A Dead Man in Malta

by Michael Pearce

‘Not too strange. In fact, oddly familiar.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what they all say.’

  A nurse put a cup of tea in his hand.

  ‘Hello, Dr Malia! Do you remember me? Bettina?’

  ‘No, I don’t think - yes, I do! I remember your quecija. You chose - I think I’m right - a thermometer. And that was right, wasn’t it? Because you became a nurse.’

  ‘Quite right! What a memory you’ve got!’

  ‘Or was it your mother?’

  ‘It was probably my mother, too,’ said Bettina laughing.

  ‘And is she well?’

  ‘Oh, very much so. Retired now, of course. But she still wants to know everything that’s going on in the hospital. I’ll tell her I met you.’

  ‘Oh, please! Yes, do that. A remarkable woman, your mother. An excellent nurse!’

  ‘Hear that?’ Bettina said to the room at large. ‘It runs in the family.’

  ‘There’s been a bit of a falling off lately,’ said one of the other nurses.

  ‘Tell me about the quecija,’ said Seymour.

  ‘It takes place on a child’s first birthday. You get together a tray of small things, a pen, rosary, thimble, or even some money, and put them in front of the child. And whatever he or she picks up is supposed to tell you what sort of future it will have. What it will do in life.’

  ‘I see, yes.’

  ‘Mostly, it’s an excuse for a party. We’re great on parties in Malta.’

  ‘It’s time we had one here.’

  ‘It is. Would you like to come, Mr Seymour? And you, of course, Dr Malia!’

  ‘I would very much like to.’

  ‘And we’ll invite Bettina’s mum so that you can meet her again.’

  ‘That would be very nice.’ ‘Another biscuit for you, Dr Malia?’

  ‘I’ve already had one - ’

  ‘Have two. That’s an order. Medical advice!’

  Dr Malia laughed. ‘Probably better advice than anything a doctor could give.’

  ‘And I’ll get Berto to speak to Jacopo, and he will give you a lift home - ’

  ‘I don’t like to bother - ’

  ‘Ssh! Jacopo has got nothing to do. And you know he always likes to have a chat with you. ‘And.’ said Melinda, ‘he has a new baby! He will want to tell you all about that!’

  ‘A new one? Another? But that’s - ’

  ‘Five. Perhaps you’d better give him some advice.’

  ‘It’s no good giving advice to Jacopo,’ said Bettina. ‘You’d do better to give it to his wife.’

  ‘I would like to talk to Jacopo.’

  ‘More medical advice,’ said Melinda. ‘This time from me. You’re overdoing things, you know. You’re looking rather tired.’

  ‘I don’t sleep as well at nights,’ Dr Malia confessed.

  ‘No, my mother doesn’t either,’ said Bettina. ‘You don’t when you get old. But she doesn’t spend half the night wandering round, like you do.’

  ‘I’m not really wandering round at night. I’m just starting the next day early,’ protested Dr Malia.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Melinda. ‘I think you sometimes forget to go to bed at all. I’ve seen you wandering about in the hospital at all hours.’

  ‘I know my way around there,’ explained Dr Malia placatorily.

  ‘You certainly do. And it’s nice to see you. But I think you need to put your feet up occasionally.’

  ‘I’ve got such a lot to do.’

  ‘And your project could do with a rest, too,’ said Melinda.

  Dr Malia looked surprised.

  ‘Could it?’ he asked. ‘Could it? You know, I’ve never thought about that. But perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘Both of you.’ said Melinda firmly. ‘You and the project. Take a break.’

  ‘Bloody newspapers!’ said the Commander.

  ‘Very trying,’ Seymour agreed.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for them - and that bloody woman, too, of course - we could have sorted things out quietly Cot deaths!’

  ‘Ridiculous!’

  ‘So bloody ridiculous we would have brushed it aside. But the newspapers were a different matter.’

  ‘But they did rather blurt it out, didn’t they? The three sailors. That bit about the snoring. And the pillow.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t had a drink or two first. And then been primed, I wouldn’t wonder, by a few more, and not bought by them!’

