All That's Left Unsaid

By Rowena Holloway

In a country made for seduction, she will unmask a killer.

Harriet Taylor is desperate to reconcile with her estranged mother. When she travels to the Amalfi coast in search of her mother's old friend she doesn't expect romance. She doesn't expect to unearth dangerous secrets. She doesn't expect a killer…

Seduced by the charming locals and breathtaking scenery, Harriet struggles to find the answers she seeks. The nearer she gets to the truth about her mother's past, the closer she gets to exposing a secret hidden for thirty years... A secret someone will kill to keep.

Trusting the wrong person will become a fight for survival...

Escape to the Amalfi coast in this emotion-filled, page-turning suspense thriller nominated for a Ned Kelly Crime Fiction Award.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rowena Holloway
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780994168832

Rowena Holloway

Rowena and Joyce are sisters in Christ who have been friends for 20 years. Both are active in their church family. Rowena has the gift of preaching and Joyce has the gift of church hospitality. They recently published Pray it Forward: Spiritual Growth Meditation. They relocated to Hawaii through prayer.

Book preview

Before

THERE ARE PERIODS WHEN HE manages to forget. A few hours at first. Soon a whole day, a week. Finally, a month of sleep-filled nights. Then it returns in a great wave of memory. All it takes is a word, a scent, the chill of wind on wet skin.

It begins with the slap of water against granite and the mineral-tinged odour of dank stone. He recalls the glistening drops of water, and lingers on the image of her exposed flesh. Then he’s jerked awake by her echoing scream.

From the beach it hadn’t seemed so far, and in the Mediterranean heat the blue waters off Positano were inviting.

‘It’ll be an adventure,’ he’d told her.

‘You just want an excuse to get me into that skimpy bikini.’ She had smiled up at him with the adoration of early love and no inkling of what was to come.

He’d been the first to reach deep water. Always one to test himself, he dived, intent on reaching the weedy bottom. The ocean tugged at his hair. He dove down until he felt ready to burst beneath the weight of water. Self-preservation made him kick for the surface. Through a veil of saturated hair, he gasped for air.

She was still swimming out to meet him. Hers was the sedate, hesitant stroke of someone unfamiliar with the ocean; but she wouldn’t make a fuss—she never did. It was why he’d chosen her. Her faith in him was boundless.

He gazed at the postcard-perfect sky, and waited. The monolithic cliff towered skyward. Wind fluted through the breaks and crevices in its craggy face. Birds swooped and soared, then hung in the air currents that swept the scraggy brink. Their caws and squawks were like a warning.

By the time she reached him, she gasped and sputtered as water stirred by wind and tide smacked at her lips.

‘It’s so cold.’

‘I know a way we can warm up.’ He winked as they trod water in the choppy swell. ‘Didn’t that old woman say the cave was once a place for lover’s trysts?’

That made her snort and she pushed his head beneath the water. In retaliation, he grabbed her ankles and pulled her down for a salty kiss. When they surfaced, breathless and spluttering, she reminded him of the other myth about the cave.

‘Find me the gold and I might let you cop a feel.’ Then she laughed: they’d already done much more than that.

They swam on, battling the sea’s efforts to hold them back, their exertions doing little to ward off the chill. By the time they reached the shallow arch of the cave entrance, the tide was high and the opening almost submerged.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Her jaw trembled as she spoke. It could have been the cold, though he felt it, too—that uneasy sense that something wasn’t quite right; but there was no way he’d turn back now.

‘Come on. We’ve come this far.’

Inside, it was dank and close. Seawater smacked against the jagged edge of a granite shelf. Suffuse light filtered through a fissure in the stony ceiling, and cast shadows on walls so flinty that in places they seemed serrated. As he hauled himself out, he tasted that unforgettable, mineral-tinged dankness.

He helped her onto the rocky shelf. Her white bathing suit hid nothing, and glistening droplets slid off her rosy, goose-fleshed body. She trembled when he touched her, but as he reached for her sodden bathing suit, she stopped him.

‘It feels like someone’s watching,’ she whispered.

He made a show of searching the cave. In the far reaches, beneath the ceiling fissure and the narrow beam of sunlight, he found a chasm as deep as a well. She stood not far away, shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, eyes huge as she gazed at the solid walls of the cavern.

‘This seems like an ideal place to stash some gold.’

