A Voice in the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  ‘An accountant!’ he howled, leaping to his feet with eyes bulging.

  Fazio just looked at him, a furrow appearing in the middle of his brow.

  Mimì made light of the situation.

  ‘Calm down, Salvo! What’s wrong with you? Accountants aren’t some sort of endangered species. So Borsellino was an accountant. So what?’

  ‘Mimì, you don’t understand a fucking thing!’

  ‘I understand,’ said Fazio.

  ‘Then please explain it to the senior detective inspector while I smoke a cigarette.’

  He smoked it at the window, and when he’d finished, he sat back down.

  ‘If I’ve understood correctly, you think Borsellino might have been the chief and only accountant for all of the Cuffaros’ businesses, is that right?’ Augello asked.

  ‘It’s just a hypothesis, Mimì, but it should be checked out. It would be the only explanation of why the Cuffaros paid the ransom. They couldn’t risk losing someone so important to them, someone who knew all their secrets.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Augello retorted. ‘If Borsellino was so important, why did they have him killed just a few months later, going through that whole song and dance of the supermarket burglary?’

  ‘Because apparently something had happened that made them no longer trust him,’ Montalbano replied.

  ‘But why? What reason could Borsellino have given them to doubt him?’

  Augello’s question was left momentarily unanswered. Then the inspector, whose brain was whirring to the point of overheating, said:

  ‘Maybe it was because of the kidnapping itself.’

  ‘Explain what you mean.’

  ‘Maybe the Cuffaros reasoned the way I just did. They too must have wondered how the kidnappers managed to know that Borsellino would be attending the meeting that evening. Fazio just said that they convened exceptionally, and unexpectedly, to the point that Borsellino didn’t have his papers in order. Who informed the kidnappers?’

  ‘Someone from the board of directors?’ Mimì ventured.

  ‘I would rule that out, since by now the culprit would have already been singled out by the Cuffaros and killed. Fazio, do you know of any member of the council who was recently offed?’

  ‘No, they’re all still alive.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ Montalbano began, then immediately stopped.

  ‘Maybe?’ Augello egged him on. But the inspector was lost in thought. Silence filled the room. And the phone took advantage and started ringing.

  ‘Chief? ’Ere’s the young lady siccritary o’ Mr Mito onna line sayin’ as how ’e jess got back.’

  Montalbano hung up and then rose to his feet.

  ‘Both of you come with me. We’re going to the Free Channel studios in Fazio’s car.’

  *

  ‘You have no idea what a nasty piece of work this La Cava is!’ said Nicolò Zito. ‘He’s a vicious dog that won’t give up his bone! There was no way I could persuade him I hadn’t faked the burglary! I’m lucky I have a good lawyer, or I’d still be there now!’

  ‘Do you have the copy of the recordings?’

  ‘I can see you’re very interested in my ordeal. Thanks. Of course I have the copy. I’ve kept it on me the whole time, even when I went to see the judge. I had it made for a normal tape recorder, since you would never be able to work out how to use the digital kind.’

  ‘As far as that goes, I don’t know how to use the normal kind either.’

  Zito pulled a tiny cassette out of his breast pocket and handed it to him.

  ‘Can I ask another favour of you?’ Montalbano asked.

  ‘Sure, as long as I won’t end up back again in front of La Cava.’

  ‘Can we all listen together to this recording right now?’

  ‘I can give you about an hour. But then I have to prepare the report on Strangio’s suicide. It’s blockbuster news and I’ve got material from three different cameramen to sort out. But what’s so important about that recording?’

  ‘There’s a phone conversation between Borsellino and an unknown person that took place before Augello got there. I want you to hear it too.’

  Zito took a small cassette player out of a drawer, put the cassette in it, ran it backwards and forward until they heard Borsellino’s voice saying:

  ‘Hello? This is Guido.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Montalbano, who’d read and reread the transcription.

  They listened to it in silence.

  ‘Can I hear that again?’ asked Zito.

