Dieser Beitrag enthält Werbung – advertising
Source: pixabay
(no English version so far!)
When Gina had come here for the first time, she had described the fruit and vegetable gardens as a “work of art”. There was something growing everywhere, hardly an area was unused, which was mainly due to the sophisticated irrigation system that Rizzi had developed with his father over the years. But where Gina admired the beauty of wildly climbing vines, Rizzi saw that the branches had to be cut back, shoots clipped and the soil loosened. He knew every shrub, bush and tree here, had played hide and seek among the vines as a child and built dens among the brambles and dwarf palms.
Now it was time to decide how to continue with the gardens, whether they could manage with two assistants during the main harvest season or whether they should think about employing the men permanently to relieve Vito – who was not getting any younger – and whether the gardens would still be profitable with the current yields.
But Vito could no more be bothered with such considerations than with the topics of “organic” or “sustainability”. …
For the next few hours they worked silently: the father on the ground while Rizzi reached into the tops of the small trees. Vito plucked the peaches like a machine, while Rizzi worked with the scissors, taking a few leaves from each fruit as a decorative bonus. …
After they had loaded the boxes, Vito set off to deliver the harvest to the shops and restaurants and take orders for the next week. Rizzi looked at his watch. It was just before nine. He still had an hour. …
“There’s a dead man.”
from: Mitten im August
(own translation)
Duties of Policemen and the Rest of Life – or the Other Way Round …
Enrico Rizzi and Antonia Cirillo are policemen – patrolmen. They are stationed on Capri and deal with traffic offences and other petty crime. Rizzi was born on Capri, knows all the corners of the island and of course all the inhabitants, well: almost all of them. Cirillo comes from the north of Italy, was demoted and transferred to Capri. What she has done … there is no concrete information about that at first. She is a stranger on the island and always gets into trouble, because the sweet southern Italian life doesn’t quite fit in with the northern Italian way of life.
Capri is a bit like a little heaven on earth, especially for the many tourists. Trouble with the tourists and shrewd residents who earn their money from tourism is the order of the day, but then there is a death that definitely has no natural cause. Rizzi and Cirillo investigate … There is another dead man who … and so it goes on. Capital crimes do happen on Capri from time to time.
Capri falls under the jurisdiction of the Naples homicide squad, which does not necessarily suit the local police. The colleagues from the mainland are also not particularly enthusiastic when they have to go to the island, which is rather unfamiliar territory for all of them. Cooperation is the order of the day, i.e. the colleagues from the mainland give out orders and the colleagues on Capri have to jump.
So much for the theory …
On the one hand, Enrico is a policeman with heart and soul and loves his scooter, with which he races all over the island. At the same time, he is the pillar of support for his father, who cultivates extensive gardens where typical fruit and vegetables are grown. His family earns its living by growing fruit and vegetables, the products of which are processed in the island’s numerous restaurants and hotels. It is back-breaking work – also for Enrico – and Enrico’s father is no longer the youngest by now …
It takes Enrico time to keep up with the demands of the family business in addition to his police job. The rest of life takes its toll on him … When he is offered a job in Naples, he refuses. Likewise, he renounces an advanced training course. It remains exciting to see which career Enrico will ultimately choose.
He is around thirty, was married; the marriage was divorced when their young son died as a baby. Enrico now lives with a woman, also divorced, and her daughter. Enrico’s father is pushing for them to marry and bring a son into the world. Let’s wait and see what happens.
Antonia, around forty, used to be an investigator until she ended up as a patrol officer on Capri. What exactly she did, what she screwed up, where she screwed up … remains in the dark for the time being. She was married and is now divorced. Her private life must have played a role in the professional disaster. Her ex-husband now lives in Sweden with their son, so Antonia only has a video relationship with her son. Let’s see what else comes to light and what happens.
In the meantime, she has met a man with whom she forms tender bonds. She finds it difficult to let go and accept her new life. She is still settling in on Capri … and she doesn’t always understand why Enrico simply turns a blind eye here and there. By the way, Antonia is also the one who mostly writes the minutes and struggles with the administration. Enrico likes to push these tasks onto her desk.
So we have Rizzi and Cirillo and murder cases on Capri – and their exhausting and not uninteresting private lives. Both like to investigate on their own, which sometimes backfires, but in the end they find the culprit(s) – and triumph over their colleagues from Naples. On the other hand, the murder cases are closely linked to Capri, long-established families, migrants, seasonal workers, wealthy owners of holiday homes … Capri ambience surrounds the cases, which the colleagues from Naples cannot necessarily comprehend.