Wasn't that a drawback? Well it might be, Oscar retorted, for someone who still thought of personal transport in terms of cars. But Olbia and the Costa were only half that distance as the crow flies, and when the crow in question was capable of zzo kph… To clinch the argument, Oscar would bundle his guests into the 'crow' – an Agusta helicopter – and pilot them personally to Palau or Porto Cervo for aperitifs.

As for swimming, since Oscar would not go to the coast like everyone else, the coast was made to come to him. A wide irregular hollow the size of a small lake was scooped out of the parched red soil behind the farm. This was lined with concrete, filled with water and decorated with a sandy beach and wave-smoothed rocks dynamited and bulldozed out of the foreshore, barnacles and all. And the bamacles throve, because one of the biggest surprises awaiting Burolo's guests as they padded off for their first dip was that the water was salt. 'Fresh from the Mediterranean,' Oscar would explain proudly, 'pumped up here through 5,437 metres of sixty-centimetre duct, filtered for impurities, agitated by six asynchronous wave simulators and continuously monitored to maintain a constant level of salinity.' Oscar liked using words like 'asynchronous' and 'salinity' and quoting squads of figures: it clinched the effect which the villa was already beginning to have on his listener. But he knew when to stop, and at this point would usually slap his guest on the back – or, if it was a woman, place his hand familiarly at the base of her spine, just above the buttocks – and say, 'So what's missing, except for a lot of fish and crabs and lobsters? Mind you, we have those too, but they know their place here – on a plate!'

Zen paused the video again as footsteps sounded in the street outside. A car door slammed shut. But instead of the expected sound of the car starting up and driving away, the footsteps returned the way they had come, ceasing somewhere close by.