"Crazy," repeated Nuzzo for the dozenth time already. "This is just crazy." Then again, as if his opinion wasn't yet quite clear: "Crazy I say."
We'd taken the short walk from his flat down to the seafront, had pulled up seats outside a cafe'. The afternoon sun was still high enough that the large rectangular umbrella which arched over our heads provided ample shade. In front of us, between the jagged trunks of palm trees which lined the pedestrian promenade, lay the sun-washed expanse of the beach, a thin blue stripe of sea just visible beyond the lines of lido umbrellas and mass of bared latin limbs.
"Just ask yourself," I reasoned back, "what have we actually got to lose?"
After tipping down the remainder of his machiato, the comandante reluctantly pulled his phone from the breast pocket of shirt. As he scrolled through his contacts list, there was a final muttering of discontent under his breath. "Una vera pazzia". A true act of insanity.
"I am Salvatore Nuzzo," he announced to whichever officer it was who'd responded . "Station Commander of the carabinieri, Punto San Gia---" Interrupted, he let out an exasperated sigh, rolled eyeballs upwards. "Si, I know there are official channels of collaboration but I'm off-duty at the moment and the favour I ask really is a simp---" Another interruption, another unimpressed exhale. "Si, si, I will wait." Hand wrapped over phone so no-one on the other end of the line might hear, he leaned in towards me, his tone a belligerent hiss. "Quite intollerable, the polizia di stato. Think their own farts smell of roses!" Yes, I'd often wondered as to the nature of the rapport between the nation's two principal law enforcement agencies, was being treated to something of an insight.
Whoever it was the call had been passed on to had now picked up, Nuzzo once more forced to introduce himself. "I ask kindly that you run me a check of your declaration of presence records," he then went on to explain, this the official document containing name and passport number of all sojourning non-Schengen nationals which hotels, bed and breakfasts, holiday rentals and so on are obliged to register with the local state police. "The July/August period of last year," Nuzzo specified. "A British citizen by the name of..." There was a glance down at the scrap of paper I'd scribbled. "Oh Saint Christ, don't ask me to pronounce it. You know the inglesi and their idiot way of spelling things." He glanced half apologetically across at me before proceeding to read out the letters one by one:
"L-O-A-C-K-E"
Danny Loacke, yes. A name which had always lurked somewhere just beneath and beyond, off the radar screen. A name which I wasn't even able to mentally match a face to but which had been there right from the very beginning. His the final number Lee Bracewell had called just a matter of hours before the disappearance. His the most frequently recorded name in the Nottinghamshire CID's log book of visitors to Olivia's luxury, glass-walled apartment.
Oh, I didn't believe it was he who had caved in a section of Sean Bracewell's skull with a blunt object. And if my new suspicions were correct that Lee Bracewell had also met his end that terrible August night, nor had it been Loacke to witness the younger brother's final breath either.
He hadn't been anywhere near Half Moon Bay that night, wouldn't have been so stupid to have taken such a risk. Doubtless, were the Nottinghamshire CID to ask, he could provide them with a watertight alibi. Some social event or a long weekend away somewhere. Booking records, photographs, a dozen reliable witnesses.
His role in the events were, I however believed, similar to his role in the Ivy boutique chain. An unknown face hidden in the shadows, away from the spotlight. Strategy, details, action-plans. Not the beating heart of things but rarher the cold, calculating brain.
*
Nuzzo's offer of an ice-cream was politely turned down; given the enormity of the lunch we'd earlier eaten, its weight and dimensions like a ship anchor wedged inside my stomach, the very idea seemed some peculiar form of sadomasochism. It didn't stop the commandante treating himself to one however, his usual triple-scoop stracciatella.
"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?"