Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  Ric leaves Marcello hanging for a moment before turning and asking in a disbelieving tone, “And that’s how we’re supposed to recognise this man other than by his voice, by this charm?”

  “That, yes; by this charm, his voice and by his name. But you are the only man who heard him speak. Ric, we have found out that Claudio and Girolamo Candela met each other in a club, in Palermo. This club, Exit, is frequented by men who prefer each other’s company to that of women. We also understand Claudio was introduced to Candela at this club by a man whose name is Francesco Ferro. We are told this man has not been seen in Palermo since Claudio disappeared; he may still be here in the islands. We are looking for him and if we find him, it is possible you will help us identify him.”

  Ric recalls Valeria mentioning Claudio patronising a club in Palermo. “You seriously think I’d be better off hiding out in Vulcano rather than handing myself in to Talaia?”

  “Yes, I do, Ric. If Palermo has sent someone to kill you, you are not safe with the police, especially if they, too, think you shot Girolamo Candela.”

  When they approach the low isthmus at the harbour of the Porto di Levante, Salvo throttles back and weaves the motoscafo between the many sailing boats at anchor. Lanterns spaced at regular intervals project perfectly round pools of light along a wooden dock, leading Ric to believe they have arrived at a prison camp. When the boat’s motor quiets, the relentless beat of club music booms and froths from a beach beyond the trees; if it is a prison camp, it is the first he has ever heard of with an entertainment facility. A stern-faced, thickset man wearing overalls appears out of the shadows and helps tie up.

  The odour of sulphur lays thick upon his tongue. Ric coughs.

  “Solfatara! Solfo! You cannot get away from the smell here,” Marcello mutters. “Now, we take the pulmino.”

  Salvo stays with the boat and Ric follows Marcello along the dock. A minibus is waiting; they get in. Beyond a brief nod between Marcello and the driver, there is no conversation; evidently the driver knows who they are and where they need to go. Sitting in the back, Ric is very suddenly aware of his tiredness; his limbs ache, his ribs still pain him from his dust-up in the vico and his head seems hell-bent on reminding him of the glancing blow the hull of the fishing boat dealt him. He isn’t sure what time it is or whether it matters, but the night seems to be extending far beyond its normal duration.

  The minibus winds its way up a slight slope into woodland and, after a couple of minutes, pulls up before a pair of ornate but rusty wrought-iron gates.

  An old man ghosts out of the shadows. He steps over to the side of the minibus, checks to see who is inside and, once he is satisfied, walks back to open the gates.

  The drive up is steep and after a succession of long, dogleg curves they halt at a collection of low, white-washed buildings.

  Ric gets out, stretches and looks around. Here and there amongst the trees he notices several, single-storey holiday chalets and down the hill a small stage sits vacant before rows of empty chairs.

  Marcello waves him to follow and they walk through a gated arch in the wall.

  If the rusty gates backed by a sheet of brown paper lend the property a rather drab and dilapidated aspect, Ric is not prepared for what confronts him next.

  The courtyard resembles the terrace of a five-star hotel: tables, chairs and umbrellas are set out on a marble patio surrounding an infinity pool, one side of which is flanked by a long beach-style bar. On the far side plush lounge chairs and coffee tables sit beneath a cinema screen.

  Marcello, hands on hips, grins. “Not bad to relax, eh?” he asks.

  A young, unsmiling man, wearing a white majordomo’s uniform, appears next to them; his skin is coffee-coloured and his features smooth and vaguely effeminate. He nods politely and waits.

  Marcello turns to Ric, “You can stay here for a few days until the storm in Lipari blows over. These people are no friends to the police. Kasim will take you to one of the little houses. It has been a long night and there is not much darkness left. Get some rest. Now, I must go back and I will see you sometime tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Ric asks him.

  “The sailmaker never sleeps,” he replies, stretching his arms above his head, “he is always watching the sky; watching and waiting for Aeolus to grant him the gift of his winds so that his sails may be filled. Ciao, Ric.”

