Ruggieri pauses for a moment and then he says, ‘I do not think so, no, Signor Flowers. He was with your step-niece, no? And then he walk to the bar on the top of the hill, where he takes a drink with his friends. His mother and father pick him up and drive him and his friends to the festa in the town centre. He is there with his family until the early hours of the morning. He has the alibi. He has the witness. He does not have the motive.’

‘What about being in our house? Those photos he took of Chloe?’

‘Si. The boy admit he look to your possessions, maybe move them a little, but he does not steal. He say that he and Chloe take the photo together.’

‘He’s admitted it? He told you he’s been in our house? Looking through our things?’

Ruggieri speaks over me. ‘Is his house. No crime has been committed.’

‘It’s trespass!’

‘It is his family’s house,’ Ruggieri repeats. ‘Nothing is missing. He is a teenage boy – looking to you because he is jealous of what you have and he has not. I think he and Chloe have a little…’ He makes a gesture with his hands as if he is cupping a flower.

‘Flirtation,’ says Biondi.

I look from one to the other and open my mouth to protest, but before I can say anything, Ruggieri says, ‘We believe that your sister is not attacked.’

‘But…’ I gape at him. ‘She was hit on the head with a rock!’

He crosses one polished boot over his knee and leans back. ‘This is what we think too. But it is also the same with a fall. She is drunk, she fall, she hit the head on a sharp stone. There are many, many where she is found, near to il cavalluccio marino. She took the Prosecco with her when she left the house. Your sister like to drink, no?’

‘She liked a drink now and again – she was on holiday, for Christ’s sake! But she’s not in the habit of getting drunk enough to fall and hit her head.’

‘How do you know? You say you are not with her. We say, she go for a walk to the beach. She drink. She fall. Is simple.’ He takes a sip of coffee and leans towards me. ‘She is not assaulted. She is found with the clothes. No sign of a struggle. Your brother-in-law, he tell me she drink a lot.’

‘Only occasionally,’ I say, frowning. ‘What about her black eye?’

He raises his eyebrows at me. ‘If you mean, the bruise here—’ he points to his own eye – ‘Dr Virgili say it is from when she hits the head. Sharp rock, it go through the skull here,’ he points to his temple. ‘The bone is thin, no? The blood go into her eye.’