“I’ve seen the report. Tabone showed it to me. Somewhat… basic, shall we say? I mean I don’t wish to criticize another jurisdiction’s work, but…”
“Tabone didn’t think much of it either,” I admitted.
“The point is, it’s been mighty cold back home. Sub subzero. I figure Galea could have been dead for much longer than the coroner here thinks. We already know that the furniture was loaded outside, it was minus fifteen at the time, and we checked the cargo line for the temperature of their cargo bays—they were embarrassed to tell us how cold they were, actually. So I figure Galea was just thawing out about the time he got here. That would account for the report.”
“But you’re here now,” I persisted. “Presumably you weren’t sent here because it was an open-and-shut case. You or your superiors must have thought there was some doubt.”
“Not really. We were sent a copy of the autopsy report, so we had to look into it.”
“So when do we start?”
“Start what? And if it’s what I think it is, who’s we? I’m the policeman, you are the shopkeeper, the one in whose shipment the body turned up, I might add.”
“Fine. Go out investigating by yourself. You’ll get lost five minutes out of the driveway, I assure you. And were you planning to take the car? I can’t wait to hear all about it!”
“Do I take it that you think that because I’m a Ukrainian from Saskatchewan I can’t find my way around an island this size? I’m a Mountie, remember. I track criminals through roaring blizzards, just like on TV.” He grinned.
“But of course,” I said. “Let me get you the car keys.”
EIGHT
Normans, Hohenstaufens, Angevins, Aragonese, Castilians—a blur of rulers, mostly absent. My tiny islands pass from hand to hand, pillar to post, sometimes the spoils of war, other times, more happily, to seal the marriage contract, yet others, a forgotten outpost in some despotic sovereign’s empire. Will freedom never come?
“I have A couple of pieces of news I think you’ll find interesting,” Vincent Tabone said, looking across his desk at Rob Luczka and me. My anticipated moment of triumph at seeing Luczka off in that splendid car was denied when Tabone called to say he was sending a squad car to the house. The factor mitigating my disappointment was that I was invited too, the Mountie’s opinion of shopkeepers doing detective work notwithstanding.
“I’ve heard back from the Italian authorities,” Tabone continued. “Martin Galea got to Rome on Canadian Airlines flight 6040. His car, a Jaguar—I’m impressed!—was found in the long-term parking area at Toronto International Airport. The Italians no longer require disembarkation cards at Fiumicino Airport—a mistake if you ask me. If they did, we could compare the signature on the card with the signature on the offer to purchase the land where he built the house just to confirm it was Galea on the flight. Not that we need to. We know he got here somehow. We’ve also contacted the airline. Galea as prebooked in seat 15B. But the flight was full, lots of large Italian families traveling together, and there was a bit of a computer glitch. A few seats in that area were double-booked. There was a seat for everyone, apparently, but a Jot of trading around on board. It was a 747—over 400 people. I’ve never been on one, but it sounds unnatural to me! We’ll try to contact the person who was supposed to be sitting in 15A, to see if we might get a positive identification, but frankly, I’m not hopeful.”
“So that means what?” Luczka mused. “Maybe his wife killed him in Italy—what’s her name again?”
“It’s Marilyn,” I burst out. “M-A-R-I-L-Y-N. Not what’s her name! Not ‘the wife.” Not la femme. Marilyn. She may be plain and very, very shy. She may have so much money you want to despise her. But I’ve met her. I like her. And she deserves better than this… this automatic presumption of guilt on both your parts!“ I was almost sputtering. Both men looked sheepish. ”What if something dreadful has happened to her too?“
Tabone cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should have added that I also checked on Mrs. Galea—that is to say, Marilyn Galea—and there is no indication she was on the plane with him. There’s no boarding pass, no ticket in her name either.”
“You said there were two items of interest,” I said, somewhat mollified. “What’s the second?”
“The second is equally interesting, I think,” Tabone said. “The information you requested on Galea’s will has come through from Canada, Rob. The bulk of his estate, as one would expect, is left to his wife, but, and this is the interesting part, he leaves the sum of $100,000 to the Farrugia boy— Anthony.”
“I think that’s great!” I exclaimed. “It’s to pay for him to become an architect, for his tuition and everything. Who’d have guessed Galea would be that generous?”
“Very generous indeed,” Tabone agreed. “But I think one would have to ask the question: Is this really for the boy’s education? Galea was what—thirty-seven?—when he died. Surely he would have expected to live longer than that. If he wanted to pay for Anthony’s education, why didn’t he just offer to do so?
“So the question remains, and the answer is very criticaclass="underline" Where and when did he get killed? If he was killed in Rome, then Marilyn Galea probably didn’t do it. If he was killed in Canada, then the Farrugias are no longer suspects.”
“You’d think the ‘when’ could be verified, wouldn’t you?” Luczka asked. “God knows I’m no pathologist. I can’t understand anything of what they’re doing with DNA evidence these days, but if I remember anything of my elementary forensics class a few years back, it is only in crime novels that it’s possible to pinpoint the time of death to an hour or two. I know what your pathologist says about rigor mortis. It normally begins to set in about five to seven hours after death, is fully set in after about twelve hours, and passes off again. But temperature makes a big difference to the rate. And as far as the breakdown of tissue after death—I think they call that autolysis—there wouldn’t be much difference between five hours and say, fifteen, which would put Galea back in Toronto when he died. And autolysis takes place at a slower rate when the body is cold.
“So let’s, for the sake of argument, say Galea was killed in Toronto. His body could even have been frozen for all I know. The weather was certainly cold enough. And it seems to me it would be relatively easy to find out whether the body had been in freezing temperatures over a period of several hours, as you and I discussed yesterday, Vince.
“If I remember correctly, cells rupture when a body is frozen, sort of like frostbite really. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell just looking at the body, but the fractured membranes should show up under a microscope if someone knew what to look for. Even if the body hadn’t been at subzero temperatures long enough to freeze completely, you could look at tissue samples from the extremities, the fingers and toes, because they would freeze first.”
“Ah, but that requires, as you so delicately put it, someone who knows what to look for. At the present time, we don’t have that,” Tabone replied. “But I take your point. I’ll make arrangements for the coroner to send some tissue samples to a lab in Italy, and we’ll see what they say. But what about the stomach contents? Bacon and eggs. Breakfast. And we know that’s the last meal they give you on an overnight transatlantic flight.”
“This may come as a surprise to you, Vince, but we North Americans eat breakfast food any time of the day or night. I don’t think that necessarily proves anything.”