The Track of Sand, my 12th and final read of a Montalbano police detective story by Andrea Camilleri of the books purchased earlier in the year, and the only one in hard cover, was enjoyable and impressive.
Problems with eye sight and lack of sharpness in his general perception of life have begun to undermine his self confidence and is creative ability to connect seemingly random events and experiences into a whole is deserting him. Moreover the one relationship where he could share his love of food in silence, the process of solving crime and his bed has broken down, so that in this book the only contact with Livia is by phone ending in argument.
The story begin with a sight which understandably makes him question the line between waking dream and reality which he has sometimes experience when what happens in real life mirrors after a fashion something his subconscious has projected into the waking dawn. There was the time when he saw Caterella dying and then more recently with the opening of a coffin found on a deserted beach which I shall come to later.
In this instance has a dream about a horse and then sees one on its side in the sand along the beach from his home and upon investigation the creature is not just dead but has been badly beaten to death. However by the time he has arranged for the appropriate authorities to deal with poor creature it has disappeared an all that is left are tracks of a vehicle the sand, a hand drawn cart. There is therefore no crime to be investigated and later when he learns that a horse has been stolen this is dealt with by another district.
Rachele, a beautiful creature, this time of the human female variety which also crosses his pathway has to come to race in an a charity raising private event staged on a course on a private state of another horse racing owner and where the missing animal had been quartered for the event. She is staying with none other than his sophisticated and modern female friend Ingrid. The race is being run by someone Salvo recognises as one of the richest men in Sicily.
Salvo explains that the horse was not kidnapped as such because it is dead so when Rachele asks to see her thoroughbred he also has to reveal that carcass has also disappeared and queries as if in the Godfather, someone has made him an offer she has previously refused, She declares this has often been the situation but not in relation to her horses and where she has accepted some and refused others. Nor is she concerned it has been the act of her husband as we are introduced into another situation where the relationship is close but a not a sexual one or at least she is the kind of modern woman who does not regard marriage as an end to relationships which other men. She has no idea why anyone would want to do such a thing, and indeed as the story unfolds she is super accurate in this. Super by the way is name given to horse, an English thoroughbred.
Ingrid contacts and they agree to meet at his house to enjoy what housekeeper Adelina has prepared, usually more than adequate for two people although he sometimes consumes the food in the entirety on his own. Later in the story he eats a salad made of baby octopus big enough for four people with some giant langoustine dressed only in olive oil, lemon, salt and black pepper After the meal he had notices a boat night fishing closer than usual and this lead him to recount the adventure he had as boy night fishing and then eating some of fish fresh cooked on a beach fire. On arrival home this night he finds Ingrid in an agitated state as she had seen two men come from his home.
Ingrid stayed the night after both had become drunk on whisky sharing the one bed but in no condition or intention for anything further to occur. What were the intruders after as having checked money drawn from the bank was still in envelop in a bed side drawer but just before on his way to the office he had returned, confirming that his fathers watch had been taken.
They then discover that one the horses of Lo Duca had also been taken with the two animals in similar appearance and therefore the thieves had the two because of similarity but which had been killed and where was the other animal? Salvo wonders why all the horses were not taken at the same time. Ingrid rings to invite Salvo to attend the charity race being held the following afternoon and where she would be now riding one of the other horses available.
On the day of the races Ingrid who comes to collect him enquires if he brought money with him as everyone attending will bet on a horse with the money going to charity and the female rider on the winning animal will give those who backed a kiss The sum of money expected was between one and two thousand Euro’s and Salvo had only a hundred on him but also his cheque book, an obligatory thing to have during one period in life but few people use cheques let alone carry cheque books these days.
There were three hundred or so guests dressed in riding clothes, top hats and tails an in a rainbow of other garb which amused and puzzled Salvo greatly confirming all his prejudices about the people participating and how out of water he had become. He is introduced to people and their host announces that 600000 euros had been raised which given the wealthy of those present was not the staggering sum one might have expected. He was even less impressed when guest managed to consume the contents of two tables of antipasti before Salvo could participate and then disappear in a rush, more of an avalanche of the ravenous when a gong sounded the start of a sit down meal
During a discussion with the host Salvo is pointed in the direction of a disgruntled former member of staff. Ingrid was at table reserved for Salvo and Rachele but then departed leaving to join an old flame at another table and Salvo was quick to work out that this had all been prearranged so that he would find himself eventually alone with the desirable race winner after she had despatched her other companion. The food was as awful as it looked, even worse. Rachelle leas towards the stables where there is a large iron gate serving no purpose drawn also on the book cover.
There in a stable stall Rachele orders Salvo to mount her and he remembers the waking dream before the discovering of the dead horse on the beach. Afterwards Salvo felt he had be used and sense of shame something which women more generally will have experienced, some more frequently than others admittedly so it was good, it can be argued, for one male to experience, although in the sense of unjust that Salvo was the victim. When thy returned to the table, the dinner was over/ some guest already departed and the tables commenced to be cleared. Ingrid was waiting to drive him home commenting that he had straw all over him.
