by Lyn Hamilton
“I believe you were at my office today. A journalist of some kind,” he said. His voice was virtually without inflection too, the counterpart of his eyes. It was difficult to tell from his tone his true feelings, although I assumed a contempt for journalists. “My secretary told me you wanted to interview me about someone called Martin Galea. I can assure you I don’t know this person.”
“How about Marcus Galea?” I asked. For some reason my terror, for terrified I was, was translating into a sort of stubborn aggressiveness that surprised even me. I was here now, I remember thinking, and before they throw me out I might as well find out whatever I can.
“Not him either,” he replied. “And now I believe you have overstayed your welcome.” The words were not said in a threatening tone, but the threat, I knew, was there. He pulled a tassled cord in the doorway, and two very large men appeared. I was hustled out of the room and into a back staircase, then down what seemed to be a couple of floors. For moment or two I had the irrational feeling that they were going to lock me in a horrible dungeon in the basement—it was that kind of house—but instead I was pushed rather roughly out onto the street. Not out the front door either, but onto a narrow, illlit alleyway. I wanted to say something soigné like “I’ve been thrown out of better places than this,” but they were very large men, and the truth is, I was really quite frightened.
I was also completely turned around. I wasn’t sure which way would take me back to Villegaignon Street and thence to the Main Gate where I had determined I would stay in a welllit area waiting for Anthony’s return. I knew he’d wait for me, and it really was a small town, so I decided it didn’t much matter which way I went. Eventually, I was reasonably sure, I’d get my bearings and find my way back.
I picked a direction and started to walk. I had a sense of being followed, and I picked up the pace. When I was a block or two from the Palazzo, I heard a car skid, and headlights flashed against a wall at the end of the street. I remember thinking, and this was the last rational thought I had for some time, that Maltese drivers really were the worst. Then I heard the car accelerate, turning down the street at top speed, and I realized that this was something much more sinister than bad driving. I froze, like an animal paralyzed by headlights, as the car came straight at me. Behind me I heard footsteps coming fast, but still I couldn’t move. Just as I was about to be hit, someone grabbed me from behind and hurled me against the wall. I heard a thump, someone said, “Run!” I heard someone gasp and fall, and I looked over my shoulder to see a man lying motionless on the street.
It was Rob. He just lay there, on his back, eyes closed. Unconscious, or even, I feared, dead. I was having a great deal of trouble thinking clearly. I kept trying to tell myself this wasn’t happening, that events like this only happened in bad dreams or worse movies. Finally, however, a sound penetrated the fog in my brain. It was the car, the same one, I could tell, and it was turning somewhere. It was coming back, and even though in these narrow streets it might take a while to turn, I had very little time to escape.
There were three doors on the street. I tried the first. It was locked. I tried a second across the little street, then ran a few yards to another, a strange little door that was down a couple of steps from the street. Miraculously it opened. But Rob was still lying unconscious on the street, and if they came back, he would almost certainly be killed.
As I watched a tiny pulse beat in his temple, I knew that I was not going to let anyone hurt him anymore. I put my arms under his armpits and dragged him the few yards to the door, pulled him down the steps and across the threshold, closed the door, and tried unsuccessfully to latch it. He was unbelievably heavy, and I’ve wondered since how I managed it, but I guess you do what you have to do. It was dark inside, and I had no idea where I was.
The dim streetlight shining through a grated window above the door was not too helpful, but eventually my eyes adjusted to the light, enough to see that I was in what I took to be a small chapel. I had heard the car sweep by, then stop near the end of the street and two doors slam. They were coming back to look for us. They began banging on the doors on the street and trying to open them. Ours, I knew would open.
I dragged Rob again, this time for cover behind a large stone structure with a marble figure, arms across the chest in the position of death, laid out on top of it, and a skull and crossbones carved elaborately on each side. This was not really a chapel, I realized, but a crypt, the stone structure the tomb of some important personage. But now was not the time to get squeamish, I knew, so I gave Rob one last heave and pulled him behind it. He had the longest legs, and I had real difficulty getting us both wedged in where we wouldn’t be seen.
I knew that even a cursory tour of the place would lead to our discovery—it was just one room—but it seemed to be the only chance we had. I sat on the floor with Rob leaning back against my chest, my arms around him to keep him from falling over. I could hear them approaching the door. Rob, still unconscious, started to murmur. I put my hand lightly over his mouth, and held my breath. The door began to open.
Just then I heard the most beautiful sound, the wail of a siren. Someone stopped crossing the threshold in mid-step, and then turned and ran. I heard the car pull away quickly. Moments later, I could see a blue light flashing through the upper window.
Rob’s hand reached up and pulled mine away from his mouth.
“Where are we exactly?” he asked.
“In a crypt of some kind, behind a tomb,” I replied.
“Wonderful!” he said in a decidedly irritable tone. “What is it about you and crypts?”
“Would you accept an unfortunate coincidence?” I said, trying to keep my tone light. In truth I could have wept with relief. Not only were the men who were trying to kill us gone, but I felt anyone this grumpy was bound to recover.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. Then, “I’m starting to take this mess personally.”
