Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  “We go to La Casa dei Sconosciuti,” Marcello murmurs. “Salvo meets us there with my boat. But we must walk at the water; it is too dangerous by road.”

  So they slip across the back of the beach, being careful not to disturb the pebbles, and wade through the shallows beneath the wall which runs along the back of the small bay.

  The steep road up past the Carasco is lit, but by keeping to the hillside they make it up and over into the next bay without incident. But as they stroll down the zigzag path towards Valeria’s little house, they hear the shrill blowing of a whistle from somewhere back in the town.

  Marcello halts briefly, “Now we must hurry. They have changed the watch and found our sleeping policeman.”

  The path is unlit and they stumble as they make haste on the uneven track.

  Valeria is waiting for them. Even in the dark, her long hair seems to shimmer like a hundred individual strands of light. “Ric, are you okay?”

  Marcello continues on to the slipway and Ric stops to reply, “If someone was to tell me what was going on, I’d feel a whole lot better.”

  She surprises him by reaching out and taking his arm. Valeria pulls him close, her lips against his ear. She whispers, “I have not told him about our conversation this evening. If you must, then know you have my blessing. But if you can keep my secret, our secret, then… This night it is better you go with Marcello and Salvo. You can trust them! You must trust them.”

  “Do I have a better alternative?” Ric can smell the citrus and the vanilla and the lime of her perfume and he is reminded of the old blind man, Nino, and how he recognised Valeria by her fragrance.

  “For now? No.”

  The boat which ghosts in out of the night is not the delicate skiff of Ric and Marcello’s aborted fishing trip. It is sleek and stylish; a twelve metre motoscafo with a forward cabin. The pilot coasts it into the slipway with all the assurance of a man who knows exactly where Homer’s coffin mushrooms up from the seabed.

  They clamber aboard, Valeria waves and the sleek motorboat burbles and sweeps slowly out of the small bay below Capistello. In the glow from the instruments of the control panel Ric can make out the pilot’s face; it is Salvo.

  Marcello takes up his station to the left of the cockpit; his expression hard and uncompromising, his eyes dark and concealed like the night and the sea before them. He pulls a cigar out of his shirt pocket and chews thoughtfully on it as Salvo eases up the throttle.

  “What the hell is going on, Marcello?” Ric asks. “Where are we going?”

  “Vulcano,” he replies, pointing towards the south. “You will be safe there.”

  “Safe from whom? From the police? From Talaia?”

  “And other people.”

  “Other people? What other people?”

  “Ric, we have found out that Candela’s people have sent a man to kill you. Whoever it is that is coming would have been here this afternoon, but because of the storm the Aliscafo has not been running, so he or they will probably arrive in the morning. It is no longer safe for you to be in Lipari.”

  “Wouldn’t I be safer in the police station with Talaia?”

  “You think so, eh? You think you can trust this Commissario? My friend, wake up! You are in Sicily.”

  But Ric is not convinced, “You may have forgotten, Marcello, but the last time I got on a boat with you I ended up having to swim ashore. You left me out in the water. How the hell do you expect me to believe the same won’t happen again?”

  “No, Ric, I think not. As I said, I sent a boat to look for you. How was I to know you would swim to the shore and not wait? My people did not leave you to the fishes; they searched until they heard you were safe. And you know I had to get back in a hurry. You know my boat was sinking. You saw the damage.” Marcello glances at Ric as though he expects him to understand. “When I heard the shots, I knew it was Candela; there was a rumour going round the città bassa that someone was going to kill him. I needed to find out what was going on. The collision with the police boat was bad luck, bad timing, nothing more.”

  “Talaia’s convinced I had something to do with Candela’s murder. He says my prints are on the pistol and he has the passports off the Mara.”

  Salvo eases the throttle back and the motoscafo slows; the swell from the backwash lifting them, lowering them and then lifting them again. “What gun is this, Ric? Why do you have false papers and a gun? Are you running from someone? Are you a criminal?”

