I have had a bursting need to write all day but constrained in order to attend work and household issue so that it is approaching six thirty in the evening of 8th September 2013 and I know I only have an hour and a half before the X factor audience show followed the third episode of a new series of North East set Police detective series which follows on the success of George Gentry and 93 degrees north or whatever the Police Detective series also set in the North East was called.
I will begin with what has been the great event of the weekend a new series of Montalbano created for Television by Andrea Camilleri and covering his arrival in Vigate as a newly promoted Police Inspector in charge at the age of 32 something of a new police station with some staff assigned and getting the establishment habitable.
The Young Montalbano series commences with him working as a Deputy Inspector located in a mountain countryside station based in a country market town. The Inspector admires Montalbano and supports his promotion and move to a district more to his liking. The Inspector is also leaving but before they both depart there the case of a body discovered by an isolated shepherd
The new series opened with a boy observing a lorry spilling a box of some fifty army mountaineering boots which he keeps and some four decades later the evidence suggests that one boot has been used to brutally stamp on the head of the victim. While the local magistrate who does not get on with Montalbano is convinced the evidence points to the shepherd. Salvo is not convinced especially after interviewing the man and hearing his story.
Salvo is having a passionate affair with a young woman and not remembering the credit or the name used in the episode I have not worked out if this is Livia who is listed as appearing in four of the six episodes when broadcast in Italy last year. When the girl friend visits and they go to the local market she is attracted to a dress but before Salvo is distracted his attend is on a pair of mountaineering boots and possibly the missing pair from those still held by the shepherd. This proves correct and is eventually traced to local gangster leader with the shepherd exonerated.
Salvo witnesses a car accident where the driver of one vehicle badly beats up the driver of the other and proves me a young member of one the major crime families in Sicily and the new Inspector is approach the thee lead lawyer in attempt to place the incident in perspective when he is called to give evidence for the prosecution. Salvo does no such thing.
At the court he notices a young woman behaving as if upset and when his car breaks down he finds that she is on the same bus taking him back to Vigate. When he approaches to ask if she needs help she pulls a gun on him, so she is arrested refusing to talk and to eat. Finding out who she is and why she has behaved in such a way in the case becomes the focus of the attention of the attention of the growing new team at the station.
This includes the arrival of the young Caterella who is overjoyed to be allocated to serve at the station and jumps at the opportunity of being in charge of the telephone switchboard and the reception desk. We also meet an older than expected Fazio, except from the Credits on the IMD database i worked out that this is the father of the Fazio of some twenty years later. Mimi Augello his deputy will appear later according to this database featuring in four of the episodes.
The story that emerges is of an attractive young woman of a hard work traditional Sicilian family who is adducted, raped by the same son of the leading mafia family involved in the court case where Salvo was the principal witness and who had passed her over to his henchmen for their pleasure before warning that if revealed his identity not only she but her family would be killed. She had therefore kept silent and born the shame and rejection of her mother when she was found to be pregnant and needed a secret abortion. She lived in an outhouse through the kindness of her father but separate from the family, an outcast.
I find that I confused about aspects of the story and although I have recording still at home. She had taken the gun from a former employer and he became a suspect after Salvo had broken into his home and found the man’s store of illegal weapons and other incriminating material about his nefarious activities. With the help of Fazio they manage to begin to get the girl to tell her story but because they do not have grounds to detain her in custody Salvo employs her has a cleaner at the station and allows her to use his flat with he going to stay at a hotel.
Told to buy the dress from the market by his girlfriend he gives this to the girl as a means of gaining her confidence but he does not then believe the story that she had been given the gun a henchman of the perpetrator after visiting the attacker in prison and told to kill and official at the court house. The official selected deals with minor civil cases and Montalbano finds him working behind a mountain of paper files and an unlikely candidate for the assassination. She had cooked up the story to incriminate her attacker, selecting the official as someone who had dealt with a land boundary case involving her father and who she would pretend was the intended victim if her plan went awry.
Having pieced together what happened and getting the girl to confirm the truth and willingness to give testimony in court if necessary he then gives the lawyer working for the crime family two options one which involves the son admitting to a different crime thus protecting the girl. The young man is also beaten up as punishment by the Mafia family and put into hospital.
The girlfriend arrives back having been delayed trying to arrange help for her mother and the victim proves an ideal solution wanting to get away from the area with a fresh start. The victim has the wit to say she bought the dress at market when the girlfriend recognises it is the one she had told Salvo to buy for her.
