Plot reminder: Mary is in the Italian fishing port of Punto San Giacomo to trace her uncle, Salvatore D'Ambra. In the previous chapter a local man helped her place her order in a pizzeria. Two chapters ago she described the letter she posted to Inspector Kubič detailing all she knows about the case.

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The hotel bed proved surprisingly comfortable - so much so that I found myself wide awake with the hands of my watch still to tick past six o'clock. Too early for the hotel to be serving breakfast, and in the meantime I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. It would have been absurd to start searching for Salvatore D'Ambra before the sun had even risen, and neither had I thought to bring a novel with me. There was a small television set on top of the chest of drawers in the corner of the room, but the idea of attempting to decipher Italian breakfast-time TV was singularly unappealing.

A walk along the beach it would be then. A chance to breathe some fresh sea air into my lungs, gather my thoughts.

Dawn was still an unformed concept, half of an idea concentrated into a sliver of crimson along the distant horizon. Its nascent glow faintly illuminated the rippled contours of the sea, the lights of the returning trawlers scattered there amidst. Closer to the shore, gulls swooped and splashed, bobbed lazily on the peach-coloured water.

As I slipped off sandals, felt the cool silkiness of the sand between my toes, I found myself wondering about Inspector Kubič. About what he'd made of the anonymous letter which had awaited him amongst the previous day's work mail. Wondered what I myself, were I in his still possibly mud-caked shoes, would have made of it. That it was the work of some unhinged crank to be immediately dismissed? No, I didn't think so. That the author was well-intentioned but ultimately misguided then? Yes, perhaps. I think the missive would have planted some sort of a seed of doubt in my mind however. If the claimed connection between Vincenzo D'Ambra and Irene Brennan were indeed valid, then yes, I would have to admit that it was all a bit of a coincidence. Enough so to make a few discreet enquiries into the nature of the old lady's death. See what the name Sergeant Reynolds might throw up amongst official archive databases.

I hadn't planned on strolling all the way to the headland, but that was where I suddenly found myself, the sand ahead abruptly blocked by a jagged mound of rocks. I felt almost trancelike, the sea a becalmed presence beside me, its gentle ebb and flow against the shore like the soft whispered breathing of someone emerging from deep slumber. I imagined my father as a boy, his feet pressing hollows into the same sand where my own trod - a wiry exuberant scamp dashing and yelling and spraying out Catherine wheels of water as he charged into the waves. I had never felt closer to him than in those moments.

Whilst on the outward leg of my stroll I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of joggers and dog-walkers I passed, turning back around I saw that with the unfurling of the dawn the tiny silhouettes scattered along the beach had increased three or four-fold. It was at the halfway point of the return leg that the sight of a wet energetic Labrador charging in my direction caused me yelp in panic. Turn my back, brace myself...

"Dante!" I heard an angry voice cry. "Dante, viene qua!"

The anticipated impact not coming to pass, I opened my eyes once more, turned back around. Ahead, the figure of a man was bent in admonishment of the high-spirited mutt. Once lead had been rehooked to collar, he turned an apologetic gaze in my direction.

"Mi scu-"

I think we both recognised each other in the same instant - that quick-fire rifling through of mental drawers, searching the context of a familiar face.

"Ah, it's you," he smiled. "The English woman who doesn't like mozzarella on her pizza."

Maybe it had been the shadowiness of dusk, but his face seemed more interesting than it had done in the pizzeria the previous evening. In the limpid light of dawn I now saw that it was a detailed relief map of ridges and nooks and vales, a landscape carved by time, the multitudinous travails of life. A face topped by messy mop of curly silver hair, the chestnut brown eyes alive, engaged with the moment.

I was aware that he seemed to be waiting for me to say something in return. That the moment, the precise conjunction of the place and time in which we found ourselves, demanded as such.

I glanced down at the chastened-looking canine now sitting obediently at his feet. "Dante," I heard myself remarking. "Interesting name for a dog." It was the first thing which came into my head.

The facial landscape shifted a little - cheeks stretching, a series of ridges forming at the corner of each eye. "What name could be more appropriate? Dante knew a lot about little devils, after all." There was an affectionate pat on the dog's head. "Still young, still learning what's right and what's wrong. But we'll get there boy, won't we eh?"

Those ridges at the corners of his eyes now straightened again, the jagged lines where the valleys had been pale against his healthy tan. Proof, it seemed, that smiling was something which came to him naturally and easily. Something he did often, the sun blocked out between the pinched folds of flesh.

