The Other End of the Line

by Andrea Camilleri

  Catarella obeyed.

  His curiosity aroused, Montalbano got up and went to see what was in the bags.

  Catarella had spared no expense. One bag contained kibble for the cat; in the other, aside from a pair of small bowls for the cat’s food and water, there was also a little cloth mouse, a clump of catnip, and a ball of yarn.

  A ball of yarn!

  Exactly like the one in his dream.

  Montalbano crouched in front of the carrying case. He looked at Rinaldo, and Rinaldo looked at him. Montalbano realized he was in no danger.

  12

  He opened the little door, and a few seconds later Rinaldo stepped forward, came out, and climbed into the inspector’s lap.

  At that exact moment the door came crashing open again. Catarella appeared. Terrorized, the cat sank its claws into Montalbano’s leg, and the inspector, cursing all the while, unstuck it roughly from his thigh and threw Rinaldo at Catarella, who stepped aside as the cat fled down the corridor.

  It took the intervention of at least three policemen to catch the cat and put it back in the cage.

  Catarella had an idea:

  “Chief, seein’ as how the cat ain’t familial wit’ dese offices, d’ya tink I cou’ bring ’im home wit’ me?”

  “But this is not a stray cat, Cat. We’ll have to give him back to his owners.”

  “Y’er right, Chief, but the owner was killed!”

  “Okay, but maybe her sister-in-law . . .”

  Catarella looked so crestfallen that the inspector changed his mind.

  “Listen, tell you what: Take him home with you for a few days, and then we’ll see.”

  “Tanks, Chief. Oh, an’, sorry again, Chief, but d’ya mine if I make a few sep’rit trips to move all ’iss stuff? Utterwise iss possible I’m gonna make anutter mess.”

  “All right. Make as many trips as you like.”

  Montalbano waited for Catarella to clear out the office, then got up himself and went out to eat.

  * * *

  He’d probably been a bit excessive in slaking his long-neglected hunger, and therefore a stroll along the jetty became not only a necessity, but an urgent one.

  When he got to the flat rock, it seemed to him the right time to make a phone call.

  “Hello, Meriam, how are you doing?”

  “Hello, Inspector. How do you expect me to be doing . . . ?”

  “Do you think I could come and see Signora Messina this afternoon?”

  “Actually, they just returned Elena’s body to her a few hours ago. Teresa’s in the morgue with her husband and I don’t think she’ll be moving from there. The funeral’s tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  “All right, there’s no hurry. Would you feel like meeting with me? There are a few things I need to ask you.”

  “Of course, but I can’t right now. How about if we meet after six?”

  “Could you come to the station?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  As he was smoking a cigarette, he reflected that, up until that moment, he had been nothing more than a recipient of information.

  He had been passively storing a great deal of data but had so far taken no initiative on his own.

  He felt uneasy about this, as though he was unable to press the right buttons.

  The real problem was that he was having trouble bringing the real Elena into focus, inside her proper frame. It was as though part of her remained in a sort of chiaroscuro that prevented him from seeing her actual contours.

  The way everyone described her—an image that he himself had been able to confirm in person—as a person completely open to the world and to other people, might actually have been a kind of screen.

  Better yet, that image might hide something that, depending on one’s point of view, could seem either true or false.

  Perhaps the right path to take was to follow his standard procedure. To try not to let himself be influenced by this great quantity of information and data, and especially not by people’s judgments of Elena.

  From this point forward, he would move only on the basis of confirmed, concrete facts. And so he decided to do something immediately that he should have done sooner.

  He phoned the forensics lab.

  The chief of the lab was Fernando Leanza, who’d taken over a few months earlier, and with whom Montalbano felt a mutual sympathy.

  Leanza replied that he had a few interesting things to tell him, but he couldn’t see him for another hour or so.

  Since he had the time, there were two things Montalbano could do: stay out there on the jetty, or get immediately in his car and go visit the Greek temples, which he hadn’t seen for a very long time.

  He got in his car and drove off.

  * * *

  Contrary to expectation, there were quite a few groups of tourists, dressed like tourists, milling about between the majestic ruins, faces half-hidden by either cameras or cell phones.

  He was overjoyed to discover that, within the archaeological park, a plot of land had been fenced off for breeding Girgentana goats.

  He stopped to look at them.

  They were so beautiful!

  They belonged to an endangered species, and perhaps because they were disappearing, Montalbano found them to be the most beautiful goats he had ever seen. They had coats of rich, long hair, light brown in color, and gentle, feminine muzzles, large, pink udders, and wonderful, incredibly long horns, upright and spiral.

  Want to bet that Borromini drew inspiration from these goats for the bell tower of Sant’Ivo?

