The Maltese Goddess Page 15

  It did sound rather ridiculous. “Not really, I guess,” I said lamely.

  Just then, almost as if to spare me further embarrassment, the phone rang. It was Alex, checking up on me. I told him about the most recent developments, and I could hear the concern in his voice. “I hope you aren’t investigating the murders, Lara. Leave that stuff to the police,” he said severely.

  “I know. There’s a policeman right here, as a matter of fact. So don’t worry, Alex.” I was about to say good-bye, when I thought of something else.

  “If you can, do some of your wonderful research and find out what a Mintoff man is. It’s been bothering me ever since I heard it.”

  “I know the answer to that one already,” Alex replied. “I visited Malta a few times when I was in the merchant marine, you know. It was a stop on a route from Southampton to Piraeus via Malta, Cyprus, and, in the old days, Beirut. The Grand Harbour was one of our ports of call. Splendid place, although there was always the Gut, of course.”

  “What in heaven’s name is the Gut?”

  “Let’s start with your first question.” He laughed. “Mintoff would be Dom Mintoff, head of the Labour Party, and the Prime Minister of Malta for many years. Became PM in the mid-fifties, if I recall. A Mintoff man, I presume, would be a supporter. Mintoff was a charismatic and some would say quixotic leader. One day you’d be his friend, the next his bitter enemy. After the War, Mintoff originally wanted Malta to integrate with Great Britain, to have representation in the House of Commons and so on. He held a referendum of sorts on the subject, and the majority of Maltese voted in favor of integration, but the British were cool to the idea. Mintoff went off the British and started pushing the cause of independence. Malta achieved nationhood in 1964, I believe. One thing you’ll find out if you get into a political discussion, which frankly I wouldn’t advise, is that politics is a very heated subject in Malta. People are avid—perhaps rabid is a better word—supporters of a particular political party. They hold their political loyalties for their whole lives.”

  “That would explain why the Hedgehog—don’t ask, Alex!—thought Giovanni was a traitor for changing political parties!”

  “I have no idea who Giovanni is, nor do I believe I have ever heard a hedgehog speak, but the substance of what you are saying is true. Politics in Malta has divided whole communities and has resulted in violence from time to time. But I’ve talked your ear off, and should get off the line.”

  “Not so fast, Alex. What’s the Gut?”

  “The Gut is a backstreet in Valletta. It was originally the only place the Knights were allowed to fight duels. Did you notice several of the steep streets in Valletta are made up of tiny steps? That’s the only way Knights in full armor could navigate a steep hill, by swinging their legs out to the side and up. The steps are just the right height for a Knight in armor. Later the street became the place to find sleazy bars. Notorious place. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble. I imagine it’s been cleaned up since I was there,” he replied.

  “Alex! This is a whole new side to you I’d never have guessed.” I laughed.

  “You lead a sheltered life, my dear. Be careful, please,” he said and rang off.

  I told Rob about my conversation with Alex, particularly the part about politics. Rob was very quiet while I spoke, perhaps because the conversation about his injuries had depressed him in some way. I took his silence to be my advantage, and started plotting our next moves.

  “This makes me think we should go and have a chat with this Giovanni fellow, the childhood chum of Martin Galea. Maybe the killing was politically motivated. Surely it can’t be difficult to locate a Cabinet Minister. Maybe he was to be one of the mystery guests at the social event here. It makes sense, with the two of them having been friends in childhood. And I know Galea was not above using his connections. Maybe he asked Galizia to set it up.”

  “I doubt Galizia has anything to do with it, and I imagine that it may be easy to locate a Cabinet Minister, but not so easy to get in to see him,” Rob replied. I detected, or perhaps imagined—in retrospect I’m not sure—something patronizing in his reply, and it irritated me. I resolved to do a little investigating of my own, without him.

  Perhaps as he’d mentioned, I don’t have the face for deception, because he said, in a supercilious tone, “You’d do well to remember the words of George Bernard Shaw: ‘Hell is full of amateurs.’ Man and Superman, I think. Actually he said musical amateurs, but you get the general idea.”