His home had been broken into but this time there was message, an unexpected one as the watch of his father was back in place. The message was clear, we want something that you have, rather than we have come to rob you of a valuable. The following morning he was woken by the scream of the housekeeper as she discovered that the house and been turned over and it would take more that one session to get it back to good order. Salvo muses that the house must have been under surveillance. The thinking back to the office that the burglaries may be something to do with the trial of Mafia figure. One of the two sons of the housekeeper, both minor criminals contacts to say he has made inquiries and no one from his circle was involved and who would consider it stupid to attempt to thieve from the home of a well known policeman. It was therefore the wok of an outside circuit but he could not say if this was higher circuit suggested by the Inspector. Salvo also had the impression that the home was being watched and worked out the watch was coming from the fishing boat too close to shore and sets up a surveillance team while he goes on a trip to view an area of temples which has become an established tourist attract action but keeping in contact.
Two men had come ashore from the boat half an hour after he had left the property. When an attempt had been made to intercept there had been an exchange of fire and one of the men and been shot but only wondered so that the other had helped him to a vehicle which was waiting and they had sped off. This was not the end of the matter and he commenced to receive threatening phone calls. His thoughts was still on the forthcoming trial of the Mafia man and the file of paper was provided for him to examine. His enquiries appears to lead to a connection the killing of one horse and the disappearance of the other as the man suggested to be behind the atrocity who was dismissed as been taken on by the mafia family involved in the Licco trial and his wife was providing the alibi as being the mistress of the accused and with him at the time of the matter with which he was being tried. Having been asked to join the Family he uses his new position to take revenge on his former employer.
It was at the point in the story that he goes with Rachele to a restaurant situated within a few minutes of the sea and they decide to try all the 15 antipastos available on the menu shrimps, langoustine, flying squid, smoked tuna, fried balls of nunnatu, morsels of squid affucati, tiny fried squid, and cuttlefish tossed in salad with orange slices and celery, cappers wrapped in anchovies, sea urchins, mussels, clams, octopus morsels, a strascinale, sardines a beccafico, and swordfish carpaccio. This reminds when a taxi was taken from the centre of Athens to the port of was Piraeus to what appeared on the outside a closed and deserted grocers shop which had been advertised in a book on Athens published by the Times.
About to go away and look for transport back an elder had come to the door and invited us , sat us down at table which was covered in a paper cloth brought a bottle of win and then over the next couple of hours brought a constant flow of small dishes , some or so more all of which I tried so that when retuning back to the hotel I was sick. However I had enjoyed the event and the food which despite distant memory of nearly fifty years ago had a remarkable similarity to the list presented by the Inspector for his meal with Rachele. In the instance of the meal at the port I have the receipt somewhere but again from memory I believe the total cost came to 12/6.
Unsurprising Salvo and his companion only had room for salad which at best was lettuce and tomatoes, although I have been offered just lettuce or just tomato, but here Salvo suggests olives black and green, celery, carrots and capers and anything else the Chef selected although in saying he would join Rachele in the salad as she had no room he appears to create a substantial dish. The purpose of the meal was to enable her to explain her behaviour on the visit to the horse race. She said that this was kind of back to front relationship skipping out all the usual preliminaries and where afterwards she either wanted no contact or reference or wanted to do everything to keep the person close to her as a lover or as a friend which was the latter situation although she understood the geographical and occupational distance the two. She also had considered mentioning something about what happened to her horse, although as he was no longer involved she had decided doing this. She had met the vet involved at the stable when going to church and he said he did not understand why they had taken the horse of the owner who was riddle with sickness and was to have been put down and not taken horse that Rachele had won the race with. Having discussed this with Lo Duca she had concluded that it was her horse they wanted to kill and not his which had been taken because they looked `alike but this had already been considered at the station and the unanswered question remained why had the other horse had not turned up.
The next development is the discovery of a body in the middle of now here and the pantomime in which the pathologist makes a performance of into answering the basic questions and winding up Salvo about the causes and timing of the death. In this instance he is eventually able to confirm that the man was shot by someone other than the person/person who had brought him to this spot. The man is traced as none other than the missing husband and former groom to the Lo Duca stables and when the bullet is checked it is of time from a gun used by the force. It is evident that this was in the unofficial surveillance at the home of the Inspector. In order to protect his office the Inspector is able to make a switch which enables him to convince the widow that her husband has been killed despite the agreement not to harm him if she testified in court. Now the alibi could be exploded and the mafia man convicted.
The case looked over until Adelina his housekeeper returned his trousers from the cleaners and the horseshoe they had found in the pocket and which he had taken from beside the animal and since forgotten about. It was a plain horseshoe as one might expect. However after talking with Rachele again she had said that her animal had horseshoes with the family crest . He worked out that this was they had come to search house and this was what the men had been after because while it remained in his possession it remedied the disappearance of the carcass useless. His call to Rachele enabled him to understand hat had happened and clever ruse plus the capture of the other man involved in the breaking in at his home provided the evidence required. Lo Duca had been requested to provide his best horse by the mafia for you in the private illegal racing that took place on the Island and elsewhere in Italy but the problem was that the animal was terminally ill. So he had sized on the opportunity of the arrival of the look a like horse to replace his own but which had broken out before it be killed and carcass disappeared. It had been killed on the beach and the carcass removed only to find that one of tell tale horse shoes was missing.
When later that evening Rachel and Ingrid arrived for a mal brining with them a cassata he decided they will eat before breaking the news that in fact Super was alive.
Although I have the notes made for season 9, season three here in the UK of the last two of the four episodes, the recordings are no longer available on the I player and were deleted from the Sky box so I have decided postponing the writing up until they are replayed, or the books are translated into English if they were teleplays.
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