The Shape of Water

by Andrea Camilleri

  “One question, signora, which has been troubling me for some time. Why weren’t you concerned to make it known that your husband hadn’t returned . . . ?

  What I mean is, wasn’t it disturbing that your husband didn’t come home that night? Had it happened before?”

  “Yes, it had. But, you see, he phoned me Sunday night.”

  “From where?”

  “I couldn’t say. He said he would be home very late. He had an important meeting and might even be forced to spend the night away.”

  She extended her hand to him, and the inspector, without knowing why, squeezed it in his own and then kissed it.

  ~

  Once outside, having exited by the same rear door of the villa, he noticed Giorgio sitting on a stone bench nearby, bent over, shuddering convulsively.

  Concerned, Montalbano approached and saw the youth’s hands open and drop the yellow envelope and the photos, which scattered about on the ground. Apparently, spurred by a catlike curiosity, he had got hold of them when crouching beside his aunt.

  “Are you unwell?”

  “Not like that, oh, God, not like that!”

  Giorgio spoke in a clotted voice, his eyes glassy, and hadn’t even noticed the inspector standing there.

  It took a second, then suddenly he stiffened, falling backwards from the bench, which had no back. Montalbano knelt beside him, trying in some way to immobilize that spasm-racked body; a white froth was beginning to form at the corners of the boy’s mouth.

  Stefano Luparello appeared at the door to the villa, looked around, saw the scene, and came running.

  “I was coming after you to say hello. What’s happening?”

  “An epileptic fit, I think.”

  They did their best to prevent Giorgio, at the height of the crisis, from biting off his tongue or striking his head violently against the ground. Then the youth calmed down, his shudders diminishing in fury.

  “Help me carry him inside,” said Stefano.

  The same maid who had opened up for the inspector came running at Stefano’s first call.

  “I don’t want Mama to see him in this state.”

  “My room,” said the girl.

  They walked with difficulty down a different corridor from the one the inspector had taken upon entering. Montalbano held Giorgio by the armpits, with Stefano grabbing the feet. When they arrived in the servants’ wing, the maid opened a door. Panting, they laid the boy down on the bed. Giorgio had plunged into a leaden sleep.

  “Help me to undress him,” said Stefano.

  Only when the youth was stripped down to his boxers and T-shirt did Montalbano notice that from the base of the neck up to the bottom of his chin, the skin was extremely white, diaphanous, in sharp contrast to the face and the chest, which were bronzed by the sun.

  “Do you know why he’s not tanned there?” he asked Stefano.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I got back to Montelusa just last Monday afternoon, after being away for months.”

  “I know why,” said the maid. “Master Giorgio hurt himself in a car accident. He took the collar off less than a week ago.”

  “When he comes to and can understand,” Montalbano said to Stefano, “tell him to drop by my office in Vigàta tomorrow morning, around ten.”

  He went back to the bench, bent down to the ground to pick up the envelope and photos, which Stefano had not noticed, and put them in his pocket.

  ~

  Capo Massaria was about a hundred yards past the San Filippo bend, but the inspector couldn’t see the little house that supposedly stood right on the point, at least according to what Signora Luparello had told him. He started the car back up, proceeding very slowly. When he was exactly opposite the cape, he espied, amid dense, low trees, a path forking off of the main road.

  He took this and shortly afterward found the small road blocked by a gate, the sole opening in a long drywall that sealed off the part of the cape that jutted out over the sea.

  The keys were the right ones. Leaving the car outside the gate, Montalbano headed up a garden path made of blocks of tufa set in the ground. At the end of this he went down a small staircase, also made of tufa, which led to a sort of landing where he found the house’s front door, invisible from the landward side because it was built like an eagle’s nest, right into the rock, like certain mountain refuges.

  Entering, he found himself inside a vast room facing the sea, indeed suspended over the sea, and the impression of being on a ship’s deck was reinforced by an entire wall of glass. The place was in perfect order.

  There was a dining table with four chairs in one corner, a sofa and two armchairs turned toward the window, a nineteenth-century sideboard full of glasses, dishes, bottles of wine and liqueur, and a television with VCR. Atop a low table beside it was a row of videocassettes, some pornographic, others not. The large room had three doors, the first of which opened onto an immaculate kitchenette with shelves packed with foodstuffs and a refrigerator almost empty but for a few bottles of champagne and vodka. The bathroom, which was quite spacious, smelled of disinfectant. On the shelf under the mirror, an electric razor, deodorants, a flask of eau de cologne. In the bedroom, which also had a large window looking onto the sea, there was a double bed covered with a freshly laundered sheet; two bedside tables, one with a telephone; and an armoire with three doors. On the wall at the head of the bed, a drawing by Emilio Greco, a very sensual nude. Montalbano opened the drawer on the bedside table with the telephone, no doubt the side of the bed Luparello usually slept on. Three condoms, a pen, a white notepad. He gave a start when he saw the pistol, a 7.65, at the very back of the drawer, loaded. The drawer to the other bedside table was empty. Opening the left-hand door of the armoire, he saw two men’s suits. In the top drawer, a shirt, three sets of briefs, some handkerchiefs, a T-shirt. He checked the briefs: the signora was right, the label was inside and in the back. In the bottom drawer, a pair of loafers and a pair of slippers. The armoire’s middle door was covered by a mirror that reflected the bed. That section was divided into three shelves: the topmost and middle shelves contained, jumbled together, hats, Italian and foreign magazines whose common denominator was pornography, a vibrator, sheets and pillowcases. On the bottom shelf were three female wigs on their respective stands—one brown, one blond, one red. Maybe they were part of the engineer’s erotic games. The biggest surprise, however, came when he opened the right-hand door: two women’s dresses, very elegant, on coat hangers. There were also two pairs of jeans and some blouses. In a drawer, minuscule panties but no bras. The other was empty. As he leaned forward to better inspect this second drawer, Montalbano understood what it was that had so surprised him: not the sight of the feminine apparel but the scent that emanated from them, the very same he had smelled, only more vaguely, at the old factory, the moment he’d opened the leather handbag.