  As he turns to walk out, Marcello hesitates and turns back, “Oh, Ric, a word of advice. There are people here who it would be best not to talk to. There are no mobile telephones and the fewer the people who know this place exists, the better. It is, one might say, off limits to ordinary people. Perhaps it is best for you to remember what I have said to you about puddaciari, eh?”

  65

  When he wakes, Ric has no idea how long he has slept or where he is. The room is pitch-black and there is no clock on the bedside table. He stumbles about in the dark until he finds the living room curtains and draws them.

  Soft sunlight floods in through glassed patio doors.

  His clothes smell of sulphur and when he picks them up they feel coarse with wind salt from the previous night’s travel. A cupboard reveals shirts and trousers in various sizes, and a selection of swimming briefs and shorts. A fancy DeLonghi Nespresso machine sits on the sideboard and the fridge is stocked with bottles of mineral water.

  He shivers; it is as though they knew he was coming.

  The glass doors slide open onto a neat patio with a table, chairs and an umbrella. Lemon, lime, olive and chestnut trees dapple sunlight on the forest floor and girdle the chalet in a corset of brown and green. There are no books or magazines on the table and there is little to do but make a cup of coffee, bathe in the deep silence and reflect.

  That Ric has, for the moment, no other choice than to trust Marcello is obvious. But how far he trusts him is another matter.

  If the Liparotan had wanted to dispose of him all it would have taken was for the two of them to throw him overboard in the straits between the islands; in the maelstrom of currents it would have been nigh-on impossible to survive. And besides, Marcello’s right-hand man, Salvo, though wiry and possessed of all the benign charm of a rural vicar, is clearly his enforcer. The way Marcello said he’d sent Salvo to bring Claudio back from Palermo, told Ric all he needed to know about the little guy. To have tried to take Salvo on out in the darkness of open water would have been unwise and that was to discount the raw physicality of his boss.

  The choice of who to trust lies between the barrel-chested sailmaker and the diminutive detective, neither of whom Ric knows well enough.

  So far, Marcello has been true to his every word. He’s confirmed very readily to Talaia that Ric was out fishing with him at the time Candela was shot, he’s lent Ric his monolocale and attended to the Mara’s repairs without demanding any money. What Ric cannot fathom, though, is what motivates Marcello’s profound openness and generosity. The bullish Liparotan is so casually frank with him, it unnerves him.

  Since his arrival, nearly all those he has met have been only too happy to accept him, take him into their homes and treat him as a member of the family. All of them, Valeria, Sandro, Old Nino and Marcello appear to possess a streak of integrity a mile wide. And, as he thinks of the most appropriate word which describes their straightforwardness, he realises that all of them at some time have used the word integrity when describing each other. Valeria described the Maggiore family as un famiglia di integrità and Old Nino the same. Even the inscription on the grave of Antonio Sciacchitano indicates he was un uomo integerrimo, regardless of whether his bones lie in the grave or not. Ric is surrounded by people of integrity, but he knows all too well from Corsica that integrity is measured in actions, not words.

  Commissario Talaia, however, is not such a known commodity.

  That he is playing some form of long game is self-evident. If he had simply wanted a neck to tie a noose around, he would have read Ric his rights, banged him up in a police cell and
hauled him off the island at the first opportunity. But there is something about the little cockerel, as Marcello insists on calling him, which draws Ric to him. He is a thinker, the antithesis of the obsequious Bosquet, the policeman he tangled with in Corsica. But, Ric is guarded to think, that doesn’t make Talaia any less of a liability.

  If he is honest with himself, and he sees no reason why he should not be seeing as everyone else apart from Talaia seems to be, he hasn’t got the first clue who to trust. He can’t even be sure there is a contract out on him or if he is safe strolling about this curious camp. The only thing he can be sure of is that someone murdered Claudio Maggiore and Girolamo Candela, and it wasn’t him.

  Having gone round in a perfect circle, Ric closes the door behind him and strolls down to the courtyard, a hundred metres or so down the slope.