  My, my, I thought, a literate cop. First Umberto Eco, and now George Bernard Shaw. It might actually be possible to have a civilized conversation with this man. But not tonight. “And you might do well to remember,” I shot back, “the Chinese proverb that says something to the effect that a man should take care not to anger a woman, because he has to sleep sometime, with his eyes closed.”

  “Sleep? You who sleeps in a huge bed with a down duvet! You think I sleep on that nasty cot? It’s… it’s—what do you call those temples you’re always going on about?—Neolithic, that’s what it is. No, way older than that. Pre-Neolithic,” he sputtered.

  “Paleolithic?” I smiled sweetly. “Tough!” I went up to my room and shut the door—I like to think I didn’t slam it, just closed it firmly—and resolutely thought about Lucas. Kind, sweet, and hardly ever argumentative Lucas. Not that Lucas was perfect or anything. He had his faults, like everybody. He was still, after a relationship of two years, a bit of a cipher to me, a part of him always held back. There were so many things about him I still didn’t know. Like his politics, for example, since that had been a topic of conversation that evening. I knew Lucas had ties of some kind with a radical underground group that fought for the rights of the native peoples of Mexico, but how radical and how involved, I didn’t know. I didn’t ask either, because I knew he wouldn’t tell me. But compared to someone like the Mountie, Lucas was a prince.

  That night I dreamed the Mountie and I were taking part in a round dance. We were in a large group of people, several of whom I knew: Marilyn Galea, Anna Stanhope and her Victor, Sophia and the Farrugias, Vincent Tabone. Even the Hedgehog was there. We were dancing in a large circle in front of Mnajdra. It was night, but we were lit by a spotlight.

  From time to time the steps of the dance would fling Rob and me into the middle of the circle, where we’d smile and whirl, the picture of friendship. But then the music would change, the pattern would move on, and we’d be separated by the circle once more.

  As bright and noisy as the dance was, I knew there was menace there, a terrible darkness oozing around the stones, swirling about the feet of the dancers, insinuating itself in our souls. In the dream I knew it to be Ahriman, ancient Persian god of the underworld, the embodiment of pure evil.

  I could not stop the dance.

  ELEVEN

  Have you forgotten what it is to be a Knight? What has become of the vows you took, the sacrifices you promised, the valor you espoused? Look at you, bickering, brawling, whoring, duelling, drinking, your minds and bodies bloated with dishonor. You disgust Me! Soon, displaced and discredited, you will be driven from My islands, as you so richly deserve.

  *

  The storage shed at Mnajdra was broken into during the night. Anna Stanhope, Victor, and I were called to the site the next morning. Mario Camilleri and his assistant Esther met us there, along with a rather officious policeman who did not appear to have Tabone’s sensitivity or sense of humor.

  The shed, one of those temporary aluminum structures, a somewhat larger than usual version of a garden shed, had been spray painted in swirls of a rather nasty green. There was also some hastily scrawled text. “Rude expressions,” the policeman replied to my query. There was no translation forthcoming.

  More seriously, the padlock had been forced and broken. We gingerly stepped inside to find the place in disarray. Clothes were scattered everywhere, and the boxes containing the light and sound equipment had been upset. “Perverts!” Anna muttered under
her breath.

  We got down to work. Anna and I started gathering up the costumes, inspecting them and putting them on hangers and back on the rack where I’d left them. Most were just dusty, a couple required washing, and one, roughly handled, had caught on the hook of a metal hanger and was torn. I noticed with genuine regret that it was Sophia’s. The tear didn’t look too serious to me, although no one has ever complimented me on my sewing. Marissa, who’d mentioned that she’d sold her lacework, seemed the logical candidate for the job, not the least because of what I saw as genuine affection for her son’s girlfriend. I figured she could probably also use a bit of a diversion too. I told Anna I’d see to it that the costume was taken care of in lots of time for the performance.

  Victor fussed around his boxes with Mario’s help, but they had not been opened, the locks still intact and functioning. He reported two spotlight bulbs smashed and said he’d get them replaced right away.

