‘When do you think it happened?’
‘I’m no pathologist, but I would imagine quite a few hours ago, some time last night.’ I decided not to go into the intricacies of the onset and duration of rigor mortis, especially at the breakfast table. ‘He was very drunk when we saw him, so I imagine it might have been an accident. Maybe he decided to go for an after-dinner walk and took a wrong turning.’
Anna knew me well enough by now to recognise the note of doubt in my voice and she made a logical suggestion. ‘Or maybe he decided to take his own life. The weight of what he did twenty years ago must surely have been playing on his conscience.’
Lina leant across the table towards us and voiced the other hypothesis. ‘Or maybe somebody deliberately pushed him over the edge of the cliff. God knows, it sounds as though he deserved it.’
Determined to respect my resolution to avoid ‘playing detectives’, I deliberately played this scenario down. ‘Who knows? The important thing is that he’s gone, and this means we can get on with our holiday.’
I felt Anna’s eyes on me and I felt sure I could sense scepticism emanating from her but I avoided looking at her and glanced down at Oscar by my side instead. That didn’t help much. If the expression on his face was anything to go by, he wasn’t buying my declared lack of interest any more than Anna was. Fortunately, at that moment, we heard the unmistakable wail of sirens as what sounded like at least a couple of vehicles pulled up in the parking area on the other side of the hotel. The waitress brought me my coffee and as I sipped it, I could imagine the scene down on the beach. What, I wondered, would the police and, in particular, the pathologist make of this violent death? Self-inflicted, accidental, or might it really have been murder? I took a deep breath and tried to refocus my mind on a noisy group of seagulls flying overhead rather than the body on the beach.
This death is nothing to do with me, this death is nothing to do with me.
I looked back down at Oscar. That same sceptical expression was still on his face.
I avoided looking at Anna.
6
SUNDAY
The first session of our windsurfing course went really well – for Anna.
As for me, it ranked up there – or should that be down there? – alongside the way I felt the morning after the only time I was ever stupid enough to drink eight pints of beer, the agony of a shoulder dislocated in a rugby match and the first time I came across a decaying corpse.
I should have known that it was going to be grim when Ingrid insisted I put on a wetsuit. Considering that the temperature was already in the high twenties, I protested, but she was right. In the course of the first two-and-a-half-hour session, I lost count of the number of times I fell into the water and had to heave myself back onto the board again. Sunlight or no sunlight, the constantly evaporating water on my skin would have chilled me to the core, and I would soon have got very cold. By the end of the morning, my eyes were burning, I had seawater up my nose, in my ears, and quite possibly swirling around in my brain as well. It’s amazing how a solid-looking lump of plastic about eight feet long and two or three feet wide can suddenly become as wobbly as a trapeze. To make matters worse, every time I climbed back onto the board, all I got from Ingrid, who was sitting comfortably in her rubber dinghy looking on, was the instruction to ‘relax’.
Some hopes.
Mercifully, we had a break at lunchtime, and I very nearly fell asleep over my non-alcoholic beer and focaccia sandwich. Ingrid, my torturer, had advised me not to drink alcohol in case it made me ‘toorelaxed’. I did as I was told, but I felt sure there was no chance of that happening any time soon.
In the beginners’ group alongside me were a couple of French university students and the lone diner from our hotel, who I now knew to be called Tatsuo, from Japan, who managed to get the hang of windsurfing quicker than I did. The fact that the combined age of my three companions probably wasn’t that much older than me did little to boost my confidence, and if it hadn’t been for Anna’s insistence and my innate stubbornness, I would probably have headed back to the hotel for a stiff drink and a siesta.
As for Anna, it was clear that her previous experience rapidly came back to her and she was promoted to the advanced class. I occasionally saw her zooming past me with a smile on her face and the wind in her sail, while I either fell into or climbed out of the sea. Our respective performances were keenly observed by Virgilio and Lina at the bar, with Oscar occasionally opening an eyelid from his comfortable position snoozing in the shade. At lunchtime, Virgilio was tactful enough not to talk about windsurfing and, while Anna excitedly recounted her adventures to Lina, he told me quietly what had happened on the beach when the police had arrived.
‘The officer in charge is an Inspector Bellini. He’s about my age and he’s been around a long time. He sounds as if he knows what he’s doing and he’s already made it clear that this is his case, not mine. I don’t blame him. The last thing he needs is an officer from another force trying to horn in on his investigation. I got the feeling he’s already convinced himself that it was either an accident or suicide.’
‘And he may well be right. What about the pathologist? Did he or she have any observations to make?’
‘She’s taken the body off to the morgue for an autopsy but, unlike the inspector, her first impression was that foul play may have been involved because of the positioning of the wounds on the body.’
I stretched my aching shoulder muscles and took another big slug of the imitation beer. ‘What about you, Virgilio? Have you come to terms with it now? Graziani’s gone and that’s the end of it. There’s no way he can be made to pay any more for what he did, but the simple fact is that Tuscany is a whole lot safer now that he’s dead.’
Virgilio nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m afraid that seeing him here last night really shook me, and it brought back a load of memories that I’d believed dead and buried.’ He picked up his glass and clinked it against mine with a show of enthusiasm – real or fake. ‘The holiday starts now, right?’
I glanced apprehensively at my board and rig lying on the sand a few metres away from me and, in spite of the heat, I shivered. ‘From my point of view, I think the holiday is going to start at four-thirty when my next lesson ends, assuming I don’t drown in the meantime.’
I didn’t drown that afternoon and, to my considerable surprise, I finally discovered the trick of staying upright on the board. Ingrid had been dead right. It was fundamentally a matter of trying to relax. Instead of tensing and fighting every slight movement of the board on the water, I gradually learned to go with the flow and let the gentle breeze in the sail move me along.
By the time four-thirty came around, I had been able to sail – albeit awkwardly – from one end of the beach to the other, although any attempt to turn around inevitably ended in disaster. I’m sure I gave considerable amusement to the holidaymakers stretched out on their sunbeds under their parasols. Like most Italian beaches, this one had been carved up intobagni, where beachgoers paid a handsome sum for sunbeds, changing rooms and a bar. Still, by the time my day of purgatory finally ended, I had to admit that I might just possibly be beginning to enjoy this windsurfing business – assuming that my arm and shoulder muscles would be up to the task when I woke next day.
Anna and I walked back to the hotel along the clifftop with Oscar running on ahead. Such had been my apprehension before my windsurfing session, I had committed the deadly sin – in his eyes – of forgetting to bring his lunch with me. Fortunately, the staff at the beach bar had ensured that he didn’t fade away by giving him leftover sandwiches, biscuits and at least one packet of potato crisps. I shuddered to think what might be happening to his digestive system by now. One thing was for sure: we would be sleeping with the window open tonight.
Back at the hotel, after giving him his food, I stood under a cool shower for several minutes and gradually did what Ingrid had been telling me to do all day – I relaxed. In fact, I managed to relax so successfully that when I came out of the shower and lay down on the bed for a quick rest, I fell asleep and didn’t wake until almost six.
‘Feel better?’
I rolled over at the sound of Anna’s voice. She was sitting on the bed alongside me, propped up against the headboard with a weighty historical tome in her hands. I gave her a smile. ‘Remarkably, yes.’ I stretched tentatively. My shoulders ached a bit, but far less than I had feared. ‘What about you? Looking forward to tomorrow’s session?’