“Me too,” I said fervently. “Me too.”
“I’m also thinking I’m getting too old for all this action.”
“I’d have to say the same for me,” I agreed.
“Call Tabone, okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“There’s something I can’t figure out.”
“What’s that?”
“Who was on the plane? Ask him that, will you?” And then he passed out again.
THIRTEEN
Why are you here? A new flag run up on the battlements. Another occupying power. Rule Britannia. The sun will never set, you believe? You bring your poets, your statesmen, your laws, and your ways: But you also bring your enemies to My shores.
*
“It’s a bothersome question, no doubt about it,” Tabone said in a whisper, gesturing in the general direction of Rob, dozing gently in the big bed at the house. Tabone and I had taken Rob to the hospital where they’d diagnosed multiple bruises and a mild concussion. He’d insisted on coming back to the house, even though the doctors hadn’t wanted him to, but he had to be wakened every couple of hours and his eyes peered at for symptoms of worse concussion. I’d insisted he have the bed, and promised Tabone I’d be diligent in my nursing duties. It was the least I could do, after all. He’d saved my life. Tabone offered to take the first shift, but I couldn’t sleep, so we sat chatting quietly at the end of the bed.
“You’ll have to explain the question to me,” I said.
“Then Rob hasn’t told you about the autopsy report,” Tabone said.
“Been busy. Haven’t had time,” a sleepy voice from the bed said. Rob kept drifting in and out of sleep and our conversation in a disconcerting way.
“Galea died approximately twelve hours before you found him, according to Dr. Caruana. I say approximately because of the time lapse between the first and second autopsies. There were indications of freezing in the extremities just as Rob predicted. So he was, we’re almost certain, killed in Canada. The good news is that this should let old Joseph Farrugia off the hook, although I
’d still like to know why he went to Rome, just to reassure myself there’s absolutely no connection.
“The bad news… well, you know what it is. They also found two different blood samples on the chest. One, of course, is Galea’s. The second is B positive. Marilyn Galea’s blood is, or was, B positive. It’s not a particularly common blood type for white North Americans, either. We can’t compare it directly to hers, because we can’t find her. But I think we can safely assume it’s hers. Either she cut herself in the act of murdering her husband, or, she was herself injured, or perhaps,” he said carefully, “killed at the same time as he was. I’m not sure which way I’m leaning on that one. The blow that killed him was, according to Caruana, masterful. A quick slice up and between the ribs, puncturing the lung and left ventricle of the heart. Either the work of a professional, or a very lucky, if I may use that term in this regard, blow for an amateur.
“But the fact remains, someone used the ticket, got on the plane, and presumably used Galea’s travel documents to get into Italy. Who and why, I have no idea.
“However, to get back to the problem of the hour. Go back over, one more time, what happened tonight in the Silent City. That’s what they call Mdina, by the way, and it’s what saved you. They don’t call it that for nothing. The fancy residents of Mdina don’t like their peace disturbed. Called the police right away. You and your pursuer, or pursuers as the case may be, were making quite a ruckus, I gather, banging on doors and revving engines and all. We were told there were hooligans loose in the city.”
I went back over the evening’s events. Tabone’s eyebrows rose very slightly and there was the slightest hint of a smile when I told him about stealing the invitation, but other than that, his reaction was low-key, with none of the stomping about that Rob had done. He interrupted my narrative with questions from time to time.
“Did you see a license plate?” Answer: no.
“How many people were in the car?” Answer: two, or at least I thought I’d seen two.
“Are you absolutely certain they were deliberately trying to hit you? You know how we drive here. Perhaps they came back to make sure you were all right.”
“To apologize, you mean?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s possible,” Tabone said in a somewhat defensive tone.
“Noooo,” came a muffled reply from the bed.
“All right, then,” Tabone said. “I’ll check up on Galizia’s party, although there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. Except for your arrival, of course.”
We sat quietly for a few minutes.
“Alex!” the voice from the bed said. “He called. I forgot to tell you. He wants you to call as soon as you get in. Sorry!”
It was still relatively early back home, and I knew Alex was a nighthawk, so I returned his call while Tabone watched over Rob. I apologized for calling him back so late, explaining only that I’d been to a party.
“I got a copy of the Ellis Graham documentary and had a look. It’s a quite sensationalized account of the history of the Knights of St. John, but a rather good television show, I must say. He mentions a lot of objects that have gone missing, and talks about the old families of Malta who may be hoarding them, but the one object I think he’d be looking for now is the cross I told you about, a silver and gilt cross supposedly carried from Rhodes to Malta by Philippe Villiers de L’IsleAdam, Grand Master at the time of the Knights’ defeat by Sulieman the Magnificent and their consequent wanderings about the Mediterranean looking for a home.”
“So you think producing the program gave him an idea of where the cross might be, and he came on a treasure hunt of sorts,” I said.