He wasn't smiling right at that very moment however - had turned his gaze, was contemplating the sea with the same consumed intensity I'd  noted the previous evening. "It has arrived," he announced, his voice hushed as if in awe. "That brief moment that comes at a certain point of every dawn. The angle of the sun, it is just so that the sea seems to be silver. A vast pool of liquid silver."

He was right, I saw, also turning my gaze. Quicksilver. The sea had become a gently rippling vat of quicksilver. So subtle and so simple, something the jogger at that moment passing by seemed not to have noticed, yet which so described was one of the most breathtaking sights I had ever beheld.

"The sea has many faces," the man mused beside me. "It can laugh and play. It can - how do you say? It can snarl. Snarl like an angry dog, yes. It can bite. Turn you upside down, steal from you. But when it is like this it is as splendid as a..." His eyes turned momentarily skywards as he sought an appropriate simile. "As a sleeping child."

He turned then, Dante tugging him along back the way they'd come. The way I was going. Back towards the harbour, the centre of town.

"What's your name?" he called over his shoulder.

"Mary," I called back.

"And I'm Lucio." He paused his step, twisted neck back to me. "Come Mary, I buy you breakfast. Apologise for Dante scaring you so. I take you to the place that serves the best croissants in all of Punto San Giacomo. The best cappuccino too." That ready smile flashed once more across his face. "I almost forgot - no milk, right? Yours will have to be a double espresso then."

Dante then jerked him back into motion. And I had no choice, it seemed, other than to follow.

*

As we headed from the beach, I was to learn several interesting things about him. He was a recently retired librarian, for example. His English was self taught from books, honed via regular visits across the Atlantic to visit his sister and her family in Florida. As for dogs, these had always been an important part of his life. Before Dante there had been a Golden Retriever called Boccaccio; before that a German Shepherd named Virgil. The man clearly had a penchant for classical poetry.

The cafė he led me to was on one of the long streets which ran parallel to the sea, not far from my hotel. Directly across the road was the pretty baroque facade of a church, the crumbled brickwork of a bell tower rising in stark silhouette against the unbroken azure of the sky. In between swooshed and beeped the early morning traffic; passers-by strode languidly across our line of vision, their mutual calls of salutation almost boomed like thunderclaps across the street.

Such energy - such indomitable joie de vivre - was frankly beyond my comprehension. Perhaps it had something to do with the head-spinning strength of the coffee the people there drank, the sugary indulgence of their pastries. For them, breakfast was much more than a quickly slurped bowl of cereal, a grabbed half-eaten slice of toast. It was a ritual, as much so as evening mass. Fuel for both body and soul.

As Lucio sipped on his cappuccino, Dante curled up at his feet, I couldn't help but notice the wedding band on his finger. I wondered as to the nature of the relationship he had with his wife, that he should think nothing of inviting a woman he barely even knew to have breakfast with him.

"Why are you here Mary?" he suddenly asked, dabbing paper napkin to the corners of his lips. "Sure, Punto San Giacomo has it charms, but there are many places near here that have more charms. Where the sea is even clearer and the sand much finer, and where foreigners come to pass their holidays. In Punto San Giacomo, to hear a foreign voice is rare."

Yes, I assured him, I'd sort of had that impression. I then proceeded to recount to him the same tale I'd told George Shreeves, John Simmonds and Peter Harvey. That I was a freelance journalist researching a story. By that point, it had become almost a force of habit. So far from Ravensby, from anybody even vaguely connected to Irene, such subterfuge wasn't entirely necessary of course. But that was who I was. That was my nature. I was the sort of person to hide even when there was no need to. I suppose I just found things easier that way somehow.

Did he know Salvatore D'Ambra, I asked?

The question provoked a smile, one I perceived as slightly rueful of nature. "Sure I know Salvatore D'Ambra." A flicked hand indicated the general scene around us. "Look around Mary. This town suffocates. It's like a hand around a person's throat. Everyone knows everyone."

My plan had been to wait until later in the day, ask around some of the bars - the old men I'd seen the previous evening slapping down playing cards at the outside tables, noisily discussing politics and football, whatever the hell it was elderly Italian men talked about. But even if I were to find my uncle, what then? With which common language would we be able to communicate? I wondered if Lucio had any plans for that morning, whether he might not mind accompanying me, acting as interpreter.

Before I had chance to ask, I noticed him frowning at me however. "But  I'm surprised you haven't heard. It was in the local newspaper yesterday." The gaze which held my own was sombre, regretful. "The DNA test, there was no match. Those bones they found in England, they're not Vincenzo D'Ambra's."

~~~~~