Inside, the holiday bungalow was much as one might expect: perfectly neat and functional but clearly furnished on a tight budget. Cupboards and cabinets were of the flat pack variety. The TV was similar to my own back at the vineyard - a relic of a thing little bigger than a shoebox. To the rear was a small, basic kitchen; the front part of the living area was meanwhile centred by a round, chip-marked table which looked like it had been dusted down from somebody's attic. The environment was light though, pleasantly airy, the kitchen window doors looking out onto a pretty rear patio complete with wrought iron table and chairs, a slice of Ionian visible beyond. The beach was public here, a little rockier than the main stretch in town. Not so crowded, twenty or thirty metres separating each umbrella-centred encampment. Just visible beneath the nearest of these was an untidy sprawl of beach bags and bared limbs. Further out, a circle of ant-like figures were tossing a volleyball around, others taking shoreline strolls, throwing themselves into the crested lines of incoming waves.
"That's the thing with the world," murmured Sarah, following my gaze. "Just sort of carries on regardless." She motioned that I should join her and Olivia at the table. "Another bit, was going to call you anyway. Those thirty-six hours up yet you think?"
As near as damn it, I thought, reaching into pocket for my phone. As a precaution, Nuzzo and I had swapped numbers the previous afternoon, but I don't think either of us had seriously expected to hear each other's voice again.
"I don't like how this sounds, signor Jacks. I don't like it at all." Moving phone momentarily away from mouth, the commandante barked out instructions to some poor subordinate before rasping a weary sigh back into the receiver. "I will arrive immediately."
In the meantime, there were a couple of practical considerations to attend to. Firstly, a round of hot, sugary teas - the soothing balm of Englishmen and women everywhere. Then, a call to the landlord. The holiday lease would be up that same afternoon, but the two sisters-in-law would need to stick around town of course. A couple more days at least.
Both the tea-making and hunting down of the landlord's contact number were seen to by Sarah. Eight years or so the senior of the two sisters-in-law, hers was a purposeful, hands-on presence. She was the one who had to remain strong, externally at least. Olivia, in contrast, sat wordlessly at the table beside me, her vacant gaze directed out of the window doors. Close up, she was even more beautiful than she'd seemed on first impression, her shoulder-length blonde hair a sleek golden haze in the sunshine. The nose was a pretty, stubbed affair, her eyes as blue as the sea she was contemplating. These latter were red-rimmed however, raw-looking; oh yes, it was clear that a lot of crying had been done.
The landlord, signor Caputo, was to prove himself a kind and likeable old chap, his enquiries into the two women's welfare touching, insistent. He had a German family arriving on Friday, but until then, yes of course they could stay on. No extra charge. Given the circumstances, it was the least he could do. He only wished there was more.
Thanking him, I rested down the phone, glanced at each of the sisters-in-law in turn.
"We'll be needing a photo of course..."
I was struck by my use of the first person plural. We not they. It had just slipped out, as if my subconscious had already decided for me: I was part of this now, intended to play as active a role as possible.
In all, there were a score or so of holiday snaps on Sarah's phone, every type of combination - some showing the four members of the holidaying party singly; others in pairs by sex, by marriage, with respective in-laws. The majority were in diverse groupings of three; just a couple - a neighbouring beach-goer obviously called upon to do the duties - framed all four together. Sean, whether alone or with others, was rarely without a bottle of beer in hand; Lee, likewise, rarely without a cigarette between his lips. I remember lingering particularly on the soon-to-be-famous shot of the pair arm-linked on the beach - those differing expressions, Sean's cheerful beam contrasted by Lee's lowered brow. For facial clarity, I'd already earmarked it as the one most suitable for the inevitable media appeals which would follow.
