IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009)

by Andrea Camilleri

  “And why would he do that?”

  “I dunno. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “Listen, was there a moon?”

  Tommaseo gave him confused look.

  “Well, it wasn’t a romantic encounter, you know, there wasn’t any need for moonlight, they were just there to—”

  “I think I know what they were there to do, sir. What I meant was that, since these past few nights there hasn’t been any moonlight, we should have found two corpses, not one.”

  Tommaseo now looked utterly lost.

  “Why two?”

  “Because climbing down that path in total darkness, they would certainly have broken their necks.”

  “But, what are you saying, Montalbano? Surely they had a flashlight! Of course they’d planned the whole thing out! Well, unfortunately I have to go now. I’ll be hearing from you. Good day.”

  “Do you think that’s the way it went?” Montalbano asked Mimì after Tommaseo had gone.

  “If you ask me, it’s just another of Tommaseo’s sexual fantasies! Why would they go down into a dump to have sex? It stinks so bad down there you can’t even breathe! And there are rats big enough to eat the flesh off your bones! They could have easily done it right here, in this clearing, which is famous for all the fucking that goes on every night! Have you had a look around at the ground? It’s a sea of condoms!”

  “Did you point this out to Tommaseo?”

  “Of course. But you know what he answered?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He said that it’s possible those two went to fuck in the dump because it was more thrilling to do it surrounded by shit. A taste for depravity, get it? The kind of thing that only enters the mind of someone like Tommaseo!”

  “Okay. But if the girl wasn’t a professional whore, it’s possible that, with all the cars in this clearing and all the trucks passing by, she—”

  “The trucks that go to the dump don’t come through here, Salvo. They discharge their stuff on the other side, where there’s an easier descent that somebody made specifically for heavy vehicles.”

  Fazio’s head popped up at the top of the path.

  “Good morning, Chief.”

  “Are they going to be here much longer?”

  “No, Chief, another half an hour or so.”

  The inspector didn’t feel like seeing Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics. He felt a visceral antipathy towards him, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

  “Here they come,” said Mimì.

  “Who?”

  “Look over there,” replied Augello, pointing towards Montelusa.

  Over the dirt path connecting the provincial road to the dump there rose a big cloud that looked just like a tornado.

  “Matre santa, the press!” exclaimed the inspector.

  Obviously somebody from the commissioner’s office had spilled the beans.

  “I’ll see you guys at the office,” he said, racing towards his car.

  “I’m going back down,” said Augello.

  The real reason he hadn’t gone down into the dump was that he didn’t want to see what he would have had to see. Augello had said the corpse was of a girl barely more than twenty years old. It used to be that he felt afraid of dying people, while the dead made no impression on him. Now, however, and for the past few years, he could no longer bear the sight of people cut down in their youth. Something inside him utterly rebelled against what he considered an act against nature, a sort of ultimate sacrilege, even if the young victim had been a crook or a murderer in turn. To say nothing of children! The moment the evening news displayed the mangled bodies of little children, killed by war, famine, or disease, he would turn off the television at once . . .

  “It’s your frustrated paternal instinct,” was Livia’s conclusion, stated with a good dose of malice, after he had confided this problem to her.

  “I have never heard of frustrated paternal instincts, only frustrated maternal instincts,” he had retorted.

  “Well, if it’s not frustrated paternal instincts,” Livia insisted, “maybe it means you have a grandfather complex.”

  “How can I have a grandfather complex if I’ve never been a father?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Ever heard of an hysterical pregnancy?”

  “It’s when a woman has all the signs of being pregnant but isn’t.”

  “Right. And you’re having an hysterical grandfatherhood.”

  Naturally the argument had ended in a nasty squabble.

  From the front doorway of the police station the inspector heard Catarella speaking frantically.

  “No, Mr. C’mishner, sir, the inspector can’t come to the phone ’cause he in’t bibiquitous. He’s at the Sarsetto in so much as—Hullo? Hullo? Whaddhe do, hang up? Hallo?”