  He listened to it carefully again and then said:

  ‘It’s clear that the man to whom Borsellino is reporting the burglary already knows what’s happened. He gives himself away without wanting to.’

  He sat there for a spell, thinking.

  ‘You guys mind if I listen to it one more time?’

  ‘Why?’ Montalbano asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you afterwards.’

  When it had finished, Zito said:

  ‘Come with me.’

  All four of them went into a room packed with video-cassettes. Zito searched around for a while, then picked one out and slipped it into a VCR beside a monitor before Montalbano stopped him.

  ‘Nicolò,’ he said, ‘if you tell me you want me to listen to the voice of an honourable parliamentarian, I swear I’m going to hug and kiss you.’

  ‘How’d you guess?’ asked Zito, smiling.

  Montalbano hugged him and kissed him. It was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

  Ten minutes was enough to dispel any doubts anyone might have. The unknown voice on the phone to Borsellino belonged to none other than the Honourable Mongibello himself.

  *

  ‘Do me a favour,’ Montalbano said to Fazio as they were going out. ‘Take Mimì back and then come and pick me up in front of Montelusa Central.’

  It took him ten minutes on foot to reach the shop he was looking for.

  ‘I’d like a mobile that doesn’t cost much.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place. We’re having a sale, with a ten-euro phone card prepaid.’

  The salesman opened the display case, took the phone, and showed it to him.

  ‘It costs only thirty euros.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Let me see some sort of ID,’ said the salesman.

  Montalbano got flustered. He didn’t know you needed ID. The salesman noticed.

  ‘You don’t have an ID card?’

  ‘I do, but I left it in the car, which is parked a long way away. Let’s forget about it.’

  But the salesman didn’t want to lose a sale.

  ‘Perhaps if you knew the number on your ID card . . .’

  ‘That I do,’ Montalbano improvised. ‘ID card number 23456309, issued by Sicudiana Town Hall to the name of Michele Fantauzzo, Via Granet 23, Sicudiana.’

  The salesman wrote down the information.

  ‘Could you explain to me how it works?’ Montalbano asked.

  After getting his explanation, he paid and went out, putting the device in the left-hand pocket of his jacket. In the other he had the recorder Zito had lent him, the instructions for which he’d even written down on a piece of paper – after having them explained to him a good ten times. He started running towards Montelusa Central.

  *

  The first thing he did when he got home was pick up the telephone and look for a number, which he then wrote down on a piece of paper.

  He went into the kitchen. Adelina had made him a salad of rice and clams, mussels, and baby octopus pieces. For the second course, fried calamari and scampi. He laid the table on the veranda and had a feast.

  Wanting to kill time until at least midnight, he sat down in the armchair and turned on the TV. There was a movie with Alberto Sordi on. He watched this for a while, then switched to TeleVigàta news. Mr Chicken-Arse Face was just finishing his editorial:

  . . . it wasn’t a proper letter he left, but just a note, which we’ve had a chance to look at,
and which said only: ‘My son Giovanni did not kill Mariangela Carlesimo. I did. I’d been having an affair with her for some time. We had a quarrel, and I lost my head.’ These words were followed by his signature. I feel now that it is my duty to explain why we here at TeleVigàta were so long convinced of the guilt of Giovanni Strangio, the son. This young man . . .

  He turned it off and went out on the veranda with whisky and cigarettes. So Michele Strangio hadn’t mentioned either the phone calls or the bathrobe. He would call Fazio in the morning to tell him to get rid of it.

  He felt a bit uneasy about what he had in mind to do. When the commissioner, in his office, had informed him of the president’s suicide, he’d felt overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. Even though there was no question that his intention had not been to push the man to suicide, but simply to smoke him out in the hope that he would make a false move, that death had weighed heavily on him at that moment. Then it occurred to him that he might not have had anything to do with Strangio’s death. It was a voice in the night, an anonymous voice, that had told him this. A voice in the night that could easily have been the voice of his conscience. The justification was a bit of a stretch, and a bit hypocritical, of course, but to a Jesuit it would have held up. Anyway, why should he have so many scruples in dealing with people who didn’t even know what scruples were and did nothing but constantly escape punishment by using their political power? No, he would do what he’d decided to do. And if it worked the first time around, it would work again the second.

