‘She must have been killed on the marshland, like your mother,’ I said. ‘She must have been killed early one morning, somewhere between the convent and the bus stop on the Ragusa road, and then someone took her body back to the DeLucas’ villa and buried it beneath the swimming pool. I expect Gabriele had a vehicle of some kind. I don’t suppose it was much of a problem. He got rid of the body and you cleared out Gina’s room at the convent; you disposed of the evidence.’

Matilde was distracted by a fly that spiralled and then landed on the back of her father’s hands. How thin the hands were, literally skin and bone. The nails were long and yellow. The skin had sunk between the bones.

‘Is your father all right?’ I asked, moving slowly around the chair. I was no more than three steps from the kitchen now. ‘He’s so still.’

‘Flies don’t bother him,’ she replied. She was watching me, holding my eye.

Three steps to the kitchen; four at the most. I was about to move but Matilde pre-empted my escape. She lunged at me with the poker, stumbling against the wheelchair, which tipped. Her father slumped forward. I saw that he was falling and instinctively crouched to catch him.

And two things happened.

Firstly, as the body of the old man crumpled and fell into my arms, the fedora slipped and I saw the rictus grin on the face beneath and the sunken eyes and the skin, mummified and yellow, and the grey hair sparse on the almost-bald head, and secondly, the front door burst open and Irma Arnone arrived, brandishing her gun.

64

I caught the corpse of the Porta Sarina taxi driver as it fell and then, realising what it was, scrabbled away from it, screaming, so I didn’t see the scuffle between Irma and Matilde, all I heard were their shouts as I crawled away towards the kitchen and then I heard gunshot and pain drilled into my back.

I panicked. I kept going, half crawling through the kitchen and out of the back door, and I climbed over sacks of rubbish in the backyard, swollen plastic bags splitting beneath my hands and their insides spilling out. I climbed and scrabbled over that vile collection of detritus until I reached the marshland and then I staggered across the marsh. I was so full of fear that the pain was dulled, but I knew Irma’s gun had fired and the shot had found me and that with every breath I was becoming weaker.