He stood there for a few moments, staring across the terrace before, reluctantly, sitting down again and using his napkin to dry himself off. Interestingly, in the twilight, nobody else appeared to have noticed this little cameo and the holiday mood continued around us – at least among those who had been in the mood in the first place. Virgilio picked up his empty wine glass and returned it to a vertical position before reaching for his water glass and draining it. Finally, he launched into an explanation.
‘That animal was Ignazio Graziani, one of the foulest individuals who ever walked on the surface of this planet.’ The disgust in his voice was almost palpable. ‘Just over twenty years ago, there was a spate of abductions and rapes near Pisa. I was a young sergeant stationed there at the time. It took us three months of hard work, but we finally nailed him. He kidnapped a total of four young women, did unspeakable things to them, before abandoning them in the wilds of the countryside more dead than alive. I was involved in the investigation that led to his arrest, trial, and sentencing to twenty-five years in prison. I was appalled to hear that he’d been released last month – would you believe because he was deemed to be “no longer a risk to the public”? I’d forgotten that he was originally from Elba, and I certainly wasn’t counting on running into him ever again.’ He relapsed into silence while I picked up the wine bottle and refilled his glass. He looked as though he needed it.
We resumed our meal but I, for one, barely tasted it. Even the panna cotta smothered in caramel sauce and whipped cream, scattered with fresh raspberries and blueberries, failed to hit the spot. By the time our coffees arrived, I was wondering if Graziani had already made the acquaintance of the other guests and if he was responsible for the bad mood of the people on the beach. Might there be some connection between Graziani and the dodgy-looking characters we had seen earlier? Certainly, he had managed to cast a definite shadow overourevening.
As I sat there, I realised that I was already filing this confrontation away in my memory banks to be included in one of my whodunnits. That’s the wonderful thing about being an author – real life so often throws up fascinating situations every bit as good as fiction. At this point, I had no idea when or where I would draw on this evening’s fracas, but I knew I would. Sooner or later.
After dinner, I took Oscar for a walk, accompanied by Virgilio after he had run upstairs to change into a fresh pair of shorts. The grounds of the hotel were surrounded by a solid chain-link fence taller than me, and there was a pedestrian gate off to one side near the clifftop with a key code to restrict access only to guests of the hotel. We opened the gate and followed a footpath that ran southwards through clumps of pine trees, not far from the cliff edge. Apart from a delightful scent of resin, the trees also produced a regular supply of pine cones for me to throw for Oscar to retrieve.
Without the presence of our two partners, Virgilio went into more detail of what Graziani had done to his unfortunate victims and, in spite of our outstanding meal, I could feel a sour taste in my mouth. Virgilio had actually been part of a three-man team who had found one of the distraught victims, barely conscious, badly bruised and beaten, and it was clear that the appearance of this brutally mistreated woman had burned itself forever into his psyche. Ignazio Graziani was a monster, and all four of his victims – although they had survived – undoubtedly still bore psychological as well as physical scars. As we walked along the path, the only sounds the gentle hiss of the tiny wavelets on the beaches below and the background whirring of cicadas in the pines, I felt a million miles away from such depravity – and yet I knew that the perpetrator was sitting having his dinner barely ten minutes away from us. I asked the obvious question.
‘What are you going to do about Graziani? That was quite definitely assault by him on you. If he’s just come out of jail, I imagine he’s on parole. His parole officer isn’t going to like that one bit. A few words from you could see him back inside, surely.’
It took a while before Virgilio replied. ‘I’ve been wondering about that. It was dark on the terrace and I don’t think anybody else was aware of the scene at the dinner table. If Graziani has a good lawyer, it should be easy enough to point out that the only witnesses were our group and it wouldn’t be hard to make a case for us inventing the whole thing – calling it police harassment. After all, there’s not a mark on me, but I wouldn’t mind betting that his hand is going to be bruised in the morning. You could end up with a charge of assault yourself.’
He had a point, of course, but it didn’t seem fair to let the man get away with it. ‘Surely if you don’t get the police involved, it could be that Graziani’s going to spend the next week here and you’re going to be seeing each other every day. Sooner or later, that could lead to another confrontation.’
Virgilio stopped and turned towards me. ‘Part of me would really like that. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to beat him to a pulp.’
I’d never heard Virgilio sounding so bitter and aggressive before and I knew that this was a dangerous way for a senior police officer to talk. Like it or not, the man had done his time, and any further involvement with him could prove seriously detrimental to Virgilio’s position. It occurred to me that there was a pragmatic, if unpalatable, solution, and I chose to suggest it before he did.
‘You know what I think? High season hasn’t started yet, so there should be lots of spare accommodation on the island. Why don’t we cancel our booking here and move somewhere different tomorrow, maybe on the other side of the island? I’m sure Rita and her boss would understand under the circumstances. I wouldn’t want you to do anything you might regret.’
