The Shape of Water

by Andrea Camilleri

  Wasn’t it a woman who took Luparello to the Pasture?”

  “Yes and no. Let me continue. Rizzo races to Capo Massaria and dresses the corpse in a big hurry.

  He intends to get him out of there and have him found somewhere less compromising. At this point, however, he sees the necklace on the floor and inside the armoire finds the clothes of the woman who just phoned him. And he realizes that this may just be his lucky day.”

  “In what sense?”

  “In the sense that he’s now in a position to put everyone’s back to the wall, political friends as well as enemies. He can become the top gun in the party. The woman who called him is Ingrid Sjostrom, the Swedish daughter-in-law of Dr. Cardamone, Luparello’s natural successor and a man who certainly will want to have nothing to do with Rizzo. Now, you see, a phone call is one thing, but proving that La Sjostrom was Luparello’s mistress is something else. Besides, there’s still more to be done. Rizzo knows that Luparello’s party cronies are the ones who will pounce on his political inheritance, so in order to eliminate them he must make things such that they will be ashamed to wave Luparello’s banner. For this to happen, the engineer must be utterly disgraced, dragged through the mud.

  He gets the brilliant idea of having the body be found at the Pasture. And since she’s already involved, why not make it look as though the woman who wanted to go to the Pasture with Luparello was Ingrid Sjostrom herself, who’s a foreigner and certainly not nunnish in her habits, and who might have been seeking a kinky thrill? If the setup works, Cardamone will be in Rizzo’s hands. He phones his men, whom we know, without being able to prove it, to be underhanded butcher boys.

  One of these is Angelo Nicotra, a homosexual better known in their circles as Marilyn.”

  “How were you able to learn even his name?”

  “An informer told me, someone in whom I have absolute faith. In a way, we’re friends.”

  “You mean Gegè, your old schoolmate?”

  Montalbano eyed the commissioner, mouth agape.

  “Why are you looking at me that way? I’m a cop, too. Go on.”

  “When his men get there, Rizzo has Marilyn dress up as a woman, has him put on the necklace, and tells him to take the body to the Pasture, but by way of an impassable route, actually by way of a dry riverbed.”

  “To what end?”

  “Further proof against La Sjostrom, who is a racing champion and knows how to travel a route like that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I was in the car with her when I had her drive down the riverbed.”

  “Oh, God!” the commissioner groaned. “You forced her to do that?”

  “Not at all! She did it quite willingly.”

  “But how many people have you dragged into this? Do you realize you’re playing with dynamite?”

  “It all goes up in smoke, believe me. So while his two men leave with the corpse, Rizzo, who has taken the keys Luparello had on him, returns to Montelusa and has no trouble getting his hands on Luparello’s documents of greatest interest to him. Marilyn, meanwhile, executes to perfection the orders he’s been given: he gets out of the car after going through the motions of sex, walks away, and, near an old, abandoned factory, hides the necklace behind a bush and throws the purse over the factory wall.”

  “What purse are you talking about?”

  “Ingrid Sjostrom’s purse. It’s even got her initials on it. Rizzo found it in the little house and decided to use it.”

  “Explain to me how you arrived at these conclusions.”

  “Rizzo, you see, is showing one card, the necklace, and hiding another, the purse. The discovery of the necklace, however it occurs, will prove that Ingrid was at the Pasture at the time of Luparello’s death. If somebody happens to pocket the necklace and not say anything, he can still play the purse card. But he actually has a lucky break, in his opinion: the necklace is found by one of the sanitation men, who turned it in to me. Rizzo gives a plausible explanation for the discovery of the necklace, but in the meantime he has established the Sjostrom-Luparello-Pasture triangle of connection. It was I, on the other hand, who found the purse, based on the discrepancy between the two testimonies: that is, the woman, when she got out of Luparello’s car, was holding a purse that she no longer had when a car picked her up along the provincial road. Finally, to make a long story short, Rizzo’s two men return to the little house and put everything in order. At the first light of dawn, Rizzo phones Cardamone and begins playing his cards.”

  “All right, fine, but he also begins playing with his life.”

  “That’s another matter, if that is indeed the case,”

  said Montalbano.

  The commissioner gave him a look of alarm.

  “What do you mean? What the hell are you thinking?”

  “Quite simply that the only person who comes out of this story unscathed is Cardamone. Don’t you think Rizzo’s murder was providentially fortunate for him?”

  The commissioner gave a start, and it wasn’t clear whether he was speaking seriously or joking.

  “Listen, Montalbano, don’t get any more brilliant ideas. Leave Cardamone in peace. He’s an honorable man who wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  “I was just kidding, Commissioner. But allow me to ask, are there any new developments in the investigation?”

  “What new developments would you expect? You know the kind of person Rizzo was. Out of every ten people he knew, respectable or otherwise, eight, respectable or otherwise, would have liked to see him dead. A veritable forest, my friend, a jungle of potential murderers, by their own hand or through intermediaries. I must say your story has a certain plausibility, but only for someone who knows what kind of stuff Rizzo was made of.”

  He drank a dram of bitters, sipping.