He’d meant it as a joke, but as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw something glimmer. A group of small stones lay scattered nearby. He snatched one up, tossed it in, and counted the seconds until it hit the bottom with a sharp crack. He calculated the depth was about twice his height, just shy of four metres.

She only agreed to climb down because he was strong enough to haul her up again. That she might slip and fall never occurred to him. Neither of them considered what they would do if he couldn’t reach her. Fed by the local myths, excitement made them reckless.

Halfway down, she called, ‘I think it’s a bracelet. I’ll try and—’

A tumble of stones—her panicked shriek.

In the smear of sunlight he could just make her out, curled on her side, motionless. Frantic, he called her name. When she finally moved, using words he thought would never pass her lips, he laughed with relief.

‘I like this foul-mouthed side of you,’ he told her.

‘Shut up. There’s something else down here.’

Then her scream split the cave.

One

THE CHIRRUP OF TELEPHONES and the constant hum of conversation aren’t doing any favours for my jetlag. Nor is Commissario Magliari’s attitude.

‘What is it you expect, Signora…?’

‘Taylor. Harriet Taylor.’

Twice now I’ve told him my name and still he couldn’t care less. To him, I’m just a ghoulish foreigner offering a thin excuse for viewing a relic.

‘You bring me a photograph and expect me to say, Aha, the bracelet, it is the same. The foreigner she has solved the mystery of the Positano Skeleton!’ Magliari tosses the photograph on his desk where it joins a cascade of reports and curling faxes. ‘You know nothing of investigating.’

Ready to argue, I take a breath then bite my lip. I couldn’t make it work back in London when I had a job, contacts, confidence in my skills; why did I think Italy, where I can’t even speak the language, would improve my chances at investigative reporting? Disturbed by Magliari’s glittering stare, I shift my gaze to the detritus of case reports that clutters his desk and the image sitting among them, an enlarged section of the scarred photograph that for me changed everything.

‘I can see you have a lot of cases,’ I say. ‘Surely, this is one that could be cleared up quickly?’

His chair complains as he leans back to clasp his hands behind his head. Sweat darkens the underarms of his pale shirt. ‘There is no such thing as quickly. There is protocol to be followed. And paperwork. Always there is paperwork. For me and for you.’

‘Is that why you won’t let me see the bracelet? Because of paperwork?’

‘No, Signora. I am not going to show it to you because I cannot.’

‘Why not?’

‘You cannot just walk in from the street because the bracelet might be like one the friend of your mother once wore.’ He leans forward, chair protesting, and rests his forearms on the desk. His rolled-up sleeves reveal hair as thick as an ape’s. ‘What do you think? That I keep evidence in my drawer? That I am like the television detective who is obsessed with only one case? In Napoli we do not have that luxury. You women, you think everything is easy.’

Easy? Nothing has been easy since I discovered the depths of my self-delusion. And my being female shouldn’t have anything to do with my request. It’s 1992: the Berlin wall has fallen, the Cold War is over, and feminism has been alive and well for more than thirty years; but to this Neanderthal detective a foreigner, a female foreigner, offering to help identify a body is nothing more than grit in his shoe. I want to slam my hands on the desk, to slap the supercilious lip curl he doesn’t bother to hide. Instead, I try for the smile that once opened doors.

‘I’m sure there is some way you can shortcut the paperwork, Commissario. It will only take a minute. If I could just see—’

‘I do not show you the bracelet because it is not here. It is with the…’ He snaps his fingers several times searching for the phrase and an elegant blonde appears at his side to murmur in his ear. ‘Yes, pathologist. It is with the forensic pathologist. To see him you must make a request, fill out the paperwork, prove you are who you say you are, wait for permission, and so on.’

The blonde slides a bundle of typed documents across his blotter and the two converse in the rolling rapid-fire of their native tongue. I’m forgotten. Invisible. Punished for my cheap attempt at flattery. Scuff marks and the stains of past coffee spills mar the pale flagstones under Magliari’s well-shod feet, and caught on the edge of a little plastic rubbish bin is a Mars bar wrapper. After six years battling for my place in a male-dominated newsroom, it should be easy to ignore Magliari’s contempt, but those last awful months in London have left me shattered. The tough hide I thought I’d developed was no more than brittle plastic.

‘Surely a man of your rank doesn’t need that kind of permission.’ I make another stiff attempt at my winning smile. ‘You could clear this up with one phone call.’

He puts down a file with just enough force to show his impatience. ‘Why are you really here?’