  ‘Shouldn’t wonder.’ agreed Seymour.

  ‘And it’s all a load of bollocks,’ said the Commander. ‘You get used to snores if you’re in the Navy. “Put a pillow over his head.’” he mimicked. ‘I’d put a boot up their backsides!’

  ‘All the same, they might have seen something,’ said Seymour.

  ‘They didn’t see anything! They were so slewed they wouldn’t have seen anything if the whole hospital had gone down! No, they made it up. It was the beer talking. And then the newspapers blew it up, made more of it than they should have done. And once they’d shouted it out from the hilltops everyone got in on the act. And it was all unnecessary.’

  ‘Unnecessary.’

  ‘We would have looked into it. We were looking into it. Only quietly. We would have taken any action that was necessary. If any action was necessary. We’d have given the police the tip-off. If it was murder, which I doubt.

  ‘But it all got out of hand. And then that damned woman came along and made things worse. And in no time at all we had a Force Eight gale blowing up. And all the time they were missing the point.’

  ‘Missing the point?’

  ‘Yes. The Type XK 115.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Type XK 115. The new destroyer. Just in from Portsmouth. First time out. That’s what they wanted to see.’

  ‘Sorry, who wanted to see?’

  ‘The Germans. That’s what was the point of it all. That’s what they were up there for. Those balloons. Getting a good shufti at our fleet. And especially the new Type XK 115.’

  ‘Spying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Surely not all of them. I mean - ’

  ‘No, no, not all of them. Just the German. And, do you know, the bugger was cheeky enough to come down right beside them. So that he could get a closer look! I’d have clapped him in irons, but, instead, they took him to the hospital. So that we couldn’t get our hands on him. Fortunately, somebody else did.’

  According to Inspector Lucca the place to go in Valletta on a Sunday was the Marsa racetrack.

  Not church?

  ‘Church, too, of course,’ said Inspector Lucca. ‘Mass in the morning, then a good lunch, and then, when it gets a bit cooler, the racetrack. I go every Sunday.’

  And so, evidently, did a lot of other people. When Seymour made a rough count, he reckoned that there were over four thousand people in the stadium, many of them in their Sunday best. There was a general air of festivity. Two bands were playing simultaneously, one on each side of the stadium.

  ‘Where’s the third?’ said Inspector Lucca, worried. ‘Ah!’

  Pushing its way through the crowd was the missing band, brass - most Maltese bands were brass - instruments gleaming in the sun.

  This is where there’s sometimes a bit of trouble.’ said the Inspector.

  Every Maltese band - and there were dozens, if not hundreds, of them - identified strongly with its own locality, and pride, and passions, ran high. This was fine when the band was playing in its home patch but not so good when it was playing in the patch of another. As, of course, it had to when it was accompanying a march (political) or procession (religious) both of which were frequent in Malta; and practically every route took it through some rival territory. Disputes, according to the Inspector, frequently broke out. Not infrequently they turned into pitched battles and the police, and sometimes the army, had to be called in.

  It sounded, thought Seymour, not at all unlike the marching season in Northern Ireland - where rel
igious processions marched at, rather than through, the local inhabitants whenever they were of an opposing faith.

  The Marsa racetrack bordered on the territories of several bands and all asserted a claim to perform whenever there was a meeting. Blowing turned to blows and eventually the Governor had to intervene. After prolonged negotiation a compromise was reached whereby the bands took turns. This proved unsatisfactory since it was so long before your turn came round. To speed things up it was decided that two bands should play simultaneously but on opposite sides of the track.

  This worked well for a time but then another difficulty arose. Many of the attenders at the racetrack came not from Valletta proper but from across the bay, from ‘the three cities’ of Birgu, L’lsla, and Bormla, each with its own band, and they asserted their right to play at Marsa. After a long period of bloody conflict a compromise was reached whereby ‘the three cities’ would take it in turns to supply a band, which would play on alternate Sundays on the third side of the racetrack, leaving, as the Inspector pointed out, just the one side for you to stand if you wanted a bit of peace.