  “You certainly had me fascinated. What you’ve told me is an exercise of the highest intelligence; at moments you seemed like an acrobat on a tightrope, with no net underneath. Because, to be brutally frank, underneath your argument, there’s nothing. You have no proof of anything you’ve said. It could all be interpreted in another way, and any good lawyer could pick apart your deductions without breaking a sweat.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you intend to do?”

  “Tomorrow morning I’m going to tell Lo Bianco that I’ve no objection if he wants to close the case.”

  16

  “Hello, Montalbano? It’s Mimì Augello. Sorry to disturb you, but I called to reassure you. I’ve come back to home base. When are you leaving?”

  “The flight from Palermo’s at three, so I have to leave Vigàta around twelve-thirty, right after lunch.”

  “Then we won’t be seeing each other, since I think I have to stay a little late at the office. Any news?”

  “Fazio will fill you in.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Up to and including Thursday.”

  “Have fun and get some rest. Fazio has your number in Genoa, doesn’t he? If anything big comes up, I’ll give you a ring.”

  His assistant inspector, Mimì Augello, had returned punctually from his holidays, and thus Montalbano could now leave without problems. Augello was a capable person. Montalbano phoned Livia to tell her his time of arrival, and Livia, pleased by the news, said she would meet him at the airport.

  When he got to the office, Fazio informed him that the workers from the salt factory, who had all been “made mobile”—a pious euphemism for being fired—had occupied the train station. Their wives, by lying down on the tracks, were preventing all trains from passing. The carabinieri were already on the scene. Should they go down there, too?

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know, to give them a hand.”

  “Give whom a hand?”

  “What do you mean, chief ? The carabinieri, the forces of order, which would be us, until proved to the contrary.”

  “If you’re really dying to help somebody, help the ones occupying the station.”


  “Chief, I’ve always suspected it: you’re a communist.”

  ~

  “Inspector? This is Stefano Luparello. Please excuse me. Has my cousin Giorgio been to see you?”

  “No, I don’t have any news.”

  “We’re very worried here at home. As soon as he recovered from his sedative, he went out and vanished again. Mama would like some advice: shouldn’t we ask the police to conduct a search?”

  “No. Please tell your mother I don’t think that’s necessary. Giorgio will turn up. Tell her not to worry.”

  “In any case, if you hear any news, please let us know.”

  “That will be very difficult, because I’m going away on holiday. I’ll be back Friday.”

  ~

  The first three days spent with Livia at her house in Boccadasse made him forget Sicily almost entirely, thanks to a few nights of leaden, restorative sleep, with Livia in his arms. Almost entirely, though, because two or three times, by surprise, the smell, the speech, the things of his island picked him up and carried him weightless through the air, for a few seconds, back to Vigàta. And each time he was sure that Livia had noticed his momentary absence, his wavering, and she had looked at him without saying anything.

  ~

  Thursday evening he got an entirely unexpected phone call from Fazio.

  “Nothing important, chief. I just wanted to hear your voice and confirm that you’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Montalbano was well aware that relations between the sergeant and Augello were not the easiest.

  “Do you need comforting? Has that mean Augello been spanking your little behind?”

  “He criticizes everything I do.”

  “Be patient, I’ll be back tomorrow. Any news?”

  “Yesterday they arrested the mayor and three town councillors. For graft and accepting bribes.”

  “They finally succeeded.”

  “Yeah, but don’t get your hopes too high, chief.

  They’re trying to copy the Milanese judges here, but Milan is very far away.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We found Gambardella, remember him? The guy who was shot at when he was trying to fill his tank?

  He wasn’t laid out in the countryside, but goat-tied in the trunk of his own car, which was later set on fire and completely burnt up.”

  “If it was completely burnt up, how did you know Gambardella was goat-tied?”

  “They used metal wire, chief.”

  “See you tomorrow, Fazio.”

  This time it wasn’t the smell and speech of his island that sucked him back there but the stupidity, the ferocity, the horror.

  ~

  After making love, Livia fell silent for a while, then took his hand.

  “What’s wrong? What did your sergeant tell you?”

  “Nothing important, I assure you.”

  “Then why are you suddenly so gloomy?”

  Montalbano felt confirmed in his conviction: if there was one person in all the world to whom he could sing the whole High Mass, it was Livia. To the commissioner he’d sung only half the Mass, skipping some parts. He sat up in bed, fluffed up the pillow.

  “Listen.”

  ~

  He told her about the Pasture, about Luparello, about the affection a nephew of his, Giorgio, had for him, about how at some point this affection turned (degenerated?) into love, into passion, about the final tryst in the bachelor pad at Capo Massaria, about Luparello’s death and how young Giorgio, driven mad by the fear of scandal—not for himself but for his uncle’s image and memory—had dressed him back up as best he could, then dragged him to the car to drive him away and leave the body to be found somewhere else. . . .