‘I told you: to compare the bracelet you found with the skeleton to the one in my photo.’

‘No. Why are you in Italy?’

Good question. I could explain how I discovered the photograph and glimpsed an unknown past, tell of my curiosity about the three strangers pictured with my mother on a beach in Positano; how my mother, usually horrified by a public display, did nothing to stop the tears that spilled down her cheeks and dampened the neck of her nightie. Magliari wouldn’t understand that. Nor would he understand why my mother’s distress over this pile of bones retrieved from a chasm pierced my defences—why I even needed defences against my mother. Even I don’t understand why I crossed half the world on the strength of her certainty that the remains belonged to a long-forgotten friend. Quality time with my mother always drove me to rash decisions.

‘Signora!’ Magliari smacks his palm on the desk. ‘Why did you come to Italy? You could have faxed the photograph. Or asked your Embassy. Interpol. Friends of this Evie Broussard.’

‘I tried the Embassy and Interpol. Evie’s not a relative, she’s not an Australian citizen, and on top of that they won’t spend time following up what they consider a hunch.’

‘How do you know she is even missing?’ He rocks the squeaky office chair. ‘You say your mother has not heard from her in twenty-eight years, yes? This is normal for holiday friendships.’

It’s impossible to forget the smile that ghosted my mother’s lips at the mention of her friend. ‘She didn’t let her past dictate her life. She was the only one who saw that I could be something more.’

‘It wasn’t a holiday friendship. She said Evie Broussard was her best, her only, friend.’

‘You came all the way from Australia because of that?’ He glances at another man sitting within eavesdropping distance and they share a smirk.

‘Why don’t you just do your job?’ I snap. ‘Then you can get back to munching Mars bars and I can get on with looking for Francelli’s villa.’

His gaze sharpens and I catch a glimpse of the interrogator he could be. ‘What do you know of Villa Francelli?’

‘Let me see the bracelet.’

‘Why is this villa so important? What does it have to do with this?’ He waves his hand at the photograph of the bracelet.

‘Let me compare them. If that bracelet is the same as the one you found then there’s a good chance the skeleton is Evie Broussard’s. If not, then I’m out of your hair.’

‘I have told you, I cannot.’

‘Well, I can’t tell you anything about the villa.’

It’s actually the truth. I don’t know anything other than the scant information my mother let slip. ‘If it wasn’t for that damn Francelli and his villa…and now she’s dead. Left to rot in a cave.’ When I’d probed for more she’d become defensive. ‘I had a life before you came along.’ I’d heard that my entire childhood. I’d just never guessed that life could have been lived somewhere other than rural South Australia.

With a muttered oath, Magliari abandons his cop’s stare and beckons the elegant blonde. He picks up a folder, leans back in his chair, and puts his feet on the desk. Whatever he says to the girl is short and sharp. Its meaning is clear enough. When she grips my arm and tries to haul me from the chair, I hook my fingers under the seat. Suddenly, it’s as though getting Magliari’s attention will solve all my problems—not just identifying the skeleton, but miraculously unravelling my mother’s past and proving I’m not the fraud Simon accused me of, that I do have something to offer.

‘Don’t you want to know who this woman was?’ I ask. ‘Don’t you care?’

Magliari’s feet hit the floor. ‘You think I do not care. This is Napoli. Almost every week, sometimes every day, someone is killed. We have to treat every one of them as murder until we can prove otherwise. I have twenty-five open cases. Venti-cinque.’

Distress crosses his face. I have misjudged him. Misjudgements are the one thing I have perfected.

‘Each of these corpses still has flesh on its bones, Signora Taylor. Each of these still has family living and mourning and wanting the killers punished. And for each of these the Capo della Polizia demands I act faster, that I solve them…’ he snaps his fingers, ‘…like that.’ Hailed from across the room, he stands and grabs his pale linen jacket from the back of his chair. ‘And now, it seems, I have another. Buongiorno, Signora.’

‘At least tell me where to go to see the bracelet.’

He summons two of his men and strides through the ordered rows of desks to the front exit. I jump to my feet and follow, raising my voice against the din of telephones and multiple conversations.

‘Commissario! Ignoring me won’t make me go away.’

He spins on his heel and the din abates as though the whole squad is waiting for his answer. ‘I warn you, do not interfere. This is not a cosy village. Murder speaks louder than any law.’

‘So, it was murder.’

