Chapter Forty-nine

I STEPPED INTO two tiny rooms. during winter, it was Gianfranco’s apartment but now the furniture was shrouded in dust covers and everything else was packed away.

I turned on the handheld device and watched the needle on its voltmeter flicker to life. It was Swiss-engineered and expensive but, unlike most of the crap Chinese versions, I was confident it would work. The device was made for builders and renovators – it told you where to find power and light cables in walls and ceilings so that you didn’t nail into them and electrocute yourself.

If there was a secret door or trapdoor in the boathouse, I figured it had to be either mechanically or electrically operated. The problem with mechanical was that it was complicated: you would need levers and pulleys, chains and counterweights. An electrical system, on the other hand, just required an electric motor, and I believed it was the more likely candidate.

I held the device up, placed its two prongs on the wall and started to search the length of it. I was trying to find a power cable that would lead to a hidden switch but, while the device found plenty of wiring, it all led to lights or power points. Once I had finished with the walls, I started on the ceiling and floor, but with no better results.

Moving downstairs, I realized that the wind had picked up and was rattling the sea doors – a storm was coming in – but I ignored it and stepped into the workshop. The room, full of power tools and shelves of paint, abutted the cliff and I thought it was the most likely location of a hidden door. I started at the back wall, working fast.

The needle of the voltmeter kept jumping – there was wiring everywhere in the walls – but each strand led to one of a host of power points and light switches, which turned out to be legitimate. The ceiling and cement floor – even under the workbenches – yielded nothing, and my spirits sagged.

Wondering if I had been too worried about the swastikas and had deluded myself, I moved into the changing rooms. Hope spiked when I found a switch under a wooden bench – only to crash when I found it worked the underfloor heating.

From there, I headed towards the showers but decided to sweep the toilet first. I was fast running out of possibilities.

The ceilings and floor were clear, as were three of the walls, but on the one which featured a handbasin and a mirrored cabinet above it, I got a signal.

There were no light switches or power points on that wall, but the flickering needle didn’t excite me: I guessed there was a small light inside the cabinet. I opened the mirrored door and, apart from an old toothbrush, found nothing.

Using the meter, I traced the wiring along the plaster until I came to a right angle: the wall featuring the toilet and cistern stopped me. It was strange – an electrical cable ran straight along a side wall and disappeared into a corner. What was behind the toilet? I wondered. I tapped the wall – it was stone block or brick. Solid.

I went back to the cabinet and used the meter to search around it. The wire definitely terminated behind the cabinet. It was basically a wooden box, and I looked at it carefully: it was old, almost certainly fitted when the house was first built – but the mirror was new. I wondered if a maintenance guy – Gianfranco – had been asked to replace the mirror and, when he took the cabinet off the wall, had found something far more interesting behind it.

Using the flashlight on my key-ring and feeling with my fingers, I searched the edges of the box – if there was a switch behind it, there had to be a way to access it easily. It wasn’t apparent; and I was starting to think of unscrewing the cupboard from the wall – or just getting a hammer from the workshop and ripping it off – when I found a small, ingenious lever hidden under the bottom edge.

I pulled it, the cabinet moved out from the wall and I could hinge it upwards: a perfect piece of German engineering.

Recessed into the wall behind was a brass button with a swastika etched into it. I pressed it.