The Potters Field TV episode

The latest episodes of Montalbano, the Potter’s Field, rank among the best if not the best although I was confused during the performance because of the inclusion of a scene taken directly from the Snack Thief. In the Snack Thief Salvo goes to stay at a restaurant Inn for a few days avoiding visiting the hospital where father is dying. There he meets an academic teacher of philosophy who like him insists on eating in silence so they can enjoy the meal which includes pasta with crab meat and a sublime second dish which in the book they consider the various herbs and other contents as a miracle. They talk of the background of the chef who reveals he was a petty criminal who was visited by the Virgin Mary. There is an important conversation between Salvo and the Academic about their tendency to run away from unpleasantness.

In the Potter Field, the deputy Mimi Assistant is being a pain in the backside driving Catarella, the front desk man and series clown to tears and annoying everyone at the station to an extent that Fazio, the faithful and trusted Inspector assistant reveals to Salvo that they have considered making a formal complaint via their Federation. Salvo speculates that Mimi is having an affair because one point his wife Beba chastises the Inspector for keeping the Inspector out at all hours at night and Salvo covers for the what he believes is the errant husband by apologising for his actions.

The episode begins similarly to the last with Salvo having a nightmare while the rain teams down outside. On this occasion the nightmare consists of a mafia politician insisting that Montalbano takes a job in the new government is forming and Catarella comes in and says he will shoot Salvo if he agreed to the request and both men then start to shoot the Inspector at which point he wakes up because Catarella is at the door, Montalbano having switched off his phone.

They drive to what is a very muddy place where the rain appears to have brought to the surface a body which has disappeared again by the time Salvo arrives to join his deputy and Fazio who have been sheltering from the rain. Catarella, who has already slipped down an embankment, discovers the body when he slips again into a small clump of shrubs. To say body is not strictly accurate because the bag contains thirty body parts and the face and finger tips have been obliterated to make identification as difficult as possible. The death is believed to have occurred by a single shot to the head about two months before.

On the journey Catarella rehearses his part in a passion play as Judas. Thirty pieces of silver... Get the connection!!!!!! And alter Salvo watches Catarella in his performance and again as with his taking on board electronic communication and coming top of the class he is excellent in his performance and draws applause, Italian style for the watch crowd. Catarella is his own worst enemy, something which I know all too well.

A beautiful young wife arrives at the station insisting seductively for the help of Montalbano to locate her husband, a ships officer from whom she has had no contact and where she has received a postcard which arouses her suspicions because the handwriting is different from others previously received. She is flirtatious to an extent which concerns Fazio knowing the propensity of his boss to get involved with beautiful young women while conducting an a long distant relationship with his long term woman friend Livia who lives and works in Genoa

Before the visit from the officer’s wife Salvo received a report from a passer by of witnessing what appeared to be an attempt to hit a run the same young woman. He has only got a couple of the letters of the car index but later after seeing the same vehicle he notes down then index and provides this to Salvo.

The young woman explains that because of the brevity of her husband’s stays ashore they have rented a small apartment by the docks so they can spend all the time together. At first Salvo dismisses the woman’s concern suggesting that her husband has run off with someone but the woman shows him an intimate and passionate letter. Having been given the key to the apartment Salvo arranges for the local police to visit and they report indications different from what the wife has stated. They fax pictures which show that two people had been drinking beer, the place is in a mess and the man’s trousers, those which he was supposed to be wearing when he left to board his ship are still in the flat. Moreover the shipping line confirms the husband never arrived for the journey. The evidence appears to confirm that the man in the Potters Field is the husband and the woman goes into mourning.

She innocently reveals something which Salvo and the team have already found out that that the husband was a ward of a Crime Family. The anti Mafia squad have received an anonymous letter claiming that the boss of the Family, a very old man who has a good relationship with Salvo in that he is willing to help to prevent further violence as the end of his life approaches, was personally responsible for the death of the missing man because of some slight. However when the anti mafia squad investigate they find that the boss has been in a coma and is dying. Salvo visits and a lieutenant reveals that the man is concerned about the allegation given that several decades before he had believed that an agent in Columbia was a traitor and had him executed chopping up the body in thirty pieces as a warning to others. Finding that he was wrong he had “adopted” the boy, providing for his education which had led him to become an officer in the merchant navy, and he married in Columbia and settled in Sicily with the financial help of the family but where the man was not involved in any aspect of the criminal businesses.

Oddly some cocaine powder was found in a shoe box at the flat. When Salvo visits the flat he finds a neighbour who has antipathy to anyone from the republican government as she is a monarchist which Salvo also pretends so she he talks to him in a way she has not talked to others disclosing that she had found a syringe half full of blood in the waste bin which when Salvo checks is spotless clean but looks red rusty at the base. There are traces of dried blood in the shower which tests confirm are those of dead man and missing husband. Amazingly it takes time for Salvo to find out that the bins have an inner film against rusting and the marks are also of dried blood the same as found inside the flat.

When Salvo then finds that the index number of the car seen to have attempted to hit and run the young wife now widow is that of his Deputy Mimi, he is able to piece the mystery together and begins to acquaint Fazio with his understanding and plan. The final piece to arrange for a letter to be sent in an older woman’s handwriting, he gets his housekeeper to write out in her hand a letter in effect demanding money because the writer has the syringe and the letter is posted from where the flat is located so the trap is sprung,

I had worked out the core plot very early on when despite what the young woman said about the relationship with her husband, Fazio reported that there was very little contact between the two because the man was constantly at sea and the implications was that she found ways to be entertained in the meantime with the latest the local butcher although there appeared to have been a cooling off over the past two months when she appeared to have moved on to someone else. Salvo takes a look at the butcher to confirm his suspicion that that she had decided to get the butcher to kill her husband and try and frame the Mafia boss because she disliked the new sexual interests of her husband, no doubt because of his experiences in foreign shores. She had lured the husband to the butcher’s shop where he had been shot in the head and then his body chopped up in the same way as his father having learned about the death from her husband and the association with the Crime Family. She had taken a syringe of his blood together with his trousers to the flat together with the cocaine to make it look as if the husband had returned there, met someone and been killed. She had made the mistake of throwing away the syringe in the trash can. In order to complete the perfect crime she had sent the anonymous letter and then set about meeting and seducing Mimi known for his weakness and which was why she had also asked Mimi to take charge of the investigation and why he had become so upset when Salvo took the case on after first saying he would leave it to his deputy.

