Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  Ric is embarrassed at taking up so much of the old man’s time and feels as though all the eyes of passeggio are upon him. He stands and rests his hand softly on the bony shoulder of the magistrato di Marina Corta. “Thank you, Nino. Again, I am heavily indebted to your memory.”

  “Ciao, my young friend.” He pats Ric’s hand and smiles beneath his thick, black glasses. “Again, it is I who should thank you for shepherding me down so many overgrown paths.”

  As soon as Ric moves away, the curious twins rush to sit down and bombard the old man with the details of their latest dispute.

  The Corta is beginning to empty. Mothers gather their offspring, like fishermen drawing in their nets. Giuliana flashes him a smile as bright as any from the cameras of the tourists, who busy themselves arranging and rearranging the vivid cocktails on their tables with which they pose for a record of their holiday.

  Sandro is lurking on the fringes of the café at the foot of the Garibaldi. As Ric walks past, the escurzionista hisses to attract his attention.

  When Ric looks over at him, Sandro points to his right and touches the corner of his eye as if to warn him of a threat.

  It is the same man Ric noticed following him up the Concordato earlier in the afternoon. The man wouldn’t look so conspicuous but for the fact that the gazzetta he is reading is upside down.

  Ric chuckles to himself and gives Sandro the thumbs up. But the escurzionista shies away, clearly not wanting to risk being seen to fraternise with him.

  52

  He turns on the bedside light and lies staring at the ceiling, waiting for what he does not know. His room is hot and stuffy, and his body creaks and rebels every time he tries to find a comfortable position. Eventually, he tires of his restlessness, gets to his feet, pads downstairs and puts his shoes on. He feels nauseous, but reconciles that his feeling is understandable given the awkward situation he finds himself in.

  He opens the front door, peers out into the alleyway and pauses to listen. The vico is even warmer than his room, and the air is dry and dusty. He waits for a full minute before closing the door silently behind him.

  Tonight, there are no cats prowling in search of overfilled dustbins, they are safely tucked up away from the coming rain, and the wireless of the old lady opposite is, for once, hushed.

  When he is certain he can hear no sound beyond the thumping of his heart, he steps down. The high cloud he observed while sitting and talking with Old Nino has thickened and now blankets the sky, locking the stars out and the heat in.

  There is no longer any doubt in his mind that it is Marcello who has taken the gun from the Mara. But, what bothers him most is the timing of events. Why would someone throw the Beretta into the water at Portinente, other than because Ric just happened to have been abandoned out in the water nearby?

  Now that Sandro will not speak directly to him and Marcello is given only to deliver lectures on the value of integrity, he has no one else to talk to but Valeria. She is the only person who might have an idea of what is going on.

  He weighs up which is the best route for him to take out towards the Punta San Giuseppe: the Maddalena is narrow and he knows that once he is in it, there is no escape from it. He decides that up around the back of the town through San Nicola is the safer route and so turns right.

  He walks slowly and carefully, minding the dustbins and flowerpots, and is a couple of paces from the corner, when he hears a shuffling of feet.

  “Buonasera signore,” says a figure in the darkness.

  In the gloom of the vico, Ric can just about make out a man’s profile. He is tall, very tall and very broad, and he wears a peaked cap.

  “Signor Ross, resti dov’è,” the figure orders. “Ritorni alla casa, per favore.”

  Ric cannot make out the man’s face, but knows he has little alternative other than to do exactly as the officer says.

  That he is under house arrest is all too obvious. Now there is nothing he can do until he meets the little detective in the morning.

  Back in his room, he cannot settle. The tap drips. He washes his face and lies down on the small sofa. He feels dirty. His shirt is stuck to his back and though he knows he would be better off upstairs in bed, he is too weary to take a shower, let alone climb the narrow stairs. Soon, his fatigue overwhelms him and he succumbs to an uneasy sleep.

  During the night, Aeolus stills the winds of the Levante in the east and conjures the warm Scirocco from the deserts of Africa.

