The Third Shadow

Fifteen

~~~~~

Those September days. Those endless, muscle-jellyfying September days.

There were just the five of us - myself and the four African street-hawkers I managed to round up from the promenade of Punto San Giacomo. The Eritrean brothers, Aziz and Hagos, Prince from Ghana, Abdou from Senegal. All seemed glad to bundle up their stocks of fake Rolexes and Gucci handbags for a couple of weeks, dirty their hands with more noble work. Their faces were eager and attentive that first day as I demonstrated how to identity bunch rot, the difference in colour and taste between ripe and not-yet-quite-so. Communication was carried out half in pidgin English, half in pidgin Italian. My own voice had to strain a little for a sense of authority and expertise, my excitement tempered by a sinking sensation that I was swimming out of my depth, would be swept off towards humiliation and financial ruin. Those first few days, I could read it their eyes: You're English. What the hell do you know about making wine?

Beyond having read several books on scientific theory and a couple of days spent as a guest at a vineyard in Sussex the previous autumn, nothing at all in fact. Yet the five of us together, somehow we got through. Survived all those long, sweat-dripping days at the vines, our brimming wheelbarrows hauled to the outbuilding, the de-stemming done by hand. The odour from the must vat was overpoweringly sweet, and grew ever more intoxicating as primary fermentation took hold. Even outside there was little escape, the very air enough to make a man feel giddy; that corner of Puglia is one of the most intensive grape-producing areas in the whole of Europe, the perfume of a thousand vineyards carried on the sea breeze.

As evening fell we'd kick back with a few cold beers, each of us taking it in turns to mix up a huge pan of pasta, mashed potatoes, spicy African stew. I'd set up some bunks in a corner of the outbuilding, but the darkness was so refreshingly cool that often they preferred to sleep out underneath the stars. Bellies full, beer-mellowed, it was in that hour before their eyelids grew heavy that they'd tell me their stories. Tales of trouble-torn homelands, of overcrowded dinghies, the relentless rise and fall of the Mediterranean. Children crying, the eyes of the pregnant women white and pleading in the endless rolling night...

On their own crossing, the Eritrean brothers told us, six of their fellow passengers were not make it.

I think about this sometimes. When I feel myself about to slip, poised to fall into self pity's quicksand embrace.

*

During that same physically draining period in which the African lads and I were hard at it amongst the vines, a specialist dog team came down from Rome, spent a full week sniffing around Nuzzo's search zone. So-called cadaver dogs, their training differs from that of ordinary search and rescue hounds, is aimed specifically at recognising the odour of human decay. As feared however, the search zone proved too extensive even for the most sensitive of canine nostrils. The GPR helicopter which for several days would also buzz over the area similarly drew a blank. Interpol's interest would subsequently be pricked by a couple of reported sightings of Lee Bracewell - one in Wales, another in Portugal. Follow-up investigations would come to nothing however.

As is so often the case, after that initial frenzied flurry of activity, things soon ground to a halt. A situation which frustrates no-one more than the chief investigating officer him or herself.

Whilst there were no further trips to the gelateria together, I bumped into the comandante a couple of times during errand runs in town. Although his pleasure at seeing me seemed genuine, the enquiries as to my well-being and the progress of the wine sincere, I couldn't help but note an underlying sadness to his gaze, a certain air of defeat. During the course of my own career I'd had enough cases go cold, end up box-filed away on dusty shelves, to know the feeling only too well. It's like you've let everyone down: superiors, subordinates, the local community as a whole.

It's the victim's friends and family you feel most for however, the ones left behind. Those for whom justice might in some small way help with the healing process.

Sarah Bracewell. Her two daughters.

*

Though far from the best Christmas I've ever spent, it wasn't quite as bad as I'd been expecting. The 25th of December being in fact sunny and mild, I took a long stroll along the beach, almost as far as Punto San Giacomo and back. When I returned there was the parcel Ellie had sent waiting for me under the fake tree I'd bought: one of those fancy electronic corkscrews, must have cost a few pounds. It was immediately put to work opening the expensive bottle of Sicilian syrah I'd treated myself to, this the perfect accompaniment to the pumpkin tortelli I'd spotted in the local supermarket. Later that evening, RAI were showing Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, one of my all-time favourite films.

No, Christmas wasn't such a problem - it was the successive months which would prove darker and sadder. Much more challenging to get through. Survive. Those days when the verical rain dampened spirits. When the confines of the bungalow became claustrophobic, when the lonliness began to bite. The only thing which kept me buoyant was the progress of the wine: after the successful harvest the previous September, the various phases of fermentation also seemed to be proceeding with textbook smoothness. I could do this, I kept telling myself. I could make a damn decent wine.

As I went about my day-to-day business, I often found my thoughts passing to the Bracewell brothers of course. Riding along the back roads of the province, I couldn't help but wonder if the dogs had had a good sniff around over there, by that copse of olive trees, or just here, behind this dry wall. Somewhere. Sean Bracewell was buried somewhere round here. At any given moment someone could have been stepping right above his grave.

*

Thankfully, spring in southern Italy arrives much sooner than it does in the north-east of England of course. By the time I celebrated a year in the country in the middle of March, temperatures were already comparable to a fine English summer's day. By the first days of June, meanwhile, the loading up of the van with scores boxes of my now bottled and labelled wine was a panting, sweat-soaked operation.

As the temperature had begun to soar, my bank balance had meanwhile continued to travel in completely the opposite direction. Threatened very soon to dip well below zero.

Though I now sat on several tens of thousands of pounds worth of fine Negroamaro wine, unless I was able to sell the stuff it was as useless as an undergound oil reserve with no well pump.

Leaving enough space in the back of the van for a camping mat and sleeping bag, I twisted the ignition key one golden, just-emergung dawn, at the bottom of the slope turned northwards onto the coast road.

The boxes of wine rattling reassuringly behind me, I thus began my epic overland haul towards England.