THE LIGHT WAS DYING. SOON THE SEA WOULD BE NOTHING but a patch of darkness spangled with the lights of the fishing boats. He decided to go home along the beachfront esplanade so he could get some fresh air. He crossed paths with two young men jogging and a woman who was returning home from a walk with her dog. Only two cars and a ramshackle rattling scooter went past. Francavilla al Mare was a vacation town. Especially along the beachfront, most of the houses and apartments were shuttered, locked up until their rightful owners came back in the summer months. Corrado lived on a street not far off the beach, and besides him, only three families lived in his apartment house, with its two stairwells and twelve apartments.

Things just couldn’t go on like this. An endless torture. He only slept a few hours a night, and they were weary, agitated, gray, dreamless hours.

All things have a start and a finish, he told himself over and over again. Why won’t it ever end for me?

How much longer would he have to pay for the error of his ways? It was worse than serving a life sentence without parole. Maybe it really would be better to land in prison, he told himself. Why hadn’t that policeman, six years earlier, killed him along with his accomplice? Now he found himself chained to the spot, helpless, frightened, and in the hands of a killer.

“This thing has to end!” he said to himself all in a rush, as he inserted his key into the lock of the metal gate that led into the courtyard. He went to the left, toward Staircase A. He opened the ground-floor door. His apartment was half a floor up, on the mezzanine. He turned the key just once and walked through the door. He turned on the light. He took off his hat and heavy jacket and hung them on the hooks next to the door. He drew a deep breath and walked into the kitchen. Enzo Baiocchi was sitting at the table. He was watching TV and smoking a cigarette. The windows were closed, as well as the shutters, and the room reeked of stale smoke and old coffee. He felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

“Welcome home,” Enzo said to him.

Corrado said nothing. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water.

“You didn’t buy any fucking groceries.”

Corrado glanced briefly at Enzo out of the corner of his eye as he went to the dish rack for a glass. It would have required only a good sharp blow with that glass bottle to the back of his head, powerful and determined, and his nightmare would have been over.

“No, I didn’t.”

“So what am I supposed to eat tonight?”

Enzo’s bleached-blond hair, stiff and dry, looked like frayed rope. The man put out his cigarette in his espresso cup.