  It was now half-past midnight. Montalbano got up, went over to the telephone, picked up his mobile, and dialled his own number. The phone started to ring. Reassured by the success of his test, he turned his attention to the recorder, keeping the instruction sheet in view. The second test also went well. Then he took the usual clothes peg out of the broom cupboard, pinched his nose with it, and dialled on his mobile the number he’d written down earlier.

  ‘Hello, who is this?’ asked the voice of the Honourable Mongibello.

  Without answering, Montalbano turned on the tape, keeping the receiver right up next to the speaker. When the recording had finished, he said:

  ‘D’ja like that? Ya wasted yer time stealin’ the recorder!’

  ‘Who’s speaking? What do you want?’

  ‘Can’t figger out what I want?’

  ‘Speak clearly.’

  ‘When I feel like speakin’ clearly, I’ll letcha know.’

  He hung up before the other could protest. He had a shower and then got into bed.

  He slept straight through and didn’t wake up until past nine.

  *

  ‘Cat, send Fazio to me, would you?’ he said as he entered the office.

  ‘I’m incatacipated, Chief, ’cause the foresaid ain’t onna premisses.’

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  ‘Yessir, Chief. Diss mornin’ ’e come in an’ ’enn ’e went straight back out, an’ as ’e’s passin’ by me on ’is way out, ’e said as ’e’s passin’ by me ’at ’e was called inna the c’mishner’s office.’

  What could they want with Fazio at the commissioner’s office?

  ‘Is Augello in?’

  ‘Nahssir, ’e called sayin’ as how ’e’s gonna be late.’

  ‘Then get somebody to replace you and come into my office.’

  ‘Straightaways, Chief.’

  The inspector had barely sat down when Catarella came in.

  ‘Lock the door behind you and sit down.’

  Catarella obeyed and then stood at attention in front of Montalbano.

  ‘I told you to sit down.’

  ‘I can’t, Chief. My legs refuse, outta rispeck f’ yiz, sir.’

  ‘Well, at ease then, otherwise I feel like I’m talking to a puppet.’

  Catarella assumed the regulation ‘at ease’ stance.

  ‘Everything I’m about to tell you must remain between you and me.’

  Catarella teetered.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Jest a li’l dizzy spell, Chief.’

  ‘You feel all right?’

  ‘The fack ’at ’ere’s gonna be a secret ’tween me an’ yiz makes my ’ead spin, Chief.’

  Montalbano asked him the question he had in mind. Catarella explained what he had to do. The inspector gave him some money and told him to go and buy what he needed and to take it to his house in Marinella, where Adelina was still working.

  *

  Fazio checked back in at around eleven, wearing a face so gloomy that Montalbano got worried.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was called in this morning by Vice-Commissioner Sponses.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s the official in charge of Anti-terrorism.’

  ‘God, what a pain! Do they want us to get involved in something of theirs?’

  ‘No. But he cautioned me not to do any more work on Borsellino’s kidnapping.’

  Fazio, expecting a violent reaction from the inspector, was taken by surprise. Montalbano was smiling.

  ‘Tell me exactly what he told you.’

  ‘He said he’d found out I was going around asking questions about the kidnapping and ordered me to stop.’

  ‘Did you ask why?’

  ‘I certainly did. He said it was better if everyone forgot about the whole affair. He said Borsellino’s suicide had prevented a certain thing from reaching its conclusion, and so the less it was talked about, the better.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. So Sponses believes that Borsellino killed himself?’

  ‘He seemed pretty convinced of it to me.’

  ‘That means Sponses hasn’t spoken to the commissioner. And that the order to stop investigating is an independent decision of Anti-terrorism.’

  ‘That’s the impression I had too. But now you have to explain to me why you were smiling.’

  ‘Because I was convinced that Borsellino was kidnapped by the Anti-Mafia people, when it turns out it was Anti-terrorism. There’s a considerable difference.’

