The lean-to at the side of the bungalow had been a pre-cut affair - three large bundles of wood, a bag of bolts and screws, assembly instructions which like all such things were indecipherable and got scrunched into a ball after five minutes. I remember as I'd been lowering a support beam into place from diagonal to upright, my hand had slipped down one of the rough edges, left a splinter embedded in my palm. It not causing any particular pain or swelling, and the idea of trying to ease it out with a sterilised needle frankly not something which appealed to me, I'd just left it there. And there it would remain for several months, just under the surface. Forgotten yet always visible whenever I glanced at my upturned palm. Then one day, somehow, it just naturally worked its way back out.
There are memories which are the same I think, ones which get wedged somewhere between a person's consciousness and subconsciousness. Memories which are never quite open, yet at the same time never quite closed. Memories which at some point will slip once more through to the surface, break themselves free.
The rivulets of rain sliding down the windscreen of the van as I parked up on the other side of the street. That black-clothed figure emerging from the front door, strangely frail-seeming for her age, her strawberry blonde hair darkening and flattening under the deluge as she struggled to open her umbrella.
Sarah Bracewell's daughter, Alice.
Yes, she'd never quite left me. Had got trapped there between the mental layers. And now, after all those months, she'd come piercing through to the surface once again.
Not a single photograph. Nowhere in the house had there been a visual record of Sean Bracewell. And while Diane had been right - while Diane is, somewhat annoyingly, always bloody right - in this case she'd only been half right. People may pack away memories of the recently departed to avoid being confronted by their grief at every turned corner of their day. But others may do similar in order to actively forget. To try and expunge that person from their minds as swiftly and clinically as possible. Banish them from their thoughts. Expel, cast out, drive away.
That Sunday afternoon as Nuzzo and I sat there on the semi-circular steps overlooking the beach, mine was only a hypothesis. It was, however, one which would later be verified in the eventual court hearings.
"I think there were problems," I began softly. "I think there was some..." It was difficult to find the right words. "Some kind of darkness inside that house." I nodded solemnly to myself. "Black, yes. For her to feel so much hatred towards him, it had to be something black. So very, very black." I twisted my neck a few degrees, looked Nuzzo directly in the eye. "I think Sean Bracewell had been sexually abusing his daughter." I paused a moment, waited for the comandante to absorb the hypothesis. "Sarah must have found out. Been... been blinded by her rage. Desired nothing more than to rid the world of him. Protect her daughters, both of them."
Nuzzo gazed out past the lido umbrellas, all the way to the horizon - the exact line of it difficult to locate, the sea tranquil that afternoon, a perfect sky-reflecting blue.
"My father," he murmured. "When he was young, he planned to do the seminary - you know, become a priest. Then he met my mother and everything changed." There was a smile. "Turned many men's heads in her day, so they tell me." That the elderly and frail had once been young and vigorous; yes, it was a difficult concept to grasp sometimes. "Anyway," Nuzzo continued, "he got married and became an officer of the carabinieri." A fist was padded to chest. "But inside, you understand, he was still a priest. Often on a cold winter night he'd bring a homeless man to our house, let him sleep on the sofa. He was coach of a boys' football team, director of a church choir, volunteered himself to everything it was possible to volunteer himself to." As the comandante turned back to me I saw that his eyes had moisened with a mixture of sad nostalgia and filial pride. "He had time for every man and every man had time for him." Those numerous photos of the man on the wall of the flat were in stark contrast to what I had encountered at Sarah Bracewell's house of course. Unlike her, Nuzzo and his mother wished the deceased to live on - if not on earth then in their hearts at least. "Some men," the comandante concluded, "they don't deserve to die young. Other men, they don't deserve to have ever been born."
With that he laboured himself back his feet, a slowly rising bundle of groans and winces
"Come, ispettore," he gestured once upright," let's walk a little more. There are matters we must discuss."
*
Circumstantial.
As a former law enforcement officer, it ranks amongst my least favourite words in the whole of the English language. The closest analogy I can think of is that it's like the congealed fat which blocks the drain of your kitchen sink, keeps all those scraps of food floating in a dark, malodorous pool around the plug hole. No matter how overwhelming - no matter how utterly convinced a chief investigating officer is of a person's guilt - if evidence is deemed circumstantial the criminal simply will not disappear down the plug hole. Like those floating scraps of food, will remain stubbornly in circulation.
