“Thanks for everything, Doctor.”
They shook hands. The inspector got back in his car and drove off at a leisurely pace, lost in thought. A car came up behind him and flashed its high beam, reproaching him for going so slowly. When Montalbano pulled over to the right, the other car, a kind of silver torpedo, passed and came to a sudden stop in front of him. Cursing, the inspector slammed on the brakes. In the beam of his headlights, he saw a hand emerge from the torpedo’s window and give him the finger. Seething with rage, Montalbano got out of his car, ready to have it out with the driver. The torpedo’s driver also got out. Montalbano stopped dead in his tracks. It was Ingrid, arms open and smiling.
“I recognized the car,” said the Swede.
How long had it been since they’d last seen each other? Surely at least a year. They embraced long and hard. Ingrid kissed him, then lightly pushed him away, holding him at arm’s length to have a better look.
“I saw you naked on TV,” she said laughing. “You’re still a pretty nice hunk.”
“And you’re more beautiful than ever,” said the inspector in all sincerity.
Ingrid embraced him again.
“Is Livia here?”
“No.”
“Then I’d like to come sit a while on your veranda.”
“Okay.”
“Give me a second. I need to break an engagement.”
She murmured something into her cell phone, then asked.
“Got any whisky?”
“A whole bottle, still unopened. Here, Ingrid, take my house keys. You go on ahead, I can’t keep up with you.”
She laughed, took his keys, and had already vanished by the time the inspector turned on the ignition. He was pleased by this chance encounter. It would not only afford him the pleasure of spending a few hours with an old friend, but would grant him the distance necessary to think with a cool head about what Dr. Pasquano had just revealed to him.
When he pulled up in front of his house, Ingrid came up to him, embraced him and held him tight.
“I have authorization.”
“From whom?”
“From Livia. The minute I went inside, the phone started ringing, so I answered. I shouldn’t have, I know, but it was an instinctive reaction. It was her. I told her you’d be home in a few minutes, but she said she wouldn’t call back. She said you hadn’t been feeling too well and that, as your nurse, I was authorized to comfort you and take care of you. And this is the only way I know how to comfort and take care of people.”
Shit. Livia must have been seriously upset. Ingrid hadn’t understood, or had pretended not to understand, Livia’s venomous irony.
“Excuse me just a minute,” said Montalbano, breaking free of her embrace.
He dialed Livia’s number in Boccadasse, but it was busy. She’d taken the phone off the hook, no doubt about it. He tried again. Meanwhile Ingrid roamed about the house, digging up the whisky bottle, getting some ice cubes from the freezer, going out on the veranda and sitting down. The line remained busy. The inspector gave up, went outside, and sat down next to Ingrid on the bench. It was an exquisite night. There were a few light, wispy clouds in the sky, and the surf washed ashore with a caressing hush. A thought—a question, really—came into the inspector’s head and made him smile. Would the night have seemed so idyllic if Ingrid hadn’t been there beside him, head resting on his shoulder after having poured him a generous dose of whisky?
Then Ingrid started talking about herself and didn’t finish until three and a half hours later, when only four fingers of whisky remained in the bottle before it could be officially declared dead. She said her husband was acting like the asshole he was and that they lived separate lives under one same roof; she said she’d gone to Sweden because she’d felt a longing for her family (“You Sicilians gave me the bug”); and she admitted she’d had two affairs. The first was with a member of Parliament, a strict Catholic who went by the name of Frisella or Grisella—the inspector couldn’t quite hear which—and who before getting into bed with her would kneel on the floor and beg God’s forgiveness for the sin he was about to commit. The second was with the captain of an oil tanker who’d taken an early retirement after coming into a generous inheritance, and it could have become a serious involvement if she hadn’t decided to call things off. This man, who went by the name of D’Iunio or D’Ionio—the inspector couldn’t quite hear which—troubled her and made her feel uncomfortable. Ingrid had an extraordinary ability to grasp at once the comical or grotesque aspects of her men, and this amused Montalbano. It was a relaxing evening, better than a massage.