This is where the humanity and loyalty to his colleagues comes to the fore. First he gives Mimi control of the case much to the horror of Fazio before going off for his visit to the gourmet restaurant hotel. Then on the day he plans to arrest the widow and murdering conspirator butcher he gets Fazio to ensure that Mimi is kept busy out of the way. When he calls Mimi into his office to say he has arrested the woman with her lover and she has confessed, Mimi collapses realising that his world of home and work is about to collapse not realising that Salvo has been organising things in such a way that nothing of his own involvement in the cover up or Mimi’s indiscretions will come to the fore. The episode ends with Mimi giving Salvo a great hug as he goes off on a holiday with his wife and son.

The Gull's Dance TV drama

Watched an excellent Montalbano episode on BBC i player on full screen TV. Will write up as novel on which episode is based has not been translated into English. The episode is called the Gull’s Dance and begins with Salvo watching a Gull falling to the sands, struggling and then turn over dead. When a local fishing boat owner calls to report a concern he asks about the Gull and appears satisfied when the fleet owner has says those he has seen die fall directly into the sea. The man has come to report a concern that one of his boats appears to be involved in smuggling of some king, perhaps drugs with which he has not wish to be associated.

Fabio’s father calls concerned that his son has not returned home having promised to take him for a hospital. Salvo tries to ensure the parents everything is OK but the summons Mimi and they go off in search. Father subsequently says he has received a call from someone on the run who has seen/ knows something and arranges a secret meeting with Salvo, who works out who the man is but disregards the situation because of the info about Fazio. They have already established that the duty police officer at the docks thought he heard shots but when a motorcycle went past he assumed it had backfired. When they find a gun case the anxiety is heightened, and reaches fever pitch when the informant says he knows that Fazio was being taken to some empty wells at a site some two hours away.

When they arrive with local forces including Mimi from Vigata they discover two bodies in the wells. One has been there for several days and tortured before the final shoots while the other broke his neck from a fall only hours beforehand.

What we learn much later is that a former school friend of Fazio had contacted him with a concern and then backed off, but makes a call to him the evening before his disappearance, although in fact it is someone pretending to be the friend advising him to be at the docks at am when he will observe what is going on. This is a trap as one of the men dead in a well is his friend and informant. Fazio who has a glancing bullet at his neck is also hit on the head prior to being thrown down the well, but manages to turn the tables and one of the other men falls while the other runs off after an exchange of fire. Fazio dazed goes off and hides in a nearby cave hoping to recover. The next he remembers is a car driving at speed into the cave so he shoots fortunately missing Salvo and another officer. Fazio recovers at a hospital in the area for his security and is able to begin to recount what happens.

Meanwhile they are able to trace the other dead man previously married he appears to have not one but two places of stay. In one there is a powerful telescope which his ex wife says he used for spying on neighbours and which is trained on the docks The caretaker cleaner says that he appears to have a friend stay overnight from the mess she sometimes finds but there is no evidence of who. It later emerges that he had a transexual lover with whom he stays at another accommodation and who was involved with a smuggling enterprise of some kind. This later is established as moving Russian Mafia supplied chemical weapons to a Middle East Country and in fact the fleet owner is implicated and not the innocent he proclaimed. The informant had been tortured to find out what he had told Fazio who had been set up to find out what he knew and then killed when it was appreciated he had little Knowledge. Fortunately Fazio had been able to turn the tables.

Salvo appears attracted to a young nurse at the hospital on the first day he visits Fazio and invites her out for a meal , He encounters her again trying to find where Fazio has been moved in the hospital on the orders of the chief to protect the man. She accepts the invite and Salvo gives the key of his car plus number plate for her to wait for him until after the Fazio visit. He is not surprised when she changes her mind about sex after inviting herself to his home and he points out the three occasions she said or did things which aroused his suspicion. It was never clear if she was a nurse at the hospital or not which would have been an remarkable coincidence and story flaw if this was the case.

Her boyfriends had been the criminal who Fazio had pushed into the well and she was being forced by the other man to get information from Salvo, later to get him drunk so compromising pictures could be taken to blackmail his silence and inaction. The man heading this enterprise is a member of one of the Sicilian crime families.

The caretaker cleaner has been found murdered and interestingly the expensive and powerful telescope had been removed but Earlier with the woman shot by men on a motorbike as she opened the door. The surmise is that she used to telescope and found the info to blackmail the gang although how she had done this remains unexplained. She paid the price for her foolishness. They move of Fazio to a secure hospital bed in Vigata goes well with Mimi in charge

Mimi is also helpful in ensuring that a letter to Salvo from the dead former school friends of Fazio is put back in the flat which Salvo has broken into and then found via an official search warrant. However the concern remains how to tie in the Mafia family into the killings and Salvo has a creative idea which is to get a friend of the nurse to make a complaint against him that he has failed to investigate a report that someone one is being held at the home of the Mafia man against their will. On the insistence of the Chief Salvo goes force handed with a search warrant having also notified his media TV friend to be present albeit secretly to await developments.

At the home the wife says her husband is away but Salvo winds her up exposing that her husband was also having an affair with the transvestite and in her rage she reveals the location of the secret room where her husband and the other murderer are hiding. They are arrested with the media present and Fazio’s life is no longer threatened or the nurse. For once the relationship remains platonic. What the falling Gull has to do with the rest of the story remain unclear to me. I enjoyed the work very much and look forward to read more of the books and the remaining two episodes of the series.

