Page 8 of Murder on an Italian Island (Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mysteries #12)
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 ‘ too relaxed’.
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 into bagni , 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? ’
‘Definitely, but what about you?’
‘If you’d asked me at lunchtime, I’d have run a mile but, all things considered, yes, I think I am looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.’ There was a movement from the floor beside me and Oscar’s nose appeared by my elbow. ‘Our four-legged friend probably needs a walk. You feel like coming?’
She shook her head. ‘You go. I’m very comfortable here and, besides, I’m prepping a whole new course for next autumn, so I really need to do a bit of reading while I’m here.’
Oscar and I went out, and I couldn’t resist taking a walk down to the beach to see if anything was going on down there.
Everything appeared to have returned to normal.
The body had been removed, there was no incident tape around the headland where the body had been discovered, and no sign of any members of the police force.
Evidently, the investigating officer’s hunch that it had been an accident or suicide had been vindicated.
While Oscar splashed around in the shallows, I stood there for a minute or two, wondering what had happened here last night.
My brief encounter with Graziani tended to make me think that the most likely explanation for the fall was an accident – caused by an excess of alcohol in his bloodstream – but I couldn’t shift the idea that somebody might have assaulted him.
His body had been a real mess after the fall, but presumably, the pathologist had been able to work out the true circumstances.
I tended to dismiss the idea of suicide as he hadn’t struck me as a man bearing such a terrible burden of guilt that he’d decided to end it all.
Maybe too much wine, a dark night and a high cliff had been all it had taken.
Inevitably, my mind returned to my current book.
Over the last few weeks, I had written and rewritten about ten thousand words without coming up with anything that satisfied me or that would have satisfied a reader.
I had even reached the point of considering changing the whole thing and removing the dead body in San Gimignano completely.
Now here I was, faced with a situation that didn’t differ too greatly from the scene in the book and I wondered if there might be any lessons to be learned from reality that I could incorporate into my fiction.
My literary musings were interrupted when, to my considerable surprise, I heard police sirens arriving at the hotel, and I hurried back up the path to see what was going on.
Two squad cars were now parked outside the main entrance and as I approached the terrace with Oscar, a uniformed officer held up her hand and asked for my ID.
I wasn’t carrying my wallet, but I gave her my name and room number and she checked me off on a clipboard.