  Ric lies half awake, listening to the God of Winds howl his encouragement as he unleashes his storm against the island. It is as though the small fry of Lipari have born Aeolus some great offence and he designs to wash them clean of their misdemeanour. The shutters rattle and the gutters overflow, the rainwater gushing and slapping down against the flagstones in the passage outside.

  He feels vaguely sorry for the tall poliziotto standing sentry outside and briefly considers asking him in.

  But his dreams consume him. They are, like Aeolus’ thunder and lightning, violent and vivid, and ceramic masks, like those he has seen in the shop window in the Corso, dance in the shadows. The beautiful Minerva fears for a future she has foreseen; Bacchus carouses, he has no cares; the elderly Neptune warns him of dangers to come; the two-faced Janus watches to see which choice he will make; and last in line Vulcan, who busies himself lighting the flame in which Ric is to burn. They file on and off the stage of his nightmare, delivering their oratory like actors in a tragedy. And, at the close of their performance, the players gather before him and remove their masks to reveal their true identity: first Valeria, then Sandro, Nino and Marcello, and finally Maso Talaia.

  When, eventually, the grey light of dawn creeps along the alley, the rain is still falling hard and Ric comes to the conclusion that he is even more confused and weary than when he lay down. He gets up and makes his way down to the Corso Vittorio; the sentinel outside his door has been washed away by the rain.

  53

  Commissario Talaia is waiting in a back office of the police station on the Via Marconi. The room is bare but for a couple of grey filing cabinets, a desk and chairs, and a small electronic terminal about the size of a large credit card reader. The window behind the desk is barred.

  “Very punctual, Signor Ross, thank you. Please sit.”

  The tall, broad-shouldered poliziotto, the one standing guard on the early shift outside his rooms, is in attendance. His uniform is creased and crumpled. He pulls a chair out from the desk.

  Ric, though, is also soaked. Outside, the clouds hang low and grey, and issue a steady stream of rain. “Don’t thank me, Commissario,” he replies, as he runs his hands through his hair and shakes the water off his fingers. “The waiter at La Precchia wears a watch, I don’t.”

  “Oh, don’t you need to know the time for navigation? For when you use a sextant? I noticed you have one on the Mara. She doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of sailing boat for more modern conveniences. It is a wonder you managed to find your way to Lipari.”

  Ric grins, “I told you, Commissario, I was just blown…”

  “By the winds. Yes, and very amusing this over-used cliché is too. To think, Aeolus blows the voyager this way only for Il Faro del Mediterraneo to scare him to death when he arrives.”

  “I know the story,” Ric chuckles.

  On the desk before the little inspector are three passports. He picks up Ric’s. “So, clearly this is your passport, Signor Ross. The photograph shows this strange birthmark on your forehead.” He taps his right temple. “And now that your fishing injury has healed it is plain to see you are this man.”

  Talaia places Ric’s passport on the table between them, but not so close to him that it is intended for him to take it. The Commissario picks up the two other British passports.

  “These two are, just as clearly, not your passports. These we will return to the appropriate authorities. Exactly how they come to be lying on the desk of this police station in Lipari is a mystery. We have had them
examined, dusted for prints, but they would appear to be clean almost to the point of sterile, which is, to me, not such a mystery.” He drops the passports on his side of the table and taps them rhythmically.

  “What is a mystery, as I have told you, is that these passports were reported missing from Porto Vecchio in Corsica not long before you became the owner of the Mara, which suggests you were at or, at the very least, near this location. Through further enquiries, it has come to my attention that at about this time you were declared a person of interest by the local Gendarmerie. My friend in Ajaccio, the Commissaire de Police Judiciaire, also tells me that a number of deaths occurred very close to where this boat was registered and in a similar time frame.”

  “I–” Ric begins.

  Talaia leans forward and waggles a finger at him. “No,” he interrupts, “now, I talk and you listen. Later, you talk and I listen.” He sits back.

  “One of the few benefits of being a member state of the European Union is that extradition is now a fairly simple business. Do I make myself clear, Signor Ross?”