Next morning, despite an eternal shower and four cups of coffee, gulped down one after the other, when he got into his car his head was still numb from the whisky of the night before. As for everything else, he felt entirely back on track.
“J’you get over your illment, Chief?” asked Catarella as the inspector walked into headquarters.
“My illment’s a lot better, thanks.”
“Hey, I saw you on TV, Chief. Jesus, what an embodiment you got!”
The inspector went into his office and called Fazio, who arrived in a flash. The sergeant was dying to know what Dr. Pasquano had told him, but didn’t dare ask. He didn’t open his mouth at all, in fact, because he was keenly aware that these were dark days for the inspector, and the slightest peep might set him off. Montalbano waited for him to sit down, pretending to look at some papers out of sheer meanness, since he could clearly see Fazio’s question etched in the curve of his lips. He wanted to let him stew a little. Then, all at once, without looking up from his papers, he said:
“Homicide.”
Taken by surprise, Fazio jumped out of his chair.
“Shot?”
“Nuh-unh.”
“Stabbed?”
“Nuh-unh. Drowned.”
“But how did Dr. Pasquano—”
“Pasquano merely took a look at the body and formed an opinion. But Pasquano’s almost never wrong.”
“And what’s he base his opinion on?”
The inspector told him everything. And he added:
“The fact that Mistretta doesn’t agree with Pasquano actually helps us. In his report, under the heading ‘Cause of Death,’ Mistretta will surely write: ‘Drowning,’ using the proper forensic terminology, of course. And that’ll be our cover. We can work in peace without any interference from the commissioner’s office, the flying squad, or anyone else.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“First of all, you should request an identification profile for the victim: height, hair color, age, things like that.”
“And a photo, too.”
“Fazio, didn’t you see the state he was in? Did that look like a face to you?”
Fazio looked crestfallen.
“If it’ll make you feel any better,” the inspector continued, “I can tell you that he probably limped. He’d been shot in the leg some time ago.”
“It’s still going to be tough to identify him.”
“Try anyway. Have a look at the disappearance reports, too. Pasquano says the body’d been cruising the seas for at least a month.”
“I’ll try,” said Fazio, unconvinced.
“I’m going out. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He headed straight for the port, stopped the car, got out, and walked towards a wharf where two fishing boats were moored, the rest having already gone out to sea some time before. Luckily, the Madre di Dio was there, having its motor overhauled. He approached and saw the captain and owner, Ciccio Albanese, standing on deck, overseeing operations.
“Ciccio!”
“Is that you, Inspector? I’ll be right down.”
They’d known each other a long time and were fond of one another. Albanese was a brine-bitten sixty-year-old who’d been working on fishing boats since the age of six and who people said had no peer when it came to knowing the sea between Vigàta and Malta and all the way to Tunisia. He could find
mistakes in nautical charts and navigation manuals. It was whispered about town that when work was scarce, he wasn’t above smuggling cigarettes.
“Is this a good time, Ciccio?”
“Absolutely, Inspector. For you, I’m always available.”
Montalbano explained what he wanted from him. Albanese limited himself to asking how much time it would take, and the inspector told him.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours, boys.”
He followed behind Montalbano, who was heading towards his car. They rode in silence. The guard at the morgue told the inspector that Dr. Mistretta wasn’t in yet; only Jacopello, his assistant, was there. Montalbano felt relieved. Meeting with Mistretta would have ruined the rest of his day. Jacopello was quite loyal to Pasquano, and his face lit up when he saw the inspector.
“Good to see you!”
With Jacopello, the inspector knew he could lay his cards on the table.
“This is my friend, Ciccio Albanese. He’s a man of the sea. If Mistretta’d been here, we’d have told him my friend wanted to see the body, fearing it might be one of his deck hands gone overboard. But there’s no need to playact with you. If Mistretta asks you any questions when he comes in, you know what to answer. Right?”
