02 _ Maltese Goddess, The (23 page)

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 raised 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.

“ T 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’Isle-Adam, 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 die 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.

“Marissa,” I began, “I’m sure you’re very happy to have Joseph back home, but you need to know that Detective Ta-bone 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 cafe. 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.

“They refused to change their decision, of course. I knew it was hopeless, but Joseph wouldn’t admit it to himself. He thought if he just explained it to them, they would understand and change their minds. He is a proud man in his own way, and the whole experience was profoundly humiliating for him. He forbade me to speak of it; he could hardly tell even me when he got back that night. Not that I was particularly helpful, what with Martin’s body and everything.

“ I know he should have told the police, but I think he really felt, naively, that because he was innocent, everything would be all right, and he wouldn’t have to tell anyone about his humiliation in Rome.

“The thing is, we haven’t said anything to Anthony yet. Even though Marcus is gone, and he knows there is no chance he’ll be able to go now, he checks the mail every day, perhaps just for the satisfaction of being accepted somewhere, or else the closure of knowing he couldn’t get in to either place anyway, so the money doesn’t really matter anymore. I’m torn really. I don’t know what to do. What do you think?”