  The encampment is peaceful and the mood docile, like that of an old people’s home. And apart from the insects chattering away in the scrub, the quiet is broken only by distant samba rhythms down the way. A couple sit out on the patio of their chalet, reading the papers; they don’t acknowledge him.

  At the pool, a group of men sit around a table playing Scopa. They mock in unflattering terms each others game-play and moan when their opponents capture a coveted card. Half a dozen others sit in couples, observing their own space as if enveloped in a quarantine zone; the men, suntanned, heavyset, with shining bald pates and dark glasses, ignore their women, who are mostly pale-skinned, slender and bored, their bikinis more supermarket than Milan.

  Ric looks around and notices there is one man who sits alone and apart from the rest. He pulls out a seat at the table between the bar and the man, and measures his surroundings against his hazy impressions of the night before.

  At first glance the infinity pool lends the beach-style bar an air of opulence. But, like the women perching close to their partners, the two are not perfectly matched. The marble-tiled courtyard gives way in places to unfinished concrete and beyond the pool’s edge the gardens peter out to rough scrub and, further on, forest. Whoever has put the place together has a Monfortino palate, but a Moscato wallet.

  Kasim appears at his table. “Vuoi bere? Mangiare?”

  “Grazie, Kasim. Per favore, una Birra Messina.”

  The beer arrives accompanied by a menu, which reminds Ric he hasn’t eaten a square meal in over twenty-four hours. “Per favore, Kasim, delle sarde.”

  “Alla Catanese Palermitana o Messinese?” he asks.

  Not realising there is a choice, Ric replies, “Catanese.”

  The man sitting alone at the adjacent table turns and says, “You should have chosen the Sarde a Beccaficu alla Palermitana, they are better.”

  Ric adjusts his chair so that he can address the man without twisting his tender torso. “If I’d known the difference, I might. Perhaps you’d enlighten me?”

  His face is familiar, but from where Ric cannot recall. The man is tall and lean of build and sits straight-backed. His skin is saddle-brown and his shoulder-length, wavy black hair is combed straight back over his head to curl around the collar of his sky-blue linen shirt. He wears wrap-around sunglasses and a vaguely conceited expression, as though he would prefer not to be associated or confused with those other, bald, muscular beefs seated around the pool.

  “The Beccaficu alla Palermitana is baked with capers and raisins and pine nuts,” he offers. “Alla Catanese, the sardines are marinated in vinegar and deep fried; the flavour is all cooked out. Messinese is okay, but cheese with sardines, eh? I ask you?”

  “Thanks, I’ll remember for next time.” He goes to turn away, but thinks again, “It’s that obvious, is it? My not being Italian.”

  The man chuckles, “Yes, it’s that obvious. You have significantly more hair and better manners than most of the others here.

  “Which tells everyone I’m not French or German?”

  “A lucky guess, eh? A Frenchman would have taken more time to choose his food and a German would not have chosen a dish that is named after a small bird that pecks at figs; Beccaficu is not enough food for a German. I am Ciccio.” He holds out his hand. His fingers are slender and manicured; his grip, though, only a fraction off intimidating.

  “Ric,” he replies. “Nice place they’ve got here.”

  “Just passing through, Ric?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Oh, here and there. Much the same as you, I expect.” But it is the way the man who calls himself Ciccio sits that brings to mind where Ric has seen him before. He is the same man Ric noticed in the barca which passed close by him the day he arrived in Lipari.

  Ciccio raises his head and curls his lip, “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, Ciccio, most of the time I’m either on my way to somewhere or on my way back from somewhere else. But right now I’m sitting in a chair beside a pool, looking forward to a cold beer and something to eat.”

  “The beer here is not good,” Ciccio states, holding up his dark brown bottle of Birra Messina. “They,” he nods at the table where the men are playing Scopa, “drink this because they think it is the beer of their birthplace. Let me tell you, Ric, this beer no longer comes from Messina; it is no longer made by Siciliani. Now, it is owned by Heineken and brewed in Massafra, in Puglia,” he speaks the name of the town as though he has experienced some unpleasantness in it. “The only true Sicilian beer is Birra del Sole; it carries the Trinacria, the Sicilian flag: the head of Medusa with the three legs and ears of wheat?”

