San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany From a green-shuttered bedroom window of La Casa Strada, Jack looked down on a garden filled with apple, plum and pear trees. The row with Nancy had drained him and made him reflect, but deep down he knew he'd crossed the point of no return. Whatever his wife said, or did, he was going to help Massimo. And if necessary, he was going to help Howie too. Being truthful to himself, he now accepted that he'd never really managed to get BRK out of his system. In fact, because he was so totally removed from the case, it had preyed on his mind more than ever. Now, at least, by getting involved, by trying to do something, the mental anguish would be worthwhile, instead of just pointless.
Jack stared again out of the window. The only guests walking around the garden were an elderly couple; probably about the same age his mother and father would have been if they'd still been alive. They wandered along the stone pathway, holding hands and pausing every now and again to point out various fruits and plants to each other. Jack tried to recall their name: Giggs, or Griggs, something like that. Anyway, Nancy had said that they were here to celebrate his seventieth birthday and her sixtieth, which fell within five days of each other. How beautiful to have reached that age and still be so in love. Jack looked closer at the man, his sunburned face smiling from beneath an ivory-coloured Panama hat. The old guy seemed perfectly happy with his life, content to be slowly pacing it out, hand in hand with his soulmate. The couple stopped beneath the shade of a cherry tree and admired Zack's pet rabbit as it bounded around their legs, before darting off to the far side of the orchard. The old man brushed leaves off a nearby steamer chair and helped his wife into it, before settling in another one alongside her. No sooner was he comfortable than he stretched out his gnarled old arm so they could hold hands again. Jack would have loved to have brought his parents here, to have had them stay for a month or two each summer and watch their grandchild growing up. He would have given almost anything to be looking down from that very window on his own mother and father. They'd seldom travelled out of New York State, let alone America, but Italy was on their 'To Do' list and deep down he was certain they'd have loved the place. It was sad and ironic that it was the money they'd left him that had enabled him and Nancy to buy La Casa Strada, mortgage-free. For a moment he pictured all three generations of Kings walking together, down to the centre of town, to the Piazza della Liberta', where they could sit on long stone steps, while Zack and the grandfather that he had never got to know could choose ice cream from the nearby gelateria. Afterwards, they'd walk through the Renaissance gardens of Horti Leonini and Nancy and his mother would wait while Zack played hide and seek in the miniature maze. Somehow the argument with Nancy and the prospect of distance opening up again between them made him ache once more for his own mother and father.
Jack stepped back from the window, and from all his musings on what might have been. It was time to put Tuscany, and any thoughts of his parents, his wife or his child firmly to the back of his mind.
There was work to do.
He dialled the number of Massimo Albonetti.