  “As ever, Commissario Talaia. And I get the feeling that if it wasn’t such a simple business, there’s more than half a chance I’d wash up on a beach in Corsica at exactly the spot your counterpart chose to take his breakfast.”

  The little man grins. His pencil-line eyebrows slope down at the same angle as his lips, lending his face the aspect of a road sign amused at the deceptive bends along its route.

  “Before we come to the matter of the pistol, let us have coffee.” He looks up at the uniformed poliziotto, “Paolo, due caffè, per favore.” The tall Paolo steps out.

  “The issue of the pistol we can look at in one of two ways. It is a little like the chicken and the egg, which some like to think of as a paradox and others a dilemma.” Talaia’s expression collapses from amused to serious. “The fact that the pistol must have come first before Candela’s shooting is not in doubt. But what is in doubt is who came first, Signor Ross or the Beretta?”

  Ric smiles reluctantly and asks, “So which one am I, Maso, the chicken or the egg?”

  The little Commissario frowns and replies, “Please, not Maso in front of my officers, only Commissario Talaia. The fact that I find you engaging as a personality is not relevant to my enquiries.” He pouts in apology.

  The door opens and officer Paolo walks back in with two cups of coffee.

  “Possibly the correct way to approach this is on a historical basis. First, this pistol is a 9mm Beretta Model ‘34 Corto, marked with the letters RE and the date of its manufacture in Roman numerals. These markings tell us that this Beretta was produced in 1939 for the Regio Esercito, the Royal Italian Army. But, there were so many made that unless it was registered to an individual, which I think is highly unlikely, the serial number is of no consequence.

  “All this tells us, though, is that the Beretta is older than both you and me. So, let us state, for the moment, that the pistol came first. But…” he holds up his finger to emphasise his point, “but, did the pistol come to Lipari first, before you, Signor Ross? Or did you come to Lipari with or before the pistol? That is both the paradox and our dilemma.”

  Talaia leans forward, sips his coffee and winces. He frowns at officer Paolo.

  “Second, what we do know for certain, because we have examined the gun and matched it with the bullets removed from the unfortunate Girolamo Candela, is that this was definitely the gun that was used to kill him.

  “And then we have to take into account the coincidence that you were enjoying a swim in the sea at Portinente at about the same time Signor Candela was murdered. And Portinente, as we know, is the location from which the gun was recovered.”

  The coffee is bitter. Ric sits back and folds his arms across his chest. “The Beretta isn’t mine, Commissario. I’ve told you that already.”

  Talaia waves away his objection. “Yes, yes, of course. And the chair I am sitting in does not belong to me, but it is mine until I vacate it; if you see what I am getting at.

  “What our forensic department has been able to establish is that the Beretta contains only one fingerprint, or more accurately a partial thumbprint, and that the gun was contaminated with oil, an oil with which, it seems, the assassin attempted to wipe the gun clean before throwing it into the sea. Our brilliant,” Talaia briefly sucks his teeth and glances at Ric, “scientists have not, as yet, identified the exact type of oil, other than that it is not the usual oil one would use to lubricate or clean the workings of the pistol. But, they assure me they will be able to identify it given time.”

  “Plenty of engine oil on the Mara, Commissario,” Ric says.

  Talaia pouts, “Yes, thank you, it had occurred to me. So, in order to eliminate you from our enquiries, Signor Ross, we will now take your fingerprints and see if they match the partial print on the Beretta.” He nods at Officer Paolo, who steps forward and passes the fingerprint scanner to Ric.

  “Con permesso,” Paolo says, bending down and taking hold of Ric’s right hand. “Il pollice, per favore.” He holds his own thumb up so that Ric is in no doubt which of his digits he is supposed to place on the reader.

  “Sure,” Ric replies, not inclined to resist Officer Paolo’s extremely firm and yet surprisingly gentle grip.

