The Maltese Goddess Page 11

  “It’s Marilyn,” I burst out. “M-A-R-I-L-Y-N. Not what’s her name! Not ‘the wife.’ Not la femme. Marilyn. She may be plain and very, very shy. She may have so much money you want to despise her. But I’ve met her. I like her. And she deserves better than this… this automatic presumption of guilt on both your parts!” I was almost sputtering. Both men looked sheepish. “What if something dreadful has happened to her too?”

  Tabone cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should have added that I also checked on Mrs. Galea—that is to say, Marilyn Galea--and there is no indication she was on the plane with him. There’s no boarding pass, no ticket in her name either.”

  “You said there were two items of interest,” I said, somewhat mollified. “What’s the second?”

  “The second is equally interesting, I think,” Tabone said. “The information you requested on Galea’s will has come through from Canada, Rob. The bulk of his estate, as one would expect, is left to his wife, but, and this is the interesting part, he leaves the sum of $100,000 to the Farrugia boy—Anthony.”

  “I think that’s great!” I exclaimed. “It’s to pay for him to become an architect, for his tuition and everything. Who’d have guessed Galea would be that generous?”

  “Very generous indeed,” Tabone agreed. “But I think one would have to ask the question: Is this really for the boy’s education? Galea was what—thirty-seven? —when he died. Surely he would have expected to live longer than that. If he wanted to pay for Anthony’s education, why didn’t he just offer to do so?

  “So the question remains, and the answer is very critical: Where and when did he get killed? If he was killed in Rome, then Marilyn Galea probably didn’t do it. If he was killed in Canada, then the Farrugias are no longer suspects.”

  “You’d think the ‘when’ could be verified, wouldn’t you?” Luczka asked. “God knows I’m no pathologist. I can’t understand anything of what they’re doing with DNA evidence these days, but if I remember anything of my elementary forensics class a few years back, it is only in crime novels that it’s possible to pinpoint the time of death to an hour or two. I know what your pathologist says about rigor mortis. It normally begins to set in about five to seven hours after death, is fully set in after about twelve hours, and passes off again. But temperature makes a big difference to the rate. And as far as the breakdown of tissue after death—I think they call that autolysis—there wouldn’t be much difference between five hours and say, fifteen, which would put Galea back in Toronto when he died. And autolysis takes place at a slower rate when the body is cold.

  “So let’s, for the sake of argument, say Galea was killed in Toronto. His body could even have been frozen for all I know. The weather was certainly cold enough. And it seems to me it would be relatively easy to find out whether the body had been in freezing temperatures over a period of several hours, as you and I discussed yesterday, Vince.

  “If I remember correctly, cells rupture when a body is frozen, sort of like frostbite really. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell just looking at the body, but the fractured membranes should show up under a microscope if someone knew what to look for. Even if the body hadn’t been at subzero temperatures long enough to freeze completely, you could look at tissue samples from the extremities, the fingers and toes, because they would freeze first.”

  “Ah, but that requires, as you so delicately put it, someone who knows what to look for. At the present time, we don’t have that,” Tabone replied. “But I take your point. I’ll make arrangements for the coroner to send some tissue samples to a lab in Italy, and we’ll see what they say. But what about the stomach contents? Bacon and eggs. Breakfast. And we know that’s the last meal they give you on an overnight transatlantic flight.”

  “This may come as a surprise to you, Vince, but we North Americans eat breakfast food any time of the day or night. I don’t think that necessarily proves anything.”

  Tabone nodded as Rob continued. “You might also have someone do some tests on the chest he turned up in, if it hasn’t been done already. It’s been well handled, I know, so chances of finding clear prints are slight, but I’ve got a copy of Galea’s fingerprints that I brought along. Got them when he applied for a visa to come to Canada. In the meantime,” Luczka said, “I think I’ll have a bit of a look around, if it’s okay with you, Vince. Try out a little old-fashioned detective work. Find where Galea was from, who he knew, that sort of thing.”

