Rounding the Mark

Rounding the Mark is the sixth Andrea Camilleri book in the Montalbano police detective series that I have enjoyed reading over the first weeks of August 2013. I should have read the Scent of the Night, the next book in sequence but in fact Round the Mark has a great connection with Excursion to Tindari the previous book reviewed which covered the exploiting, maiming and murder of poor people, frequently migrants, for their organs by a Mafia funded and organised operation!!!!

In this book Montalbano, given his age and foodie lifetsyle, takes one of his long and potentially dangerous swims given his proneness to cramp and encounters a badly decomposed body which he manages to get ashore by using his swimming trunks much to the horror of a visiting couple whose husband keep Montalbano at bay until his colleague police officers and a TV camera arrive to give the scene a national significance.

Who is this man and how he got to where he is found is the first question followed by did Inspector Salvo Montalbano do the right thing in reuniting an illegal migrant runaway with his mother? Readers of this brilliant series will also ask what is the connection between the two events?

The book begins with Montalbano trying to work off one of his evening meal extravaganzas` where he has a tendency to consume several portions of some delicacy, presumably without side dishes, at times wolfing if he does not concentrate, hence the need to eat in silence even when he has excellent company. In this instance he mentions baby octopus a strascinasali, baby fish boiled in salted water and then dressed in olive oil and lemon juice which I have in stock but the baby octopus does not appeal while and sardines beccaficio- headless cleaned sardines stuffed with sautéed bread crumbs, pine nuts and anchovies all I have except the pine nuts but which I will try.

During the book the owner of the Trattoria where Salvo has many meals announces he is to retire and this cause the Inspector great anxiety and various trips in search of a replacement home from home. His daily help creates one meal a day and the Inspector is not content with making do with cheese, olives, salted sardines and salami as a second meal of the day. After experimenting in half a dozen places the one found which is passable involves a car journey which being such a busy man created problems. He therefore takes up a suggestion of a Trattoria recommended by a friend of his deputy Mimi. The owner chef Enzo and been waiting for him to arrive having heard thought the grapevine the Calvary, the Inspector faced.

He has an antipasto of salted octopus followed by the pasta with a sauce off squid ink(There are 12 results for this on Amazon). He then has a fish grill which included mullet, sea bass and gilthead reminding of what if the great meals experience when visiting in Northern France one year commencing with a whole dressed crab on shell and claws to crack with a bottle of white Sancerre, followed by a red mullet with more wine and the crème caramel before coffee. I still have the receipt somewhere.

As the pressure of the case built up Salvo rejects beef roulades left for him by the daily help and goes to the Trattoria Enzo for more spaghetti in squid ink followed by crispy fried calamaretti. As his mood improves he enjoys a pasta ncasiata from the oven. Having persuaded his married Swedish friend Ingrid to assist in his inquiry she takes him out for meal comprising a dish of ditalini in a sauce of fresh and properly salted ricotta with pecorino and black pepper on top. The second course was costi imbriachi, drunken pork ribs drowning in wine and tomato concentrates. He is supposed to pay but forgets his wallet.

All this food makes my hungry for good cooking but I am unlikely to try making most of the top ten public voted Italian dishes which were broadcast on More Four on Saturday August 10^th 2013 and which would have sent Salvo into raptures of ecstasy with the insistence on freshly made with the best ingredients, except there was little mention of the fish other than part of a pasta dish with, clams. The most favoured was the Pizza, not surprising and the gelato form of ice cream. I was most interested by the making of lasagne and an aubergine dish, and noted the meat balls with polenta, the wild mushroom risotto, the brochette options and the tiramisu plus finding out for the first time was is gnocchi placing the recipes in my More Four scrap book just in case. I also discovered that I have a recipe book at home on the pasta which was given when I purchased a Fiat motor car one time. All making me very hungry again at writing so I had two ready made omelettes with cheese (£1) from frozen with my coffee followed by a glass of lemonade for breakfast and a few dried figs to get me going for the rest of the writing. For lunch there is a pork chop, jacket potato and corn on the cob while later afternoon there was smoked mackerel, a cheese toastie and red grapes all with lashings of lemonade.

Back to the book the problem Detective and the faces is that while body had been dead and presumably in the sea of a month at the time it was found it could only have been in the particular current for short time and from along a short distance fo coast otherwise the current would above taken long long distance further. The answer found much later is that the body was trapped in a secret small harbour attached to one of the properties put up without planning permission, part of the new towns of such properties created along this part of the Sicilian coast. The three towns although unauthorized have electricity, running water, sewerage and gas etc and pay taxes to the appropriate municipality. These property eventually get amnesty with the officer adding that there are also several houses built on the beach. This is the significant information which Salvo will eventually follow up,

The next phase of the story begins when Salvo becomes involved in the daily arrival of migrants(tourists) taken from captured or rescued stranded vessels and spots a young body breaking from the crowd who he then finds hiding in the docks and befriends reminding of his experience of the lad in the Snack Thief who he and Livia planned to adopt before the child made it plain he wanted to stay with the sister of Mimi, her husband and their two sons. When the boy is claimed by a female migrant with other children, Salvo reunites but notes the reluctance almost pleading of the boy. The mother has an accident and is taken to the local hospital by an ambulance that is regularly on hand to deal with medical problems arising for the daily arrivals and rescues. However when Montalbano goes to see the boy and his mother at the hospital he finds there is no record and a nurse later contacts to say that on returning to the hospital she had seen a woman mother with boys getting into the car a little way from the hospital and who had not appeared injured in anyway..