The Snack Thief Part 3

One of the problems preventing full appreciation of Romanzo Criminale or the books and TV series about Montalbano is my lack of knowledge about the Italian police and criminal justice system and after reading up on Wikipedia I am only a little wiser. I was prompted to begin the study because mention was made that when Salvo runs out of petrol, in the Snack Thief, the third book in series by Andrea Camillieri, and the first to be shown as a 90 min TV film here in the UK, he has to be rescued by the Carabinieri, the Arma dei Carabinieri, to give their correct title and he pretends differently rather than admit he needed them. Why was this? I was also concerned by the different levels of superiors to which he was answerable, including any political involvement although I have decided to leave this aspect. The information is set out below*

It will be remembered that I ended part two of my writing about The Snack Thief as Montalbano was about to talk to a Secret Service officer an elf like Colonel with a video camera hidden and on. Salvo apart from the mobile phone admits ignorance of all things digital especially the computer, although at a time historically when the use as a communication and information tool by the majority of citizens was still to occur and to think that when I commenced as a salesman of office machines they were manual and one office in the still used the manual calculus. The book is written for a time before the use of phones as cameras, for Internet communication and the development of digital film and photography in general

Salvo does not reveal what his intentions are beforehand. I had thought when having returned to the restaurant where he had enjoyed a full lunch he had stayed to eat the red mullet that he had questioned the cook. What in fact he did was to purchase a couple of the fish and then prepare them as the Chef had instructed, eating in silence as is his standard and drinking wine without offering any to his visitor.

It was only when the Inspector was enjoying a coffee did the man from Rome speak and Salvo delayed him further by taking the empty cup to the sink. The Colonel said he wanted to be above board but before the man’s mission is disclosed Salvo goes back into the kitchen and brings back a large slice of Cassata but asked his visitor to continue as he wanted the ice cream to thaw before eating.

The first point the Colonel made is that they had nothing to do with the death of Aisha which he said was an accident and if they had wanted to eliminate her it would have been done straight away. The man then enquired if Salvo knew the writings of Mussolini particularly in his last writings where he said that one had to treat people as donkeys with sticks and carrots. Salvo commented that his grand father, a peasant, had said the same thing. The Secret Service man said he understood that the faxes, the interrogation with the Captain and the Prefect’s Cabinet chief had been Montalbano’s sticks while the decision not to involve the authorities in the death of Lapécora by placing all blame on the man‘s wife was the carrot. They were not unappreciative about this decision but assumed he had some purpose, a price.

While he appeared calm Montalbano guessed his guest was worked up inside about what had happened and when asking for water, Salvo made the man go into the kitchen and get what he wanted himself. Returning the Colonel explained that two years before the opposite numbers in Tunisia had asked for cooperation in neutralizing Moussa. Salvo made the officer say out loud the name of the man for the camera and now he ensured that the man also said on the record that neutralizing meant killing. After consulting the government they told the Tunisians no, but there was a development (unstated) which led them to approach the Tunisian for help and as a consequence they had become morally indebted. Montalbano intervened that whatever it was it was not moral.

The Tunisian authorities had discovered that the Terrorists favourite sister, Karima lived in Sicily and had a large circle of acquaintances. Salvo again intervened to replace ‘large circle’ with ‘select.’ Ahmed’s right hand man Fahrid, unknown to his boss was being used by the Tunisian secret service, and suggested they should use Karima and her boss Lapécora. They communicated using the imaginary business company based in Tunis. It had been news to the service that Lapécora had written letters to his wife informing on himself as mentioned by Salvo at the press conference. Salvo explained that the man had become suspicious about what the shell company was about.

Salvo asked about the blond man who had showed up from time to time to visit Fahrid and Karima and this was admitted to be the link with the Italian Secret Service. The bait was a major supply of weapons and a meeting which had to take place just offshore. Moussa had not only accepted the bait but lit the cigarette at the meeting place which identified him so they were able to kill him and no one else. It was at this point that the Captain panicked because he had not been told his passenger was to be killed; Instead of returning to his home port he had made his way into Vigáta, having thrown the man’s papers overboard and divided the 70 million in his possession among the crew.

Salvo asked if the Captain had been right to fear that they would also be neutralised. The secret service man protests that such as massacre would have been without purpose. The man said this was all he had come to say.

Montalbano decided to finish the story for him saying that Fahrid had then gone to finish off Lapécora using Karima as Montalbano had worked out earlier but he arrived to find the man already dead and thought perhaps the Italian service had acted and uncertain what was happening he panicked. He had met up with Karima and told her the brother was killed and he murders her to ensure no one remained who could reveal the true story. The Colonel congratulated Salvo on the way he worked out things and commented that it was 2 am as if seeking closure. Montalbano made a move in telephoning Fazio pretending they had a prearranged visit in such a way that his assistant knew it was urgent that he came quickly using an official squad card. He would arrive in twenty minutes.

Salvo had set the limit of their talk and the Colonel came straight to the point wanting to know what Salvo wanted. His price which Montalbano said was cheap. First the body of Karima had to be identified. He did not to disclose that the body was needed so a trust could be formed for the money she had saved to go to the boy when he became a young man. Secondly he wanted a block on the promotion which his boss had said he had to accept and that he would be moved anyway if he did not accept. The Colonel was adamant they could not help would not help with the production of the body. It is then Salvo played his card about recording their conversation on camera tape. The man told Salvo he was making a mistake and went for his phone to ring for help. Salvo smashes the man, his glasses and his phone. Fazio arrives and is told to wait in his car and to be careful. Before he left, although a teetotaller Salvo made the man drink whisky.