There was another long pause before Virgilio replied, resignation in his voice. ‘You’re right, of course, I have a lot more to lose than he does, but in a way, that would be a victory for him.’
‘But it doesn’t mean it’s got to spoil your holiday.’ I turned and looked out to sea, the glow of phosphorescence in the water illuminating the scene and a line of distant, orange lights on the mainland framing it. ‘Life’s too short, Virgilio. Let it go. Let’s look for somewhere else tomorrow and do our best to enjoy the rest of our holiday.’ I reminded myself that this was supposed to be a relaxing holiday, and it hadn’t started out too well. Secretly, I felt sure that the best thing for all of us would be to turn our backs on this hotel – however lovely – and move on.
Reluctantly, Virgilio told me he would sleep on it and decide in the morning.
4
SUNDAY MORNING
I woke up to another clear, blue sky without a single cloud and I had no doubt it was going to be a hot one. Leaving Anna still asleep, Oscar and I crept out early for our morning walk and followed the clifftop path all the way around to the next bay, where Anna and I were scheduled to start our windsurfing course. I had found it hard to get off to sleep the previous night – no doubt because of the testosterone and adrenalin still swirling around in my system – and Anna had been similarly afflicted. As we lay in the dark, she had confessed to me that she’d been terrified that the confrontation might have spiralled out of control.
‘He had such awful eyes, that man. I could imagine him being capable of anything.’ I felt her shiver so I hugged her to me while she continued. ‘I’ve never seen you like that before, Dan. It was almost like you became a different person. You frightened him, you know. I could see that in his eyes.’
I nodded. ‘If it helps, it frightened me as well. It took me back to similar incidents in my past, and not all of them ended well.’ I felt her fingers reach for the scar on my left arm where a knife wielded by a man off his head on acid fifteen years earlier had come within a few inches of slicing open my brachial artery. I had told her about that a year ago when she’d spotted it, although I’d done my best to play down the potential severity of the incident. I caught hold of her fingers and gave them an encouraging squeeze – considerably gentler than the squeeze I had given Graziani’s – and did my best to cheer her up. ‘But this time, there were three of us against one: me, Virgilio and, of course, Oscar. He wouldn’t have let anything happen to me.’
‘I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you, Dan.’
I did my best to comfort her by saying that I was far more frightened at the prospect of the windsurfing course than I was of an Italian villain, but it had still been quite a while before I heard her breathing relax into sleep.
It had taken me a good bit longer. Unless Virgilio took the sensible decision to distance himself from Graziani, I had a feeling that further confrontation would be unavoidable. One thing I knew for sure was that I would be only too happy if I never saw Graziani ever again.
It was a delightful morning for a walk in the fresh air – still relatively cool before the heat of the day. Although it was barely half-past seven, I found that there was already activity at the Elba Windsurfing Academy– the name written in English on a sign by the track leading down to the beach. It came as no surprise at all to see a battered old VW camper van – the vehicle of choice of the surfing community – come bumping down the track and pull up outside a wooden structure with the wordsSurfers Paradiseon a wooden sign hanging above the door. I smiled to myself at the lack of an apostrophe. My editor would definitely not have approved. One thing I had very quickly learned in my new career as a writer of murder mysteries was that thirty years of writing crime reports had failed to eliminate a depressing number of grammatical errors.
Oscar and I wandered down to the beach where we received a wave and a friendly greeting from a blonde woman wearing a T-shirt with the wordMistralacross the front. A rack full of boards with the same logo on them confirmed my suspicion that she was giving the manufacturer a bit of free advertising. What was interesting was that she didn’t greet me in Italian, or even English, but in fluent German. Virgilio had told me that the island was very popular with the Germans as a holiday destination, and many of them had also bought homes here on Elba. I had done some German at school many years ago and so I was able to take a stab at an appropriate response, but she must have very quickly worked out that I wasn’t a native speaker and she switched to pretty good Italian, albeit with a German accent.
‘Ciao, are you here on holiday?’
I answered in Italian. ‘Yes, we’re staying at the Augustus, and I’ve somehow managed to get myself signed up for a windsurfing course here later on today.’
Her smile broadened. ‘That’s great. I look forward to getting you out on the water.’ She bent down to stroke Oscar, who was rubbing up against her suntanned legs – he likes the ladies – and she glanced up at me. ‘I’m Ingrid. I’m one of the instructors. Who’s this guy?’
‘He’s Oscar and I’m Dan. I’ve never windsurfed before, so you’ll have to promise to be gentle with me.’
She straightened up and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll have you windsurfing like a pro in a very short time.’
