Nobody moves and nobody breathes. They stand and stare, open-mouthed at the diver, as he examines the gun dangling in the mesh of the child’s net.
Ric tries to remember if he wiped the gun clean the last time he touched it. He knows he dare not move. The very last thing he can do is to look over at Talaia. It is precisely how he feels driven to react and he can feel the Commissario’s eyes boring a hole in the side of his face, but he knows he would give himself away as surely as if he put his hand up and shouted, “That’s mine, thank you.”
The diver wades to the beach and hands the net to the soaking poliziotto, who, now that there is something of significance in the net, is far more enthusiastic about his part in what was, until a few moments before, a gentle comedy.
A man whistles and a collective groan is thrown up by the crowd; it is as if the balloon of their tensions has burst and the air is escaping in one long, relieving breath. Most turn away to discuss the find, the hubbub of their analysis growing with each added opinion; others press forward wanting a closer look at the gun which is, beyond any reasonable doubt as far as they are concerned, the weapon used to kill Candela.
Marcello folds his arms over his chest as though his mind, too, is made up. “So, now all they have to do is find who this gun belongs to.”
“Looks that way,” Ric replies, focusing his attention on the gun and in so doing avoiding Talaia’s gaze.
“Everyone likes the circus; the adults more than the children, eh?” Marcello mutters.
Valeria is no longer standing on top of the wall which overlooks the beach and the crowd begins to drift away as the evening shade draws a curtain on the spectacle.
“Now,” Marcello produces a stubby cigar from his shirt pocket, lights it and puffs away until he produces a cloud of smoke sufficiently noxious to disperse the crowd around them, “what were we discussing before these clowns began their very entertaining performance? Ah, yes, you were asking after the Mara and at the same time telling me Old Nino provided you with some information about this ancestor of yours. Well, my friend, there is good news and bad news.”
“Marcello, you said the Mara isn’t going anywhere for the moment. With the engine out and stripped back, that’s pretty obvious. So, what’s the bad news? Are the parts a problem?”
Marcello puffs and removes the cigar from his mouth. “No, it is not parts; these I have managed to get from suppliers in Milazzo. This is good news.”
“Then there is another problem?”
“Yes, a bigger problem than putting the Mara’s engine back together.”
Ric tears his eyes away from the blue shirts inspecting the Beretta and turns to face Marcello. “Okay, let’s have it?” he asks, wracking his brain for some other malady the Mara is suffering from that could be worse than a broken engine.
Marcello puffs, removes the cigar and picks a flake of tobacco from his tongue. “You see this little cockerel on the beach. The one wearing the suit and hat,” he waves his cigar in the general direction of Commissario Talaia who, curiously, shows little interest in the stir created by the appearance of the gun.
“He comes to my place this afternoon. He introduces himself: his name is Talaia, Commissario Talaia. He is calm and polite, but dangerous, like the tracina fish; you call them weevers. They look harmless until you tread on them and then…” He winces and waggles his foot. “He is not like normal policemen, who one can often persuade to see a certain point of view, if you get what I mean by this? No, this man works for everyone and yet for no one; Guardia Finanza, Polizia di Stato, Direzione Nazionale Anti-Mafia. But he is accountable to only one politician, the Ministero dell’Interno, which means that he has great powers. His kind do not have to ask permission before they act and sometimes they act in ways that are questionable.”
“Large brief for such a small man.”
“Yes,” Marcello smiles a hapless, slightly envious smile, “he will have a judge in his pocket; a judge who will provide him with a warrant for whatever he needs, whenever he asks.”
“I get the picture.”
“Bene, because when he speaks, a wise man listens. The Commissario comes to my place. He searches the Mara. He finds a little locker beneath your bed. In this locker, he finds a plastic bag with money and two passports. He tells me that he expects to find something else, but he is not surprised to find the passports. Next, he tells me he would prefer to eliminate you from his enquiries, but he can no longer believe what I have told him about you and me fishing when Candela was shot.”
“So now I’m the chief suspect in Candela’s murder.”
He shakes his head, “I did not say this. I said he tells me he would prefer to eliminate you from his enquiries; I did not say he thinks you are the chief suspect. Finally, he tells me the Mara will not be put back in the sea without his permission; completa autorizzazione was what he said. And that, my friend, means he has not yet eliminated you from his enquiries.”
Ric is hardly surprised at the news and doesn’t feel the need to show it either. He tries to summon a smile, but it will not come to him. “Well, Marcello, if I’m a suspect and I can’t account for my whereabouts at the time Candela was shot because I was out fishing with you, then neither can you account for your whereabouts because you were out fishing with me. So that makes you a suspect as much as me, even though the only people who we know for sure can’t have shot Candela are the two of us.”
Marcello grunts, “Yes, this thought has occurred to the little cockerel. It would appear we are both in the same boat, so to speak.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Ric replies, frowning. “The only difference is that I don’t have a motive for shooting Candela, where as you may.”
