A Voice in the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all, not one word more, or less.’

  ‘And you got all worked up over a perfectly normal question?’ Montalbano asked Borsellino.

  ‘I got worked up not only over the words but the look!’ the manager reacted.

  ‘The look?’

  ‘Yes, sir, the look! As he was asking the question, he was looking at me as if to say: I know it was you who did it, so don’t think you can fool me.’

  ‘The furthest thing from my mind,’ said Augello. ‘He imagined that look himself.’

  The inspector assumed an episcopal air, exactly like the Good Shepherd.

  ‘Look, Mr Borsellino, you’re too upset, which is perfectly understandable after being shaken up by a burglary, but you mustn’t let yourself get so carried away. You’re all worked up and take every word, every gesture, even the most innocent, the wrong way. Try to calm down and answer my question: who has the keys to the supermarket?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Aren’t there any copies?’

  ‘Yes, one set. The company’s board of directors has them.’

  ‘I see. So how do you explain it?’

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘That the doors show no sign of having been forced.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Let me ask you the same question in a different way. Is it possible the thieves used copies of the keys?’

  Before answering, the manager thought this over for a minute.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘The ones belonging to the board of directors?’

  THREE

  Upon hearing the question, Borsellino literally leapt out of his chair. He’d turned pale as a corpse. His hands started trembling.

  Noticing, he thrust them in his pockets.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘What do you mean who told me that? You did!’

  ‘No, sir, I did not! I said nothing of the sort. Mr Augello is my witness!’

  ‘Keep me out of this,’ said Mimì. ‘Because I’m in total agreement with the inspector: you said it yourself just a minute ago.’

  ‘You two want me dead!’ yelled Borsellino, who was sweating as if in the August sun. ‘All I said was that maybe they came in with copies of the keys, but I certainly wasn’t referring to the board of directors’ copies! I meant some other copies!’

  ‘Then you made a false declaration when you said that there was only one set of copies, when in fact there are at least two!’ said Montalbano.

  Borsellino took his hands out of his pockets and put his palms against his forehead as if he had a terrible headache. ‘No, no, no! You two are trying to make me lose my mind! You want to see me sentenced to death! I said, and I repeat, that the burglars could have used copies they made themselves for that purpose!’

  ‘Forgive me for insisting,’ said Montalbano. ‘But in order to make copies, you need originals. Doesn’t that make sense? So there’s no getting around it: either you gave the burglar the original keys or somebody from the board of directors did. What do you think?’

  ‘I want my lawyer!’

  Montalbano huffed in annoyance.

  ‘Well, Mimì, I guess we can go. There’s nothing left for us to do here.’

  Augello got up without a word.

  Borsellino, for his part, stood there for a moment looking at them, speechless, then began to protest.

  ‘What is this? Why?’

  ‘Mr Borsellino,’ Montalbano said after staring at him in turn for a moment, ‘I sincerely don’t understand you. First you want a lawyer and then you complain that we’re too hasty? I can well understand that you feel reassured by our presence, but I’m sorry, we can’t stay any longer. Let’s go, Mimì.’

  But Borsellino had no intention of giving up.

  ‘Excuse me, but would you please explain why I should feel reassured by your presence?’

  Montalbano rolled his eyes up to heaven.

  ‘Mr Borsellino, with you one needs more patience than even the saints possess! You’ve just finished accusing us of wanting you sentenced to death. And you are very clearly scared out of your wits. All I did was do the maths. Which tells me that as long as we remain here, nobody can do anything to you. Get the picture?’

  ‘And what would anyone want to do to me?’

  Borsellino was going from fear to defiance.

  ‘Whatever the case,’ the inspector continued, ‘was a report drafted of your complaint?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Have you informed your company chairman that a theft took place?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Montalbano showed great surprise.

  ‘Ah ah ah! You never cease to amaze me!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the first thing you should have done! Even before calling us.’

  ‘I’ll do it as soon as—’

  ‘It may be too late, you know. There’s no point in putting off the moment of truth.’

  The shop manager started turning visibly pale again.

  ‘But the first thing I did was call you!’

  ‘But we’re not them, don’t you see?’

  Borsellino turned even paler and his hands started shaking more violently.

  ‘Th . . . them? Who’s them?’

  ‘Them,’ the inspector said evasively. ‘You know perfectly well who they are. And they’ll ask you questions that’ll make ours seem like a walk in the park by comparison.’

  Borsellino took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat glistening on his brow. His nose was starting to drip.

  Montalbano threw down his ace.

  ‘And those guys, you can bet your life they won’t let you call your lawyer.’

  He let out a laugh, sounding like a starving hyena in the desert, and continued:

  ‘At best they’ll call you a priest for the last rites. I don’t envy you. Have a good day.’

  And he started heading for the door.