  “Sheer vandalism!” Anna said. “If they’d wanted anything of value, they would have broken into the boxes and taken the sound equipment. If they can get in the door, those little locks would have given them no trouble. Whoever it was just wanted to stop the performance. Perverts!” she repeated.

  It certainly looked that way, although I must say I had the impression that, for a very small island, a lot of very strange things were going on. We all worked at tidying up the place, even the rather retiring Esther.

  “Esther, I’m not sure we’ve been officially introduced,” I said when we were outside together straightening out the costumes and inspecting them in the sunlight for dirt and damage.

  “Esther Aquilina.” She smiled. “I hope you are enjoying your stay in Malta,” she said, then looked dubious. “Except for this, I mean.” she gestured toward the shed, “and of course the murders.” She bit her lip.

  “I am, actually, despite these things. Malta is an exceptionally beautiful place.”

  She brightened. “You must have a very interesting job, Esther,” I said, “working in the Prime Minister’s office.”

  She nodded. “It’s Mario who works for the Prime. Minister,” she said. “I work in the Protocol office, the External Relations Ministry. I work on visits of foreign dignitaries, that sort of thing. It’s actually lots of detail work, not very exciting sometimes, until they get here, and then it gets way too exciting. Worrying everything will go okay and all,” she explained.

  “You must know the Minister, then,” I said, in what I hoped was a casual tone. “What’s his name again?”

  “Giovanni Galizia,” she replied obligingly. “Yes, I work for him. But of course someone of my level in the organization doesn’t get to deal with the Minister very much. He’s very nice, very charming, though. Except, of course, when something goes wrong,” she sighed. “I’m hoping he won’t hear about this,” she said glumly.

  “But you must get to meet some very interesting people, and attend some lovely events,” I said, trying to sound suitably awed by all this. In fact, I’d had the dubious pleasure of meeting a couple of Cabinet Ministers who’d been patrons of the shop. Neither had particularly impressed me, burdened as they were by unbridled ambition untempered, in my opinion, jaded though that may be, by an equal passion for public service. It sounded, come to think of it, a little like the person the Hedgehog had described, and would not have been out of keeping with a close friend of Martin Galea. Perhaps public service is not the high calling it once was.

  “I’m still pretty new to the job,” she replied. “So I haven’t really met that many people. The Minister, though, is the Prime Minister’s closest advisor,” she said proudly. “His office is very close to the Prime Minister’s.”

  That might be true about the location; as to the rest of it, not from what I’d heard. “And where is that?” I asked.

  “The Palazzo Parisio, around the corner on Merchant Street. Napoleon stayed there; he slept right in the alcove in the Minister’s office. In what is now the Minister’s office, I mean. He, Napoleon that is, was on his way to Egypt, and he captured Malta first because of its strategic importance.”

  She went on a bit more about various other aspects of Malta’s history, and what she had to say was very interesting. Until I’d arrived here, and particularly until I’d become involved with Anna Stanhope’s historical drama, I’d had no idea that Malta had played such an important role in Mediterranean history, and once again wished Galea had given me more than twenty-four hours notice about this trip. But there was something in the way that Esther was talking about it. She sounded as if she’d memorized it all, somehow, as if a button had been pushed and now the speech was to unfold in its entirety. Characteristic of a recent protocol school graduate, I thought, or someone determined to please. I was glad when the speech was over. I had what I wanted: an address for the man I wanted to see. I had learned something else too. Esther made much of the fact that her minister lived in Mdina, among the rich and famous, I could tell.

  Soon Victor, Mario, and Anna joined us outside, and we all surveyed the damage.

  “We must get this painted,” Victor said, eyeing the shed severely. “I have a friend, a cousin actually, who will help us with this.” And with a bow in our general direction, he started up the causeway to the exit.

  “We’ll get some of the boys to help, Anna called after him. “Maybe Sophia’s young man… Anthony, I think his name is.” She turned to me. I nodded

  “Isn’t he a lovely man?” she said to the retreating back of Victor Deva.