Thus the new series has all the successful ingredients of the originals series and the books where I am enjoying reading the paper moon. There are several reference to his penchant for good eating and in this instance for cooking but lacks all the details which makes the books that much more enjoyable. He also has an uneasy meeting with his father who comes to visit on learning he ahs moved to Vigate, finding him eating at a Trattoria and where he orders some food so to eat in silence as commanded by his some so we are introduced to his insistence of the silent eating to enjoy the textures, flavours and aromas of the dishes.
One of the reasons I returned home from Derby early is that I wanted to watched the second episode of the series during which I solved the issue of Livia as the girlfriend and confirmed my belief that this Fazio was the father of the officer in the main series and the books.
When Salvo is on the beach he notices that a door appears ajar on the veranda of the holiday corner house overlooking the beach, he investigates and catches one of boys who have broken in and whose mother I suspect becomes his housekeeper for when he returns the boy the boy without arresting him for mother to give a good physical hiding he notices that she has prepared some delicacy for the local deli as a means of improving her income to make ends meet, hence not being home to exercise ongoing control of her son/sons. He tracks down the owners who visit and check that noting is missing and then insists on viewing the beach and bay from the veranda and then makes an off screen request to the couple. We then see him moving in although it assumed he is renting rather than having purchased the property.
We had previously seen him saying goodbye to his girl friend after she had spent Christmas with him, explaining that work and having agreed to spend the New Year’s evening with colleagues prevented him joining her with her mother for the New Year. He also makes excuses to the same colleagues about not accepting the invitation of Fazio senior ho has also invited Caterella. We then see him enjoying food and wine alone in the hotel room although why he has not returned to the allocated flat is not explained.
Nor does he spend New Year evening at the home of his father who calls to wish him well and brings a case of wine which suspecting it is not of outstanding quality he distributes to his colleagues leaving only one bottle for himself later when he solves the case he drinks some of the wine and congratulates his father out loud,
We therefore learn more of his need to be alone, to enjoy good food, and wine and to think through solutions to work mysteries. The girl friend is excited by the new home and rattles off what she will bring and how she will stamp her personality on the establishment. Montalbano is clearly not impressed but it is a subsequent incident which brings the relationship to an end.
On the morning of New Year’s Day he is woken from a heavy slumber by Fazio who first quizzes him over the white lie that he had to go elsewhere the previous evening and then breaks the news that a man had been shot in the face in room 22 of the same hotel. The shot going unnoticed with the letting off of fire works and weapons into the air. One consideration is that this is the cause of the death of man, an accident.
The investigation reveals two registered nearby gun owners. The first held by an elder shows the weapon to be a souvenir from World War Two with filled barrels to prevent an accident. The second is from a couple across the way where the husband admits he fired the weapon into the air, although later the wife admits she was he one who used the riffle in celebration and does not understand how a bullet could have caused the fatality. Tests establish that a different bullet was used and fired at an angle from above. The arrest of the woman is designed to discourage the firing of weapons into the air at festivities.
The man who dies owned the hotel with his young wife but is away for the greater part of the year as a representative of a firm in Russia. He suffers from hearing sensitivity which is why he stayed in a separate bedroom to that of his wife although why not one adjacent is the flaw in the storyline, The complication is that he moved from the allotted room where he was shot to another quieter and a housemaid had moved the belongings at his request so why had he returned?
During the episode a local priest approaches the Inspector with a plea that he visit with him an old dying woman who has confessed something which she needs to also say outside the confessional so something can be put right. With great reluctance Salvo agrees to the request but the woman dies before she can provide sufficient information to understand what he needs. While he is wrestling with the problem his former school teacher makes a call and invites him to her home for a meal where he is introduced to a friend of the woman who has a fascination for murders and has become a walking encyclopaedia on the crimes. Salvo takes he opportunity to ask her about a case where he hoped there might be a connection, but she did not and he returns home late after the meal. Meantime his girl friend arrives and finds that he is not there to meet her. She takes a taxi and goes to the house waits up and eventually goes to bed. She hears him return but before he reaches the bedroom there is call from the woman he had asked about the historical crime and she says that she has lain awake thinking and realised she knew the case but the woman in question had a different name. He immediately goes back to hear at first hand what she has to say and the girl friend only hears the name of a woman who he has gone straight out to see.
When he returns he explains about the case and the woman but this only helps the girlfriend to realise that Salvo puts work before everything else and he is never going to become the kind of husband and father of her children that she wants. She leaves by taxi in the middle of the night. At one point he goes to the where she lives and waits in his car only to see her come out and becomes pillion to a young man on a scoter where they have obviously already become closely attached. He closes his involvement in the relationship. Enter Livia next ?
