The Affair (44 page)

Her words were slow and her expression weary. Trevor couldn’t bear to leave her looking so miserable but the guards were calling time.

‘We should have a holiday when you get out,’ he suggested. ‘Where would you like to go? How about Athens?’

‘Maybe,’ Diana hedged. ‘Athens would be nice.’ But he noticed that she couldn’t meet his eyes.

Hilary was happy to let Trevor visit Torre Astura, and even arranged a studio car to pick him up and drive him there. On the road west, he kept his eyes peeled, trying to imagine Helen’s thoughts on her final journey as she gazed out at the tilled fields, terracotta farmhouses and rows of cypress trees. Was it still daylight or had darkness fallen? The driver spoke English so Trevor asked him how Helen might have travelled from the station in Anzio to the film set. He needed to keep an open mind about events that evening. There was a local bus, the driver told him, but they would have run infrequently at that time of night.

The car stopped at the gates of the Torre Astura set, where a security guard was sitting in a roadside office. Fortunately he spoke English. Trevor got out to chat.

The guard remembered Diana well, and they talked through her movements on the day in question, but he said he hadn’t seen her after six that afternoon, when she picked up her bag from the gatehouse, until the following morning when Helen’s body was found. He hadn’t seen Helen at all, because another guard had been on duty from seven in the evening through to seven in the morning. They worked twelve-hour shifts – night and day. His wife hated him doing this work, he said. She thought the hours were too long, but he was looking forward to seeing all the stars when they came to shoot the outdoor Alexandria scenes.

Since he didn’t know what Helen had done when she reached the set, Trevor decided to retrace Diana’s movements. The guard told him that she went straight onto the jetty and began making notes, so he walked down that way, past a gaudy imitation of the Serapeum and various other buildings and sculptures, to the waterside. Coils of rope and huge sails lay on the ground, alongside a pile of incense burners and some gold and blue statues cast in resin. A large oared battleship was moored at the end of the jetty and, as he drew closer, Trevor could see that it had been converted from a fishing boat, with a turret added in the centre of the deck. He turned at the end of the jetty and looked back at the miniature Egyptian city built along the shoreline. From a distance it was rather impressive.

He walked back along the jetty and had a quick look around the sets, discovering they were mere façades propped up by metal scaffolding. There was a black structure with ropes dangling down the front that he assumed must be Cleopatra’s mausoleum. Whoever had decided it should be black? It seemed unlikely. He explored all the other structures along the front, trying to work out what they were meant to be: Cleopatra’s Needle, Ptolemy’s Needle, the Palace, the famous Library of Alexandria. There was no lighthouse in the bay, though. Having gone to so much trouble, he wondered why they hadn’t made a copy of that wonder of the ancient world, which could reputedly be seen from right across the Mediterranean.

Diana had told him she went to the
trattoria
for lunch around two, so he did the same and found it packed full of workmen in dusty overalls. He ate some pasta and drank a beer but couldn’t follow any of the conversations in rapid-fire Italian that took place around him. A couple of times he sensed they might be talking about him but when he turned to look, their gazes were quickly averted.

He’d brought a photograph of Helen, cut from the newspaper, and when he finished eating he leaned over to the men at the nearest table and asked, ‘Did you see this girl on the 10th of May?’ He spoke slowly and held up ten fingers to try and make them understand. They shook their heads. ‘Pass it around,’ Trevor motioned. Each table in turn looked at the picture and glanced at Trevor but no one admitted to seeing Helen. He wished he spoke Italian and could question them individually about where they had been that night. Did any of them know the witness who claimed to have seen Diana and Helen fighting? What could he hope to discover without speaking the language? It was hopeless.

After lunch, he walked down to the coast and worked out the path Diana must have taken when she went to bathe in the sea. The heat was intense now. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and carried his jacket over his arm but still he was roasting. He could feel the patch on the top of his head burning where the hair was thinnest. He bent, peering at the shingle, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary.

Who am I fooling?
he thought.
The police will have done this. What chance do I have of finding something they have missed?

After half an hour of walking south, directly into the sun, the shore became rocky and he would have had to clamber across some large boulders to continue. Diana hadn’t mentioned rock climbing, so he turned to walk back towards the set again. He couldn’t work out where she must have stopped, or which field she crossed to return to the road. No matter. He decided to look in the opposite direction and cross into the army camp to see where the soldier had been when he spotted Helen’s body in the water.

Behind the model of the Serapeum, there were piles of scaffolding poles on the ground, along with some tarpaulin sheets, paint pots and stacks of plywood, then a fence separating film-set land from army land. He walked down to the waterfront and found he could easily cross into the army camp. Tents were erected further up a gentle slope but there was no one about. Tentatively he walked towards them, and when he turned to look back at the wide expanse of the bay he could imagine where the soldier must have been standing when he saw Helen’s body in the water. He would have spotted the red of her dress first.

‘
Signore, questi sono terreni privati
.’ A soldier appeared carrying a black assault rifle, the muzzle pointing at the ground.

Instinctively, Trevor raised his hands. ‘Sorry. Just looking.’ He backed off.