Despite the revelations which had been gleaned that case-changing Sunday afternoon and the chilling conclusions they had led to, all that Nuzzo and I had to offer an Italian criminal prosecuter was the intangible and subjective. All we had, in short, was the circumstantial.
"A body," murmured Nuzzo beside me as we stepped pensively back along the promenade. "We need to find the body."
It was now four o'clock, the town fully reanimated after the post-lunch still. To our left, one of the lidos had begun pumping out disco music; just ahead a group of bare-chested teenage boys were kicking a ball around. As we veered around them, Nuzzo paused his step for a moment, turned towards me.
"The beach you think? Like his brother."
Shaking my head, I shuffled us back into motion. "No, I don't think so. Too much risk that some family dog would sniff him out, just like Sean."
Nuzzo nodded, the narrative becoming clearer. "He, they wanted to be found. It fitted their story. But with Lee they needed to be more careful."
I tried to drown out the disco beats, the shouts of the boys behind us. Tried to picture it, the stomach-turning dynamics of that night.
"Those three figures signor Quaranta saw---"
"Kids, ispettore! How many times must I say to you it was just kids?"
But his objection was somehow less forceful than before, reduced in decibel-level, the accompanying hand gesture not quite so dismissive. Oh yes, I'd got him now. Even he was starting to believe.
"Just for argument's sake, let's say it wasn't kids. That it was them - the Bracewells, the two sisters-in-law. Only, there were three figures, not four. One of them was missing. Who?"
Nuzzo smiled indulgently. "You want me to play your little game, ispettore, then I will play your little game. My answer is Lee."
I nodded; yes, that was what I was thinking too. "So the two figures in front were probably Sean and Sarah. The one following along behind Olivia." Yes, it was starting to emerge now - a blurred kind of film reel projected against the canvas of my mind...
The sene is washed various shades of blue in the moonlight - the inkiness of the night sky, the much lighter hue of the sand; beyond, the soft ripples of the sea as it laps against shore are licked a stark gleaming white. There at the back garden gate emerge Sarah and Sean, the latter with beer bottle in hand, his step a little unsteady. As they head out onto the beach, a third shadow emerges behind, the swing of the gate hinges buried beneath the rustle of the waves A few metres ahead, the two figures have paused, heads tilted upwards, admiring the vast dome of stars above. Olivia reaches down, hands searching for a pebble. A large one. Just heavy enough...
"I think it was Olivia. For all her rage, Sarah didn't trust herself enough to go through with it."
Now it was Nuzzo's turn to nod. "Just buried him where they killed him. Right there in the sand."
"Too heavy for them to carry."
The film reel flickered momentarily back into life: the quick swish of signor Caputo's garden spade through the sand, Olivia's urgent hissed whispers in the darkness: Hurry Sarah, hurry.
The comandante paused his step once more. "And Lee. Where was he at this moment?"
My answer was immediate, the only obvious conclusion which could be drawn. "In bed. Some kind of sleeping pill slipped into one of his glasses of wine earlier in the night. Maybe some ricin too. Might have already been dead. Either that or they finished off the job with a pillow over face."
Nuzzo nodded again. "You think he was too heavy for them to carry also?"
Lee Bracewell had been trimmer than his brother, yes, but couldn't exactly have been described as skinny. He'd been reasonably tall too. Fourteen stone perhaps or thereabouts. Whilst Sarah may have been able to muster a certain level of physical power, the waiflike figure of Sarah would have had great fdifficulty holding her end of things.
"Not very far perhaps," I concluded.
"They could have got him to the car you think?"
I reflected a moment. "Maybe, but I don't think they did. There were the dunes to one side of the bungalow remember, the olive grove to the other. Wherever they tried to manouevre the car it would have remained in sight of the coast road. Even at that time of night, far too risky."
There we were, the comandante and I, a still point amidst the blur of that hot June Sunday afternoon. Oblivious to the passers by, the scampering children. Deaf to the disco beats, the calls and shouts, the passing conversations.
Lee Bracewell. Finally, after all those months, we knew where he was.