He called Fazio back in later to find the visitor drunk and singing having vomited over himself. Fazio was told that on arriving home his boss had found this man drunk in his car and without papers and had brought him in to sober him up. Fazio would drive the man in his car to the station and put him a cell for the rest of the night. Salvo would follow in squad car. When Fazio brought Salvo back to his home they burnt the man’s documents and placed them in a hole made in the garden and in a separate hole the smashed spectacles and mobile phone. After this he attempted to play the Cassette tape of the admission made by the colonel. It was blank. He had pressed the wrong button.

Salvos response was to get undressed and go for a cold water middle of night swim, returning to bed tired and wet. His next reported action the following day was not to visit his dying father but to go away, staying at a Trattoria to eat well, relax and think on his own. He is pleased when asked to share a table with someone of my age the man makes the point that he too likes to savour the food without conversation.

He describes the pasta with crab graceful as a ballerina and the stuffed bass with saffron leaving them breathless. I enjoyed some porridge this morning and for lunch two scrambled eggs with a little pepper and shrimps on one thick slice off white toasted bread. And this evening a chicken breast from the roasted whole chicken, bland as was the already prepared mashed potato covered with beans and tomato sauce from yesterday’s lunch with a battered white fish.

The two men agree that their cook is a genius and not surprised that the owner of a famous Parisian restaurant had tried to prize him away. His companion came for two weeks at a time to enjoy the food and was doubly delighted not just to find someone with a similar appreciation but who also played the game of Chess. I stuffed up again on reach 41 games then with my run of over 200 games of Free Cell. The man was a Professor of Philosophy who as with everyone else knew who Montalbano was from his TV appearances but pretended they did not know as he must have some reason for being there privately.

It was the following day that he was contacted by Valente his friend from Mazára who had been trying to contact him to express delight at getting his long sought transfer, another part of his deal with the Colonel. He was moving to the area of his wife’s family. Salvo reminded him that he had said something good would come from the affair.

His boss also contact to say he was upset, felt offended, because his request that Salvo should be promoted had been blocked for no reason which meant Salvo would be staying in his present position. Salvo confessed he was not just happy but doubly happy, He did not explain that this was because he felt the authorities were moving in the direction he had requested as the price for his silence about what had gone on.

The following morning he went fishing at the invitation of the Professor and found himself talking about his father and his imminent death. He admitted he could face going to hospital to see him. The Professor mentioned that he had followed Salvo‘s involvement in the case of the Terracotta Dog, an earlier book although I have seen the TV show and therefore appreciated the context in which the Professor now argued that he had noted that Salvo had abandoned his involvement in an important current case to solve one fifty years old. He suggested that this was Salvo’s way of coping with a challenging and stressful job. He cannot cope with every day reality at times hence the decision to escape to this retreat with good food and as it transpired good company. The Professor then looks the Inspector straight in the eye and asks “When will you decide to grow up” To which I would have quoted back T S Elliot, human being cannot cope with too much reality, and this is not to a sign of immaturity, the opposite is to recognise human limitation.

For lunch the Professor expressed his horror and amazement at what appeared to be meatballs. Salvo reacted differently making sure he savoured the mixture of fish, onion, hot pepper, whisked egg, salt, pepper breadcrumbs cumin and coriander. And so this bliss continued for a total of five days.

When he got back home he found that there was no meal prepared for as the note from the housekeeper explained he had not said when he was coming back so she had prepared meals each of which had been eaten so she was not prepared to do anymore until he returned. He therefore had to make do with a few olives, wine from his father’s vineyard and bread. This bring back the memory of one of the great days when I was alone at a hired villa in the South of France with its own private pool which was not overlooked. I had swam naked at regular intervals throughout the day, enjoying freshly baked crusty bread, olive, salami, pate and wine when ever I fancied throughout the day until required to go to the local railway station in late afternoon. I had taken decisions which were to affect the rest of my life in several profound ways and apart from my body in the water and the sounds of the insects there was silence occasionally broken by distant noises from the valley below. I would be back there writing this if circumstances had been different.

After finishing what was available to eat he switched on the local news for the announcement that the body of Karima Moussa had been found in a decomposed condition. She had been strangled and thrown into a deep well with her belongings. The investigating Inspector suggested she could have been killed by her pimp although here were many questions still to be answered. Salvo could not contain his excitement but soon fell into the sleep of the just, long and deep, in the chair where he was sitting.

The following day he had dinner with his boss and told him the full story. The man was disappointed to have been left out so close to his retirement.

Salvo then wrote a very letter to Livia in which he asks her marry and for them to bring up the child Françoise.

He then receives the news he had been dreading that his father’s life was coming to an end and that he should visit without delay. When he arrives at the clinic a doctor explains that his father had died two hours before. Salvo said ‘Thank you.’ The doctor did not understand this was meant for his father.

　

* The Italian Police

There are five national police forces and two local

The Carabinieri have two functions in that they serve as police to military, that is the separate army, navy and Air forces whereas here in the UK and the USA, the services have their own police divisions. In Italy the military police are independent of the armed forced which I regard as a very good thing. The other role is described as military units akin to the Gendarmerie which begs the question of what is a Gendarmerie.

Over thirty countries have this armed military controlled force and in France, the gendarmerie has crowd and riot control units (the

Gendarmerie Mobile, along with some corresponding units in the civilian police), counter-terrorism and hostage rescue (GIGN, again along with some corresponding units in the civilian police), maritime surveillance, police at sea and coast guard (Gendarmerie maritime), control and security at airports and air traffic police (Gendarmerie des transports aériens), official buildings guard, honorary services and protection of the President (Garde Républicaine), mountain rescue (Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne) and security of nuclear weapons sites. This still begs the question about their role in Italy. Wikipedia states

“Special Tasks Departments are outside the ordinary organisational framework and are used for special missions:

Corazzieri (Cuirassiers) are an elite corps and honour guard of the President of the Italian Republic, located in the Quirinal Palace. They are distinguished by their uniforms and height (the minimum height for admission is 190 cm, or 6 feet 3 inches). They have almost no other everyday duties, although they may be seen patrolling occasionally. Other departments are in service to constitutional bodies such as the Presidency of the Republic, the Senate, Parliament, the Judiciary, the Prime Minister and the National Council of Economy and Labour. Carabinieri also perform military police and security duties for the Ministry of Defence, military high commands, the offices of the military judiciary and allied military organisations in Italy and abroad. They also have personnel attached to the Department of Public Security in various departments, as well as anti-Mafia and anti-drug investigative task forces. Carabinieri officers are charged with surveillance and security at Italian embassies and consulates abroad, performing the same services entrusted to the United States Marine Corps in US diplomatic and consular offices. Together with the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza, the Carabinieri is also responsible for border control.”Because they are military trained and employed they have been used in Italian Peace and other International Missions including in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The second National Force is the Guardia di Finanza which Wikipedia states

is a corps of the

Italian Army under the authority of the Minister of Economy and Finance, with a role as police force. The Corps is in charge of financial, economic, judiciary and public safety: tax evasion, financial crimes, smuggling, money laundering, international illegal drug trafficking, illegal immigration, customs and borders checks, copyright violations, anti-Mafia operations, credit card fraud, cybercrime, counterfeiting, terrorist financing, maintaining public order, and safety, political and military defence of the Italian borders

The

Guardia di Finanza has around 68,000 militaries among agents, NCOs and officers. Its agents are in service in the Europol and the European Anti-Fraud Office. Its Latin motto since 1933 is Nec recisa recedit (English: Not Even Broken Retreats). The Guardia di Finanza also maintains over 600 boats and ships and more than 100 aircraft to fulfil its mission of patrolling Italy's territorial waters.”

“The Polizia di Stato (State Police) is the civil national

police of Italy. Along with patrolling, investigative and law enforcement duties, it patrols the Autostrada (Italy's Express Highway network), and oversees the security of railways, bridges and waterways. It is a civilian police force, while the Carabinieri are military. While its internal organization and mindset is somewhat military, its personnel is composed of civilians. Its headquarters are in Rome, and there are Regional and Provincial divisions throughout Italian territory. A program Polizia di Quartiere has been implemented which increases police presence and deter crime. Pairs of poliziotti (policemen) or carabinieri patrol areas of major cities on foot. Its critics contend that these efforts are ineffective, as the areas with the greatest concentration of crime are being neglected.”

“The Polizia Penitenziaria (Prison Guards, literally Penitentiary Police) operate the Italian prison system and handle the transportation of inmates. The training academy for the Polizia Penitenziaria is located in

Aversa.”

“The Corpo Forestale dello Stato (National Forestry Department) is responsible for law enforcement in Italian national parks and forests. Their duties include enforcing poaching laws, safeguarding protected animal species and preventing forest fires. Founded in 1822, the Corpo Forestale dello Stato is a civilian police force specialised on the environmental protection. A recent law reform expanded its duties to food controls. In Italy it has the responsibility to manage the activities related to the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species)”

If you understand the above and are convinced that everyone works together and there is no duplication, then you will be confident about the two other forces which are controlled at local level.

The “Polizia provinciale

are small police organisations and their main duties are to enforce regional and national hunting and fishing laws but have also expanded into environmental protection. The forces' vehicles are usually white with a green or blue stripe along the side. As they are not considered national Police organizations, armaments (when allowed) is left to the initiative of the individual officers, and as such most of polizia provinciale members have to rely on firearms normally sold on the civilian market; seen the normal duties of such organizations, most of the firearms used by their members are hunting rifles or shotguns. However, when on-duty, the provincial police officers can be issued with some kind of equipment normally not available to civilians, such as

generation-3 and above night-vision devices, used especially in anti-poaching operations.

The polizia municipale are the

municipal police of Italy responsible to the mayors of the various municipalities of Italy. Traffic control is their main function in addition to enforcing statal, regional and local laws regarding commerce, legal residence, pets and other administrative duties. They also have all other police duties, with the exception of public safety, because this is an exclusive duty of the Polizia di Stato and Polizia Municipale has just an auxiliary function.

The Italian polizia municipale (PM) forces have 60,000 employees, Rome having the largest at several thousand. PM uniforms and vehicles have many different liveries depending on regional laws and local tastes and traditions.

Some municipal police, including those of Rome, are known as the vigili urbani (urban watch), and thus derive their name from the

vigiles of ancient Rome. In other regions of Italy, these forces are also called polizia comunale, polizia urbana, and polizia locale. In the autonomous province of Bolzano/Bozen, where German is an official language, the municipal police is also called Stadtpolizei or Gemeindepolizei. Municipal police vehicles in this region have both Italian and German names on them.

In the autonomous region of

Aosta Valley, where French is an official language, the municipal police is also called police municipale. Municipal police vehicles in this region have both Italian and French names on them.

Municipal police officers are still referred to as vigili (singular: vigile, meaning watchful, alert) but the official name is agente di polizia locale (APL), meaning 'local police officer'. In some regions, especially while regulating traffic, they wear white

custodian helmets similar to the black helmets worn by British police officers”

I will try and find out about the Italian Secret Service and the political system at local level in relation to other Montalbano Books as well as writing about Sicily.

The Snack Thief part two

I thought I would be able to continue to write the second part of the Snack Thief, by Andrea Camilleri, the third book in the series about the work, loves and eating habits of Commissario Salvo Montalbano, the creative, at times inspirational State Police Inspector in the Italian station of Vigáta in Sicily, without delay or difficulty, but when I came to begin last night I quickly appreciated that a number of questions had to be answered and which would involve several quick rereadings of the novel.

In the first part I had explained that his deputy, Mimi, had taken on the investigation of the death of a Tunisian Fisherman when the fishing boat on which he worked was fired upon by a Tunisian military patrol vessel claiming it was attempting to stop the fishing boat because it had strayed into Tunisian waters without permission at night and without lights. The fishing boat Captain claimed they were in International waters and had come to Vigáta, the nearest port in Italian Waters rather than return to their home port of Mazára del Vallo fearing that the Tunisians would continue to fire at them if they continued in that direction..