‘The damage to the skull is consistent with a fall.’

‘She’s been down there twenty-eight years, hasn’t she?’

‘Leave it alone, Signora Taylor. I am too busy to deal with your clumsy questions. And I do not want to pull your body from a chasm. I do not like dealing with Interpol.’ His eyes drop to my thin T-shirt then my ancient denim cut offs. ‘You could have at least dressed respectfully.’

On the ferry from Naples to Sorrento I manage to grab some sleep, but it is standing-room only on the crowded bus from Sorrento to Positano and the coach is thick with the smell of sunscreen and sweat. Passengers sway and totter against each other with every gear change. Though it’s more than two hours since my run-in with Magliari, I’m still fuming over his attitude and my mishandling of something that should have been straightforward.

The gears crunch and whine as the bus labours up yet another steep rise. Those of us standing in the aisle stagger backwards and regain our footing. A kid of about fourteen with angelic features and dark curls leans against me longer than necessary. He’s been doing it for a while so I give him the stare to let him know I’m onto him. He widens his eyes and smiles, like I’ve just given him the big come-on.

I turn my back and gaze through the window, trying not to notice the sheer drop of the mountain or how close we must be to the edge. The cloudless sky offers a kind of refuge, something to focus on so that I don’t release the tears that have been threatening for months.

When I got the call my mother had fallen and was in hospital, I’d been all too ready to escape the mess of my life in London. It wasn’t that I expected my mother to welcome me or soothe me with kisses or promises of how everything would get better. She’d never been that kind of mother. And I’d stopped confiding in her long ago. On the plane home, I’d prepared myself for superficial conversation while we danced around the cracks in our relationship and I played the dutiful daughter.

I should have known my mother wouldn’t play along.

Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t pressed her about why she was so certain a skeleton unearthed half a world away could be her friend. After all that had happened in London—the accusations of journalistic fraud and Simon’s subsequent betrayal—everything I thought I was had been challenged. I should have realised I was in no state for more surprises, but goaded by her sharp tongue and rejection of my attempts at comfort, I’d kept at her until she cracked.

‘The cellar,’ she’d finally said, ‘find the blue suitcase.’

What I found unsettled my entire history.

An abrupt swerve of the bus nearly dumps me into the lap of another passenger. Our driver yells from his window and the air fills with the sharp blare of his horn and the screech of brakes.

A tour bus is angled across the lane. Hooked under its wheel arch is the front fender of a baby-blue sedan. At the edge of the crowd of onlookers, a woman stands rubbing her shoulder, shouting at the bus driver, who bellows back and waves his hands at his damaged side mirror. Some of the onlookers laugh while others try to free the car’s fender. My fellow passengers raise their voices, whether in vocal support or abuse, I can’t tell.

The sting of a slap leaves my backside numb. Just as I turn on the perpetrator, the bus lurches into gear and I grab for the rail above my head. The kid takes the opportunity to grope my breast. With a gasp, I twist aside. I’m not the kind of girl who gets groped: my understated curves are pretty much missing in action beneath the sensible business suits I usually wear.

The little creep deserves an earful. I say nothing, ashamed of my silence but unable to speak until I catch him grinning at his mates. As if assault is funny. I unclasp my hand from the rail and shove him hard in the chest.

‘Bugger off!’ It feels great, like I’ve just survived a parachute jump from twenty-thousand feet.

He stumbles backwards, surprise in his plump face, and lands in the wide lap of an old woman. She lets forth a stream of incomprehensible words, pushing the boy away and pointing her arthritic finger at me. All I can think is that with her hooked nose and her dress, headscarf, and sensible shoes all in black she looks like a crow. I push my way to the front of the bus and don’t care that my backpack bumps against others as I pass.

‘Positano,’ I say to the driver, and he nods. ‘When do we get there?’

He keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Cosa?’

‘How long before we get to…’ I can’t remember the name of the stop or the number, if it had a number, and with the bus swaying and the people staring I dare not fumble through my backpack for the map or my English-to-Italian dictionary. I spent hours on the plane practising basic phrases and counting to ten in Italian over and over, but now I can’t think of a single word, and the old lady is still yelling and waving her finger, cursing me for all I know, and the bus passengers are still laughing, and my face is hot, and all the old anger is crushing my chest, and if I don’t get off this bus soon I might lose it!

‘Positano,’ I say, and he nods.

Still he won’t look at me. I tap him on the shoulder and this time he does look, but not at my face.