  “I know it.”

  “I tell you, my friend, the beer here is only for the pigs!” He nods in the direction of the card players.

  “You know your beer then, Ciccio,” Ric suggests.

  “Enough to know what tastes good and what does not.” He leans over towards Ric and waves him closer as if to impart some great secret, “There is a little brewery,” he whispers, “a microbirrificio, you know what I mean by this? I forget the name. It is on the Via Cavour in Palermo. It makes great beer, but don’t tell these viddani. These peasants will only tell others and then the place will be full of their ugly friends.”

  Ric tries to imagine exactly how much uglier than these viddani their friends could be.

  “You don’t know Palermo, Ric?”

  “No,” he replies, “it’s not one of those places I’ve been to. Maybe I’ll get the chance one of these days.” He recalls what Marcello has told him about Claudio, Candela and the club called Exit, and realises that Ciccio is the only man around the pool who isn’t partnered by a female. He is surely the grain amongst the chaff; his nose is straight, his face unscarred and his teeth white.

  He sits back, still upright, very possibly content that his new friend doesn’t know Sicily’s capital and is therefore a man apart from those around him.

  Noticing this, Ric asks, “You know Palermo well?”

  “Sure, I know Palermo well; certainly better than any of these pigs.”

  “Good place to enjoy a little fun?” Ric asks.

  “Sure. It depends on what kind of fun you are looking for, but most of what a man would want is available.”

  Kasim interrupts their conversation and places a plate of breaded sardines and a basket of focaccia with olives before Ric.

  “I told you, my friend, you should have asked for the Palermitana,” Ciccio reminds him and, looking over at Ric’s plate, he tugs Kasim’s sleeve. “Tesoro,” he whispers, “Capunata.” A brief, intimate look passes between the two of them.

  “Thanks,” Ric replies. “I’ll remember your advice for next time. You want to join me?” Ric starts to eat.

  “Eh,” Ciccio says, getting up out of his chair, “why not? A man who eats alone, eats too fast and gets a bad stomach. I know this; I have eaten alone too many times.” He hauls himself out of his chair and pulls it over to Ric’s table. His sky-blue linen shirt is open to his waist, revealing a thick growth of chest hair. “What kind of entertainment would you be lookin
g for, my friend?” His expression, concealed as it is behind his wrap-around sunglasses, Ric cannot read, but his tone is unsettlingly licentious.

  “Well,” he replies, rubbing his ear and trying his best to look self-conscious, “everything, really. I like bars, restaurants and clubs. A friend of mine told me about a club…” he hesitates, “it might not be the kind of place everyone likes… Exit, I think it was called. Do you know it?”

  Kasim reappears with a plate of aubergines, onions and tomato. This time, he doesn’t linger for any appreciation.

  “Sure, I know it. It is in the Piazza San Francesco di Paola; a good place for those who prefer things a little different, a little exotic.” Ciccio grins, tucking into his food.

  “My friend,” Ric begins, tentatively, “told me it’s where the arts crowd hang out, you know, intellectuals, politicians, that sort.”

  Ciccio bridles. He cuts a morsel of aubergine into a neatly symmetrical portion, forks it delicately into his mouth and closes his eyes to savour the flavour. He waits until he has swallowed before replying, “Yes, of course, it can be. Now that our President, Rosario Crocetta, is open about his sexuality, places like Exit are more acceptable. It doesn’t make him any more popular, though. You know, when he was mayor in Gela, he almost put Stidda out of business; no one could collect their pizzo.”

  “Pizzo?” Ric repeats.

  “Yes, pizzo,” Ciccio repeats, a lecturer amazed that his pupil can be such a dimwit. He places his fork carefully at the edge of his plate and rubs his thumb and index finger together: “Pizzo, the beak that needs wetting, the money others make from making sure your business is not bothered. Do you not have this in Britain?”