  There was nothing else to see. Just to be thorough, he bent down to look under the furniture. A tie had been wrapped around one of the rear feet of the bed.

  He picked it up, remembering that Luparello had been found with his shirt collar unbuttoned. He took the photographs out of his pocket and decided that the tie, for its color, would have gone quite well with the suit the engineer was wearing at the time of his death.

  ~

  At headquarters he found Germanà and Galluzzo in a state of agitation.

  “Where’s the sergeant?”

  “Fazio’s with the others at a filling station, the one on the way to Marinella. There was some shooting there.”

  “I’ll go there at once. Did anything come for me?”

  “Yes, a package from Jacomuzzi.”

  He opened it. It was the necklace. He wrapped it back up.

  “Germanà, you come with me to this filling station. You’ll drop me off there and continue on to Montelusa in my car. I’ll tell you what road to take.”

  He went into his office, phoned Rizzo, told him the necklace was on its way with one of his men, and added t
hat he should hand over the check for ten million lire to the agent.

  As they were heading toward the site of the shooting, the inspector explained to Germanà that he must not turn the package over to Rizzo before he had the check in his pocket and that he was to take this check—he gave him the address—to Saro Montaperto, advising him to cash it as soon as the bank opened, at eight o’clock the following morning. He couldn’t say why, and this bothered him a great deal, but he sensed that the Luparello affair was quickly drawing to a conclusion.

  “Should I come back and pick you up at the gas station?”

  “No, stop at headquarters. I’ll return in a squad car.”

  ~

  The police car and a private vehicle were blocking the entrances to the filling station. As soon as he stepped out of his car, with Germanà taking the road for Montelusa, the inspector was overwhelmed by the strong odor of gasoline.

  “Watch where you step!” Fazio shouted to him.

  The gasoline had formed a kind of bog, the fumes of which made Montalbano feel nauseated and mildly faint. Stopped in front of the station was a car with a Palermo license plate, its windshield shattered.

  “One person was injured, the guy at the wheel,”

  said the sergeant. “He was taken away by ambulance.”

  “Seriously injured?”

  “No, just a scratch. But it scared him to death.”

  “What happened, exactly?”

  “If you want to speak to the station attendant yourself . . .”

  The man answered Montalbano’s questions in a voice so high-pitched that it had the same effect on him as fingernails on glass. Things had happened more or less as follows: A car had stopped, the only person inside had asked him to fill it up, the attendant had stuck the nozzle into the car and left it there to do its work, setting it on automatic stop because meanwhile another car had pulled up and its driver had asked for thirty thousand in gas and a quick oil check.

  But as the attendant was about to serve the second client, a car, from the road, had fired a burst from a submachine gun and sped off, disappearing in traffic.

  The man at the wheel of the first car had set off immediately in pursuit, the nozzle had slipped out and continued to pump gasoline. The driver of the second vehicle was shouting like a madman; his shoulder had been grazed by a bullet. Once the initial moment of panic had passed and he realized there was no more danger, the attendant had assisted the injured man, while the pump continued to spread gasoline all over the ground.

  “Did you get a good look at the face of the man in the first car, the one that drove off in pursuit?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you really sure?”

  “As sure as there’s a God in heaven.”

  Meanwhile the firemen summoned by Fazio arrived.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Montalbano said to the sergeant. “As soon as the firemen are done, pick up the attendant, who hasn’t convinced me one bit, and take him down to the station. Put some pressure on him: the guy knows perfectly well who the man they shot at was.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “How much do you want to bet it’s one of the Cuffaro gang? I think this month it’s their turn to get it.”

  “What, you want to take the money right out of my pocket?” the sergeant asked, laughing. “That’s a bet you’ve already won.”

  “See you later.”

  “Where are you going? I thought you wanted me to give you a lift in the squad car.”

  “I’m going home to change my clothes. It’s only about twenty minutes from here on foot. A little breath of air will do me good.”

  He headed off. He didn’t feel like meeting Ingrid Sjostrom dressed in his Sunday best.