The story of the woman he was able to unravel over time is that she had refused to give poison to woman who she suspected wanted to use on husband. The woman had worked in pharmacy in the town and had taken over the service when her husband had died. The other woman had nevertheless been arrested and tried for murder when the husband had died from a heart attack but where the prescribed poison could have the same effect. The woman had gone to prison for 20 years, in part because of the evidence of the woman now wanting absolution. Why had she not said she had not provided the poisoned therefore the death was a natural causes one. It emerged that the woman who had gone to prison had an affair with her husband.
Salvo attempts to honour his commitment and goes to see the woman now also old but living with her daughter and grandchildren had become reconciled after release from prison. Salvo finds her asleep and looking at peace and takes the decision not to resurrect the historical experience from several decades before.
Turning to the main case there is a red herring introduced involving the mafia which appears to implicate the business owner and also the house maid who we find is having an affair with the business owner and where the owners wife is related to one of the main crime families on the Island. However the real culprits are the wife and her lover the man who manages the hotel in the absence of the owner. He had decided to leave his job and return to Vigata. The housemaid had noticed that a package, later established to contain sleeping pills and ear plugs was not with his things. Someone had taken them from the new back to the original. He had gone in search and was shot and this pointed to an “inside” job which together evidence helps to confirm.
I am also approaching the end of my reading of the Montalbano books acquired after seeing the two series of made for TV films shown on BBC4 that has established a pattern of showing the best series from Europe on Saturdays at 9pm. The latest read has been the Paper Moon although I am still working out the significance of the title.
A young woman approaches Montalbano because her brother has not responded and she persuades the Inspector to accompany her to his flat, As an after thought despite the fact that she has a key to the flat she thinks of a former laundry room on the roof which he has converted to somewhere to relax and where after breaking in the body of the man is found and with his sexual organ exposed. Later tests reveal that he had not had recent sexual activity. After the usual forensic examination of the area Montalbano who finds the woman attractive allows her to remain for the night in the flat when the body is removed. Because the Inspector is now familiar we the reader are not surprised by this break from normal police practice as we know he is a man who rarely follows convention and has survived because he always gets the right result in terms of uncovering the mystery, identifying the culprits and effecting a form of justice which is empathetic for all the parties and will be regarded fair to anyone who accompanies him on his work and in his private life experiences.
At first there is nothing to indicate why the man has been killed apart from the suggestion that because of his known relationships with women, including married women, jealousy of a husband or another woman could be the motive.
Almost from the outset the sister Michaela points Montalbano in the direction of the latest lover yet one more of the nature emancipated women who we find in the novels of Andrea Camilleri, a woman married to a much older and impotent man who nevertheless likes to enjoy a regular bed with a woman, young enough to be daughter and even grand daughter,
Towards the end of the novel the woman, Elena explains how they came to have such a unique marital relationship in which the husband not only knew about her lovers but required to provide detailed accounts of her experiences, insisting that he always knew in advance when she was to have an assignation.
She had a troubled and rebellious childhood and as an adolescent she had been placed for a year in a specialist residential establishment from which her father had brought the future husband, Emilio, on one of his visits and the man had called again on his own twice.
Because of her difficulties she had run away to Milan and there lived and been used by a large number of men being picked up for prostitution twice by the police. In the first instance she had been sent home to the father but she had run away again and on the second she had been used by the police with violence and humiliation. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty she led a life which Salvo finds difficult to hear and then on her birthday she returns to Sicily. Their relationship begins and they marry.
The evidence against her begins to stack up despite Montalbano not being convinced when he locates the man‘s garage and finds an envelop in the car which contains three letters which she subsequently admits to writing about their relationship experiences but under the direction of the murdered man and which contain a threat to the man‘s life. Elena admits that on the night of his death she had driven to see him but not getting an answer from the flat she had driven around and then home. When Montalbano fails to arrest Elena Michaela complains to his superiors and when she is arrested does she reveal that on the night in question she had an encounter with the garage attendant when she had filled the car with petrol. The reason for the previous non disclosure was that she had broken faith with her husband by not disclosing to him at the time or subsequently about the affair.