  “I know where he’s from,” I piped up. “At least I think if I had a look at a map the name of the town would come back to me. Marilyn told me that day I went over to measure the furniture. I remember the word made me think of honey—the Greek word for it, meli.”

  “Mellieha?” Tabone asked.

  “I think that’s it,” I replied.

  “Well, you may be right. Because it says so right here on his file.” Tabone grinned at me.

  I glared at him. “What else does the file say?”

  “Parents both dead. No known relatives. Emigrated to Canada about eighteen years ago. That’s about it.”

  “Will you give us a lift back to the house so we can get the car?” I asked “And directions to Mellieha?”

  “Of course. Call me when you get back and tell me what you’ve found. And you will be careful, please, driving in Malta. We have many, many accidents. Remember what they say about Maltese drivers. We don’t drive on the left or the right. We drive in the shade! And by the way, try not to get lost!”

  *

  And so it was that the Mountie and I set off to do detective work. He wanted to drive, but the car, egalitarian in its perverseness, wouldn’t start for him either. I took over, he pushed, and I waited for him, engine running, a few yards past the end of the driveway. I noticed he was limping slightly as he approached the car, but I was feeling too irritable to ask him if he was okay.

  He got in and started looking for a seat belt. “There aren’t any,” I said.

  He looked annoyed. “There should be a law!”

  “There is, but it only applies to cars manufactured in 1990 or later, Anthony tells me. This, as you can see, is just a little bit older than that.”

  “Like about twenty years!” he responded. I put the car in gear and revved it up to the max. We tore down the road, engine screaming, until I was able to make the shift to third.

  “Nice car,” he said. I looked at him sideways but could not tell if there was irony in his words. We hit the first roundabout. There was nothing coming, so I didn’t gear down. The window beside him fell down. “Very nice car,” he added, as the handle spun uselessly in his hand.

  I had had a good look at the map before we left, and I had chosen a route that picked up the road to Rabat, then angled up to the northwest comer of the island where the town of Mellieha was located. We whipped past the sign for Verdala Palace around where the Great White Hunter had run me off the road, and I idly wondered where he was and whether he was trying to negotiate another surrealistic deal with someone, perhaps a total stranger like me. Fifty percent of what, was the question.

  As I had learned from my earlier outing in the car, I ignored the directional signs and kept angling along in the general direction of Mellieha. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to sense the Mountie beside me studying the road map with a perplexed air, but regrettably he was keeping his confusion to himself. He did wince perceptibly, however, when a mini minor shot past us on the shoulder, and again when someone passed on a hill.

  Once part of a prehistoric land bridge that linked it to what is now Italy, and also, perhaps with Africa, Malta is shaped a little like an oval platter with the northwest side tilted up, and the south and east down. Its western end is bisected by alternating parallel ridges and valleys cutting across the island from coast to coast. Our route, which took us out of the lower south and east, climbed for a while. As we crested the top of the first ridge, I could see, still miles away, the sweep of a large bay on the far side of the island, the water a silver ribbo
n against the dark outline of the shore. If my calculations were correct, it should be St. Paul’s Bay, where St. Paul was supposed to have been shipwrecked, and thus converted the island to Christianity.

  From here, sometimes the road followed a valley, relatively green and terraced to preserve precious soil and water, sometimes it crossed another craggy ridgeline and we could see the coastline for a few minutes again.

  Finally we reached the large bay. It was at the coastal edge of one of the island’s largest valleys, and it looked as if it had been formed during an earthquake or a volcanic eruption millions of years ago when the sea washed into one of the depressions between the ridges. Moored at the edge of the bay bobbed several beautifully colored fishing boats, their bright paint in sharp contrast to the subtle yellow stone of the buildings that hugged the shoreline.

  From here the road curved along the edge of the bay, then up onto another high ridge. It was not long then until we came to the edge of a town, and a sharp turn in the road to the right put us on the main street looking downhill toward a large cathedral.

  “Mellieha, I think,” I said, pulling into a parking space, and then looking about me at what appeared to be a rather prosperous little town.

