The Third Shadow

Seven

"Lad'll have his fingers in a few pies," she commented. "Not-quite-legal ones like as not."

"Not just a snorter but a peddlar too perhaps."

"Plenty of them about."

The last reported transaction, she continued, was a current account withdrawal of two hundred and fifty euros from the Punto San Giacomo branch of Monte Paschi di Siena, this timed at 15.27 on the 25th, Sunday.

"Interesting," she mused. "Twelve hours before he and his brother go missing, makes a maximum cash withdrawal."

There might not have been anything in it perhaps. Cash has a way of evaporating into thin air at the best of times, and particularly whilst on holiday. A man of Bracewell's means would like to keep himself well supplied no doubt.

The checking of Sean's financial affairs had meanwhile proven a much more straightforward task, there being just one account to his name, this a joint affair with Sarah. No money had left it since a withdrawal of fifty euros on Thursday.

"Owe you a bottle of wine for all this, sergeant."

"I'd say you owe me a whole bloody crate's worth Jim. There is the small matter of a weekend's worth of petty crime still clogging up my in-tray."

"The usual town centre argy-bargy?"

"Saturday night wouldn't be Saturday night without a couple of ABH's. Telling you Jim, you're well off out of it."

My sentiments precisely, I thought.

*

Due perhaps to the limited time period the news crew had had to work on it, the story came in at number three on the regional bulletin that first evening; this behind an Egyptian building labourer fighting for his life after a four-storey fall from unstable scaffolding and the latest political corruption scandal involving high-up members of Bari city council.

A lingering close up of the brothers' faces cut to Nuzzo. His little remaining hair was neatly greased and combed for the cameras, I noted. He was seated at a table somewhere inside the caserma, a clutch of microphones and voice recorders before him. As seemed the custom with carabinieri press conferences, he was framed with a projected image of the force emblem behind and an officer standing over each shoulder. While he outlined the salient case details, a hotline number was superimposed across the bottom of the screen. Any members of the public with information shouldn't hesitate to get in touch... The standard line.

Most common amongst the initial flurry of calls were possible sightings of the Peugot in and around Punto San Giacomo that fateful early morning. Many would prove contradictory however, the vehicle placed in two completely different locations at the same time. Other callers reported hearing loud foreign voices in the town centre; though more than one was insistent the language was English, the voices would in fact later be traced to a holidaying, beer-swilling pair of Dutchmen. An octogenarian insomniac dogwalker meanwhile reported seeing figures on the beach in the vicinity of the holiday home, this from the improbable distance of four hundred metres up on the headland; in any case, the timing was an hour before the brothers' departure. Another caller swore blind that she'd seen the pair stumbling out of an edge-of-town disco at gone four a.m, but none of the staff or other clientele were able to substantiate this.

No, by far the most interesting call was to arrive from a one Giuseppe Rizzini, a paramedic based in the inland town of Oria. At around quarter to five of that Monday morning, his eventual statement would read, he and a colleague had been on their way back from a call-out at a nearby village. The suspected heart-attack to which they'd been summoned resulting as a stroke minor enough not to require hospital treatment, they were travelling without flashers or sirens and within civilian speed limits. The car which had passed was to stick in their memories for the simple fact that it was the only one they encountered on their journey home that night.

It was travelling in the opposite direction - north eastwards - along the minor road which links Punto San Giacomo and the main inland hub of Francavilla Fontana. At the time of the encounter, it would have been roughly halfway along the thirty kilometre stretch, deep into the Murge hills.

Though uncertain of make and model, both paramedics could confirm that it had been a dark-coloured hatchback. Furthermore, they were able to describe that as the ambulance had swung around a curve its headlights had picked out the silhouetted figure behind the wheel - a silhouette distinguished by the definite peak of a baseball cap.

There were no passengers, or at least none that they'd seen.

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