Because I know, or thought I knew the full story I had made an assumption about the location of the port of Mazára del Vallo, and now I am still unsure except that it within a days drive and is very cosmopolitan because at one point a senior police chief tells Montalbano that Mazára is a kind of open town where migrants from North Africa and the Balkans come and go as they please without the authorities being able keep any kind of proper track whatever was expected of them by the central government in Rome.

Take the dead Tunisian fisherman for example; a man who the local free TV station declared was called Ben Dahab who had been on the boat for the first time. The fishing boat was part of a cooperative which agreed to take on at least one Tunisian per voyage, or perhaps it is one migrant worker possessing appropriate papers to live and work. In this instance the TV programme emphasised not only was this the first time the man had worked on this or any other boat from the port but almost nothing was known about him as he appeared to have no family or friends. It was established that he was 32 years of age and from Sfax in Tunisia.

It was the moment when a photo of the man was shown on the television that Salvo’s part time wife of six years walked in with the Snack Thief, five year old Francois, the child of Karima, the cleaning woman and provider of special services who had been employed by Aurilio Lapécora, the Importer and Exporter who had been found murdered in the lift of his apartment block, the case which Salvo was investigating.

When searching her two room two story little cottage with the help of Aisha, a fellow Tunisian who acted as a grandmother to the boy, caring for him while his mother worked or occasionally spent a night away as she had done the night before the murder there had been a commotion in the town with parents surrounding a policeman complaining that a child had been attacking their children and stealing the snack food the children were taking to school for their mid morning break. Salvo had gone with his force during the night and found the boy who he was convinced, as he had rightly concluded that this was the child of Karima who had been told to run off and hide by his mother when she was stopped from taking a bus on the day of the murdered Lapécora by a man regarded by Aisha as a bad man. Later established as Fahrid, for the way he treated her friend. It was also evident from the observations of an invalid woman, Signora Cozzo, who’s flat overlooked the front room of Lapécora that in addition having sex with Karima, that Fahrid was conducting an activity when he visited, including phone calls and correspondence.

On seeing the TV the boy had exclaimed that the man was his uncle, that is not Ben Dahab but Ahmed Moussa and that the surname of Karima was therefore also Moussa. So what this official statement about the man as Ben Dahab? From having had the beginnings of an explanation for the murder of Lapécora Montalbano was now not sure. He had become certain that Karima had gone to the home of Lapécora the night before and had been hidden by him in a room where her perfume was evident when Salvo visited later that day. According to his wife who Salvo had made show him what she had done that morning before leaving her husband asleep and taking the bus to visit her sister, recovering from cancer and she has been doing several times a week, she had not gone into the room and was therefore unaware her rival was in her home. Salvo also had a theory that Karima had made Lapécora let her stay over night so she could open the door for Fahrid to kill her employer him and now this appeared related to death of Karima’s brother.

From the information to hand Commissario Salvo Montalbano was also convinced that the five year old Françoise would not see his mother again. His long term woman companion Livia had immediately taken to the boy. The child had been ravenous on arrival at his home and then fallen asleep, later to be found sleeping in her arms.

Salvo quickly came to resent the child being in his home as the boy brought out all her pent up maternal longings within Livia so she cancelled her flight and made arrangements for her work to be covered and in a heart to heart with Salvo accepted that they were unlikely to marry for years because he was as he is and if they did eventually she was likely to have passed child bearing so this was her opportunity to have a child, if the boy was an orphan.

The position turned again after he saw the boy running away along the beach in tears calling for his mother. He followed and although a language barrier was between them they quickly came to understand each other as the boy appeared to recognise he would never see his mother again and Salvo shared his own experience of losing his mother and being alone. The boy expressed opposition to being placed in a residential home and Salvo made a commitment that this would not happen and the bond between them was established just as strong as between the boy and Livia.

However he soon also reached the view that the boy should not stay with them and he arranges for his Deputy to find someone safe, his married sister with two boys who live on one of the smaller islands to the main island of Sicily and he also sends Livia back to Genoa, although why he did not suggest she took the boy with her is not covered, perhaps he did not want the bond between her and the boy to become even stronger.

His motive was to protect the boy. Salvo had persuaded his chief to put pressure on the licensing authority to provide the ownership of the vehicle the priest cyclist who witnessed the boy’s mother being held against her wishes or so it seemed to him and he had had noted down the registration number. Usually such requests would take weeks so there was surprise and then dismay when the response came back quickly, the ownership of the vehicle was protected. The state security services were a law unto themselves, using criminals including the mafia to do their bidding and with links to politicians and political party interests

It is as the two cases have became connected that Salvo turns his attention to establishing the true circumstances of the death of the brother, no fisherman and who was behind the story of the event presented to the media by the Tunisian authorities and which appeared to be supported in general by the Italian government, and why?

He visits Mazára the following day and the Vice Commissioner Valente who had gone to a judge and obtained a warrant so they could search the room of the alleged fisherman as soon as Salvo arrived.

According to the landlady of the rented accommodation the man was well spoken and appeared well bred, a man of distinction who had arrived ten days before and wanted to stay another ten days having offered to pay for the whole month in advance. She had asked for 900000 expecting him to bargain like other Arabs and settled for five or six hundred thousand but he had pulled out a fat wad of 100000 bills and handed nine without hesitation. When the body of the man was examined at Vigáta he had only 10000 lire on him and no passport. The only thing of interest is that they found a plane ticket from Rome to Palermo ten days previously.

The next person contacted is an elementary school teacher who acted as a link with the Tunisian Community where the local school was providing a unit for Tunisian children and this had attracted attention in the home country and a paper published an article in the school earlier in the year and Ben Dahab had contacted and introduced himself as a journalist wanting to write about the local Tunisian people. He wanted to be regarded as another immigrant looking for a job and said he wanted to sign on a fishing boat. He had integrated well into the local community and they had met a few times. They, his group which had a fund had paid for the funeral. They had attended a festival and a photographer had taken a photo about which the man had protested. However following his death and the publicity when a TV crew arrived he had passed to them the photo that had been taken.