Blaring traffic pushes past though the mountain road is barely wide enough for the bus, and yet the driver keeps his eyes on my tiny breasts as if they are bursting through my shirt. I want to clamp my arm across my chest, but I fasten my hand to my hip and will him to look me in the eyes. My face is my best asset, slightly crooked nose and all, but none of these wannabe Romeos has looked that far.

I want to get off. Right now. But then I would have to find my way through the steep streets of Positano, and after several years in London the heat of the Italian sun is too much. I just want to find my hotel room, crawl under the covers, and go back to a time when I knew who I was, when I still had my job, and when Simon loved me.

I’d booked the room from a pin-up board at the Sorrento station, just grateful that at the height of the tourist season somewhere in Positano had a vacancy. With my luck I wouldn’t have been surprised to find Villa Nuova was a run-down fleapit. Perhaps my luck is on the turn because as I follow the stocky hotelier up a curving staircase, trailing my fingers along the beautiful wrought-iron balustrade, I catch the whiff of fresh paint.

At the top of the stairs, we enter a short passage made welcoming by earthy floor tiles and walls of mythology-inspired mosaics. He waits for me at the end of the passage, my backpack swinging at his side, his grin carving dual brackets in his well-tanned face. With a flick of the gleaming brass handle, he throws open the door.

‘Benvenuto. I hope you enjoy.’

Sunlight fills the room. Filmy curtains stir in the salty breath of the ocean and draw me straight onto the balcony. Below, mountains tumble to the town clustered along the brink of the gleaming ocean. I turn to him in amazement.

‘Are you sure this is for me? There hasn’t been a mistake?’

‘No mistake, Signora. It is the best room in the house. We finish only yesterday. Ecco, la valigia.’ He places my backpack on a small stool near the door, then waves away my tip before showing me the bathroom and handing me two keys: one for my room, the other for the front door, which is locked every night at midnight.

‘I am named Tommaso. If there is anything, you just ask for me. Yes?’

‘Villa Nuova,’ I say. ‘That means New Villa, doesn’t it?’

‘The house, it is very old, but we have make it new, so we call it Villa Nuova.’ He goes on to recount the history of the house and how long it has been in his family. A few minutes later, I’m feeling very welcome and he is smiling his way out of the door when he asks me to dinner.

‘Pardon?’ My disbelief is clear.

‘Ah, I only ask because you are the single guest tonight. My wife she wish for you to take the dinner with us. You come, yes?’

I’m too busy looking for an ulterior motive to give a gracious response. My fumbling for an answer must make that obvious because his smile falters and he retreats, gently closing the door behind him. I throw myself on the opulent bed and shove my face into a lace-edged pillow to muffle my scream. Tommaso hadn’t meant anything other than what he said. I’ve spent too long in the newsroom looking for ulterior motives, too many months pretending I didn’t notice those I’d counted as friends were suddenly too busy to talk to me, the way their gaze slid away when I tried to deny the accusations. When I’d turned to Simon for help, he’d been so busy saving his own career he’d let me swing.

Tremors wash over me. The sun is warm on my bare legs yet it’s as if I have a fever, or perhaps the chill of London has seeped permanently into my bones. Tremors had gripped me in the hospital when I tried to explain to my mother what had happened and why I’d been in that alley in the wee hours, having drunk too much, with too much to say. That cold exterior of hers kept me silent. After all our battles about my career choice, my move to London, I couldn’t expose my failure, my shame, even when she lay in hospital practically begging me for help.

Journalism has been my life. I can’t let what happened ruin me. I’ve worked too hard, made too many sacrifices. Though she couldn’t have known it, my mother’s plea has given me the chance to redeem myself. Not just as an investigative journalist, but as a daughter.

‘I think my friend is dead!’ she’d said.

My mother hadn’t heard from this friend in more years than I’ve been alive, had never, in fact, mentioned her name. Yet this stranger—a pile of bones retrieved from a chasm on the Amalfi coast—is suddenly the most important person in the world to her.

All my life, I’ve waited for my mother’s affection. Now I must compete with a dead woman.

Two

I’M NOT ABOUT TO SCUTTLE HOME just because Magliari brushed me off. If I can’t get a look at the bracelet I can at least discover if the remains are feasibly those of a woman of Evie’s era, height, and age. At my job—if I still had my job—I could shortcut some of the research with a few contacts. Here,