffling along the planks until he called a halt.

Someone had strung more police tape across the width of the corridor, fastened to a metal pole on the right and a chunk of rock protruding from a burial ledge on the left. From the jagged hole gaping in the floor behind it rose a ladder and a few of the old graves had been pressed into service to hold strong lamps, their cables criss-crossing what remained of the floor until they disappeared under the wooden plankway.

"We should be safe," Graziano said in a hushed tone. "Our ground radar showed cavities from this spot onwards. The tomb must have been the first of them."

"I wouldn't like to try my luck and move any further," Brigitte said and rose on her toes to peep into the hole.

"If the cops made it, we should be okay as well." Viktor unwound the tape from the rock prodded the floor with his boot before shifting his weight into the corridor.

The floor held.

Graziano slipped past him. "You need to come here. Otherwise, you can't see it."

Brigitte gave a Gallic shrug before joining the two men.

The floor still held.

Three was okay. Four might be a crowd.

The dog scooted across and stood at the edge of the hole, stumpy tail wagging.

Don't be a wimp!

Ike sucked in air as if that would make her any lighter and shuffled along the side until she reached the ragged cavity in the floor and took a peep.

A broken oblong Graziano had called a couch. Pieces of wood. Pottery shards and three intact amphorae leaning against the wall. And the skeleton, its bones mingled in with the broken furniture, as if the Vestal had died while reclining on her couch.

Assuming she had been a Vestal.

"See this?" Graziano said and pointed into the hole.

Ike only noticed dusty darkness. "Eh, no?"

"On the left." He pointed. "There's a writing on the wall."

Do let me know if you have questions or comments on my novel. Constructive suggestions and feedback are always welcome! And thank you for reading. In doing so, you give my writing a purpose.

Image by darksouls from Pixabay