The Third Shadow

Forty-one

"Let's take a little stroll," he suggested as we exited the gelateria and stepped back onto the promenade.

Taking a little stroll in the company of a southern Italian is a much more complicated activity than one might imagine. First of all there is the snail-like pace you have to adapt your own step to. Even more difficult to get used to is their tendency to pause every time they wish to make particular point or counter-point, swish their hands about in gesticular reinforfement.

"It's natural that he didn't want any ball-breaking journalists around."

I was forced to swivel on my heels, the comandante having suddenly halted a couple of paces behind.

"Nobody wants ball-breaking journalists around. That's why he told the girl to lie if anybody asked for him."

I'd just recounted my visit to the boutique in Nottingham city centre two weeks earlier. The tongue-pierced shop assistant, the car parked a little further along the street outside - a red Mini Cooper with union jack on the roof, just as Marston had described to me in the pub a little earlier that morning. I'd never told Nuzzo of this before; hadn't considered it significant. But now... Now yes, I was starting to believe it might have been. Hugely so perhaps.

"That's what I'm trying to say," I countered. "That maybe he had a very particular reason to keep his name and his face out of the media spotlight."

Tongue recommencing its ice-cream licking, Nuzzo fell once more into step beside me. The town was by now starting to rouse itself from its post-lunch lethargy; from the side streets to our right emerged ever increasing numbers of flip-flopped beachgoers returning to their lido umbrellas for the final hours of afternoon sun.

"What if the rumours are true?" I continued. "What if Olivia and he really are romantically involved? What if they'd been having an affair before the disappearance?" Marston had certainly suspected as much, I seemed to remember. I remembered too entering Olivia's bedroom in the holiday bungalow that time, the polite knock on the door, her towel-wrapped figure perched on the edge of the bed post-shower. That casual way she'd identified the final number Lee had called as Loacke's. How she'd double-checked with the contacts list of her own phone as if to make one hundred per cent certain. Yet another of her little acts, I now wondered, like her feigned surprise at the missing passport the day before? Very possibly, I thought, yes. And wasn't it also highly probable that the call hadn't been some routine business matter, as Loacke had reported to the Nottinghamshire CID - a meeting with a Coventry-based textile supplier, if I remembered correctly - but had in fact been far more personal and vitriolic of nature?

It was my turn now to pause my step; I was becoming ever more Italian by the day. The point I wanted to make was important, needed that extra element of reinforcement.

"The baby. What if it's his?"

Perhaps Lee had found out, yes. Had had some kind of inkling at least. Wouldn't that explain his distractedness that weekend? The forced smile and lowered brow on the media-saturated photograph?

Nuzzo's feet ground back into first gear, moved a step or two ahead. "All this is possible," he agreed as I caught him up. "Young people, they have hormones. They make mistakes." Halting again, he swivelled around to me. "But those other things you say. That he came here some weeks before, planned everything..." Smiling, he wafted out a dismissive hand, stepped off on his way again. "You have a fine imagination, ispettore, this I concede. Now you are retired you should write novels. Whodunits. Agatha Christie, Andrea Camilleri, they have nothing on you."

It was then that his phone rang. Unable to recall which pocket he'd put it in, he apologetically handed me over his ice cream cone, left me staring down at the dome of saliva-glossed stracciatella as he patted both hands to shirt, front of jeans, then backside. Finally locating it in left rear pocket, he snatched it out, managed to hit the respond button before the caller's patience might reasonably run out.

"Si, sono io." Glancing across at me, he breathed out a whisper: "State police." For a few moments there was a complicated sort of dance, one I experienced a little difficulty in keeping up with: a step forward, a long pause, two steps forward, a short pause, another step forward and so on and so forth. All the while his head was nodding like a woodpeckers at a tree trunk: "Si...si...capisco...si" I could already sense a change in his demeanour however, similar to Ciavarella's call at the dining table an hour or so earlier- his brow lowered, suddenly serious.

"Grazie, grazie mille" he finished, swiping the call to end.

His expression as he looked back up at me was ambiguous, difficult to read. Something that may have been approaching admiration but one mixed with the deepest of annoyance.

The ice-cream had meanwhile started to melt, was dribbling out over my thumb. I passed it back to him, but the leakage seemed not to interest him, his gaze upon me steady and unwavering.

"For the love of God, ispettore, can't you just stop being right about everything for once?"