  ‘Wa . . . wait,’ Borsellino gasped, collapsing into a chair. ‘I swear on my mother’s blessed soul that I wasn’t the one who stole the—’

  ‘But I’m well aware of that!’ the inspector exclaimed. ‘In fact I’m totally convinced of it! You’re not so stupid as to go and steal money from the Cuffaros. You did make things easy for the burglar, however. And he mustn’t be just any burglar – burglars know that you don’t just go and rob the Cuffaros. It must be someone who can easily get his hands on the other keys, of which the board of directors owns the second set, take them for about an hour, use them, and then put them back without anyone noticing. Someone in the family, in other words, who urgently needed some of the company’s money and therefore took it. A traitor. Who will meet the same end as other traitors to the family.’

  Head hanging against his chest, Borsellino was now having trouble holding back the tears.

  ‘Best of luck,’ said Montalbano, leaving the office.

  *

  ‘My heartfelt compliments, maestro. That was a textbook interrogation,’ said Augello as soon as they were outside. ‘But would you explain to me why you didn’t keep going? The man was completely fried.’

  ‘First of all, because I felt sorry for him. Secondly, because he was never going to name the person who made him do what he did, not even if we tortured him.’

  They were joined by Fazio.

  ‘Did he confess?’

  ‘No, but he was just about to.’

  ‘I wonder how they forced him,’ said Augello.

  ‘Probably blackmail. Fazio, see if you can find out more about this Borsellino.’

  ‘Still,’ said Mimì, ‘there’s something in all this that doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Why bother to use duplicate keys? They’d already gone so far as to put the fake sign on the night-deposit box and force open the drawer, they might as well have gone all the way and broken the outside locks. Whereas they did it the way they di
d so that we would immediately think of the extra set of keys in the hands of the board of directors and the complicity of the manager. But it was a huge mistake!’

  Montalbano glared at him.

  ‘You think it was a mistake?’

  Augello bristled.

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘Well, half an idea, to be exact.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘That the fact there was no break-in caught the manager by surprise, too. He hadn’t expected that. The agreement made with the burglar must certainly have stipulated that one of the supermarket’s outside locks would be broken. That’s why he was so scared.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Listen, I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll see you two later this afternoon.’

  *

  ‘Why so late?’ asked Enzo, the restaurateur, upon seeing the inspector come in.

  Montalbano felt his heart give a tug.

  ‘Why, is there nothing left? Did your customers eat everything?’

  ‘Not to worry, Inspector. For you there’s always something to eat.’

  Seafood antipasto (double portion), pasta with sea urchin sauce (a portion and a half), and red mullet cooked in salt (six rather large fish).

  He asked for the bill. He’d allowed himself a special birthday feast. And, indeed, as he was getting up from the table, he saw Enzo approaching with a tiny little cake, enough for one.

  ‘With my very best wishes, Inspector.’

  He realized he couldn’t very well shun Enzo’s offering. He had to eat that cake, even if it risked ruining the wonderful taste of mullet in his mouth.

  His mood, moreover, had already been ruined by the two candles on the cake, one shaped like a 5, the other like an 8, forming the number 58.

  Apparently Enzo counted the same way as Livia.

  The walk along the jetty thus became necessary not only for digestive reasons but also to shake off the irritation that the number on the cake had caused him.

  *

  As soon as he sat back down at his desk, Gallo came in.

  ‘Chief, I have something to tell you about Giovanni Strangio.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You ordered me to take him to Montelusa prison, but as soon as I got there and introduced myself, they told me I had to take him to the prosecutor’s office.’

  ‘Which prosecutor?’

  ‘Dr Seminara.’

  Montalbano screwed up his face. It was well known that Prosecutor Seminara was rather sensitive to the pressures of a certain political party. Apparently Nero Duello had already informed him. ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘He immediately released him.’

  ‘But did he read what I wrote?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He had it on his desk.’

  ‘So in spite of my report, he released him?’

  Gallo threw up his hands.

  ‘OK, thanks.’

  Montalbano decided to set his mind at rest. All this meant was that when Strangio finally killed someone, it would be on Prosecutor Seminara’s conscience.

  Gallo was still on his way out when the telephone rang.

  ‘Ahh, Chief! Ahh, Chief, Chief!’

  This was the classic Catarellian litany whenever Hizzoner the C’mishner, as he called him, was on the phone.

  ‘Tell him I’m not in the office.’

  ‘Bu’, Chief, ya gotta unnastan’, ’e’s rilly pissed off!’

  ‘Well, just piss him off a little more.’

  ‘Matre santa, Chief, the guy’s libel a eat me right true the tiliphone line!’

  *

  Fazio came back in around six in the evening.

  ‘What did you find out about Borsellino?’

  Fazio sat down, stuck a hand in his pocket, and pulled out a small sheet of paper.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ said the inspector, ‘if you start reading me his date and place of birth and mother’s and father’s names, I’m going to take that piece of paper out of your hands, crumple it up into a ball, and make you eat it.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Chief,’ said Fazio, half-resigned, half-offended.

  He folded it up and put it back in his pocket.

  He suffered from what the inspector called a ‘records office complex’. If, for example, Montalbano wanted simply to know what someone had done at eleven the previous morning, Fazio, in his report, would start with the man’s date of birth, then his parents, their address, and so on and so forth.

  ‘And so?’ the inspector coaxed him.

  ‘Widower, fifty years old, no children, no known girlfriends or vices,’ said Fazio, telegraphic in his resentment.