  He saw Montalbano.

  “Ahhh Chief Chief! ’At was the c’mishner!”

  “What’d he want?”

  “He din’t say, Chief. He said only as how he wanted a talk to you rilly emergently.”

  “Okay. I’ll call him later.”

  On his desk was a mountain of papers to be signed. His heart sank at the sight. It really wasn’t his day. He turned heel and passed by Catarella’s closet.

  “I’ll be right back. I’m going to have a coffee.”

  After the coffee, he smoked a cigarette and went for a short walk. Then he returned to his office and called the commissioner.

  “Montalbano here. Your orders, sir.”

  “Don’t make me laugh!”

  “Why, what did I do?”

  “You said: ‘Your orders, sir’!”

  “So? What was I supposed to say?”

  “It’s not what you say that matters, it’s what you do. I give the orders, you can be sure of that, but I can’t—I don’t dare—imagine what you do with them!”

  “Mr. Commissioner, sir, I would never allow myself to do what you think I do with them.”

  “Let’s drop it, Montalbano, it’s better that way. What ever happened with that Piccolo business?”

  Montalbano was befuddled. What piccolo business? He didn’t know of any piccolo makers in Vigàta.

  “Uh, Mr. Commissioner, I don’t know of any musical-instrument makers in—”

  “For God’s sake, Montalbano! What are you talking about? Giulio Piccolo is a person, not an instrument; he’s retired, seventy years old, and . . . Listen, Montalbano, listen very carefully to what I’m about to say, and you can take this as an ultimatum: I demand a thorough, written report on the matter by tomorrow morning.”

  He hung up. Surely the file on this Giulio Piccolo, about whom he couldn’t remember a single thing, must be buried somewhere in that mountain of paper in front of him. Did he have the courage to set his hand to it? Ever so slowly, he extended his right arm and, with a lightning-quick jab—as you might make to grab a poisonous animal that could bite you—he grabbed the folder at the top of the pile. He opened it and his jaw dropped. It was none other than the file on Giulio Piccolo. He felt like falling to his knees and thanking Saint Anthony, who must certainly have worked this miracle. He opened the folder and started reading. Mr. Piccolo’s fabric shop had burned down. The firemen had determined the cause to be arson. Mr. Piccolo declared that the shop was set on fire because he had refused to pay protection money. The police, on the other hand, believed that it was Piccolo himself who had set fire to his shop to collect the insurance.There was, however, something that didn’t make sense. Giulio Piccolo was born in Licata, lived in Licata, and his shop was located on the main street of Licata. So why was this case not being handled by the Licata police instead of Vigàta’s? The answer was simple: Because at Montelusa Central, they had confused Licata with Vigàta.

  The inspector picked up a ballpoint, a sheet of paper with Vigàta Police letterhead, and wrote:

  Respected Mr. Commissioner,

  As Vigàta is not Licata, nor Licata Vigàta, there’s been an error of position, sir. What seems to you i
naction, on the order you gave, is nothing at all save respect for jurisdiction.

  He signed it and stamped it. Bureaucracy had reawakened a long-lost poetical vein in him. True, the lines stumbled a bit, but Bonetti-Alderighi would never notice that he had answered him in rhyme. The inspector called Catarella, gave him the Piccolo file and the letter, telling him to send the lot to the commissioner after properly registering it according to protocol.

  2

  Shortly after Catarella went out, Mimì Augello, back from the dump, appeared in the doorway. His nerves looked frayed.

  “Come on in. Did you finish up?”

  “Yes.” He sat down on the edge of the chair.

  “What’s wrong, Mimì?”

  “I have to run home. On my way here Beba rang to tell me she needs me because Salvuzzo’s crying with a tummy ache and she can’t seem to calm him down.”

  “Does he often have this problem?”

  “Often enough to bust my balls.”

