The Third Shadow

Thirteen

It was late afternoon, Monday September 9th. Two weeks therefore after apuntato Ciavarella's unexpected visit to the vineyard, my being sucked into the whole regrettable mystery of the missing Bracewell brothers. I was outside giving the van a much needed hose down. Garageless, I usually just let nature take care of cleaning duties. Though rainfall levels are of course low during summer months, occasional electric storms provide short, sharp bursts. There hadn't been one for weeks though, in which time the van had accumulated a coat of dirt thick enough for some bored kid to finger a cartoon face onto the left rear door as I'd popped into a supermarket earlier in the day.

As I hosed, a sudden dust cloud at the bottom of the track caught my eye. Another damn journalist, I thought. Despite my best efforts, I'd had a couple of visitors over the previous few days - one from the Daily Express, another from some women's magazine I'd never heard of. They'd asked around town, had somehow found their way to me. Both had been met with a terse 'no comment' and the threat of police intervention if they didn't get immediately off my property. After nearly thirty years in the force, I'd learned that one has to be strong-armed with these people.

Thankfully, I soon saw that the car making its way up the slope was a marked carabinieri vehicle. Unlike two weeks earlier, it wasn't Ciavarella who emerged from the driver's door this time however, but instead the rather less nimble form of Comandante Nuzzo. There was prolonged spurt of groans and curses as he unfolded himself upright.

"This damn lumbago!'

He looked accusingly down at the bumpy, back-jolting track he'd just come up. Having spent much of the previous week and a half bent over boxes of tiles and bags of grouting powder, I felt a certain empathy. Clapped out, pain-wracked old codgers, both of us.

"On Fridays I go to a woman," he stated somewhat ambiguously as I turned off the hose tap. "She gives me a massage. The doctors say it doesn't help, but believe me, it helps. For a day or so at least." He swept out a dismissive, gesticulating hand. "All this, the Bracewell case, I haven't been for two weeks." The expression in his eyes suggested something deeper than just mild regret.

"Please comandante," I offered, gesturing to the table and chairs under the shade of the lean-to behind me, "take a seat."

Lifting service cap, he double swept palm over balding dome, sadly shook his head. "It's better if don't. The problem with sitting is that sooner or later you must to get up on your feet again." Glancing around, he then seemed to notice the house for the first time. As Ciavarella fourteen days earlier, he nodded appreciatively. "I see you are a man who likes hard work."

I shrugged modestly. "More a case of having a lot of free time to fill."

He nodded again. "Retirement, si." There was an unmistakable wistfulness to his voice, the stress and long hours of the recent period clearly having taken their toll, the folds of skin under his eyes darker and heavier than the last time I'd seen him.

"I didn't have the chance to thank you. All the help. Those first days."

I tossed my shoulders. "Di niente." Don't mention it.

There was something strangely coy about the way his eyes then turned down at the ground, a swept foot skittling away a loose stone.

"You like ice-cream, ispettore? In England, you have it?"

*

A few moments later I was ensconsed in the air-conditioned comfort of the marked Alfa Romeo as the comandante pulled out onto the coast road towards town - towards what had been advertised in his own words as 'the best gelateria in all the Puglia'.

If life has taught me one thing, it is to pay no hind to stereotype or prejudice but to take each man as he comes. With regard to the Italians' reputation of being terrible drivers however, I have to say it is an infamy largely deserved. Nuzzo was an exception however, his manner at the wheel prudent, respectful of his fellow road users. It felt strange, almost like stumbling across a Scotsman who didn't enjoy a tot of whisky.

"A little Sinatra?" he asked, finger poised over the play button of the stereo. Personally, I couldn't stand any of the crooners but found myself nodding politely anyway. For the next four minutes I was forced to suffer his toneless vocal accompaniment to, as he pronounced it, I kotchu on the my skin. After this, I would learn the precise historical and symptomatic details of his lower back disorder. Not that he was the sort to complain or go on about things of course...

It came as something of a relief when we finally parked up in the centre of town. Though the ice-cream place was only a couple of hundred metres away - left down a side street, right onto the promenade - it took us a full fifteen minutes to reach it, in which time I would be introduced to no less than two aunts, an uncle and three cousins. This was typical of the place; apart from a few youngsters with enough get up and go to seek out the more favourable economic conditions of the north, the resident population is mostly immobile, unchanging. If you were born there, the chances are you're going to die there too. The blood pool thus restricted, almost everyone is related in some vague way to almost everyone else.

Annunziata, the gelateria owner, was also some kind of distant cousin. A pleasant-faced woman in her sixties, her wide, bundled curves suggested a penchant for her own wares. Though the place was packed with a throng of customers, queue order was, for Nuzzo, temporarily overlooked. The rising anger on turned heads didn't exactly dissipate but was left to wordlessly simmering at least. In Italy, a uniform is power.

"The usual I suppose," greeted Annunziata.

"Usually is," Nuzzo smiled back.

There was a frown of disapproval as she dug her scoop into one of the vast array of metal tubs. "Twenty-five flavours from which to choose, and always the same."

"A man who know what he likes is a man that is never disappointed."

The 'usual' was a triple scoop of stracciatella - plain cream embedded with slivers of dark chocolate. Trusting myself to the commander's preferences, I ordered a double-scoop version of the same. The hand which I dug into my pocket in search of coins was brusquely slapped away. "Annunziata's husband" Nuzzo informed me mysteriously, "he owes me a favour."

Free ice-creams in hand, we stepped out onto the palm-lined pedestrian promenade. Though late-season, it was still a boisterous and dizzying place at that hour of the day. Families streamed out of lido entrances, beach bags and towels draped over shoulders, faces as shiny as cherries from the day's sun. There was a clamour of called voices, mums and dads rounding up scurrying offspring, dawdling grandmas and grandads. Stationed at regular intervals of twenty metres or so were the African street hawkers, their fake designer wares displayed on tableclothes lain onto the ground. Upon catching sight of Nuzzo's uniform, the nearest shouted warnings to the others - this sparking a chain reaction of hastily bundled up wares, departing heels. It seemed that their activities were illegal enough for them to be worried, but harmless enough for the local authorities to turn a blind eye.

Just a little further up from the gelateria is a short section of public beach. Here, a semi-circled appendage to the promenade thrusts out into the sand, a kind of mini piazza. We found ourselves some space amongst the older folk sitting on the stone steps, both of us wincing as we lowered ourselves down. Though not high, the perimeter wall is raised just enough to afford a fine view along the beach, the bright clashing colours of the lido umbrellas growing ever smaller. A few beach-goers lingered on, desperate to catch every last minute, every final drop of sun.

We sat wordlessly for some moments, Nuzzo attacking his ice-cream with the assuredness of a man well-versed in the art - quick, expert flicks of the tongue, round and then round again. Despite my best efforts, mine had already leaked a sticky dribble over my hand.

"So," he asked finally, "how you like the stracciatella?"

Though without question exquisite, and though my reply was to this effect, I knew he hadn't brought me here to talk about ice-cream.

Preliminaries over, it was time to get to the crunch.

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