The Third Shadow

Twenty-six

Bill had never crossed the border himself; apart from the fact that 'daytripping' was frowned upon amongst military personnel, he'd never had any desire to. Even viewed through binoculars on the other side of the checkpoint, it had been clear that East Berlin was a starkly different world. 'The fire engines were from the 1920s. This was the 80s we're talking about!' I remember him shaking his head in sad conclusion: 'Someone'd have to be pretty desperate to actually choose to go and live there.'

"And Duggan or Brown," the comandante mused, once I'd finished my account. "Or whatever his name is. You think he was desperate enough?"

"I believe so, yes. I think Millwood had come after them again. Got wind they were in Cologne, asked around some of the building sites. Duggan found out, escaped to the only place he and his new family would be truly safe."

"Behind the iron curtain." Nuzzo pushed his lips out thoughtfully, reflected on this, the palm of his hand double sweeping over head. I wondered once more as to the absence of a wedding ring. The day he'd taken me for ice-cream, he'd mentioned a father-in-law who'd cultivated grapes. A divorcee like myself perhaps?

"Then things changed," he ruminated. "The wall came down. He become older, wanted to make contact with his first two sons."

"Just Lee I think. At least, for the time being. He'd only been a baby when Duggan had left. Wheras Sean... well, he'd been old enough to remember. Remember it well." I recalled Sarah's story: his seventh birthday, playing football with his mates in the park. "It was he rather than Lee who'd had to grow up fast, play the man of the house. Only natural that he'd be the angrier one of the two. The more bitter."

I told Nuzzo too about the naming of the boutiquue chain, Lee's ode to to his paternal grandmother. He would almost certainly have been receptive to what Olivia had termed a reconnection with that side of his family.

"Maybe it was this they argued about,"  Nuzzo concluded. "Not the guns but theit father."

Following for a moment the glide of a distant gull silhouetted against the sea, I poured myself a second glass of wine. Yes, it had to have been over something  particularly intense for the argument to have led to such a tragic conclusion. The return of an erstwhile father. A sense of fraternal betrayal.

"I'd be almost convinced of it," I responded. "Just that--'

"It was Lee who became angry with Sean, not the contrary."

"Unless---"

Again, I found myself interrupted: "We are dealing with a case of self defence."

I took a sip of wine, twitched my shoulders. "We'll probably never know for sure."

I thought of what Marston had said in the pub that morning, his belief that Bracewell had simply ended his own life somewhere. As a hypothesis, wasn't it just as valid as mine?

Nuzzo was smiling encouragingly at me. "It's something which Interpol can work with at least." He tossed down the last drop of wine in his glass, winced and groaned as he scraped back his chair, got to his feet "I'll inform them straightaway. "

He took a couple of steps away, then twisted his neck back in my direction. "You know ispettore, with all this galavanting around you seem a boy of twenty." He regarded me seriously for a moment. "Men of our age, we must take things a little more slowly." He turned again, lumbered off to the marked Alfa Romeo, a raised hand of goodbye.

"It's why you came here, no? The south of Italy. To take things slowly."

*

As the commander's progress back down the slope was marked by a trailing dust cloud, I rooted the business card Marston had given me from my wallet, lifted up my phone. He was interested in what I had to tell him about my little German adventure, promised to do a little more digging around at his end. 

I then clambered into the van, drove it the short distance to the outbuilding, opened up the back doors. The unsold boxes of wine were testament to the trip's miserable failure. A manifestation of utter folly. Who had I been kidding when I'd thought I'd be able to make a decent living from the production of wine? Pay the bills by indulging in a hobby? You don't rise to the rank of DCI without a bit of plain common sense, but this time it seemed to have deserted me.

It was as I was unloading the boxes that Ellie's call came. Bracing myself, I pressed receive...

"Where the hell have you been dad? You think it's grown up behaviour to leave your phone switched off for..." Wincing, I snatched the phone momentarily away from ear. For a petite little thing, my daughter could be hellishly loud at times. "... absolutely worried sick."

The tirade seemingly over, I murmured an apology. How quickly the years had passed, I thought. It didn't seem so long ago that roles had been reversed: I the one to do the telling off, she who'd been sheepishly apologetic.

Her sigh was difficult to read. Subsiding anger, continued preoccupation, resigned acceptance. Maybe a little of all three.

I'd seated myself on the edge of the van bed. The vehicle angled directly to the evening sun, the rearside cool was refreshing.

"It's been over two years now dad."

The long successive pause lent her statement a sense of isolation, self containment. As if no further elaboration were necessary.

Two years, I reflected. Not much really in comparison to twenty-eight. Not much at all.

"Time to move on," she finally concluded.

"I have!" I shot back. "About two thousand miles!"

"Emotionally, dad. It's time to move on emotionally."

I remembered what Diane had said, that everybody gets over everything eventually, that it just takes some people more time than others. I wondered if it were true or just another of those hollow pleasantries humankind has invented for itself.

"You're not so old and clapped out you know." There was a faint nasal snigger, trying to inject a little lightness into the conversation. "Not just yet, anyway. There's still time dad. You could find someone else."

I thought again of Diane, our second near miss sixteen years after the first. Yes, I'd been thinking about that a lot as it happened...

"You're not such a bad catch," Ellie continued. "For an old timer I mean." Again, there was a cheeky snigger. "You must have taken some signora's eye. Some dusky mediterranean divorcee or widow."

"My social circle's still pretty limited," I admitted.

"You need to get out more."

I hadn't come to Italy to get out more though. Exactly the opposite: I'd come to Italy to get out less. As Nuzzo had put it, to take things more slowly.

"You think she's happy?" I asked.

The reply was immediate, unsparing: "Yes dad, she's happy. It glows off her. Happier than she's been for years."

And a small part of me - that noble, selfless  fraction of me - felt something approaching gladness.