“That was certainly my assumption when I’d finished watching the documentary, and I’ve had my hunch confirmed. I talked to an old friend of mine in L.A. Turns out he worked out of the same studio as Graham, and he says that after doing the documentary, Graham became absolutely obsessed with the idea of finding that cross. He talked about it and the Knights incessantly, to the point where people thought he was a bit daft. He was convinced that the Knights would have left a secret message of some kind, telling where they’d hidden it before Napoleon threw them off the island. That would explain why you saw him peering at tombstones and the like. Anyway, I was convinced we were on the right track here, but then I learned something new. I don’t know whether this is good news or bad, but the cross has been located.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not. I joined a little chat group on the Internet, a bunch of museologists who get together regularly. I thought I might get some information from them. Anyway, I was following along the conversation when one of them said that a museum in one of the former satellite states of the old USSR had just released a catalogue of their collection, and we should all have a look at it because so many of these things had been hidden from us during the Soviet era. I’m sure you’ve guessed the rest. A silver and gilt cross said to have belonged to the Knights of St. John and supposed to have been carried from Jerusalem to Rhodes to Malta, then passed from hand to hand, or should I say Grand Master to Grand Master, after the Knights left Malta, eventually worked its way into this museum. I can’t believe it, but I also can’t imagine there are two. The catalogue even mentions de L’Isle-Adam.”
“But presumably Graham didn’t know that, if the news is as current as you say.”
“Exactly. He may have been looking for it, but he couldn’t have been killed for it, because it wasn’t there to find. He could have been looking for something else, of course, but it doesn’t sound like it from what my showbiz friend has told me.”
“This is getting rather bizarre,” was all I could think to say. I thanked Alex for his detective work, and then went back to watch over Rob. Tabone left shortly thereafter, and I sat watching Rob and doing a mental catalogue of my own of where this whole mess stood.
Galea was killed in Canada. Marilyn was either guilty of his murder, or was herself a victim. It looked as if he’d been killed in his own home, since there seemed to be no other opportunity to do it. But someone drove his car to the airport, parked it, used the airline ticket, and got into Italy using Galea’s travel documents.
A second murder victim, Ellis Graham, was looking for something, of that I was reasonably certain, what with the connection to his documentary and his metal detector, and all the places I’d spotted him. But the most likely object of his search wasn’t here; it was in a museum somewhere, something it was unlikely he could have known.
Joseph Farrugia had gone to Rome for some reason he would not reveal, had been in the vicinity at the time of Graham’s murder, and Tabone was still a little suspicious because of his reticence.
Rob and I had just had what he would describe as a close encounter of the automotive kind, right after I’d been thrown out of the Palazzo Galizia by the Minister himself, a man with sumptuous tastes and blank, soulless eyes. He was also, according to someone called the Hedgehog, a boyhood friend of Martin Galea, a fact he had denied to my face.
All sorts of important people were in town, foreign ministers of various European countries and lots of military types, and Galizia, in his role as External Relations Minister was associated with them all. Several of these people were to attend a performance at Mnajdra the following evening, a place which had had its share of strange events and controversy.
It was an interesting catalogue, but it didn’t seem to be leading anywhere in particular, and soon I fell asleep curled up in a blanket across the end of the bed. It seemed the easiest thing to do. I just rolled over from time to time, woke Rob up, shone a flashlight in his eyes, then we both went back to sleep.
*
Marissa arrived the next morning, and made both of us breakfast. She and I then had a brief discussion about looking after Rob, which she agreed to, because I knew there were a couple of things I had to do before I went to the performance that evening. The first was that Marissa and I had to have a serious talk.
“Mari
ssa,” I began, “I’m sure you’re very happy to have Joseph back home, but you need to know that Detective Tabone still has some reservations about him, primarily because of his refusal to say why he went to Rome.”
“I know,” she sighed. “He can be a very stubborn man. I’ll tell you why he went, but only if you promise me not to tell anyone else, and also to give me advice as to what I should do about it.” I agreed to her terms.
“Anthony, as you know, wants very badly to be an architect and we want the best for our son. But now with Galea dead, it will simply not be possible, I think. We cannot afford it,” she said sadly.
“But before all this happened, we were waiting for Anthony to hear from the University of Toronto and the school in Rome. Joseph and I—we shouldn’t have, we know that—opened the letters before Anthony got home from school. The first to come was an acceptance from Canada. You know how we felt about our son going to be with Marcus. We hid the letter, hoping for a similar reply from Rome. But when it came, it was a rejection letter. Anthony was not accepted. It was, in a way, our worst fear. Only one acceptance, and from so far away, where Marcus could continue to influence our boy.
“We didn’t say anything to Anthony—he continued to watch for the letters, but it kept gnawing away at Joseph. He couldn’t sleep, he fretted all the time. Finally he decided to go to Rome and plead, beg, the people at the school to let Anthony in. We had difficulty putting together the money for the ticket, and we couldn’t afford a hotel. Joseph spent the night sitting up in a café. He had trouble finding the place, and the right person to talk to, but finally he did.
“They were horrible to him, polite, of course, but horrible. He knew they were laughing at him behind his back, his workingman clothes, even though he wore his best, his only, suit. They sneered at his poor Italian and his working-class manners. He looked out of place, and he knew it, but they made it clear to him even if he hadn’t known.