The Inspector then learns that the boy is found run down and killed by a car on an isolated roadway leading to or from the new towns, where the witness although from his vantage point did not have a clear view has the impression that the vehicle deliberately changed course to hit the child. Salvo understandably is very upset. This has a traumatic effect who announces to Livia he has arranged to see the Commissioner of Police to give his resignation. Meanwhile he goes over his recollection of what happened at the dockside and this leads him to make inquiries about the Ambulance paramedic.

His assistant Fazio finds out interesting things about the man such as the shop inherited by his wife burned down from arson after failure to pay protection money. However he appears to accept the Mafia involvement, expands and gets into debt with Mafia Loan Sharks. Salvo dresses up like a gangster after having a few business cards printed and engaging the help of Ingrid (the Swedish wife he assisted in a previous case) and goes to the gift shop run by the wife of ambulance paramedic to buy a present for a friend who is getting married. The impact of the visit to cause the paramedic to ask to see Salvo at home rather wait for their morning appointment.

The terrified man confirms that he has been part fo a racket helping to bring in migrant children and escaping from the authoritative by feigning an accident and need for medical help which he is on hand to take to the hospital with the help of the driver who he pays off and then enables the woman and her charges to leave just before the hospital to be picked up by the car. He admits to doing this before involving adults and children. He had given the boy a sedative to quieten him. Salvo is so angered he hits the man and blackmails him into agreeing to go through with the next request that comes, keeping the Inspector informed throughout.

During these events the team tries to find out the identity of the dead man discovered by the Inspector when swimming he is contacted by an investigative journalist who Caterella and his ability to mispronounces everything says is Pontius Pilot. On returning home has found a letter delivered from the Journalist Fonzo Spala who having seen him TV wants to meet and talk to him about his investigation into the involvement of the Mafia and illegal immigrants.

In order to have some break through Salvo gets forensics to create an image for the dead man who is recognised as Ernesto Errera, a fugitive for two years with a long criminal record but this only adds to the mystery because the man in question died previously and was buried. However Salvo remains open minded and when someone like the man in the made up photo is reported to have been seen since the alleged burial in an area of the new towns and from a small group of private and secluded villa on the beach or with sea access, he investigates further. One of the witnesses at a garage recognises not only the man but also boy who was run down. It is evident he had been taken to a property from which he has run away and then run down. The two cases have become linked.

Salvo arranges to hire a dingy to be taken along the coast so he can view the isolated and now vacant holiday villas and discovers one with warning lights for an entrance avoiding the rocks and where there is a metal barrier into a mini harbour immediately below the property. The property was created by an American Italian known for criminality, but has been recently rented out.

Salvo has the tendency to discuss his cases which ever one fo his women folk admirers has his company and after their meal out it is Ingrid who provides the information which reveals that one of her recent lovers is that same man found by the Inspector when swimming. This is a believable coincidence given the nature fo Sicilian society and the range of affairs which Ingrid enjoys.. They had met queuing for petrol. The man was married to a girl from Cosenza who died after two years. The man she knew as Ernesto D’Iunio looked as being Ernesto Errera fugitive.

The relationship had only lasted two months and she had ended because of concerns about the man. He had cancelled arrangements to meet three times arranging to see her the following night although on the third occasion she had not gone. The second confirmatory breakthrough comes when he receives through the post a paper clipping for the death of Mr Errera that he had only been identified from documents in his wallet, the body being smashed from being it by a train in the Cosenza area! Things moved fast as next the paramedic contacted after being told to be ready for another pick up.

Salvo also meets with the journalist whose investigation concerns the trafficking in immigrant children who come in their thousands alone from Albania, Rumania, former Yugoslavia and Moldavia, Morocco , Algeria, Turkey, Iraq, Bangladesh etc. The main purpose is use them for organ transplants, to sell to paedophiles or to become part of he begging rackets.

The journalist had come to Vigate because one of the key figures of Mafia involvement in the trafficking was seen in the area, a thirty year old with an army of killers to hand and that it was believe that in the area was a holding and sorting facility for those who would be passed on, sold, or move into terrorist cells Events them move fast with Salvo getting into major difficulties from an underwater explore and then being shot in the shoulder in an exchange of fire with one of the lieutenants involved in this horrific criminal trade.They find a group of terrified children who have been unloaded directly from the smuggling vessel to the house.