The soldier didn’t seem unfriendly but watched until Trevor had stepped back across the boundary onto film-set land. Next, he walked behind the Serapeum, across a field, to the
pensione
where Diana had stayed. He could see a little patio on the ground floor at the back of the building and assumed that must have been hers. It was the only room with a patio. He peered through a gap in the shutters but it didn’t look as though anyone else was occupying the room because he couldn’t see any personal possessions – just a bed and a chair.

There was an old wooden bench on the patio. It was in the shade, so he sat down, trying to imagine his wife sitting there the evening Helen died. The air was full of the noisy chirping of crickets, the buzzing of bees around a purply-pink bougainvillea and the distant rhythm of the waves. Trevor was overcome by weariness and despair. He’d come all this way and got no closer to understanding what had happened. Meanwhile, Diana was stuck in jail with common criminals. He couldn’t think what else to do, though.

I’m impotent
, he thought, and the word seemed to sum up all that was wrong with him: his lack of manliness, his inability to deal with things of a practical nature, and his many sexual failures. No wonder Diana took a lover. It was a miracle she hadn’t taken many more during the course of their marriage.

Trevor decided he would stay in Torre Astura until seven o’clock and try to talk to the night guard. He wasn’t sure if Helen had made it to the entrance of the set, but if she had, surely she must have spoken with him. That gave him three hours to kill in the meantime. He closed his eyes and slipped into a wakeful doze. He could still hear the crickets and feel a slight breeze coming up from the shore but his eyelids were heavy and his limbs melted into the bench. Gradually the doze got deeper, and the external noises drifted further away, until he was sound asleep.

Trevor woke with a start. The sun was setting over the ocean and when he looked at his watch he saw it was almost eight o’clock. Four hours had gone by. He wasn’t sure whether the studio driver had waited for him. If not, he would have to find his own way back to Rome.

As soon as he leaned forward, he felt a jabbing pain in his lower back. He must have slept in an awkward position and it had triggered his old trouble. He clutched the arm of the bench and rose carefully, leaning his weight into his arms, before straightening up slowly. He rubbed the painful spot, trying to relax the tense muscles, before he started hobbling across the field towards the film set.

He made his way to the gatehouse and, as he drew near, he saw that the night guard was sitting reading a newspaper.

‘Hello, do you speak English?’ Trevor asked.

‘A
leettle
.’ The guard put down his paper.

‘I’m Diana Bailey’s husband.’

‘Ah, yes, yes.’ The guard seemed to understand.

‘Can I ask you some questions about what happened here?’

‘Of course.’ He pulled out a chair for Trevor to sit down, wiping the seat with his sleeve.

Trevor retrieved the photograph of Helen from his jacket pocket. It was becoming rather dog-eared. ‘Did you see this girl?’

‘Yes, yes.’

Trevor wasn’t sure if he had understood the question. ‘This is the girl who died in the water.’ He pointed towards the Mediterranean. ‘Did you see her before she died?’

‘Yes, before.’

Trevor felt the stirrings of hope. ‘
When
did you see her?’

‘Almost twelve at night.
Mezzanotte.
She come here. She ask for Diana.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I tell her Diana is in the
pensione
.’ He pointed.

‘Was Helen alone?’

‘Yes, alone.’

So Luigi wasn’t with her at that stage. ‘How did she look?’

The guard shook his head. ‘She look sad.’ He waggled his fingers under his eyes to indicate crying. ‘Not good.’

‘And did she go to the
pensione
?’

‘Yes, I see her.’ He pointed at the door of the
pensione
.

‘Did you see her after that?’

The guard shook his head. ‘No. Not until the morning, when she is dead.’

‘You didn’t see her with my wife, with Diana?’

‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically.

So this guard wasn’t the witness. Who on earth could it have been?

The guard spoke, obviously keen to communicate something. ‘
Non credo che sia vero che qualcuno ha visto loro due lottare. È così tranquillo qui che avrei sentito. Credo che qualcuno stia mentendo.
’

Trevor couldn’t understand what he meant. The guard repeated himself and Trevor tried to pick out a few individual words but it was beyond him. Damn and blast it that he had never been any good at languages.

‘Is my driver here?’ he asked, miming a steering wheel. Perhaps he could translate.

‘He go to
Roma
,’ the guard said. ‘I call taxi for you?’ He mimed a telephone.

Trevor considered his options. He was reluctant to leave with nothing to show for the trip. Perhaps he could find someone to translate while he asked the night guard more questions, since he seemed to be the last person to admit to seeing Helen alive.

‘Could I stay here tonight?’ he asked, then mimed sleeping and pointed to the
pensione
. ‘Maybe I could stay in Diana’s room?’

‘OK,’ the guard said. ‘Room number eleven.’

Trevor rose from the chair, wincing and clutching his back, then shook the guard’s hand. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you for your help.’

The guard nodded and watched him walk slowly up the road.

There was no bell on the outside of the lodging house but the door was ajar so Trevor walked into a hallway. A radio was playing a song he recognised called ‘
Volare
’. Dean Martin had sung it, he was pretty sure, but this sounded like an Italian version. He couldn’t imagine where he’d absorbed this information, but occasionally he was called upon to supervise parties at the students’ union so it might have been there.

‘Hello?’ he called. No one appeared so he shouted louder. ‘Hello?’