The Third Shadow

Forty-three

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."