Together we manhandled an old wooden ladder from the linen cupboard into the smallest bedroom, where an abandoned wasps’ nest hung in one corner and a tiny door in the ceiling opened into the attic. Joe climbed up while I used my weight to steady the ladder. I watched him disappear through the hole. He called down to me that he was in a space that ran the length and breadth of the building. I heard his footsteps above, drawing away from me, and the occasional bump and thump from somewhere distant. When I heard nothing for a while, I became uncomfortable.

‘Joe?’ I called. ‘Joe! Are you okay?’

He coughed in response. ‘Fucking dusty.’

Eventually, he backed out and came down the ladder, bringing with him feathers, dust and cobwebs. There was nothing there, he reported, apart from old birds’ nests, chewed insulating foam, bags of old clothes and the lanterns that used to light the gardens during his grandparents’ parties.

‘The Madonna’s not there,’ he said. ‘Nobody in their right mind would put anything of value up there anyway.’ He shook himself, dislodging the black, desiccated corpses of insects from his clothes.

‘Why don’t you go for a swim?’ I suggested, but he held a finger to his lips. I listened and heard what he had: the sound of an engine; a vehicle coming down the track; another visitor on their way.

21

This time it was a battered old truck that drew up beside the hired Fiat, coughing thick smoke from its exhaust. The truck’s bodywork was dirty, dented in unlikely places, the bumper held on with duct tape. Hand painted livery informed us that it belonged to Vito Barsi, Tuttofare – handyman. Next to a scrawled mobile phone number was a crudely drawn cartoon plumber, a rip-off Mario Brother with a full moustache and overalls, holding a plunger in his hand.

‘Shit,’ Joe hissed, ‘what’s he doing here?’

‘Did you ask him to come?’

‘No! I didn’t say anything to Valentina either.’

‘You saw Valentina?’

‘I called in to the pizzeria yesterday while I was in Porta Sarina.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well then, you must have said something to her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You must have.’

‘I might have said we didn’t have any water.’

I pursed my lips. ‘There you are then.’

The truck rocked on its wheels as the driver’s door opened and a short, heavily muscled man climbed out, a sweat stained baseball cap on his head. He was bullet shaped, with a domed head, broad shoulders and a thick neck; his features were large and uneven. He was good-looking in a bulldog-ish way and his jaw rotated as he chewed gum.