  ‘And what do they say about him around town?’

  ‘That he was hired by the supermarket at the urging of the Honourable Mongibello.’

  The Honourable Mongibello, formerly of the Liberal Party, then the Christian Democratic Party, and then, after some time off, elected to Parliament in the last elections as a deputy for the majority party, the one trying to force Italy into a straitjacket, had long been, and still was, a faithful lawyer of the Cuffaro family.

  ‘OK, but before being hired as manager, what did he do?’

  ‘He worked in Sicudiana as an accountant for a number of businesses belonging to the Cuffaros.’

  ‘So, a kind of loyal servant?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Listen, could you try and find out who is on the board of directors of the—’

  ‘Already taken care of.’

  Now that he’d had some measure of revenge, Fazio relaxed.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Chief, I wrote their names down on that piece of paper. Can I take it back out?’

  Montalbano had no choice but to swallow Fazio’s sarcasm.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘The board of directors are Angelo Farruggia, Filippo Tridicino, Gerlando Prosecuto, and Calogero Lauricella. The first two are eighty-year-old retired railwaymen, Prosecuto is a projectionist at the cinema, and Lauricella formerly worked as a warehouseman at the fish market. All front men.’

  ‘And who’s the president?’

  ‘The Honourable Mongibello.’

  Montalbano hesitated.

  ‘I wonder why he decided to expose himself personally?’

  ‘Maybe because on a board of directors you need at least one person who can read and write.’

  *

  He laid the table on the veranda, took a plate with a large serving of octopus from the fridge and brought it outside, then sat down and dressed it with olive oil and lemon juice. He started eating it with a sense of satisfaction, relishing a sort of revenge on the creature after the morning’s scare. It was very tender; Adelina had cooked it perfectly.

  Suddenly he remembered having read, in a book by a scientist named Alleva who worked with animals, that octopuses are extremely intelligent. He sat there a moment with his fork in midair. He reflected that it was always the fate of the intelligent to be eaten in every way possible by the more cunning cretins. He had no problem acknowledging the fact that he was a cretin himself, and resumed eating.

  In any case, hard as it was to digest, the octopus would have its revenge in turn, by preventing him from sleeping. A draw.

  He’d just finished clearing the table and was quietly smoking a cigarette when the telephone rang. Instinctively, he looked at his watch. It was nine thirty. Too early for Livia.

  ‘Ah, Chief! I beck yer partin’ for disturbin’ yiz! Wha’, d’jou eat yet?’

  ‘Yeah, Cat, don’t worry about it. What is it?’

  ‘I jess now got a call from a lady says she’s a killin’ lady at the supermarket in Piano Lanterna!’

  ‘I think you mean a cleaning lady, Cat.’

  ‘Why, wha’d I jess say?’

  ‘Never mind. What did she want?’

  ‘She wannit a tell us Porcellino ’ung ’isself.’

  Montalbano wasn’t surprised. In a way
he’d expected something like that. ‘Is Fazio still at the office?’

  ‘Nossir, Chief, ’e left on ’is way to the scene wit’ Gallo.’

  *

  When he pulled up outside the supermarket, the newsmen were already there along with fifty or so onlookers who Gallo and another police officer were keeping at bay.

  Inside he found Fazio standing in front of a woman of about forty seated on a chair with her blouse unbuttoned. Beside her, another woman was holding a wet cloth to her forehead, while a third woman fanned her face with a newspaper.

  Every so often the first woman would strike herself in the chest and say:

  ‘My God, what a fright! Nearly scared me to death!’

  ‘Was she the one who discovered the body?’ the inspector asked Fazio.

  ‘Yes, sir. But it was that girl over there who called us.’

  And he gestured towards a thirtyish young woman leaning against a counter with a broom in her hand.

  ‘Have you informed the prosecutor and Dr Pasquano?’

  ‘Already taken care of.’

  He went over to the girl.

  ‘I’m Inspector Montalbano.’

  ‘My name is Graziella Cusumano.’

  ‘Please tell me how you discovered . . .’

  ‘Me an’ th’other girls come in every night aroun’ nine. We knock at the back door an’ the manager comes an’ opens up for us. But tonight we knocked and knocked an’ nobody came.’

  ‘Had that ever happened before?’

  ‘Nossir, never.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So we thought that the manager maybe went home, ’cause ’e didn’t feel so good after the robbery an’ all, an’ I—’

  ‘Who told you about the robbery?’

  ‘Everybody in town knows about it, Inspector! So, anyway, I called him on my mobile, but there was no answer. An’ that seemed strange to me. To be on the safe side, I decided to call the company an’ explained everything to Filippo Tridicino, who’s a distant relative of mine. He came wit’ the key an’ opened up. Filumena went to clean the manager’s office, since that’s her job, and when she saw him hangin’ there, she fainted. An’ that’s when I called you.’

  ‘What time does the supermarket close?’

  ‘At eight. But it wasn’t open this afternoon.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I dunno. My cousin, who works at the shop as a cashier, told me. The manager told all the staff that we wouldn’t be opening again after lunch.’