“Right. Follow me.”
The corpse, in the meantime, had grown even paler. It looked like a skeleton with an onionskin laid over it and bits of flesh randomly attached here and there. As Albanese was examining it, Montalbano asked Jacopello:
“Do you know how Dr. Pasquano thinks this poor bastard was killed?”
“Of course. I was there for the discussion. Mistretta’s wrong. See for yourself.”
The deep, circular grooves around the wrists and ankles had, moreover, turned greyish in color.
“Jacopè, think you could persuade Mistretta to order that test Pasquano wanted done on the tissues?”
Jacopello laughed.
“Want to bet I can?”
“Make a bet with you? Never.”
Jacopello was a well-known betting enthusiast. He made bets with everyone on everything from the weather forecast to how many people would die of natural causes over the course of a week, and he rarely lost.
“I’ll think up some reason to convince him that we’re better off having that analysis done. How are we going to look if Inspector Montalbano later discovers that the guy didn’t die by accident, but was murdered? Mistretta will sacrifice his ass if he has to, but he doesn’t like to lose face. But I’m warning you, Inspector, those tests take a long time.”
Only during the drive back did Albanese decide to emerge from his silence.
“Bah,” he managed to mutter.
“What?” the inspector said in vexation. “You look at a dead body for half an hour and all you can say is ‘bah’?”
“It’s all very strange,” said Albanese. “And I’ve certainly seen my share of drowning victims. But this one . . . ,” he interrupted himself to follow another thought: “How long did the doctor say he’d been in the water?”
“A good month.”
“No, Inspector. Two good months, at least.”
“But after two months in the water, there wouldn’t have been any body left, just pieces here and there.”
“That’s what’s so strange about it.”
“Explain, Ciccio.”
“The fact is that I don’t like to talk bullshit.”
“If you only knew how much comes out of my mouth! Come on, Ciccio, out with it!”
“You saw the wounds made by the rocks, right?”
“Right.”
“They’re superficial, Inspector. This past month we had rough seas for ten days straight. If the body was thrown against any rocks in those waters, it wouldn’t have that kind of wound. It would have had its head knocked off, or some ribs broken, or a few bones sticking out.”
“So? Maybe during those bad days you mention, the body was out on the open sea, far from any rocks.”
“But Inspector, you found it in an area where the currents go backwards!”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you find it right off Marinella?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the currents there either go out to sea or run parallel to the coast. Another two days and the body would have passed Capo Russello, you can be sure of that.”
Montalbano fell silent, lost in thought. Then he said:
“You’ll have to explain this business about the currents a little better for me.”
“Whenever you like.”
“You free tonight?”
“Yessir. Why don’t you come to my place for dinner? My wife’s making striped surmullet her own special way.”
Immediately Montalbano’s tongue was drowning in saliva.
“Thanks. But what do you make of all this, Ciccio?”
“Can I speak freely? First of all, rocks don’t leave the kind of wounds that guy had around his wrists and ankles.”
“Right.”
“He must have been tied up by the wrists and ankles before they drowned him.”
“With iron wire, according to Pasquano.”
“Right. Then they took the body and let it soak for a while in sea water, probably in some secluded place. Then, when they figured he was pretty well pickled, they put ’im out to sea.”
“Why would they wait so long?”
“Inspector, those guys wanted to make it look like the body came from far away.”
Montalbano looked at him with admiration. Not only had Ciccio Albanese, a man of the sea, come to the same conclusions as Dr. Pasquano, a man of science, and Montalbano, a man of ironclad police logic; he also had taken a big step forward.
4
But the inspector was destined never to get so much as a whiff, not even from afar, of the striped surmullets specially prepared by Ciccio Albanese’s wife. Around eight that evening, when he was getting ready to leave the office, a call came in for him from Deputy Commissioner Riguccio. Though he’d known him for years and they got on rather well, their relationship had never gone beyond the confines of work. It wouldn’t have taken much for it to turn into friendship, but neither of them could make up his mind.