  “No, not running. I had a little trouble in Corsica.” Ric’s right thigh pains him and he rubs at the scar. “The passports were given to me in case I needed them; it seemed a good idea at the time.”

  “And the gun?” Marcello asks, raising an eyebrow in concern. “Why do you carry a gun with you? Are you an assassin?”

  Ric scoffs loudly, “I’d have to have been a magician to shoot Candela when I was a mile out in the ocean, with you. If I didn’t know better it would look to me as though you planned for me to be out of the way so I had no alibi. It wouldn’t look that way to Talaia though.”

  “I told you, Ric, Talaia cannot be trusted. He is Palermitano – from Palermo. The police there cannot be trusted; they are always ambitious for power. Candela was going to run for mayor in Palermo. If he was elected, he could have done much for Talaia.”

  “Then explain why he seemed to know from the start that I was mixed up in Candela’s murder.”

  “This is simple, my friend. After the shooting he would have asked the Carabinieri if anyone unusual had recently come to the island. Normally the Carabinieri would not walk across the vico to spit on a Commissario of La Polizia from Palermo, even if he was dead. But this man, Talaia, has much authority in Palermo, Milazzo and Messina. They cannot afford to ignore him. This is how it works. From the Carabinieri he would have found out about you, Ric, and he would have found out where you were staying; that was easy enough, eh? The Carabinieri are not always as blind or as deaf as we would like. And you told him the Mara was in my place, so he comes to Canneto to search her.”

  Salvo works the helm and the throttle, guiding the craft between the peaks and troughs. The bald cone of the volcano across the Bocche di Vulcano blacks out the stars and once they clear Punta della Crapazza, the southern point of Lipari, the water chops up rough; the current running out of the Mare Siculum beating into the current coming on from the western Mediterranean. In their battle to overcome each other, the obsidian sea is the loser.

  “So why would Talaia want to pin Candela’s murder on me?”

  Marcello shrugs: “Ambizione, I told you; he is an ambitious man. It is possible he doesn’t care who killed Candela: dead men do no favours, eh? But he would certainly care about being seen to catch the killer; this would be a good profit for him.”

  “But what if the gun doesn’t have my prints on it?”

  Marcello wrests his gaze from dark waters before them and stares hard at Ric. “What difference will it make? He has your gun. We have a saying, a tailor does not make a man for the clothes, but when he does not have sufficient cloth…”

  He ushers Ric to the stern and they sit down on the cushioned seats at the transom. Though the motorboat is pitching and yawing through the waves, Ric realises that rather than heading for Vulcano, Salvo is now steering the motoscafo around in wide circles.

  Marcello lights his cigar with an old Zippo lighter and puffs away for a few seconds. He examines the end of his cigar and, happy it is properly lit, says, “Ric, yesterday I asked you why you came to the ferramenta and asked to see my brother–”

  “I–”

  “No, un momento, Ric. Two days ago, you were seen at Pietra Liscia in the old warehouse of La Cava. I don’t know what you were doing there, but today you went with the Commissario to the same place. I think it would be better if you told me why. What were you looking for?”

  “Your brother, Claudio.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the day I arrived here in Lipari I tied up to the old pie
r and heard an argument between two men. It ended in screaming and it sounded to me like one of the men murdered the other. I asked an escurzionista if anyone notable on the island had gone missing. He didn’t know at first, so I went to the old warehouse to see if I could find a body.”

  “And did you, find a body?”

  “Yes, buried beneath some rubble in a room cut out of the hillside.”

  “Did you recognise this man?”

  “Not until I described him to the escurzionista. He seemed to think the man was your brother.”

  “Puddaciaru!” Marcello spits.

  Ric flinches.

  The barrel-chested Liparotan sits and stares at Ric, his eyes burning like the glow from his cigar. “He was my half-brother, not that this makes much difference. Tell me, why did you take this Commissario Talaia to the pumice warehouse?”

  “Because I found myself between a rock and hard place and had to make a decision. Talaia was going to lock me up; the body was my only bargaining chip. But your brother’s body has been removed. I guess your kid up at the beach bar saw me when I went up there, told you and you realised I must have gone there for some reason.”