  “I believe you, but I have no idea how you got us here.” The Mountie sighed.

  “Tell me again about tracking criminals through raging blizzards,” I said in dulcet tones.

  “Must be the absence of snow.” He grinned. Obviously it was not possible to irritate this man easily.

  We were parked very near to the top of the main street, and when we got out of the car, there was a wonderful smell of baking. “Could it be lunchtime?” the Mountie said, his eyes lighting up. We followed our noses to a small building on the curve in the road into town. We’d found the local bakery.

  There was a lineup of Maltese women, some in jeans, but most in black skirts, white blouses, and black cardigans. Several of them were carrying trays covered with tea towels. The Mountie, obviously the irrepressible type, asked the woman ahead of us what she had on her tray. Several of the women turned and smiled at his question.

  “Timpana,” she said, lifting the tea towel to show us a casserole covered in pastry. “Sunday dinner,” she added.

  “We bring it here on Sunday to have it cooked,” another woman said, “when the baking is finished for the day.” She showed us her platter, a traditional roast beef dinner just waiting to be cooked. As we talked, a couple of women left, their string bags filled with several of the round crusty Maltese loaves.

  “People have ovens in their own homes now,” a younger woman said. “But it’s still a nice tradition. We get to have a bit of a visit while our supper cooks.”

  “Does this mean there is nothing to eat here unless you bring your own?” the Mountie asked in a disappointed tone.

  “You can come to my house for supper anytime,” one of the young women said, and the rest giggled loudly. They beckoned us to go ahead of them into the dark interior. There was a counter on the left and a large brick oven at the back of the room. Arranged on a tray at the front were what looked like individual pizzas covered in a rich, dark sauce. We each ordered one and ate it right on the spot. They were delicious: lots of garlic, olives, and anchovy paste would be my guess as to ingredients, sprinkled with fresh herbs. The Mountie ordered a second right away. One of the women smiled and patted his arm.

  “I don’t suppose any of you would remember Martin Galea?” I asked them.

  “The man who was killed?” one of the younger women asked.

  “Yes, that one.” .

  They looked suspiciously at me. “I knew him in Canada,” I said. “Very well-known architect. I… We thought if he had family here, we’d express our condolences,” I lied. This seemed to allay their suspicions, but I could feel the Mountie’s law-abiding eyes boring into my back.

  “There are lots of Galeas around here, but I don’t remember anyone called Martin,” one woman said. She spoke to the older women and asked them something in Maltese. They all shook their heads. One woman added something, and the others all nodded.

  “You should go and see il Qanfud, the… What’s the name in English? The… Hedgehog,” the woman said.

  The Mountie and I looked at each other. “Where might we find this… Hedgehog?” he asked. The woman pointed us down the hill to an old man sitting in a chair outside one of the shops.

  “Take him a beer. His favorite is Cisk lager. He’ll talk your ears off,” one of the women said. They all laughed.

  “A bit crazy, but harmless enough,” another added.

  “What would we call him, if not Hedgehog?” I asked.

  “Grazio,” one woman replied. We thanked them and started down the hill toward the Hedgehog.

  “Why would you call someone a hedgehog?” the Mountie asked no one in particular.

  “Beats me. But beer sounds like a good idea,” I replied. “You’re driving,” he said severely. “Although come to think of it, I’m not sure how you tell the drunk drivers from any others on the road. Takes a policeman’s breath away, the way they drive around here.”

  We stopped and bought six cold Cisk lagers, and approached the man with a degree of caution. The Hedgehog was sitting in a battered lawn chair at the foot of a flight of stone stairs leading to an upper part of the village. He was wearing a very old plaid shirt, a tattered tan cardigan, and rather rumpled beige trousers, bare feet thrust into old sandals. He wore dark-rimmed glasses with very thick lenses, had grey hair and a rather grizzled appearance. “Hello,” I said in what I hoped was my nicest voice. “Is your name Grazio?”

  “Who’s asking?” he said suspiciously.

