We walked down the hill together, dawdling, putting off the awful moment when we had to break the news of Gabriele Arnone’s death to Francesco. We went through the villa’s gates and into the gardens. The birds were singing their hearts out. All the plants and trees, even those that had previously wilted in the heat, stood upright. The sky was blue, the light was bright, the colours vivid. We took the long way around the garden, around the edge of the flower beds, past the great oleaster that sheltered the little graveyard, past the old pool house, across the lawn. The area around the pool was muddy and puddled, the pile of concrete and tiles that had been dug out had collapsed in the downpour and the walls of the pool had subsided. I leaned over the hole, expecting it to be half full of water, but it wasn’t. Only a couple of inches of muddy water lay at its base, and a largish brown object half submerged in the mud at the bottom.

‘What’s that?’ I asked Joe.

‘I don’t know.’

He looked around, found an old bean cane, went to the pool and slid down the bank so he was standing in the puddle at the bottom. He poked the object with the end of the cane, turning it over. The other side of it stared back up at us. Joe looked up at me.

‘Jesus,’ he whispered.

At his feet was a human skull.

61

‘Is it real?’ I asked.

‘I think so. There’s something else here…’

‘What?’

‘Some big bone. Part of a pelvis, I think.’

‘Oh God!’

Other bones were in the mud. A knobble of a spine, part of a leg; the delicate curl of a rib and another, broken ribs.

‘It’s a whole skeleton,’ Joe said. He suddenly jumped and shook his foot. A piece of cloth was attached to it, ancient, filthy. Joe stepped back and cried out as he trod on another bone. He scrabbled for the side of the pool.

I stepped away, slipped and sat down in the mud. I reached down to help Joe and heaved him up. He stood beside me, covered in mud and panting heavily.

‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘Jesus Christ!’

We clung to one another, appalled. Joe was trembling.

‘How did it get there?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘D’you think it’s another of those things like the cat and the crow?’

‘It looks old, like it’s been there for ages.’

‘You mean it was there all the time? Under the pool?’

We stared into the mud. The bones were settling again now, the skull tilted to one side. A brown bubble emerged from one of the eye sockets and broke on the surface. We both shuddered.

‘Maybe the pool was built over an old graveyard,’ I whispered.

‘It wasn’t.’

‘How can you be sure?’