Spider

48

San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany Nancy King's morning was thrown into disarray when a landscaper unexpectedly turned up to survey the area of subsidence in the rear gardens. Vincenzo Capello was an old friend of her hotel manager Carlo, and the two hugged and kissed so affectionately in reception they could have been mistaken for gay lovers. It had been so long since Carlo had promised that his friend Vincenzo would fix the gaping hole that had opened up at the foot of their terraced garden, that she'd almost completely forgotten about him.

Vincenzo was living testimony to the much heralded benefits of a healthy Italian diet of fresh foods, olive oil and strong red wine. Nancy had been told he was nearer seventy than sixty, but looking at him now, she didn't think he looked a day older than fifty. Carlo said, 'Ciao!' and went off to chase up his staff, leaving Nancy to show a still grinning Vincenzo to the trouble spot.

'Carlo, he tell me that you have a big hole in your garden. He says all the staff are afraid of a-falling in it.' Vincenzo's eyes twinkled and his permanent smile showed a full set of strong, white teeth.

'Not quite,' said Nancy, leading him from the reception. 'But it is a big fall of soil and I'd hate it to get worse. The end of the garden terrace, behind where we grow vegetables for the kitchen, has given way and some kind of tunnel has opened up beneath it. What I'm most worried about is whether the ground above it might also be unsafe.'

Vincenzo didn't appear to hear her. His eyes were fixed on the bathroom sign. It seemed that the one thing that might not be holding up as well as his looks was his bladder. 'Un momento brevissimo,' he pleaded and ducked inside. Nancy waited patiently, her eagle eyes spotting some chipped paintwork that would have to be touched up once the summer season was over and all the guests had gone. Mr Capello duly reappeared, shaking water from his just washed hands. 'You like Italy?' he asked.

Italians visiting La Casa Strada always asked that, and Nancy loved the fact that they wanted her to share their passion for the country. 'I adore Italy,' she said with gusto. 'We've been here a couple of years now and I feel more and more at home every day.'

Vincenzo's face lit up. 'Meraviglioso, wonderful,' he said.

'Let me show you the damage,' said Nancy.

As they walked outside, she slowed down and looked around. It was something she did every time she stepped outside La Casa Strada. To her, every view around the hotel was a visual feast, a delicacy marinating in time itself, growing deliciously better every day she spent there. Today the sunlight in the private garden behind the kitchen was as soft and golden as pure honey.

'It's just down that slope there,' said Nancy, pointing across the garden. 'You can see where my husband has moved some old fencing across to stop anyone going down.'

Vincenzo nodded and walked slowly over, his eyes drinking in the view across the lush valley towards Mount Amiata in the south and Siena in the north. Nancy watched him disappear down the banking, and then, amid the birdsong in the orange trees she heard a strange sound, a sort of harsh clunk and click, a metallic kind of noise, the type that simply didn't belong in a garden. She took a couple of paces around a tree and was startled to find herself face to face with her highly inquisitive fellow American, Terry McLeod.

'Excuse me,' she said abruptly, 'it's private back here. Would you mind returning to the guest gardens?'

'Oh hell, I'm sorry,' said McLeod jovially. 'You've got such a wonderful place; I was just walking around taking some photographs. I'm real sorry.'

Nancy noticed the expensive-looking camera strung on a thick Nikon strap around his neck, his finger still on the shutter button. 'That's okay. Just please remember in future.' There was something about McLeod she didn't like, something that she just couldn't work out.

'New camera, I just can't leave it alone,' said the American. He lifted it from his neck to show her and in the same moment clunk-clicked off a head and shoulders shot of Nancy. This irritated the hell out of her. 'You never think of asking permission, do you?' she snapped, her face colouring.

'Hey, sorry again,' said McLeod, disingenuously. He sauntered off without saying goodbye, swinging the camera on its strap.

For one moment Nancy's mind went into flashback. The heavy black camera looked strangely familiar. Why?

And then she remembered. It looked identical to the square, black object she'd seen the previous night. The object in the hand of the burglar in her bedroom.