The cigar twitches in his mouth. “And what could I gain from Candela’s death, eh? Tell me this, if you are so intelligent.” Marcello’s tone is heavily laced with menace.
Ric grins, “It’s hard to imagine, him being a politician from Palermo and you being a… well, I guess you are the best yacht repairer in the islands.”
Marcello bristles at Ric’s rather oblique compliment.
“But I understand, from what I’ve been told of his speech in the Mazzini, Candela promised the people of Lipari increasing prosperity: free electricity, improved schooling, free transport and other benefits. I gather he even promised to build a colossal hotel up at Porticello; a thousand rooms – he said.”
“So? It’s like you said, Ric, it is none of my business.”
Ric sniggers, impolitely, “Oh, pull the other one, Marcello. A thousand bed hotel would mean heavy money and heavy money brings with it heavy characters, more than a few of whom would be unable to resist flexing their muscles around the island. Why would you want a load of new kids on the block when you and your cronies have got the whole place wrapped up tight?” Ric is goading Marcello, and judging by the glacial hardening of the shorter man’s expression, his strategy is bearing fruit.
“Even an uneducated soul like me knows you and your brother are on the planning committee. If Candela was half the politician I think he needed to be to get to where he was, I’m sure he would have figured to pay you both off in order to get planning consent.”
At this, Marcello rounds on him. “What do you know of this?” he spits. “How do you know about our business? And what gives you the right to interfere in what we do? You are nothing but a piece of driftwood washed up on our beach. Your kind washes through these islands every week. I tell you this, Ric, I like you and, because I like La Strega, I let you have the monolocale. But don’t put a price on our friendship, eh?” Marcello’s mask of loathing leaves Ric under no illusion he has overstepped the mark.
“Listen, my friend,” Ric soothes, “please don’t think I’m not grateful for what you’ve done for me and what you are doing for the Mara. I meant no disrespect, but–”
“Then this is a strange type of respect coming from an Englishman.”
“I’m Welsh, but that’s by the bye. What I was trying to tell you is that you’ve got motive for wanting Candela out of the way and I haven’t. And if I can figure that out, it’s a racing certainty the little cockerel can too.”
“Perhaps someone has paid you to shoot Candela?” Marcello spits in return.
“Don’t be an arse, Marcello. If I’d wanted to do away with Candela, I’d have seen to it and been off the island before you could have said Christopher Columbus.”
“He was from Genoa,” Marcello grunts, but his temper is cooling.
“You know what I mean,” Ric replies, swallowing his frustration. “Anyway, if the Mafia wanted him dead, why waste him here, in this island; why not in Sicily or on one of his trips to Rome or Brussels?”
Marcello chews his cigar and exhales a stream of smoke at a bystander who is trying his best to listen in on their conversation.
The man moves away, sharply.
“Okay, you have a point. But it is interesting that you talk of Brussels and business trips. We are to understand that this little cockerel has the two passports – British passports – he has found on the Mara.” He grins once more and raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I hope you have yours safe.”
“Sure,” Ric lies.
“It is only that I was intending to ask you,” he pauses to assemble his words, “what it is that you were looking for when you came to the yard yesterday? Was it these passports, or was it something else?”
Ric smiles, “The passports were part of what I was looking for.”
“Then I am sure whatever else it is that you have lost will turn up. Everything is somewhere, eh?” He nudges Ric gently in his ribs and winks at him. “Now, what did that old fool Nino tell you?”
“Oh,” he drags his reply out, “he spun me a yarn about Vincenzo Maggiore, your grandfather, trying to help some deportees escape from Devil’s Island in the 1930s.”
Marcello nods. “This is possible. The Maggiore family has never been Fascist.”
“It turns out that on this occasion the deportees were betrayed to the Carabinieri. He went on to tell me that your grandfather sent my great-grandfather, Antonio Sciacchitano, to warn the deportees, but that he got to them too late. Unfortunately they were ambushed and killed by the Carabinieri. Sciacchitano was picked up by a patrol later that night and Old Nino’s father had to spirit him off the island. He told me Vincenzo organised a mock funeral to convince the authorities my great-grandfather was dead. Old Nino reckons there is no corpse in Sciacchitano’s grave.”
“Mm,” Marcello mutters, “I told you he was mad. That old fool has nothing better to do with his time than picture the sailboats in the Canale di Salina and make up ridiculous stories. It is all that is left to him, his imagination.”
“So you think it’s likely to be a shade fanciful?”
Marcello coughs, clears his throat and spits, “It is a nice story. Believe it if you will. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go. I would say we will meet for a beer in the Corta at passeggio, but maybe it would be better if the little cockerel does not see us together.”
But as Ric is reminded of Talaia, he turns his attention to the beach only to see the diminutive Commissario watching them.
“It might be a bit late for that, Marcello.”