  Marcello sighs and exhales a great cloud of cigar smoke, which swirls about his face. “Yes, you led me to my brother’s body and I had to have Claudio moved. If Talaia had seen it, he would have made life difficult.”

  Ric is taken aback by the man’s casual attitude.

  “You think I killed my brother?”

  “I’d like to think not, Marcello. I heard the man who strangled Claudio call him “Puddaciaru” just before he killed him. But he didn’t say it the way you just said it.”

  He nods. “Yes, it may be true. Claudio was puddaciaru. You know what this word means?”

  “Talkative.”

  He nods again. “Yes, talkative. But there are different kinds of talkative; one is trivial talk, the other is to talk when you are not supposed to. This is what my brother did; he talked when he was not supposed to.”

  “Seems a pretty hefty fine,” Ric interrupts.

  Marcello leans forward, his forearms on his knees. He glances at Ric as though asking for his patience and understanding. “My brother was close to Girolamo Candela. They were planning this new hotel for Porticello. I found out that this bastardo had persuaded my brother to offer others money if they would vote against me at the planning committee. Fortunately for me, these people repeated this to me. In this way, my brother was talkative.

  “But, there is another, more important reason why Claudio’s time had come. The morning you arrived at Casa dei Sconosciuti, you came to town and sat at La Precchia in the Corso Vittorio. You were there when the funeral procession of my father passed by. I saw you and I know you saw me. Claudio, of course, was not present.” Marcello sighs and smokes, no doubt dwelling on an unpalatable truth.

  “Claudio was younger than me. He was the child of my father’s second marriage and not the same as the rest of my family. My father helped him; he set Claudio up with the ferramenta. But Claudio was lazy; he took drugs and made friends with many bad people, so I had to manage the business most of the time. Claudio was going to Palermo often to satisfy his social appetite and this was where he met Girolamo Candela. Two weeks ago, my brother told my father of this plan to build the hotel. He, my father, went into a rage and said he would take everything away from Claudio and tell the people that he was no longer the son of Onofrio Maggiore. They argued and they fought. My father was old, but he was very strong; even stronger when angry. He beat Claudio and Claudio knocked him down. My father hit his head and died during the night. I know this because Claudio was so upset and consumed by his guilt that he told me the whole story the next day. At first, I did not know what to do. My father could be a hard man to answer to and I have no doubt that Claudio did not intend to kill him.

  “I found out later that Claudio had run away with his boat to Palermo. I also learned that he went to see Candela who helped him drown his sorrows and provided him with a shoulder to cry on. Unfortunately, he told Candela what had happened. He should not have done this, for this kind of happening is not to be spoken about.”

  “Omertà?”

  “Yes, in a way. This Omertà can be interpreted in many ways; one of them is that we do not need the police to help us sort out what happened between Claudio and my father. This kind of happening we sort out ourselves, quietly, among the family. But this problem with Claudio and Candela left me in a very difficult position. If I did nothing, I would place myself below Candela, because he would know things about my family which would give him an advantage over me. I could not stand and do nothing. You, Ric, must understand that this is how it is.”

  “I seem to have heard that story before,” Ric says, thinking of how Valeria could not live with Candela knowing about her father. Somehow it all appeared to start and finish with Girolamo Candela. “So Claudio came back to have it out with you?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I telephoned Claudio that he was to come home for the funeral. He refused, so I sent Salvo to bring him back. The night before the funeral Claudio disappeared and the rest you know.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Marcello? Surely the less I know the better.”

  He removes his cigar, examines the glowing end and throws it over the side. “Perhaps yes; perhaps no. Now, there are only three people who know what happened to Claudio: you and me and whoever killed Claudio.”

  “So the fact that I know someone murdered your brother binds me to you?” Ric asks, both offended and astonished.

  “No,” Marcello replies. “First of all, we are not absolutely sure who killed Claudio; although we have an idea. Second, the fact that you heard the man speak means you are the only person who can identify him.”