“Hello, Montalbano? Sorry, but is there anyone in your office who wears glasses with a correction of three for nearsightedness in both eyes?”
“Huh?” the inspector replied. “We’ve got two patrolmen who wear glasses, Cusumano and Torretta, but I have no idea what their prescriptions are. Why do you ask? Is this some survey you’re doing for your beloved minister?”
It was no mystery that Riguccio’s political positions were close to those of the new government.
“I haven’t got time for jokes, Salvo. See if they’ve got a pair that might work for me and send them over to me as soon as possible. Mine just broke and I’m lost without my glasses.”
“Don’t you have an extra pair at the office?” asked Montalbano as he was calling Fazio.
“I do, but I’m not in Montelusa.”
“Where are you?”
“Here in Vigàta. On tourist duty.”
The inspector explained the problem to Fazio.
“Riguccio? I’m having somebody look into it. How many tourists you got today?”
“At least a hundred and fifty, on two of our patrol craft. They came across on two big boats that were shipping water and about to crash into the rocks at Lampedusa. From what I could gather, their guides abandoned them at sea and escaped on a dinghy. They were all about to drown, poor things. You know something, Montalbà? I don’t think I can stand to see any more of these wretched people. They—”
“Tell it to your pals in the government.”
Fazio came back with a pair of glasses.
“The left eye’s a three, the right eye, two and a half.”
Montalbano passed this information on.
“Perfect,” said Riguccio. “Could you send them over to me? The patrol boats are docking right now.”
Fo
r whatever reason, Montalbano decided to take them himself, personally in person, as Catarella would say. All things considered, Riguccio was an excellent fellow, and it wasn’t the end of the world if the inspector got to Ciccio Albanese’s house a little late.
He was happy not to be in Riguccio’s shoes. The Montelusa commissioner’s office had asked the harbor authority that they be informed every time a new group of illegal immigrants arrived, and whenever this happened, Riguccio would head off to Vigàta with the requisite convoy of buses, police vans full of policemen, ambulances, and Jeeps, and was greeted every time by the same scenes of tragedy, tears, and sorrow. There were women giving birth, children lost in the confusion, people who’d lost their wits or fallen ill during endless journeys outside on the deck, exposed to the wind and the rain, and they all needed help. When they disembarked, the fresh sea air wasn’t enough to dispel the unbearable stench they carried with them, which was a smell not of unwashed bodies but of fear, anguish, and suffering, of despair that had reached the point beyond which lies only the hope of death. It was impossible to remain indifferent to all this, and that was why Riguccio had admitted he couldn’t stand it any longer.
When he got to the port, the inspector noticed that the first patrol boat had already lowered its gangplank. The policemen had lined up in two parallel rows, forming a kind of human corridor all the way to the first bus, which was waiting with its motor running. Standing at the bottom of the gangplank, Riguccio thanked Montalbano and put the glasses on. The inspector got the impression his colleague was so intent on supervising the situation that he hadn’t even recognized him.
Riguccio then gave the signal to begin the disembarkation. The first person to come out was a black woman with a belly so big she looked like she might give birth at any moment. She was unable to walk on her own. A sailor from the patrol boat and a black man helped her along. When they got to the ambulance, there was some shouting when the black man wanted to get in with the woman. The sailor tried to explain to the police that the man was surely her husband, since he’d had his arms around her the whole time on the boat. Nothing doing, it couldn’t be allowed. The ambulance pulled away with its siren wailing. The black man started crying, and the sailor took his arm, accompanying him to the bus and talking to him all the while. Feeling curious, the inspector approached them. The sailor was speaking a dialect; he must have hailed from Venice or somewhere thereabouts, and the black man didn’t understand a thing, but clearly felt comforted by the friendly sound of the sailor’s words.
IM7 Rounding the Mark (2006) Page 4