  12

  He plunked down in front of the television right out of the shower, still naked and dripping. The images were from Luparello’s funeral that morning, and the cameraman had apparently realized that the only people capable of lending a sense of drama to the ceremony—

  in every other way so like countless other tedious official events—were the trio of the widow, Stefano the son, and Giorgio the nephew. From time to time Signora Luparello, without realizing it, would jerk her head backwards, as if repeatedly saying no. This “no”

  was interpreted by the commentator, in a low, sorrowful voice, as the obvious gesture of a creature irrationally rejecting the concrete fact of death; but as the cameraman was zooming in on her to catch the expression in her gaze, Montalbano found confirmation of what the widow had already confessed to him: there was only disdain and boredom in those eyes. Beside her sat her son, “numb with grief,” according to the announcer, and he called him “numb” only because the composure the young engineer showed seemed to border on indifference. Giorgio instead teetered like a tree in the wind, livid as he swayed, continually twisting a tear-soaked handkerchief in his hands.

  The telephone rang, and Montalbano went to answer it without taking his eyes off the television screen.

  “Inspector, this is Germanà. Everything’s been taken care of. Counselor Rizzo expressed his thanks and said he’d find a way to repay you.”

  Some of Rizzo’s ways of repaying debts—he whispered to himself—his creditors would have gladly done without.

  “Then I went to see Saro and gave him the check.

  It took some effort to convince them—they thought it was some kind of practical joke—and then they started kissing my hands. I’ll spare you all the things they said the Lord should do for you. The car’s at headquarters. You want me to bring it to you?”

  The inspector glanced at his watch; there was still a little more than an hour before his rendezvous with Ingrid.

  “All right, but there’s no hurry. Let’s say nine-thirty. Then I’ll give you a ride back into town.”

  ~

  He didn’t want to miss the moment when she pre

  tended to faint. He felt like a spectator to whom the magician had revealed his secret: the pleasure would be in appreciating not the surprise but the skill. The one who missed it, however, was the cameraman, who was unable to capture that moment even though he had quickly panned from his close-up of the minister back to the group of family members, where Stefano and two volunteers were already carrying the signora out while Giorgio remained in place, still swaying.

  ~

  Instead of dropping Germanà off in front of police headquarters and continuing on, Montalbano got out with him. Fazio was back from Montelusa, and he had spoken with the wounded man, who had finally calmed down. The man, the sergeant recounted, was a household-appliance salesman from Milan who every three months would catch a plane, land in Palermo, rent a car, and drive around. Having stopped at the filling station, he was looking at a piece of paper to check the address of the next store on his list of clients when he suddenly heard the shots and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. Fazio believed his story.

  “Chief, when this guy goes back to Milan, he’s going to join up with the people who want to separate Sicily from the rest of Italy.”

  “What about the attendant?”

  “The attendant’s another matter. Giallombardo’s talking to him now, and you know what he’s like: someone spends a couple of hours with him, talking like he’s known him for a hundred years, and afterward he realizes he’s told him secrets he wouldn’t even tell the priest at confession.”

  ~

  The lights were off, the glass entrance door barred shut.

  Montalbano had chosen the Marinella Bar on the one day it was closed. He parked the car and waited. A few minutes later a two-seater arrived, red and flat as a fillet of sole. The door opened, and Ingrid emerged. Even by the dim light of a streetlamp, the inspector saw that she was even better than he had imagined her: tight jeans wrapping very long legs, white shirt open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up, sandals, hair gathered in a bun. A real cover girl. Ingrid looked around, noticed the darkness inside the bar, walked lazily but surely over to the inspector�
��s car, then leaned forward to speak to him through the open window.

  “See, I was right. So where do we go now? Your place?”

  “No,” Montalbano said angrily. “Get in.”

  The woman obeyed, and at once the car was filled with the scent that Montalbano already knew well.

  “Where do we go now?” Ingrid repeated. She wasn’t joking anymore; utter female that she was, she had noticed the man’s agitation.

  “Do you have much time?”

  “As much as I want.”

  “We’re going someplace where you’ll feel comfortable, since you’ve already been there. You’ll see.”

  “What about my car?”

  “We’ll come back for it later.”

  They set off, and after a few minutes of silence Ingrid asked him a question she should have asked from the start.

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  The inspector was mulling over the idea that had come to him as he told her to get in the car: it was a real cop’s sort of idea, but he was, after all, a cop.

  “I wanted to see you, Mrs. Cardamone, because I need to ask you some questions.”

  “ ‘Mrs. Cardamone’? Listen, Inspector, I’m very familiar with everyone I meet, and if you’re too formal with me I’ll only feel uncomfortable. What’s your first name?”

  “Salvo. Did Counselor Rizzo tell you we found the necklace?”

  “What necklace?”

  “What do you mean, what necklace? The one with the diamond-studded heart.”

  “No, he didn’t tell me. Anyway, I have no dealings with him. He certainly must have told my husband.”

  “Tell me something, I’m curious: are you in the habit of losing jewelry and then finding it again?”