The Third Shadow

Thirty-seven

Those next few days were hard, back-breaking ones out amongst the vines, spray tank strapped over my shoulders. As with previous sprays, the herculean effort of the harvest, I was surprised by the edifying effect of manual labour out in the open air. Perhaps true wisdom is the realm only of farmers, of building site labourers. The pain and the sweat, they're restoring somehow. Reinvigorating to the soul. Come the evening I was too tired to get drunk. A glass or two, just enough to become healthily mellow, that was all I needed.

On several occasions my labours were interrupted by the sound of vehicles struggling their way up the dirt track: passing motorists tempted by the wine-on-tap sign I'd knocked into the verge of the coast road below. At the sound of my accent reactions ranged from surprise to open hostility: what the hell did an Englishman know about making wine? The same doubts I'd always harboured myself; doubts which however seemed to evaporate with the nods of approval upon the complementary tasting I offered them. Mica male. Not bad at all.

It was a cautiously optimistic James Jacks who'd thus return to the vines, wince and gasp spray tank back over his shoulders. The ball had been set rolling, the word was out there. The old De Ruvo place. There's a sign. Un inglese , but the wine's pretty good. Sells it cheap.*

As worked my way steadily along each line, my toils soundtracked by the repetitive hiss off the spray gun, it was inevitable that my thoughts would shift towards the Bracewell brothers' case. It seemed Nuzzo had lost interest. Given up, drawn down the shutters. Convinced himself there was nothing more which could be done, not at our end at least.

As for me, I just couldn't shake it though. The possibility that the figures Rocco Quaranta had seen had been Lee and Sean Bracewell.

Them, yes.

And that mysterious someone else too of course.

*

On the Friday evening I took a quick drive into town, checked my bank balance at the cashpoint - the same at which Lee Bracewell had withdrawn the maximum daily cash allowance only a matter of hours before he and his brother's disappearance.

The transfer had gone through; the sum, in fact, substantially  more than the basic subsistence I'd calculated to see me through until that year's vintage would be ready for sale the following spring.

My feelings were ambiguous, difficult to define. On the one hand, that line of four figures to the left of the decimal point - decimal comma, in fact, in Italian notation - seemed reassuringly long. Soothingly substantial. Velvety, enduring. But lurking just under the surface of my relief were the much darker forms of guilt, failure, a sense of inadequacy. The fear that, despite my determination and best efforts, I might never be able to pay it all back.

*

It was as I was driving back to the vineyard that Marston's call came. I pulled over onto a convenient patch of scrubland at the side of the road, snatched my thumb to the receive button just in time before a caller's patience might reasonably run out.

"Jim! Hi, it's me. Steve. How's it going?"

There was the tell-tale murmur of voices in the background. Laughter, a faint beat of music. His chirpiness, I had little doubt, was beer-induced.

"Can't complain," I replied, that most British of all euphemisms.

"Me too, me too."

Both of us, talking in code. For all our other differences, in terms of loneliness, confusion about the way life had turned out, I sensed in him something of a kindred spirit.

"Listen," he then went on. "I was wondering... Well, I mean... If you might have something for me."

"Out of ideas for tomorrow's copy?" I'd held out little hope that it might have been a purely social call.

"Now the funeral's over, things have started to dry up a bit, yea."

I gazed out between the passing traffic to the sea, the undulations of the in-rushing breakers sharply defined in the deepening sunset. The same sea in which Lee Bracewell had washed his hands of his brother's blood, I reminded myself.

"When was it?" I asked.

"Yesterday morning. Beeston Crematory." There was a pause - sombre somehow, reflective. "I took a little wander along. Some of the national press was there as well. Think we were all waiting... You know, see if-"

"Olivia would show up."

"Right."  There was another brief pause - moist this time: a gulp of beer. "Didn't though of course."

Just as well, I thought: no-one wanted a scene at a funeral.

"Inspector Tanner took her down the station for a couple of hours Saturday evening," he then informed me. "Apart from that, I'm pretty sure she hasn't left the house." He hushed his voice a little; whether in secrecy or shame, it was unclear. "Me and a couple of the tabloid guys, between us we've been keeping a  more or less twenty-four-seven vigil."

"A couple of hours you say? At the station."

"Came for her a little before seven, brought her back a little after nine."

As I myself had done ten months earlier, Tanner had no doubt hoped the threat of accessory charges might shake something out.

"I've got a contact there," Marston continued. "One of the DCs who works under Tanner. You scratch my back... You know how it works." In the background I could hear the squeal of door hinges; the general background murmur disappearing, his voice now lent a sudden echoey quality. "Seems she's still sticking to her story. The one she told you and Inspector Nuzzo." I let the imprecision pass; by this point I'd grown tired of correcting people's ignorance of carabinieri ranks.

"She had any visitors?" I asked.

But on the other end of the line came just a relieved kind of sigh, a faint, watery trickle. "Hang on a sec." Then, some moments later: "Ah, that's better." Once more there was the sound of running water - stronger this time, faster. "Loake pays a visit most evenings. He's careful though. Hasn't stayed the night -  not since the body was discovered, anyhow. Sneaks off again after an hour or so." An airy blast caused Marston to raise his voice a little. "Just long enough to... You know..."

Yes, I'd got his gist. "No-one else?"

"The usual cleaning woman that comes a couple of times a week." In the background I could hear the creak of hinges once more, the thronged, chattering voices of the clientele. "Polish or Ukranian or something, barely speaks a word of English." A moist squelch signified he'd returned to his pint. "Apart from that, no-one else, no."

I recalled mine and Olivia's little face-to-face of two weeks earlier. That sprawling, airy flat, the baby paraphernalia scattered all around. The same thing which had struck me then was striking me again now. Though she'd answered most of my questions fully, forthrightedly, there'd been that one matter on which she'd been reticent, yes...

Probably it was nothing, a complete irrelevance. But if - as I had begun to suspect - her involvement in the events of that tragic, late-August night went deeper than had previously been imagined, it was important to get as complete a picture of the woman as possible.

"Listen, I might have something for you, yes..."

The recent re-examination of Rocco Quaranta's hotline call was something I was sure Nuzzo would be loathed to share with the press - one could only begin to imagine the headlines should the British tabloids get hold of it - but I felt that Marston and I had reached a certain level of mutual trust. Thus far, he'd proved himself as worthy a digger-upper of useful tidbits as any DC I'd ever known. In return, he got exclusive access to the kind of inside source his national-level colleagues would give their right arms for. It seemed unlikely that he would want to compromise this by going to print with something before I gave explicit approval.

"I need you to do something for me though first," I continued. "You scratch my back... You know how it works." By echoing his own words, I reminded him of his role in our arrangement. "Just wonder, if you could spare a few hours, whether you'd be on for a little trip down to Stamford."

"Olivia's hometown?" His tone was quizzical, intrigued.

"Olivia's hometown, yes. Her background, Marston. I need you to find out everything you can about her background."