  “So what have you done with your brother’s body, Marcello?”

  “His corpse, you mean?”

  “Yes, of course, his corpse,” Ric replies, angrily.

  “You are sitting on it.”

  64

  Ric stands up; an involuntary reflex born of revulsion as much as a mark of respect for the dead. He looks down in wonder at Marcello and knows his wonder is not of the kind found in San Bartolo’s expression on the ceiling of the cathedral.

  “Is that what this boat trip is about, Marcello? Burial detail?”

  “Yes and no, Ric. Salvo and I can manage this without you, but the opportunity comes, so we make use of it. But it is more important to get you away from Lipari to a place of safety. Go and take the helm from Salvo while we attend to Claudio.”

  The wiry Salvo stands back, allowing Ric into the pilot seat. He is deferential and solemn, and nods his approval when he understands Ric is competent at the helm.

  Salvo and Marcello lift the cushions and open the locker beneath the seats.

  Claudio’s corpse is wrapped in sailcloth, sewn neatly up the centre, and judging by the grunting and groaning as they lift it out of the locker, weighed down with rocks. They teeter at the side of the motoscafo before swinging the corpse once, twice and then a final time over the side.

  Ric is still unsure as to whether or not he can trust Marcello. He looks around the cabin for some weapon that might help him avoid Claudio’s fate. However, aside from a box of fishing tackle in the corner, there is nothing.

  The breeze and the motion of the boat snatch the few words Marcello offers after his brother and both he and Salvo cross themselves in the traditional fashion. As they pay Claudio their last respects, Ric picks an ontreto from the box and slips it into his pocket.

  “I don’t like to bury him like this,” Marcello moans, once he is back in the cockpit, “but the sea is two to five hundred metres here. It is better that no one will ever find Claudio, even if it means no one will be present at his grave to mourn him in the way a man should be mourned. I hope San Bartolo will forgive me.”

  Salvo takes the helm again, speeds up and steers the motoscafo towards the small peninsula of Vulcanello. Once they have pass
ed the lights of the Punta Samossà the sea is calmer and the odour of rotten eggs hangs heavily on the air.

  “I don’t buy this, Marcello,” Ric shouts. “Someone stole my Beretta from the Mara and used it to kill Candela. The only person who could have done this was either you, Salvo or Valeria. I found out this evening that Valeria lured him to the Piazza San Bartolo the night he was shot; she admitted that much. However, in my experience, eighty-year-old ladies don’t go around shooting ex-lovers in shady alleys late at night. You may call her a witch, but I doubt she’d know how to use a gun. All of which means she got him into the alley and your Salvo, here, shot him with my gun, the three of you hoping the police would pin it on me.”

  Marcello glares at him. “If I had intended for you to be blamed, would I have confirmed to the Commissario that you were out fishing with me when it happened?”

  Ric fingers the ontreto in his pocket. The spines are sharp and dig into his thigh. He tenses and readies for the assault he is expecting: “Not unless you were also intending for me to join your brother out here to sleep with the fish. That way, Commissario Talaia could lay the blame at my door and wrap up his case.”

  But instead of Marcello and Salvo throwing him overboard, the burly Liparotan runs his hands through his hair and sits down, exasperated. “You question my integrity, Ric. This I do not like. Perhaps you are tired. I would prefer to believe this for now, because if I do not, the only course left after your disrespect is for me to throw you over the side. You can swim; I know this. But the waters here are treacherous and many have perished trying to swim between the islands.”

  Marcello sighs and pulls out another cigar. The flame of his lighter illuminates his face for a second. His expression is stark and brooding.

  “Let us think about what we already know for sure. You heard this man who killed Claudio speak the word puddaciaru. But, there is another way you can identify him. He might have something which belonged to Claudio; a cornicieddu. It is a charm; a small silver charm shaped like a little horn with a curve. Someone gave Claudio this talismano because he was superstitious; he never went anywhere without it. He used to wear this charm on a silver chain around his neck. We searched very carefully the place where he was left at Pietra Liscia, but we could not find it.”