As I slid through the shots, I pressed the two women on background details. It turned out I'd been right about Sarah's accent, she and the two brothers hailing from Nottingham. Sean and she had a mid-terrace in the Beeston area of the city; she was a special needs teacher at a local comprehensive school, he a shift boss at a nearby production plant of a high street pharmacy chain. "That's why I married him," she murmured. "Discounted shampoo for the rest of my life. That plus the fact he'd already got me pregnant with Alice of course..." Was that a lingering note of bitterness, I wondered? They'd had a second child four years later, she continued. Another girl, Sammy. "Had better call them," she then added, motioning that I should hand back the phone. "The plant I mean. Expecting him back at work tomorrow." Rising wearily to her feet, she headed towards the window doors. "Give 'em the same cock 'n' bull story I gave my mum and the girls earlier. Slipped over on some rocks, fractured a rib. Nothing serious, but in no condition to travel for another couple of days. Blah, blah, blah." There was a grimace, a shake of the head. "Just can't face the thought. You know, all the fuss that'd be made if they knew the truth. Not yet, anyway. Need to... to come to terms with it myself first."
After she'd stepped outside to make the call, my attention then turned towards Olivia. It was the first time during our brief acquaintance that I'd heard her mumble more than a couple of words. Unlike Sarah, her accent was soft - a standard middle class diction which was impossible to geographically pinpoint.
"Stamford," she informed me.
Just off the A1 past Grantham, I thought - a road I knew well from forays south to visit Ellie. As a personal connection it wasn't much perhaps, but I latched onto it anyway. A way-in, a conversational point of departure. Within a couple of minutes, she'd begun opening up to me a little.
Lee, it soon emerged, was by far the more successful of the two brothers, a kind of regional fashion-trade hotshot. Working his way up from market trader, he had, by the age of twenty-eight, opened his first boutique in the chic Hockley area of Nottingham. A second had followed a couple of years later in the city centre. She herself was a model, had met Lee during a photo shoot for some advertising material. Theirs had been one of those whirlwind things - the pair moving in together almost immediately, married within a year. A third shop in Derby had been opened soon after, a fourth in Leicester had recently followed. Lee had even won a regional award for Young Entrepreneur of the Year.
"And this little holiday of yours," I asked. "All of you together. Something you've done before?"
No, this was the first time, or at least since she'd been on the scene. It had all been Lee's idea, she told me.
"Ostensibly to celebrate Sean and Sarah's fifteenth anniversary. Tomorrow, I think it is." She glanced out of the window doors; Sarah's call to Sean's workplace was finished, but she'd continued to linger on the patio, her gaze directed out towards the sea. "Lee decided to take them somewhere nice. His treat. They'd been planning a weekend in Skegness, for heaven's sake." Hardly the most romantic of destinations, no. "So there was that," she continued. "But then there was our own little reason for celebration too..."
She rubbed gently at her stomach, the eyes which glanced back up at mine infused with a kind of desperate, unspoken imploration.
"Had it confirmed a couple of weeks ago."
*
Nuzzo's arrival a few minutes later was announced by the slam of car doors outside, Ciavarella stepping through the front gate behind him. The latter was quickly dispatched to hunt out coffee-making facilities whilst the commandante and I spent a few quiet moments conversing in the hallway. Things had already been set in motion it seemed, a call having been put through to the car hire company at Brindisi airport. Neither a Fiat nor a Renault as it had turned out, but instead a Peugot 206. Sarah had been right about the colour though: burgundy. Description and licence number had been passed onto neighbouring jurisdictions.
"In my experience," Nuzzo remarked, "a car isn't so good at staying hidden as a man."
I had my own snippet of news to report too of course, one interesting enough to send the commander's right eyebrow crooking upwards. In any normal case impending fatherhood might be considered a catalyst for a young man's sudden flight. Normal this case was most definitely not however. Responsibility-fleeing fathers-to-be simply don't up and off whilst on holiday, and nor for that matter with their elder brother in tow.
For almost all Italians I've ever met, no concept is more sacrosanct than that of family. The news seemed to further steel the Nuzzo's determination. "Even more reason to find them" he reflected. "The father. The uncle." He gazed sombrely through the living room door towards the two figures seated at the table. "Come, ispettore." The Italian translation of inspector I took as a gesture of respect, of inclusion. From this point on it would it would become his habitual form of address to me.
There was a hand on my back, ushering me towards the sister-in-laws. "We have already wasted too much time."
That we hadn't taken things a little more seriously from the start - sent out a couple of officers to make a few initial enquiries at least - was something which, over the coming months, would haunt us both I think.
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