  Fazio looked completely bewildered.

  ‘I haven’t understood a thing.’

  ‘It’s like this, Fazio. I was convinced that the only ones who could have had any interest in kidnapping Borsellino were the Anti-Mafia people, to get their hands on his account books. But I wondered how they happened to know that Borsellino would be attending that board of directors’ meeting that evening, and I had no answer.’

  ‘But the question remains even if it was Anti-terrorism that kidnapped him!’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. That changes things. Say Borsellino finds out that one of the Cuffaros is in contact with terrorists. You can do good business with those people. Like, for example, offering them a safe base of operations. But the risk is much greater than with drug dealing or protection money or corruption. And Borsellino, in fact, gets scared about this initiative. It’s one thing to do the accounts for the Mafia, and something else to be accused of complicity with terrorists. One way or another, Anti-terrorism get wind of the matter. And they start putting pressure – it’s anybody’s guess how – on Borsellino. Who gives in and decides to talk. But if he’s going to talk, he wants his back covered. So they have to put on some kind of act. Anti-terrorism suggest they fake a kidnapping at the right moment, and Borsellino himself will tell them when it’s the right moment. And as soon as he’s summoned to the meeting, he informs Sponses. During those four days they talk and perhaps come to an agreement, but Borsellino asks for time so he can work out a way to let them see the compromising documents. And so they grant him time.

  The best part of the whole thing is that to make the kidnapping seem real, they demand a fortune from the Cuffaros – who at some point, however, start to suspect Borsellino. So they kill him, making it look like a suicide so that Anti-terrorism don’t get suspicious. Sponses, without knowing it, has done us a favour. He’s confirmed what I’d been thinking.’

  *

  He didn’t feel like eating; he
was too agitated. But he still took his customary stroll along the jetty, if only to distract himself. At five minutes to three he went back to the office.

  ‘Did you get everything?’ he asked Catarella.

  ‘Yeah, Chief, I wenn inna shop in Montelusa jess like you ast, an’ ’enn I took the stuff I boughted to yer ’ouse in Marinella. Lemme go ’n’ get ya the change.’

  After Catarella went out, the inspector got up and locked the door. Then he sat back down and called Montelusa Central on the outside line.

  ‘Commissioner Sponses, please. This is Montalbano.’ To make the time go by, he reviewed the times table for seven. When he got to seven times nine, Sponses answered but didn’t give him time to say anything.

  ‘Listen, Montalbano, we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting, but if you’re calling about that kidnapping business, I can tell you right away that—’

  He was tempted to tell him to stick it you-know-where, but he needed Sponses as much as he needed air.

  ‘I’m calling for another reason. Think you could give me half an hour of your time?’

  ‘Wait just a second while I check. I’m a little busy. Tomorrow morning at ten OK with you?’

  ‘Perfect, thank you.’

  He hung up and dialled another number.

  ‘Nicolò? Montalbano here. I need a favour from you.’

  ‘Jesus, Salvo! Have you become a professional pain in the arse or something? What do you want?’

  ‘If I come to your office would you interview me?’

  ‘And you’ll also write down the questions I’m supposed to ask you?’

  ‘Good guess.’

  ‘And you probably want it broadcast on the eight-thirty report?’

  ‘Good guess again.’

  ‘Come at seven-fifteen sharp.’

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Inspector Montalbano, we’ve invited you here to our studios in the hope that you might apply your investigative acumen to a case in which we at the Free Channel have become involved. As you and our listeners know, a few days ago we were anonymously sent a digital recorder that used to belong to Guido Borsellino, a former supermarket manager in Vigàta, which contained, among other things, recordings of conversations between Borsellino and Inspector Augello, your second-in-command, and then between Borsellino and yourself. We then broadcast these recordings. That same night, however, unknown burglars broke into our offices and stole the digital recorder – exclusively, taking nothing else. So, Inspector Montalbano, my first question is this: who would have an interest in exculpating you of the accusation that some have levelled at you, namely, that you drove the late Guido Borsellino to suicide?’