  “Your attitude doesn’t seem very fatherly to me.”

  “If you had a son as annoying as mine, you’d have him flying out the window.”

  “But wouldn’t Beba do better to call a doctor instead of you?”

  “Of course. But Beba can’t take a step without having me beside her. She’s incapable of making any sort of decision on her own.”

  “Okay, tell me what you have to tell me, and you can go home.”

  “I managed to talk a little with Pasquano.”

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “You know what he’s like. He takes every little killing personally. Like some sort of offense, some slight to himself. And it gets worse with each passing year. Jesus, what a nasty disposition!”

  Deep down, Montalbano felt he understood Pasquano perfectly.

  “Maybe he can’t stand cutting up corpses anymore. So, tell me.”

  “Between the curses, I was able to make him tell me that, in his opinion, the girl wasn’t killed where her body was found.”

  “Wait a second. Who was it that found her?”

  “Somebody named Salvatore Aricò.”

  “And what was he doing around there at the crack of dawn?”

  “The guy goes to the dump every day, first thing in the morning, to look for things that can be salvaged, which he then fixes up and resells. He told me that nowadays the stuff he finds is practically brand-new, hardly used at all.”

  “You just now discovering consumerism, Mimì?”

  “As soon as he got there, Aricò saw the body and called us on his cell phone. When I questioned him, I realized he didn’t know any more than he’d already told us, so I had him give me his address and telephone number and let him go, because, among other things, the guy was really upset and kept throwing up.”

  “You were saying that, according to Pasquano, the girl was killed at another location.”

  “Right. There was practically no trace of blood anywhere around the body. Whereas there should have been, and a lot. In addition, Pasquano noticed that the body was scuffed and bruised in a number of spots, likely because when it was thrown from the clearing, it got banged around as it rolled down the slope.

  “Couldn’t these scuffs have been sustained during a struggle prior to the killing?”

  “For the moment Pasquano rules that out.”

  “And he’s seldom wrong. Was any blood found in the clearing where the cars pull up?”

  “No, not there, either.”

  “That would confirm Pasquano’s thesis that she was brought there after she was killed. Maybe in the trunk of a car. Could the doctor tell how long she’s been dead?”

  “That was the best part. He says he won’t know with any certainty until after the autopsy, but at a glance, he would say she was killed at least twenty-four hours before she was found.”

  Which was strange enough in itself.

  “But why would anyone keep a corpse hidden for an entire day?”

  Mimì threw up his hands.

  “I really couldn’t tell you, but that’s what it looks like. And there’s another thing that might—I say, might—be important. The body was lying on its back, but at a certain point Pasquano flipped it over.”

  “So?”

  “On the left shoulder, near the shoulder blade, she had a tattoo of a butterfly.”

  “Well, that might help identify the body. Did Forensics get some shots of it?”

  “Yes. And I told them to send us the photos. But it’s not like I have a lot of hope.”

  “Why?”

  “Salvo, do you remember how, before I got married, I used to have a different girlfriend every couple of days?”

  “Yes, you would have made Don Juan die of envy. And so?”

  “The most popular tattoo among girls these days is butterflies. They have them tattooed in every imaginable part of their bodies. Just think, one time I actually discovered a butterfly tattooed right in the—”

  “Spare me the details,” the inspector implored him. “Say hi to Beba for me and send me Catarella.”

  Who showed up ten minutes later.

  “ ’ Scuse me, Chief, but Cuzzaniti wasted a lotta time wit’ the prototol. He coun’t figger out if the nummer he was as posta give the file was treetousandsevenhunnert and five or treetousandsevenhunnert and six. Then me ’n’ Cuzzaniti found the solution.”

  “What number did you give it?”

  “We gave it both nummers, Chief. Treetousandsevenhunnert and fifty-six.”

  There was no way that file would ever be found again, were they to look for it for a hundred years.