  He told her about Giorgio’s despair when he realized that this fiction wouldn’t work, that everyone would see he was carrying a dead man in the car, about how he got the idea to put the neck brace he’d been wearing until that very day—and which he still had in the car—on the corpse, about how he had tried to hide the brace with a piece of black cloth, how he became suddenly afraid he might have an epileptic fit, which he suffered from, about how he had phoned Rizzo—

  Montalbano explained to her who the lawyer was—

  and how Rizzo had realized that this death, with a few arrangements, could be his lucky break.

  He told her about Ingrid, about her husband Giacomo, about Dr. Cardamone, about the violence—he couldn’t think of a better word—to which the doctor customarily resorted with his daughter-in-law (“That’s disgusting,” Livia commented), about how Rizzo had suspicions as to their relationship and tried to implicate Ingrid, getting Cardamone but not himself to swallow the bait; he told her about Marilyn and his accomplice, about the phantasmagorical ride in the car, about the horrific pantomime acted out inside the parked car at the Pasture (Livia: “Excuse me a minute, I need a strong drink”). And when she returned, he told her still other sordid details—the necklace, the purse, the clothes—he told her about Giorgio’s heartrending despair when he saw the photographs, having understood Rizzo’s double betrayal, of him and of Luparello’s memory, which he had wanted to save at all costs.

  “Wait a minute,” said Livia. “Is this Ingrid beautiful?”

  “Very beautiful. And since I know exactly what you’re thinking, I’ll tell you even more: I destroyed all the false evidence against her.”

  “That’s not like you,” she said resentfully.

  “I did even worse things, just listen. Rizzo, who now had Cardamone in the palm of his hand, achieved his political objective, but he made a mistake: he underestimated Giorgio’s reaction. Giorgio’s an extremely beautiful boy.”

  “Oh, come on! Him, too!” said Livia, trying to make light.

  “But with a very fragile personality,” the inspector continued. “Riding the wave of his emotions, devastated, he ran to the house at Capo Massaria, grabbed Luparello’s pistol, tracked down Rizzo, beat him to a pulp, and shot him at the base of the skull.”

  “Did you arrest him?”

  “No, I just said I did worse than destroy evidence.

  You see, my colleagues in Montelusa think—and the hypothesis is not just hot air—that Rizzo was killed by the Mafia. And I never told them what I thought the truth was.”

  “Why not?”

  Montalbano didn’t answer, throwing his hands up in the air. Livia went into the bathroom, and the inspector heard the water running in the tub. A little later, after asking permission to enter, he found her still in the full tub, her chin resting on her raised knees.

  “Did you know there was a pistol in that house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you left it there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you gave yourself a promotion, eh?” asked Livia after a long silence. “From inspector to god—a fourth-rate god, but still a god.”

  ~

  After getting off the airplane, he headed straight for the airport café. He was in dire need of a real espresso after the vile, dark dishwater they had forced on him in flight. He heard someone calling him: it was Stefano Luparello.

  “Where are you going, Mr. Luparello, back to Milan?”

  “Yes, back to work. I’ve been away too long. I’m also going to look for a larger apartment; as soon as I find one, my mother will come live with me. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  “That’s a very good idea, even though she has her sister and nephew in Montelusa—”

  The young man stiffened.

  “So you don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Giorgio is dead.”

  Montalbano put down his demitasse; the shock had made him spill the coffee.

  “How did that happen?”

  “Do you remember, the day of your departure I called you to find out if you’d heard from him?”

  “Of course.”

  “The following morning he still hadn’t returned, so I felt compelled to alert the police and carabinieri.


  They conducted some extremely superficial searches—

  I’m sorry, perhaps they were too busy investigating Rizzo’s murder. On Sunday afternoon a fisherman, from his boat, saw that a car had fallen onto the rocks, right below the San Filippo bend. Do you know the area? It’s just before Capo Massaria.”

  “Yes, I know the place.”

  “Well, the fisherman rowed in the direction of the car, saw that there was a body in the driver’s seat, and raced off to report it.”

  “Did they manage to establish the cause of the accident?”

  “Yes. My cousin, as you know, from the moment Father died, lived in a state of almost constant derangement: too many tranquilizers, too many sedatives. Instead of taking the curve, he continued straight—he was going very fast at that moment—and crashed through the little guard wall. He never got over my father’s death. He had a real passion for him. He loved him.”

  He uttered the two words, “passion” and “love,”

  in a firm, precise tone, as if to eliminate, with crisp outlines, any possible blurring of their meaning. The voice over the loudspeaker called for passengers taking the Milan flight.

  As soon as he was outside the airport parking lot, where he had left his car, Montalbano pressed the accelerator to the floor. He didn’t want to think about anything, only to concentrate on driving. After some sixty miles he stopped at the shore of an artificial lake, got out of the car, opened the trunk, took out the neck brace, threw it into the water, and waited for it to sink. Only then did he smile. He had wanted to act like a god; what Livia said was true. But that fourth-rate god, in his first and, he hoped, last experience, had guessed right.

  ~

  To reach Vigàta he had no choice but to pass in front of the Montelusa police headquarters. And it was at that exact moment that his car decided suddenly to die on him. He got out and was about to go ask for help at the station when a policeman who knew him and had witnessed his useless maneuvers approached him. The officer lifted up the hood, fiddled around a bit, then closed it.