“Can you call ahead and book me a tower room?”
He waited on the steps for her return call and shooed the curious pigeons away. Waiting was a thing he hated to do, and he did it badly. He put on his panama and put together a plan for the evening. The usurper would show himself eventually, but he would have to go about things carefully, with a subtle touch. But where, then, were his friend and his wife?
Susan called back and told him that the tower was fully booked and that he would have to stay at one of the houses farther down the road. It was as good as she could do.
“Book it. Tell them I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“What about the Italian police?”
“Not yet. Let’s wait until tomorrow. I’m not sure yet. I want to wait.”
He thought that maybe he could ferret out more information working by himself and in secrecy.
He got up and went back to the car parked by the panorama and felt himself brimming with formless melancholy and unease. They were almost certainly dead, then. Carjacked on the road in southern Italy. The bodies could have been buried anywhere; they would be impossible to find without a detailed confession. That, in a few seconds, was what it had come down to. The entire scenario, the working hypothesis, changed and grew vaster and darker. It did so among slopes of vines and avenues of cypresses, in a humanizing sunshine that made everything under it look preordained for happiness. But, of course, it was an optical illusion. Everywhere is dangerous, he thought, everywhere where human beings exist and multiply and continue to breathe.
The road in the direction of Montegrossi twisted its way toward a junction, and there he found the first sign for Badia a Coltibuono. The estate’s main complex lay at the top of a hill, and as he parked there he saw that it was actually a small medieval hamlet of some kind taken over by the winery. He went along its cobbled streets and found the reception. They had his booking; a young woman would take him to the house in her car, and he was to follow in his.
They drove in the two cars out into the estate on gravel roads. His room was a mile from the winery and the reception, and they passed the tower on the way. There were three cars parked there, but he would have to return there later to see if the Codrington car eventually appeared among them. The track then ran through woods and sloping vineyards before arriving at a stone farmhouse with a few outhouses around it. He would be alone in the house, the other units were not yet booked, and he could drive up to the winery to have dinner in the restaurant. The woman left him there and he went up to the room, leaving his bag in the car, and took out only his swimming trunks, which had gone lamentably unused on Hydra. He went back down to the edge of the vines, which rolled serenely to the horizon. He warmed up in the last of the sun’s rays and then went to the indoor pool for a quick swim. Under the greenhouse glass panes the water was tropically warm, and after three righteously strenuous laps he lay on his back on the surface and stared up at the darkening sky. He had a sense that he could nail his man without his knowing it, until it was too late for him. If he could find the Peugeot he might finally call in the Italian police and the matter could be wrapped up. He was already in contact with an old friend in the Italian force, though he had not disclosed the nature of the matter. Everything would fall into place at the last moment.
He went back up to his room and took out the small Glock pistol he was licensed to carry, looked it over, made sure it was fully loaded, and slipped on the shoulder harness which held it snug and unobtrusive against his chest. Even under a lightweight cotton jacket it was unnoticeable. Then he returned to the courtyard and his car. The sun was setting and the Albanian and Serbian workers in the vines were heading off. At the winery the tables were set up at the restaurant and a few guests had ventured out onto a large patio area on the roof. Rockhold had a sudden inspiration. He stopped at the restaurant bar and asked the man working it if Signor Codrington was booked for dinner that night.
“He’s on the terrace upstairs,” the man said.
Rockhold went into the courtyard and up a flight of steps to the terrace, which was spacious and made of two levels. At its far end was the panorama, the distant vision of Siena, the dusk. Here a man stood alone, facing the city, his arms folded, isolated from the other guests. From behind it was hard to say if it was the same man he had seen earlier in Sorano. It could go either way. Tempting fate, he stepped out onto the terrace and sat on one of the benches as swallows swooped around the eaves and into the nearby vines. The Italian dusk was always a place of sibilant swallows. He watched the well-heeled foreigners drift back into the restaurant until it was just himself and the stranger on the terrace. The man began to stir as if thinking of leaving, but as soon as he did Rockhold was quietly gone. He had decided that he wanted to observe him. He was curious about him.
He therefore went down to the restaurant, procured a table in an obscure corner of the room and turned his chair away from the other diners. Resolutely relaxed, he ordered a plate of gnudi with ricotta, a deboned and roasted guinea fowl and some roasted potatoes. He added, naturally, a bottle of the Badia a Coltibuono Riserva. The room soon filled with wealthy Russians, exactly like the hotels in Hydra, though one had to imagine that their buying power was now on the decline. It was otherwise with the Chinese there; they ordered Riservas from the 1980s that had to be brought up from the cellars. Rockhold drank half his own modest bottle before turning to check out the other tables one by one, but the man he had seen on the terrace was not there. He had not taken a table even briefly, so he must have left without Rockhold’s noticing him go. It was a slip on his part, and he paid the bill quickly in order to make up for it.