  The poliziotto twists Ric’s hand so that his thumb is uppermost and presses it down against the screen of the device. He holds it steady, counts five seconds and then releases Ric’s hand. Paolo stares down at the reader, but it offers no noticeable return. He shrugs, examines the device a little more closely and then breathes deeply and exhales. The gentle giant presses the ON button and stands back.

  Talaia does not react; he merely sits, leaning forward on his elbows, waiting patiently.

  Officer Paolo says, “Un’altra volta, per favore?”

  “Naturalmente,” Ric replies, careful not to allow humour into his response in case he embarrasses the big man.

  They repeat the procedure. The device chirps to let them know the print has been read. Paolo let’s go of Ric’s hand. “Grazie,” he says.

  “Prego,” Ric replies.

  Officer Paolo picks up the terminal and presses a sequence of buttons as though he is dialling a telephone number. He waits. The device chirps once more. “È fatto,” he says, standing up, proudly.

  “Bene!” Talaia encourages. “Ora aspettiamo, eh? Now we wait.”

  “Si, Commissario.” Officer Paolo stands back, even more pleased now that his superior has acknowledged him in front of their chief suspect.

  The little detective smiles, perhaps a shade patronisingly. “Signor Ross,” he begins, but then thinks better of what he is about to say and looks up at his uniformed associate. “Ci lasci in pace, per favore, un momento, Paolo?”

  The big man frowns.

  Talaia dismisses him: “Per favore, Paolo? Passa al di fuori. Sarò a posto.”

  Officer Paolo leaves.

  “A good policeman,” the Commissario says by way of excuse, “though I am afraid he, like many, does not follow his instincts. He believes the evidence provides us with the conclusion that you are not to be trusted, which is why he was reluctant to leave me alone in this room with you. However, we will see.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Maso.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me, Ric. The weight of evidence may appear to be against you, although I must point out that at this precise moment much of the evidence is what a court would describe as circumstantial. But, there are too many questions to which I cannot find the answers.

  “Again, firstly, the Beretta. While Berettas may be perfectly usable handguns, they are rarely the instrument of a professional assassin.” Talaia pauses, thinking. “No, that is not quite accurate; Mahatma Ghandi’s assassin used one. But, they are, if you like, the kind of pistol one puts in a drawer and forgets about. It is doubtful that a contemporary assassin would rely on such a weapon.

  “Secondly, as I have said before, why assassinate Candela here in the
Piazza San Bartolo? Why not do this in Palermo or on one of his many visits to Rome, where he would be a much easier target?

  “Thirdly, what possible connection do you have with Candela? And, fourthly, what message could you have delivered to Candela that would have compelled him to meet you in the Piazza San Bartolo? This last point causes me much concern.

  “Then, of course, there is the question of why Signor Maggiore should confirm your alibi at the risk of implicating himself. This also gives me much cause for thought.”

  There is a knock at the door.

  “Avanti,” Talaia calls, loudly.

  Officer Paolo strides in. He places a sheet of paper before the little Commissario.

  “Grazie, Paolo,” Talaia picks it up and reads it. He rests his head against his right hand and rubs his lower lip with his index finger. He glances at Ric, reads through it once more, and then puts it face down beside his Homburg.

  Officer Paolo seems to have grown in stature and the rain flays the window, reminding Ric of San Bartolo’s fate.

  Commissario Talaia studies the surface of the desk, as though he is waiting for a genie to swell up out of it and solve the riddle of Candela’s murder.

  “Questo è tutto!” He sits back and immediately see-saws forward again. “Ei-yaei-yaei,” he mutters.

  “What’s the news?” Ric asks as innocently as his humour allows. His shirt is still wet on his back and a drop of water drips from his hair.

  “This partial print we have found on the pistol,” Talaia taps the report in front of him, “it matches yours.”

  54

  Of course, Ric knew what Talaia was going to say. He knew what the results of the fingerprint test would show the moment the detective told him the Beretta had been wiped clean but for one partial print.

  “And I was hoping this situation would not get much worse for you, Signor Ross.”

  “Thank you for your… sympathy, if I read you correctly, Commissario. But you and I both know there’s no way I did for Candela.”