The school teacher then disclosed he had telephoned the paper in Tunis to make arrangement for the return of the body to be told the journalist was at his desk. He was unable to help with information about relatives elsewhere in Sicily.

When they asked if the name Ahmed Moussa meant anything the school man paled and explained that this was the name of a Terrorist - a blood thirsty killer so what had such a man to do with their enquiries? When they told him the man said he felt ill in a feeble voice. Three years before Moussa had blown up a cinema showing a cartoon film aimed for young children where it could be said the lucky ones died while the rest were blinded, maimed and some disabled for life. His group were an extreme nationalist faction viewed with suspicion by other fundamentalists. A large bounty had been placed on his head by the Tunisian government. The schoolmaster said his response was not one of fear but horror that he had been involved with cold blooded killer of young children.

The information also had impact on Salvo and Valente who ordered coffee which they drank in silence reflecting on what they had learned. It was evident that Moussa had not signed on to fish or in anticipation of being killed. They decided to summon the Captain of the fishing boat to hear what his story was in the new circumstances. Later Salvo speculated back at the office that Ahmed had put to sea either to be put ashore in Tunisia secretly or to meet someone off shore, an explanation which Salvo favoured most.

There was then an incident which only after reading the whole book the significance is explained and one of the mysteries solved. Salvo runs out of petrol on his way back to the office and has to be rescued by the Carabinieri, and such is the relationship between the two forces that Salvo has to pretend that something else happened for his delay. However it is at this point that he sees two passenger carrying and stopping buses come to a halt at stops on either side of the road at the same time going in opposite directions to and from the same destinations.

It is also at this time that men come forward after seeing the pictures of Karima and her son to admit they hired the woman as a cleaner and were provided with additional service for additional payments. On the assumption that all the men have come forward having assumed that if they did not do so, the Commissario believed he had obtained her full schedule, Salvo was then able to calculate her monthly and annual earnings and the grand total for the time she is known to have been on the Island. Even assuming she received significantly more from Lapécora there was a huge gap between the savings from her income and the amount in the pass book, about twice as much again.

The statement from the Tunisians authorities after the Italian formal protest was also something which further aroused Salvo’s concerns and suspicions as they stick to their story that the boat was in their waters near the town from which Karima and Ahmed had come that the military patrol boat had fired warning shots for the fishing boat without lights to stop and when it continued there was a further burst of fire which killed one of those on board who by coincidence and fortunately happened to be one of their own nationals, and who by now Salvo knew had been a dangerous Terrorist maniac with a price on his head.

It was the child Françoise who provided the precipitating inspiration for Salvo to begin to understand how all the pieces of the mystery so far might fit together, or more accurately it was his Deputy, who fancied Livia and brought a jigsaw puzzle for the child to play as the excuse of calling on her when she was alone without Salvo to hand. Livia had told Salvo how quickly the child had put the pieces together and then the child expressed a view which first dumbfounded the Inspector and then made him declare the boy a genius and his Deputy a great asset for his action in providing the jigsaw. The boy had commented that Jigsaws were easy to do because the pieces were cut in such a way to make the one picture and he thought it would be better if this was not so and it was possible to create several pictures with the same pieces. Now I do not for a moment accept that the child was able to express such a profound thought which to my mind goes to the heart of the police failure around the world to often convict the wrong person for a crime or for others to reach conclusions, politicians and media especially about a situation because of the information presented to them but which is in fact only one conclusion of several possible from the information to hand. We too readily listen to the facts as they are presented and say yes 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 makes 10 but if you sit in a court you will find that another person, usually the defendant will argued that from these numbers which may be accepted if you add one more or subtract one less, you will get a different total. The point the boy was making and one which I have found from experience is that although the numbers do add to ten, it is a different ten if you add 3 to 2 and then 4 to 1 although the amount is that same it is different because of the way the numbers are added together. The same pieces provide more than one way of looking at the information, more than one picture more than one solution and it is therefore dangerous to accept the first solution without exploring if there are others just as valid

It was not what happened to Ahmed which Salvo directed his attention but to the fact that it was possible for Mrs Lapécora to take the bus from Vigáta to Fiacca where her sister lived get off and then return home, having produced evidence that she had got the bus before the death of her husband but quickly returned by getting on the bus from Fiacca to Vigáta as witnessed by Salvo albeit much later in the day. Inspection of the bus timetables and contact with the drivers of the said buses was the next step because this was a journey which the woman had made several times a week ever since her sister had been diagnosed with cancer and was therefore recognised.

Salvo was now able to work out that not only had Lapécora’s wife done this but it was possible for her to have then got to Fiacca only an hour later than her statement had stated. Had she and not Karima killed her husband? Curious more curious! Perhaps the two events were not connected in the way Salvo and his colleagues and commenced to believe? While they waited to interview the woman again the opportunity came to interview the Captain of the fishing boat.

The Captain, and owner of the vessel, the Santopadre, Angelo Prestia, was a fat sweaty man and Valente and Salvo were initially unable to get him to tell the truth and he passed the buck to one Commendatore Mario Spadaccia, Chief of the Cabinet, (but at what level of government in relation to the Police I remain in ignorance. He had provided the Captain with his card for such an enquiry. (I will report the complexity of law enforcement in Italy as well as the complex structure of the State police system at the end of part three).

Spadaccia explained that he had been asked to assist the Tunisian authorities by his boss on the basis of arranging for a journalist investigating conditions to sign on a fishing boat whose captain he knew would cooperate. It was at this point that Salvo’s boss telephoned to advise that the car number driven by the man who had abducted Karima belonged to the Italian Secret Service. The first action of Salvo was to arrange for Karima’s friend Aisha to be taken to a place of safety. His second was get his deputy to pick up the child and take him to a place of Safety and the third was tell Livia to get out of town.