  Peace, though, and the Maltese did not necessarily go together. The later compromise was not universally accepted, as ‘the three cities’ found when they tried to assert their claim. It was not uncommon for them to have to fight their way through to the station assigned them. Not that they necessarily minded that.

  Hence the Inspector’s concern.

  ‘But it all adds to the fun,’ he said philosophically.

  Seymour knew about that sort of fun. There were no racetracks in his part of London but police were regularly drafted to other parts where there were race meetings. Some professed to relish it - the open air, escape from the city, the prospect, for those from the more sedentary parts of London, of the excitement of a ‘bundle’. But in the East End, where Seymour served, there were ‘bundles’ a-plenty. Admittedly, as a member of the CID you were more likely to avoid them. Even so, the prospect of a day at the races was not one which filled Seymour with enthusiasm. However, when the Inspector had invited him he had accepted with alacrity. He had his own purposes.

  At once, though, he had a surprise. For the racing at Marsa was not the sort that he was used to, horses belting round a track. Instead, it was horses pulling a cart, or, as the Inspector put it, two horses and a trap. For the great passion of Malta turned out to be pony-trotting.

  Chantale was not enthusiastic about going to the racetrack either. But Mrs Wynne-Gurr had drawn up a programme and the programme had to be adhered to. Today they were going to the racetrack to observe how the local branch of the St John Ambulance went about its work. The Valletta St John was regularly in attendance at the races and this Sunday was no exception.

  The English visitors were distributed around the track at the various points which the Ambulance manned, one English visitor to two Valletta members. The two ladies Chantale was with seemed very pleasant and the duties not onerous. For the most part they seemed to consist of tending spectators who had succumbed to the heat. Once, however, said one of the ladies, ‘a wheel came off and the driver was thrown out right in front of me and I was able to practise my slings’. Today, however, there was no such excitement.

  As the evening moved on, though, there was another sort of excitement. Chantale had been stationed at the interface between the territory of one of the Valletta bands and that of the band from ‘the three cities’, and soon a trickle of people suffering from knife wounds began to arrive.

  About slings and fainting Chantale knew very little, but about knife wounds - coming from Tangier where she had run a hotel - she knew a lot and soon was happily working away.

  ‘Miss de Lissac,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr approvingly, as they were going home, ‘was a credit to the West Surrey St John’s.’

  Also at the racetrack was Felix, theoretically in the charge of his father. Dr Wynne-Gurr, however, had met an Ophthalmic colleague from the hospital and soon was far away, mentally at least. This became physically when Felix was hailed by Sophia and lured away by her. She had much to show him: the place where the pony-traps assembled and where the horses, skittish and sometimes resentful, were brought to wait and where there was always the chance of one horse biting another or kicking its owner; and the refreshment tent, which you could sneak round behind and find a gap through which to put your hand and grab a mquaret or a piece of quabbajt.

  They had been doing this when they noticed a roped-off piece of ground behind the tent on which was spread out a great length of grey, rubbery material. ‘Keep off!’ said a handwritten notice; so, naturally, they went over to look.

  Two men, on hands and knees, were bent over one corner of the material.

  ‘Bugger off!’ said one of the men, without looking up.

  “Op it!’ said the other. ‘Bugger offski!’ As if talking to some Slav foreigner.

  ‘You bugger offski!’ retorted Sophia, flaring up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Felix politely. At his public school voice, ridden with class authority, the technicians looked up.

  ‘Checking it over,’ one of them said.

  ‘And what have you found?’ said Seymour, coming up at that moment with the Inspector.

  ‘It’s a cut,’ said the technician shortly.

  ‘Not where your lot were looking,’ the other technician said to the Inspector. ‘That was definitely a tear.’

  ‘But this was definitely a cut,’ said the first technician, showing it to Seymour.

  ‘Why didn’t it enlarge?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘It’s where it is. Close to the seam. The fabric is doubled at that point and there’s a tuck-over.’

