Page 22 of Murder on an Italian Island (Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mysteries #12)

TUESDAY

My windsurfing career took a turn for the better that day.

It was as if my brain had finally accepted the logic of what I was supposed to be doing, and I found myself able not only to go up and down the beach in a straight line but also to turn around and come back again.

I’m sure it wasn’t pretty, but by the time our lunch break came along, I was feeling positively ebullient – and a lot less full of salt water than previous days.

More to the point, Anna had obviously been watching and she gave me her seal of approval.

‘I told you we’d make a windsurfer out of you, didn’t I, Dan? You looked really good out there.’

I was under few illusions as to how good I might have looked, but I thanked her all the same and decided that this merited a real beer rather than a low-alcohol one for a change.

At that moment, Ingrid came walking past with Anna’s teacher, Stefano, and I asked them if they would like to join us.

After ordering the drinks, I sat back and listened as the subject inevitably turned to the sudden death of their boss, the owner of the windsurfing school, campsite and villa.

I was interested to see that, although both looked shocked, neither looked particularly saddened by the event, and Ingrid didn’t even bother trying.

‘I’ll be quite honest, Dan: if that had been you or your lovely Labrador lying dead on the beach, I would have been a lot more surprised and a lot more upset.’

Oscar had positioned himself alongside her with his nose on her knee, staring up at her in adoration. Doing my best not to sound like a private detective, I prompted her into elaborating.

‘Wasn’t he a very nice man? I never met him.’

She screwed up her face. ‘I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but, no, he wasn’t a very nice man.’ I saw her glance across at Stefano for a moment. ‘At least not if you were a woman.’

‘So he was a bit of a Casanova, was he?’

‘A bit ?’ She shuddered. ‘Ask any of the women who work here. The one thing we all learnt from day one was never to find yourself alone with him. He was like an octopus – hands all over the place.’

‘Oh dear.’ I was still trying to sound less like a detective and more like a shocked bystander. ‘And did he try it on with you?’

This time, Stefano answered. ‘He tried it on with every woman in the place. It was disgusting, but jobs like this are hard to find so, like Ingrid says, the girls just learned to avoid him where possible.’

‘And did they all avoid him, or did anybody go along with his advances? After all, I imagine he was quite a wealthy man.’

Again, the two of them exchanged glances before Ingrid replied. ‘You would probably do well to put that question to Teresa, his PA.’

I didn’t want to press them any further so I took a sip of beer and let Anna turn the conversation to the Etruscans.

I listened with interest as she and Stefano discussed the Etruscan mining community who had quite possibly lived near here two thousand years ago and from time to time, I asked a question or two.

‘When you say, “near here”, where exactly do you mean? Are there ruins we could visit? I’m sure Anna would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?’

She nodded and Stefano pointed inland. ‘On the other side of the main road, just past Graziani’s villa, there are clear traces of early mining.

Where there are mines, there are normally smelting furnaces, and it would be amazing if I could find the remains of one of these, what the locals call fabbrichili .

There might even have been the site of a settlement there, but I haven’t seen any traces so far. ’

‘And what about the mines; what are they like?’

‘The whole mountain behind us is riddled with them. Most are not much more than depressions in the ground these days. Most of the deeper ones have long since collapsed, but you can still make out some of the slag heaps. Nowadays, they’re overgrown, but if you look at the hillside carefully, you’ll soon see little mounds and dips everywhere. ’

‘What about the miners themselves? You mentioned a settlement. Do you think that might be up there as well?’

He smiled. ‘That’s what I’d love to find out.

I’m writing my thesis on the Etruscan communities here on the island and I would dearly like to be able to pinpoint a former settlement.

Who knows? They might have lived only a matter of metres from where we are now.

’ He sounded wistful and I was impressed at his dedication to his subject.

I sat back and listened with one ear while considering what he’d said.

If there had been mines and a smelting furnace close to where Graziani’s new villa now stood, could it be that he had discovered the remains of the settlement, dug up valuable artefacts, and lived off the proceeds?

I resolved to take Oscar for a walk up there this afternoon after finishing my next windsurfing lesson.

* * *

By the time my afternoon session finished – and I had been delighted to find that I had been able to cope with the stronger wind and the choppier conditions – I was feeling ever more positive about my progress – at least as far as windsurfing was concerned.

When it came to the two murders, I was less optimistic.

There were still too many unanswered questions and I wondered how Virgilio and his former colleague were getting on.

Hopefully, Inspector Fontana’s investigation would unearth new information.

After a long, cool, glass of sparkling mineral water, I left Anna, who told me she was feeling tired and wanted to head back to the hotel.

Oscar and I walked up through the campsite until we reached the main road.

When I say main road, I don’t mean that it was a busy highway by any means, and Oscar and I were able to cross without seeing a single vehicle.

The vegetation on the other side of the road was in stark contrast to the neatly mown grass and well-maintained flower beds of the campsite, and I found myself walking up a vestigial track through what had once been a vineyard.

Now, after years of neglect, the vines had run wild and spread out across the ground, some encroaching onto the track.

Apart from ruts made by a 4 x 4 or an agricultural vehicle of some kind heading up to an agricultural shed, the track looked as though it was very little used, and I could imagine that in a year or two, it might even disappear underneath the rampant vines.

It was very hot up here away from the sea breeze and Oscar appeared happy to trot alongside me rather than go bounding off into the undergrowth.

I was pleased about this because I had read that there were several species of poisonous snakes here in the hills, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get bitten.

I’m not a fan of snakes, poisonous or not, but fortunately, the only reptiles we came across were terrified lizards who shot off as our shadows landed on them.

The laws of physics told me that my black dog would soon find the direct sunlight uncomfortable, so I just walked up to the top of a slight incline from where I had a better view onwards up the hillside.

Here there was a wonderful gnarled old pine tree whose trunk was about the same thickness as my waist and was probably twice as old as I was – maybe more.

We stopped in the welcome shade and I took a look around.

With my back to the sea, hiding Graziani’s villa and the campsite from view, there was virtually no sign of human activity apart from the large shed, which had probably once been used by the farmer.

Seen relatively close up, it was more modern than I had thought, and I studied it critically.

I had been thinking about getting a shed of my own, although I would need something only a fraction of the size of this serious agricultural building, and this sort of simple, practical design looked ideal.

I took a couple of photos and resolved to show them to Nello, the local carpenter back in my village, in the hope that he could make me something similar.

As I did so, I wondered idly why anybody had bothered to stick a solid-looking shed like this in the middle of an abandoned field – and the field was definitely abandoned.

The field was covered with a mixture of old vines, weeds, heather and thorny bushes that would have made any attempt at walking off the track almost impossible.

The earth beneath my feet was a dusty orange colour and the stones littering the slope were a faded deep red – no doubt a sign of the ore beneath.

Ahead of me, the hillside rose more sharply and carried on right up to the distant summit of what my phone told me was Monte Calamita, which translates as the magnetic mountain.

It was the richness of the minerals beneath my feet that had made Elba one of the most important places in early Mediterranean civilisation, and I could almost feel the history radiating up through my feet as I trod in the footsteps of the long-lost miners.