In confirming that Valente agreed his new understanding Salvo enlighten us the reader who may not have made 10 from 1,2,3,4. The wanted Terrorist Ahmed Moussa had used the man Fahrid, he who visited Karima and had abducted her in a car provided by the Italian Secret Service, to blackmail Lapécora into using his Import and Export business as a front for some as yet unknown purpose. Ahmed comes to Italy believing he has the support/protection of the Italian Secret service for his Movement/ cause with a view to having an off shore meeting of some kind unaware that the Italian and Tunisian secret services are in cahoots in a plan to get rid of him and his sister and indeed anyone else who could identify involvements, the boy the old lady carer and Lapécora himself, perhaps even his wife had she remained at home that day.

Although convinced Karima was dead and disappeared Salvo gets his colleagues and the media to intensify the search for the boy and the mother and he formally asks the registration authorities to identify the owner of the vehicle as the woman is wanted for the murder of Lapécora. He has a plan which is only revealed towards the end of the book.

He is a realist about the powers of the state and politicians, and of the Mafia. He therefore often works towards achieving a sense of justice as fairness which is outside official system. His trusted assistant Fazio goes to the apartment of Lapécora while the widow is away and removes a small cup from the display cabinet which is placed in an evidence bag together with the knife used to kill her husband.

With Livia taking sleeping ills before her journey back to Genoa, Salvo leaves his apartment with all the change available and goes to a local street phone to make a number of calls.

His media contact is advised to someone with a camera outside police headquarters in the morning and then a favour, a small remote control video camera that is silent. He then made a call to the boss of the head of Cabinet at Trapani pretending to be a newspaper from Milan exposing a story about the alleged fisherman and the role of himself and the Secret Service. Salvo is convinced that the man was being honest in his ignorance which convinces that the head of the Cabinet misled or lied.

He then advises Valente that the whole thing had been set by Spadaccia and arranges to see him the following day...

He then contacts Mimi was his last coin to establish where the boy is now located and Mimi protests about the way Livia had looked at him when he had taken the boy away to sister on an isolated farm with her husband and two sons of similar age.

He used up all his spare coinage knowing that the home telephone was likely to be listened to by the security services or someone on their behalf. Livia was in bed already asleep having taken sleeping pills angry at him, saying she wanted the boy but ready to depart to her home the following day.

Following his leak of some of the truth, local station media was issuing denials by the Tunisian authority claiming that there were a dozen men with the name of the man killed. His friend brought the camera requested and shows him how it works.

The following day he left before Livia awoke and he knew his note advising that Mimi would take her to the airport was inadequate even though it also said he would phone later in the day. When he arrived at the police headquarters he found Fazio anxious having failed to make contact unaware that the phone had been switched off. Aisha had been found dead at her home. Montalbano punched himself in the face for failing to save his witness. It appeared the woman had been unable to keep away from her home and returned to meet her destiny with death. He visited and arranged to get an official report on the death.

He then visited a notary he knew with the bank book and established that in order for a trust to be set up so the boy would inherit when of age he needed proof of the death of his mother/ He obtained a receipt for the book after asking the notary to hold for him.

He then summoned Lapécora’s widow to the station and wrote again vehicle registration authorities demanding they private the name and address of the owner of Security Service vehicle as the owner was wanted in connection with the murders of Karima and Aisha,

He would have admit that with the help of Fazio he tricked Mrs Lapécora into admitting that she had killed her husband after finding out that the Karima had been in her home and then tried to put the blame on Karima. THe motive was not jealousy but self protection in the sense that she wanted to stop the flow marital funds to the woman with the 200 million transferred to her/the last straw.

Early for his meting with Valente and the Commendatore Spadaccia Salvo stops at a restaurant for lunch, a sauté of clams in bread crumbs, a roast turbot with oregano and caramelised lemon and a butter chocolate timbale in orange sauce.

Spadaccia immediately admitted it was not his boss who asked him to arrange the visit of Moussa but a Ministry in Rome. This was all Salvo said he wanted confirmed which infuriated the Commendatore no end, but served the purpose of bringing him face to face with Ship’s captain as he arrived to be interviewed again. Angelo Prestia simmered in the next office while they enjoyed a cigarette in silence. Salvo suggested that Angelo had participated in premeditated murder and that the Commendatore had made a sworn statement saying he had never met or had contact with the Captain. They then sent the man away bewildered.

Salvo explained that he has lit the fuse which would blow up when the two me to work out what was going on. They considered that the captain had become too well known following the media attention to be silenced in the way of the two women. On his way home he passes the restaurant where he had lunch and then turns his vehicle around abruptly and goes to cook to check how he prepared his striped mullet which no doubt he then enjoys.

The following morning Salvo went to see his boss to explain the story to date but also a deliberate planned lie that the vehicle number he had given to be checked was the wrong one and therefore the vehicle did not belong to the secret service.

When he arrives at his desk he finds a letter from a friend of his father to say that the man was dying of cancer and that he has only a few days to live. A year before when Salvo had been wounded Livia said his father had phoned her every day although he had only once come to see him in when he was convalescing.

He then spends the day alone reflecting wondering how the situation has come about that the had stopped communicating directly. Later he phones his boss to explain why he would not be coming to dinner and that meal of pasta in squid ink. He was invited because the boss wanted announce his early retirement early and at the same time to say he was recommending a promotion for Salvo, a promotion which would involve a move from Vigáta. He then got iron his car and went to a town where three films were showing and chose a film for children which because it was late there was no one in cinema except himself. He found himself laughing out loud at some of the funny moments.

On return home late he spotted the vehicle of Colonel Lohengrin Pera of the Italian Security services waiting for him a man of such short stature that Salvo refers to him as an elf. He sits the man down makes an excuse to put away a book and sets the camera rolling.