Dante's Numbers by David Hewson

he came up with the key. Then, with Quattrocchi in the lead, they went in.
    It was dark and church-like. The only illumination came from a low light in the ceiling which was focused on a mass of tangled wires, mechanical contraptions, and constricting devices near the end of the room. A man—Allan Prime—was at the heart of this ganglion of metal and cable, strapped tightly into an upright frame, the open iron device around his head. A tourist print of the painting of Galatea fluttered behind him, animated by the breeze from an open window. On the floor, connected to the whole by a slender cable, sat a single notebook computer, its screen flashing a slow-moving image of something so unlikely it took Quattrocchi a moment to recognise what it was…the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
    From behind, the caretaker, unaware of what lay before them, chanted, “You will note, sir, the perspectives of another Rome… Trastevere and the Borgo… the centro storico… painted as if real views from real windows. Also—”
    Coming in last, he finally saw, and stopped.
    Allan Prime whimpered. Pain and relief mingled with the tears on his sweat-stained face.
    Quattrocchi walked forward, as close as he dared, and took a good look around the mechanical apparatus into which the actor had been strapped, checking carefully for traps or some kind of light signal device that might have been set to warn of an intruder's approach, and perhaps trigger the mechanism early.
    He saw none, but the gleaming sharp point had now edged its way to within a centimetre of the actor's left temple.
    The mechanism that held the deadly device was hidden in the deep, dark shadow outside the garish, too-bright overhead light. Carefully, barely breathing, Quattrocchi took out a penlight and shone it on the space there. A low, communal gasp of shock ran through the cluster of officers behind him. A full-size crossbow, of such power and weight it could only be designed for hunting, stood loaded, locked inside some ratchet mechanism that shifted it towards its victim with each passing minute. It was not just the spear—which he now saw to be an arrow—that was moving in the direction of Allan Prime. It was an entire weapon, ready to unleash its sharp, spiking bolt straight into the man's skull.
    “Four minutes,” Morello said, and sounded puzzled.
    “We will release you immediately,” Quattrocchi said calmly.
    “You have nothing to fear. Four minutes is more than enough—”
    “Sir…” the young Carabiniere interrupted.
    Quattrocchi turned, annoyed by this intrusion.
    “Something is happening,” the officer pointed out.
    He walked carefully towards the maresciallo and showed him the phone.
    The picture was changing. Quattrocchi grappled for the correct term. Finally it came. Zooming. The camera was zooming out of the scene. He looked at the single grey eye of the device that had been set up in front of Allan Prime. Its glassy iris was changing shape, as if trying to focus on something new.
    When he returned to Morello's phone, Quattrocchi saw himself there, looking surprised, angry, red-faced, and, to his dismay, rather old and lost as he stood next to the terrified actor strapped into the deadly frame.
    From a place Quattrocchi couldn't initially pinpoint came the deep, loud, disembodied rattle of a man's laughter, cruel, uncaring, determined too. Someone gasped in shock and, perhaps, terror.
    A lilting, laughing voice, male, probably American, issued from the computer, and spoke in English.
    “Say cheese. Say…”
    There was a sound like water rushing through air, then a scream that was strangled before it could grow into a full-throated cry.
    Quattrocchi turned his back on the apparatus, not wishing to witness what was happening to Allan Prime. On the floor of the Salone delle Prospettive, in a sixteenth-century nobleman's version of an illusory paradise, he saw instead an elderly caretaker who was on his knees, crossing himself, turning his