Tabone nodded as Rob continued. “You might also have someone do some tests on the chest he turned up in, if it hasn’t been done already. It’s been well handled, I know, so chances of finding clear prints are slight, but I’ve got a copy of Galea’s fingerprints that I brought along. Got them when he applied for a visa to come to Canada. In the meantime,” Luczka said, “I think I’ll have a bit of a look around, if it’s okay with you, Vince. Try out a little old-fashioned detective work. Find where Galea was from, who he knew, that sort of thing.”
“I know where he’s from,” I piped up. “At least I think if I had a look at a map the name of the town would come back to me. Marilyn told me that day I went over to measure the furniture. I remember the word made me think of honey—the Greek word for it, meli.”
“Mellieha?” Tabone asked.
“I think that’s it,” I replied.
“Well, you may be right. Because it says so right here on his file.” Tabone grinned at me.
I glared at him. “What else does the file say?”
“Parents both dead. No known relatives. Emigrated to Canada about eighteen years ago. That’s about it.”
“Will you give us a lift back to the house so we can get the car?” I asked. “And directions to Mellieha?”
“Of course. Call me when you get back and tell me what you’ve found. And you will be careful, please, driving in Malta. We have many, many accidents. Remember what they say about Maltese drivers. We don’t drive on the left or the right. We drive in the shade! And by the way, try not to get lost!”
And so it was that the Mountie and I set off to do detective work. He wanted to drive, but the car, egalitarian in its perverseness, wouldn’t start for him either. I took over, he pushed, and I waited for him, engine running, a few yards past the end of the driveway. I noticed he was limping slightly as he approached the car, but I was feeling too irritable to ask him if he was okay.
He got in and started looking for a seat belt. “There aren’t any,” I said.
He looked annoyed. “There should be a law!”
“There is, but it only applies to cars manufactured in 1990 or later, Anthony tells me. This, as you can see, is just a little bit older than that.”
“Like about twenty years!” he responded. I put the car in gear and revved it up to the max. We tore down the road, engine screaming, until I was able to make the shift to third.
“Nice car,” he said. I looked at him sideways but could not tell if there was irony in his words. We hit the first roundabout. There was nothing coming, so I didn’t gear down. The window beside him fell down. “Very nice car,” he added, as the handle spun uselessly in his hand.
I had had a good look at the map before we left, and I had chosen a route that picked up the road to Rabat, then angled up to the northwest corner of the island where the town of Mellieha was located. We whipped past the sign for Verdala Palace around where the Great White Hunter had run me off the road, and I idly wondered where he was, and whether he was trying to negotiate another surrealistic deal with someone, perhaps a total stranger like me. Fifty percent of what, was the question.
As I had learned from my earlier outing in the car, I ignored the directional signs and kept angling along in the general direction of Mellieha. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to sense the Mountie beside me studying the road map with a perplexed air, but regrettably he was keeping his confusion to himself. He did wince perceptibly, however, when a mini minor shot past us on the shoulder, and again when someone passed on a hill.
Once part of a prehistoric land bridge that linked it to what is now Italy, and also, perhaps with Africa, Malta is shaped a little like an oval platter with the northwest side tilted up, and the south and east down. Its western end is bisected by alternating parallel ridges and valleys cutting across the island from coast to coast. Our route, which took us out of the lower south and east, climbed for a while. As we crested the top of the first ridge, I could see, still miles away, the sweep of a large bay on the far side of the island, the water a silver ribbon against the dark outline of the shore. If my calculations were correct, it should be St. Paul’s Bay, where St. Paul was supposed to have been shipwrecked, and thus converted the island to Christianity.
From here, sometimes the road followed a valley, relatively green and terraced to preserve precious soil and water, sometimes it crossed another craggy ridgeline and we could see the coastline for a few minutes again.
Finally we reached the large bay. It was at the coastal edge of one of the island’s largest valleys, and it looked as if it had been formed during an earthquake or a volcanic eruption millions of years ago when the sea washed into one of the depressions between the ridges. Moored at the edge of the bay bobbed several beautifully colored fishing boats, their bright paint in sharp contrast to the subtle yellow stone of the buildings that hugged the shoreline.
From here the road curved along the edge of the bay, then up onto another high ridge. It was not long then until we came to the edge of a town, and a sharp turn in the road to the right put us on the main street looking downhill toward a large cathedral.
“Mellieha, I think,” I said, pulling into a parking space, and then looking about me at what appeared to be a rather prosperous little town.
“I believe you, but I have no idea how you got us here.” The Mountie sighed.
“Tell me again about tracking criminals through raging blizzards,” I said in dulcet tones.
“Must be the absence of snow.” He grinned. Obviously it was not possible to irritate this man easily.
We were parked very near to the top of the main street, and when we got out of the car, there was a wonderful smell of baking. “Could it be lunchtime?” the Mountie said, his eyes lighting up. We followed our noses to a small building on the curve in the road into town. We’d found the local bakery.
There was a lineup of Maltese women, some in jeans, but most in black skirts, white blouses, and black cardigans. Several of them were carrying trays covered with tea towels. The Mountie, obviously the irrepressible type, asked the woman ahead of us what she had on her tray. Several of the women turned and smiled at his question.
“Timpana,” she said, lifting the tea towel to show us a casserole covered in pastry. “Sunday dinner,” she added.
“We bring it here on Sunday to have it cooked,” another woman said, “when the baking is finished for the day.” She showed us her platter, a traditional roast beef dinner just waiting to be cooked. As we talked, a couple of women left, their string bags filled with several of the round crusty Maltese loaves.
“People have ovens in their own homes now,” a younger woman said. “But it’s still a nice tradition. We get to have a bit of a visit while our supper cooks.”
“Does this mean there is nothing to eat here unless you bring your own?” the Mountie asked in a disappointed tone.
“You can come to my house for supper anytime,” one of the young women said, and the rest giggled loudly. They beckoned us to go ahead of them into the dark interior. There was a counter on the left and a large brick oven at the back of the room. Arranged on a tray at the front were what looked like individual pizzas covered in a rich, dark sauce. We each ordered one and ate it right on the spot. They were delicious: lots of garlic, olives, and anchovy paste would be my guess as to ingredients, sprinkled with fresh herbs. The Mountie ordered a second right away. One of the women smiled and patted his arm.
“I don’t suppose any of you would remember Martin Galea?” I asked them.
“The man who was killed?” one of the younger women asked.
“Yes, that one.”