  “Listen, Cat. Check the list of missing persons on the computer and see if there’s a report on a girl of about twenty with a butterfly tattooed near her left shoulder blade.”

  “What kind of butterfly, Chief?”

  “How the hell should I know, Cat? A butterfly.”

  “I’m gonna go ’n’ come back, Chief.”

  Fazio arrived. He came in and sat down.

  “What have you got to tell me?” asked Montalbano.

  “Dr. Pasquano is convinced that the girl—”

  “—was killed somewhere else, I know. Augello already told me. And what do you think?”

  “I agree. I’ve even come to the precise conclusion that the girl was stripped naked after she was murdered.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because if she’d been killed when she was naked, her neck and shoulders and tits would have been covered in blood. Instead they were clean. And bear in mind that it hasn’t rained for a week.”

  “I see. So the blood ended up on the clothes she was wearing at that moment, but not on her skin.”

  “Right. The body also had some abrasions, contusions, and lacerations from having been thrown down naked into the dump. If she’d been clothed, she would have suffered less damage. On top of that, she’d been bitten.”

  Montalbano gave a start. He immediately felt a wave of nausea in the pit of his stomach.

  “What do you mean, she was bitten? Where?”

  “She had three bites inside her right thigh. But Dr. Pasquano didn’t want to talk to me about it; he doesn’t know if they were human or animal bites.”

  “Let’s hope it was an animal.”

  This was all they needed. A murderer who was also a werewolf. Half man, half animal.

  “Did he say when he was going to do the autopsy?”

  “Early tomorrow morning.”

  Catarella came in breathless, a sheet of paper in hand.

  “I only foun’ one girl around twenny, an’ I prinnet up ’er pitcher. But there’s nuttin’ ’bout no buttafly inna report.”

  “Give it to Fazio.”

  Fazio took the sheet, glanced at it, and gave it back to Catarella.

  “That’s not her.”

  “How can you be so sure?” the inspector asked.

  “ ’Cause this girl’s brunette and the dead girl was blond.”

  “Couldn’t sh
e have dyed her hair?”

  “Gimme a break, Chief.”

  Catarella slinked out, disappointed.

  “I don’t know why, but I don’t think this girl was a whore,” said Fazio.

  “Maybe because nowadays it’s very hard to say who’s a whore.”

  Fazio gave him a befuddled look.

  “Chief, a whore’s always been a woman who sells her body, not just nowadays.”

  “That’s too easy, Fazio.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lemme give you an example. Take a twenty-year-old girl, a beautiful girl from a poor family. Somebody offers to put her in the movies, but she refuses, ’cause she’s a respectable girl, and she’s afraid she might get corrupted by that world. Then she meets some fifty-year-old businessman, pretty ugly but extremely rich, who wants to marry her. The girl accepts. She doesn’t love the man, she doesn’t find him attractive, and there’s too much difference in age between them, but she thinks that over time she could grow fond of him. They get married and, as a wife, her conduct is irreproachable. Now, according to your definition, when the girl decided to say yes to the businessman, wasn’t she selling her body for money? Of course she was. But are you ready to call her a whore?”

  “Jesus Christ, Chief! I merely ventured an opinion, and you’ve written a whole novel about it!”

  “All right, forget about it.What makes you think she didn’t practice the profession?”

  “Dunno. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick. Or makeup. She was well groomed and clean, of course, but not excessively . . . Bah. What can I say? It was just my impression. But do me a favor and don’t make another novel out of my impression.”

  “Listen, when’s Forensics going to send us the photographs?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “So I can go. I’ll see you later.”

  When he got to the trattoria, he found the rolling metal shutter half lowered. He bent down and entered. The tables were all set but completely empty. There were no smells coming from the kitchen. Enzo, the owner and waiter, was sitting and watching television.

  “How come there’s nobody here?”

  “Inspector, first of all, today’s Monday, our day off, though you forgot. And secondly, it’d be a little early anyway, since it’s not even twelve-thirty.”