One of the reasons for the sister being so against Elena is that he brought the woman very expensive presents including a car and jewellery. Salvo wants to know how the man was able to afford these gifts given his commission based salary as an agent pharmaceutical companies. At first he can find no trace of the man’s financial circumstances and normal household expenditure, It emerges that he had a joint account with his sister and that she managed the household bills giving him the receipts when paid and which he kept in a drawer at the flat. Salvo belatedly works out, admitting that with age, in his early fifties, he is beginning not to be as thorough and as immediately perceptive as he has been throughout his career that the man must have another bank account kept secret from the sister and from the jewellery cases he traces the retailer where he finds the presents were purchased using cheques and this leads to finding the bank account and substantial funds. He also finds that the man had become a gambler at a private establishment, also allegedly unknown to his sister.
As with most if not all the Montalbano stories there is a second mystery, sometimes connected and sometimes not, In this instance there are a number of deaths from bad drugs although in several instances the individuals, well known men, some major political or social figures are said for the media attention and the attention to have died from natural causes. The drugs squad people who Montalbano is asked to cooperate with and where he uses Mimi as the link are convinced that the supplier is based in Vigata. Given the role of the murdered man in the pharmaceutical trade, the gambling debts, it does not take something of the skill of Salvo to appreciate the direction the investigation should take.
However there is also another lead which Salvo follows with his usual persistence. The murdered man had been a doctor struck off because of an involvement in an abortion. However according to the sister her brother had taken the blame for the botched up job of a colleague. The sister is friendly with one fo the young women who her brother had previously been associated and it is from this individual, secretly from the sister that the Inspector is able to locate and interview he young woman and it is what she says that confirms his growing suspicion that the sister has taken action to focus attention on Elena and away from what really happened in order protect the reputation of her brother and to some extent herself. It emerges that with the help of the sister the young woman had been drugged and an abortion carried out on her against her wishes. He also learns from the friend of Michaela that when with the brother he had also directed her to write letters abut their experience together.
Salvo had assigned Caterella in “possion” to try and unravel the three secured files in the mans lap top which eventually he had obtained the information from file one but where all three files subsequently disappeared through a timed ‘abortion’ programme. The first file yielded two sets of numbers which although coded and later established to be a code within a code when he finds the words of a song marked with numbers kept by the man at the flat and eventually this relates to over a dozen customers five of whom, if I remember correctly, have died from a bad cut of drugs and to the payments made for the supply.
Early on the Inspector also establishes that there must have been a strong box in the flat, rooftop room, garage or car and that in addition to placing the incriminating letters in the car for Montalbano to find, the sister had removed the box. This is confirmed that he finds that despite the ordering of a extra large coffin the burial had not immediately taken place because they had not been able to close the lid. Salvo does not immediately interfere with the burial deciding to give the sister the opportunity to own up that box which she was not able to open because this was the one thing where she did not have a key, contained drugs and the evidence that he had attempted to make additional funds keep half the good stuff to sell “privately” while cutting the rest for distribution to the customers arrange via the Mafia. Salvo was able to confirm from a witness that the brother had been visited on the night of his death by known Mafia operator. He was able to get the sister to admit that she had found her brother killed and had decided to incriminate the lover. Faced with the reality the situation Michaela had thrown herself from the flat to her death.
The case it would appears was solved. Livia came and went over a weekend and on the way home he had taken the road to visit the garage attendant with whom she had the affair on the evening of the fatal Monday. He found the garage closed and notes a sign which says that there is closure every Monday.
Once upon his time as a child he had believed his father when he said the Moon was made of Paper! He accuses Elena who for a time he thought had him within her sights as the next lover. She reminds that he had warned her that without an alibi she would be arrested so she had provided an alibi with the participation of the garage attendant who was her lover but not on that Monday and where they had assumed no one would bother to corroborate. While she emphasises that officially they will stick to their statements she admits that she went to flat on the Monday to state the affair was over because she had found a new man. The former lover had attempted to advise his sister not to visit but failed to make contact. They had argued over her decision to break up and she had left.
She then said she did not believe the Mafia man had killed the former lover. She believed it was the sister who had come to see him and was the flat while they were upstairs and she had overheard his begging and declarations of love. She believed the brother and sister had been lovers until her arrival on he scene and he had transferred his affections to her. The sister had committed suicide from guilt and unable to live without her brother. Montalbano believes her remembering that their had been a certificate of registration for a gun in the flat something which had not been followed up and which I now find most surprising.
There was less attention to food in this work although I had previously attempted to check on the notes for clarification only to find here were no notes as the book ended on page 322 without any. Then on reaching the conclusion of the story on page 270 I came to the translated author’s note but which only took me to page 276 so what of the remaining 550 or so pages ? None other than the opening chapters of August Heat the next novel. Wow.
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