  “Lovely,” I agreed.

  “I haven’t had much experience with men,” she said in a low voice. “I’m not the type men go for, you know. Never got to the prom, so to speak. Too big, too loud… ”

  “Too smart?” I added. She smiled at me.

  “Thank you. I like that better. I’m such a novice. At my age! I’m just kind of trying to find my way with Victor, taking it one day at a time. I feel totally inadequate but also totally exhilarated!” She paused for a moment, then said, “I know what you’re thinking. That I’m an old fool.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I think he’s perfectly charming, and he obviously has a crush on you. I think that’s just great.”

  She beamed. “Thank you again,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Now we must get back to work. Lots to do before the rehearsal tonight. Do you think you can get these costumes in shape?”

  “Sure. Esther is giving them all a good going-over. Most of them just need to be brushed off. There’s only one that really needs work, and I will get Marissa, Anthony’s mother, to work on it if she’s willing. I’ll be off now. See you about six.”

  She stopped me for a moment as I left. “I should tell you that the girls are quite chuffed at how well the play is looking with Victor’s lights and music and the improvements you’ve made in the costumes and the way things flow,” she said rather shyly. “There’s no question that between the two of you, you’ve moved the production up a notch, professionally speaking. I want you to know I appreciate it as much as the girls do.” I was grateful for her kind words. With so many bad things happening, any thoughtful gesture almost brought me to tears, and so I waved my thanks and got on my way before I embarrassed myself.

  I was in a hurry to get back to the house. It was, with all the fussing about at Mnajdra, getting well into the afternoon, and I was expecting Alex to call. I’d left a message on the answering machine at the shop, knowing that Alex always checked that from home very early, and it had been the middle of the night Toronto time when I’d been able to extract details on the Great White Hunter out of the Mountie. I’d learned, after considerable dancing around the subject, a great deal of pretending that our tiff of the evening before had never taken place, and on top of it all, having to cook him breakfast, that the corpse in the safari suit was an American by the name of Ellis Graham. His home address was Los Angeles; his occupation was listed as film producer. Rob had obviously had a call from Tabone the previous evening. I’d heard the phone ring
but was too busy sulking to ask about it at the time, and too proud to ask directly the next morning.

  Alex, a man of many talents, had worked very briefly as an actor when he retired and was trying to find a way to supplement his pension. He’d gone to one of those cattle call auditions and actually got to play the grandfather in a commercial for a burger chain. As a result, flushed with success he told me, he’d joined Actors Equity. It was his first and last part, but I figured his union connections might assist us in getting information on Ellis Graham, film producer.

  While I waited for his call, however, I had to deal with a sad Marissa and a very agitated Anthony. He arrived just as I was explaining to Marissa what had happened at Mnajdra and was showing her Sophia’s torn costume.

  “Mum!” he shouted, coming through the door at breakneck speed. “Where are you? They’ve taken Dad away. The police. They’ve taken him to Floriana for questioning. What will we do?”

  Marissa looked sad and uncomfortable. “Anthony,” I said, “relax. They’re interviewing all of us. I was there a couple of days ago and so was your mother.”

  “But Dad wasn’t even here when Mr. Galea arrived, I mean, when his body got here. I don’t understand this!” he exclaimed, his lower lip trembling.

  “I’m sure they are talking to everyone who knew Mr. Galea, to help them with their investigation,” I said in my most soothing tone, the one usually reserved for irate customers.

  “I’m sure your father will be glad to help the police with their investigation.” Anthony looked somewhat mollified, but I felt awful.

  “Anthony,” I said, “how’d you like to help out with a real problem? The storage shed at Mnajdra was broken into last night, and the outside was damaged. It needs to be painted, and with the performance only two nights away, it’s a bit of an emergency. Victor Deva, a friend of Dr. Stanhope, is getting paint and some help from a cousin of his, but I’m not sure they can get it done in time. It’s a big job. Do you think you could help? I’m sure Sophia would really be pleased.”