  ‘So it wouldn’t have been seen?’

  ‘It would have been seen on the first inflation. We inflate it a little and then go over it thoroughly. We actually check the seams. It wasn’t there then.’

  ‘So when was it cut?’

  ‘During or after the second inflation. When we fill it up just before launch.’

  ‘We do a second check then, but it’s pulling away at that point, and if it’s small we could miss it.’

  ‘Are there people around?’

  The technicians hesitated.

  ‘Well, there are always people around. Working on the other balloons. We launch them at about the same time.’

  ‘So someone could - ?’

  ‘They could,’ said the other technician, ‘but - ’

  ‘We’re all in the game together,’ said the first technician. ‘We just don’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s sort of honour among technicians,’ said the second technician.

  Chapter Five

  Things had looked up at the St John Ambulance aid point. Business had tailed off and Chantale had had plenty of time to watch the racing. The point was in a conspicuous position at the edge of the racetrack and she had a good view of the pony-traps hurtling past. Like Seymour she had been surprised to see the racing take that form. She hadn’t gone to races when she was in Tangier - women didn’t - but on one or two occasions she had gone to see pig-sticking, which was, in some respects, especially among the Tangier colonial community, Tangier’s nearest thing. Horses pulling carts, though, seemed a pallid equivalent.

  There was a little flurry in the crowd and a man pushed through. He was supporting another man.

  ‘Another stab wound for you, Miss de Lissac,’ said one of the Maltese St John’s workers.

  ‘The bastards!’ said the man doing the supporting. ‘They’ve stabbed a bandsman. That’s not right! We’re supposed to be neutral!’

  He was a bandsman, too, dressed for the occasion and with a trumpet slung across his back.

  ‘They’ll look after you, Luigi,’ he said, easing the man into a chair.

  He had spoken in Arabic and, without thinking, Chantale did the same.

  ‘Where is it?’ she said.

  ‘Here.’

  The man felt his ribs.

  Chantale inspected the wound. />
  ‘Lucky you!’ she said. ‘It hit the ribs and ran along them. Not between them, otherwise you’d have been a goner.’

  ‘I saw who did it,’ said the wounded man. ‘I’ll know who to look for.’

  ‘You’d do better to know where to look out,’ said Chantale.

  ‘That, too!’ said the man who had brought him. He looked curiously at Chantale.

  ‘Are you Arab?’ he said.

  ‘Of course she is!’ said the wounded man. ‘She’s speaking Arabic, isn’t she?’

  ‘I come from Tangier,’ said Chantale.

  ‘I’ve been to Tangier,’ said the other man. ‘Nice place.’

  ‘What are you doing over here?’ the wounded man asked Chantale. ‘Came over for a job? Like the rest of us?’

  Chantale guessed that, despite his Italian- , or Maltese- , sounding name he was an Arab of some kind but where from she could not tell. Although she could understand it, the Arabic was unfamiliar to her.

  ‘Came over to get a husband more like,’ said the other man.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ said Chantale, stretching the truth a little. ‘In England.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Chantale patched the man up and sent him away.

  ‘Get that looked at by a doctor,’ she called after him.

  ‘I will,’ the man promised. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke Maltese, dear,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr, stopping on one of her patrols.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Chantale. ‘At least, I think I don’t.’

  The Inspector, busy, genial and relaxed, had begun to move through the crowd chatting to people. He seemed to know everybody. Then Seymour realized: he probably did know everybody.

  The space cleared for the technicians to work on their balloon was behind some low stands raised just sufficiently to enable those at the back to get a view of the racing. On the day of the launch the course itself had been taken over by the balloons. There had been between fifty and a hundred of them, spread out through the stadium, some big, some small, some huge ones tugging at their pegs, others unable to get off the ground at all. The stadium had been full of people, most of them connected with the balloons in some way, technicians, ferryers of parts, fuel and provisions. Among the balloons were hand carts, mules and the occasional car and truck, although there were not many of these, the motor-car not having really hit Malta yet.