  “My name is Lara, and this is Rob. We’re looking for the family of someone we knew back in Canada, and the women at the bakery told us to look for someone by the name of Grazio who knew just about everybody,” I said in an ingratiating tone.

  “I doubt they called me Grazio,” he said. “More likely they called me il Qanfud.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Would you like a beer?”

  His eyes lit up. “Take a load off your feet, dearie,” he said, gesturing toward the steps behind him, “and tell me who you’re looking for.”

  “How’d you get a name like Hedgehog?” the Mountie dared to ask as we plunked ourselves down on the steps near the old man.

  “Skond ghamilek laqmek,” he replied. “Your nickname reflects your behavior. Or something else about you,” he added. We both nodded sagely.

  “We’re looking for friends or family of Martin Galea,” I said, pronouncing it, as Martin had, Ga-lay-ah, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

  “What kind of name is that?” he grunted “Here we say Galea.” He pronounced it Gal-ee-ah, with emphasis on the first syllable. “And Martin, that sounds British to me,” he said, flicking his hand in dismissal. “I’m a Mintoff man. Don’t like the British.”

  Rob and I looked at each other and then him.

  “Gal-ee-ah would have left here at least fifteen years ago,” I said. “He went to Canada and became a famous architect.”

  “Did he now? Is he the dead Galea?” the Hedgehog asked. “The one who turned up in a box?”

  “Yes,” we said in unison.

  “Saves the expense of a coffin, I guess. So why do you want to know about him?”

  I gave him my by now standard response about consoling the family.

  “I don’t know a Martin,” replied the old man, apparently satisfied by my explanation. “There’s lots of Galeas, though. Pawla ta’ Hamfusa, Pawla the beetle. There’s Mario il-Kavall, the mackerel. And long ago there was a young man, Marcus ta’ Gelluxa, the young bull. ll-mara bhall-lumija taghsarha u tarmiha.”

  “What?” we both said.

  “For him, a woman is like a lemon. You squeeze her and throw her away,” he cackled.

  “That’s the one!” I said.

  “Was he now? Marcus was quite the youngster. His mother died when he was just a baby
, but he charmed all the women in the village, and they all mothered him. He was also quite the hustler. Do just about anything to get ahead in life. Knew everyone’s weaknesses, and was not above using that knowledge if it got him ahead. Played all the angles, always on the lookout for an opportunity,” the Hedgehog said, swigging his beer. “Can’t blame him for that, though. His father died when he was just a lad, and he kind of had to look after himself. He got in with the wrong crowd for a while.”

  “I heard—his wife told me—his father owned a shop here.”

  “Owned? I think not. Worked in one, though. Just like Marcus to exaggerate,” the Hedgehog said.

  “No other relations?” I asked.

  “Not really. Nobody who’d admit it now anyway. He and his pal Giovanni il Gurdien, Giovanni the rat—such a pair, although I’ve always believed Marcus figured out Giovanni before some of the rest of us. But he left the village too. So you tell me he’s famous. An architect. Nothing would surprise me about Marcus Galea. Giovanni did just fine for himself too. Although how he could do what he did! It makes me sick!”

  The Mountie and I looked at each other again. The conversation got more confusing the more the Hedgehog drank. “What might that be?” Rob ventured to ask.

  “Most recently, you mean? Switched to the Republic party as soon as it got elected. Ran in the next election. Got to be a Cabinet minister right away as a reward. Typical! External relations minister, no less. Turncoat! And that’s the best I can say about him. Him I don’t want to talk about.” The Hedgehog looked as if he might spit out his beer, but then he thought better of it, no doubt not wanting to waste so much as a drop.

  “Always liked Marcus the young bull, though, I’ll admit. Certainly turned out better than some of the rest of them, like Giovanni and the other one, Franco ta’ Xiwwiex, Franco the troublemaker, from Xemxija. He grew up to be a gangster.” The old man giggled. After another swig, he added, “Although there’s lots of folks around here don’t think too highly of Marcus either, not after what he did. At least, as far as I know, he never changed his politics!”