‘Maybe he didn’t do it himself,’ suggested Minot quietly.
Gianni looked at him.
‘How do you mean?’
Minot relit his roll-up, which had gone out.
‘Someone told me that you were driving into Alba that morning, and saw a truck parked close to where Beppe was killed.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ snapped Maurizio. ‘We were busy all day filling those demijohns.’
‘Well, someone saw a truck there,’ said Minot. ‘Told the Carabinieri about it, too. That’s how I found out, from Pascal.’
He finished his wine and poured another glass.
‘Take it easy,’ cautioned Maurizio.
Minot laughed harshly.
‘Don’t worry! If I get arrested, it won’t be for drunk driving.’
The silence reformed, a swirling opacity like one of the morning fogs for which the region was notorious.
‘What were you two doing the night Beppe was shot?’ asked Minot, not looking at them.
Gianni gave a humourless laugh.
‘Eh, you’ve been spending too much time with cops all right, Minot. You’re beginning to sound like one yourself!’
Minot smiled.
‘Fair enough. But let’s say a cop asked you the same question, what would you tell him?’
‘The truth, of course,’ Maurizio retorted irritably. ‘We spent the evening watching TV and then went to bed.’
‘Was Lisa here?’
‘What the hell is…’ Gianni began.
‘Was she?’ Minot insisted, speaking to Maurizio.
‘She was at her aunt’s house in Alba.’
‘So you don’t have any witnesses to confirm your story,’ Minot concluded. ‘In theory, you could have gone out that night, followed Beppe down to the woods and shot him.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ yelled Gianni Faigano, pushing back his chair and standing up.
Minot held up his hands in a calming gesture.
‘Take it easy, Gianni. I know you didn’t kill Beppe. I didn’t either, but that didn’t stop Pascal from coming round and questioning me about it. Sooner or later it’ll be your turn. Just think how much easier everything would be if we all had a nice, solid alibi.’
‘Well, that’s too bad,’ snapped Maurizio, ‘because we don’t.’
‘I do,’ replied Minot with his nagging smile.
‘Good for you.’
‘I was out after truffles that night, miles from where Beppe was shot. And I wasn’t alone.’
‘Well, that’s a stroke of luck. Who did you go out with?’
‘With you two.’
The brothers stared at him.
‘We met here at midnight,’ Minot continued calmly, ‘and drove over to a patch I know of near Neviglie. You provided the dogs, I provided the location. We didn’t have much luck, as it turned out, but we stuck at it and didn’t get home until seven o’clock the next morning. An hour after Beppe was shot.’
Gianni Faigano shook his head.
‘Maurizio and I haven’t been out truffling for ages, Minot. We’re getting too lazy to spend all night tramping through the woods.’
Minot regarded him levelly.
‘That’s not quite true, Gianni. You make exceptions once in a while. This was one of them.’
Once again, the brothers consulted each other silently.
‘Why would we do that?’ asked Maurizio at length.
‘Why wouldn’t you? It’s in all our interests to have a solid story to tell the cops, right?’
Gianni shook his head slowly.
‘I don’t want to get involved in this.’
‘Ah, but supposing you’re already involved?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Minot told them what he meant.
Twenty minutes later, he was back in his truck, the demijohns of wine covered by a tarpaulin. He took a roundabout route to the Scorrone winery, sticking to the back roads. There were risks either way. On the one hand, if any roadblocks had been set up by the police or the Guardia di Finanza, they were almost certain to be on the main highway, down in the valley. On the other, the indirect route would take about twice as long to drive, which meant twice as many chances of having a breakdown or an accident which would inevitably bring to the attention of the authorities the fact that he was transporting two thousand litres of unlabelled red wine, for which he had no sales documents, certificates of provenance, tax forms or shipping manifests.
It was a fine calculation, and in the end he decided to compromise by taking a short stretch of the strada statale which would cut fifteen minutes off the total transit time. The chances of the uniforms being out at that hour were pretty low. They would have written their quota of tickets that afternoon, lurking in lay-bys to pick off drivers weaving their way home after a long lunch followed by several grappas too many. As for the tax police, both they and their trucker prey would almost certainly have taken Sunday off.
His predictions proved correct, and less than half an hour after leaving the Faigano house Minot pulled off the highway and up a short drive leading to the headquarters of the Azienda Agricola Bruno Scorrone. This looked more like a factory than a winery: all concrete loading bays and stacked plastic crates, pumps and pipes and nozzles and stainless steel tanks. In a region celebrated for its scrupulously traditional approach to wine-making, Bruno Scorrone’s main claim to fortune, if not to fame, was a generic Barbera d’Alba, widely available in screw-top, large-format bottles through various national supermarket chains.