  Then, all at once, with a disturbing sound, a large, broad-winged bird swooped across his field of vision. Montalbano stepped aside as a little girl beside him started crying and screaming loudly.

  He had just enough time to see that it was a seagull snatching a cookie out of the hand of a young foreign tourist girl. Her father and mother tried to console her.

  The inspector walked away thinking that not only had seagulls forever lost their maritime dignity, they’d become back-road brigands.

  Dejected, he decided it was time to go to the crime lab.

  As for the sympathy Montalbano felt for Leanza, the new chief of Forensics, there was a personal reason at the bottom of it.

  When Leanza was transferred from the Palermo forensics lab to Montelusa, the TeleVigàta journalist Pippo Ragonese, the one with the purse-lipped face that looked like a chicken’s anus, had given the new arrival a welcome you really couldn’t call benevolent.

  For whatever reason, Ragonese had seen fit to present a whole sequence of suppositions for the reasons behind this transfer, all of them leading to a mountain of suspicions concerning the newcomer’s private and public conduct.

  Since, however, Montalbano was well familiar with the journalist’s own public and private conduct, he had no doubt whatsoever that Leanza must, as a result, be an honest man and therefore worthy of his friendship.

  And, indeed, the chief of Forensics, who’d now been in Montelusa for eight or nine months, had shown himself to be an intelligent, reasonable man who had absolutely nothing to hide.

  And therefore, when he saw the inspector coming into his office, Leanza got up and greeted him with open arms.

  “Hey there, Fernando,” said Montalbano.

  “Have a seat, Salvo. Can I get you anything?”

  “At this hour I wouldn’t mind a whisky, but obviously, here in the office . . .”

  “Whoever said that?” Leanza replied, standing up. He went over to the closet at the back of the room and returned with a bottle of whisky and two glasses, which he filled halfway, handing one to Montalbano. They both then raised their glasses at the same time and made a silent toast.

  They sat there for a few minutes without saying anything, savoring the wh
isky and looking each other in the eye. Montalbano then took a deep breath, which Leanza took as a signal to begin the discussion.

  “A nasty affair, eh?” he said.

  “Very nasty. And I’m still unable to say that two plus two equals four.”

  “I don’t think any of our findings will really help you much. I can tell you straightaway that the killer removed the victim’s computer and cell phone from the apartment. Which in my opinion means, obviously, that they contained evidence of contacts between the victim and the killer. Therefore they definitely knew each other prior to the killing, as we saw from the fact that they had dinner together.”

  “What have we got in the way of fingerprints?”

  “In the apartment, every kind of fingerprint you’d ever want, Salvo. One thing is certain, however: The killer used the tailoring scissors and, after killing her, was very careful to clean them off, since there are no fingerprints on either the handles or the blades.”

  “What did he use to clean them off?”

  “That small piece of fabric lying on the table, which he left there.”

  “Go on,” said the inspector.

  “After killing her, he went upstairs into her apartment. He was clearly all covered with blood. And so he got undressed and took a shower in the bathroom off the victim’s bedroom. Inside the shower stall we found traces of Signora Elena’s blood but no fingerprints, and none on the taps, either. These, too, had been carefully cleaned. Which leads to a question.”

  “If the killer’s clothes were all bloodstained, how was he able to go back out into the street? Is that the question you mean?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight: Do you also think we’re looking at a crime of passion?”

  “Absolutely,” said Leanza.

  “Then, if our theory is correct, the killer did not bring a change of clothes. Therefore, one possibility is that he came by car, parked nearby, and, after killing Elena, took a shower, got dressed again as best he could, and slipped quickly back into his car. But there’s still another possibility: If it was someone who’d come from out of town and was Elena’s houseguest, he might have had a suitcase with him with other clothes in it. Incidentally, do you remember, Fernà, what the guest room was like?”

  “Of course. The bed had been made up for that night. But it hadn’t been used.”

  “Just like the guest bathroom, spick-and-span,” Montalbano remarked.

  “Whatever the case, we didn’t find any extraneous fingerprints in either room.”

  “Apparently the killer had all the time in the world to erase all trace of himself. And what can you tell me about Rinaldo, Fernà?”

  “Who’s Rinaldo?” Leanza asked, alarmed.

  “Oh, sorry; he’s Elena’s cat.”

  The chief of Forensics grinned.

  “But tell me something, my friend: Was that bed by any chance made up for you?”

  “Use your brain, Fernà. If I’d been going to spend the night there, there wouldn’t have been any need to make up the guest bed. That’s obvious, no?”

  And since Leanza kept giving him that sly look, the inspector felt he needed to explain.

  “Listen. I knew Elena, but I’d only seen her twice because she was making a suit for me . . .”

  “But how much do they pay you at Vigàta Police, anyway, for all of you to have suddenly become so chic?”

  “C’mon, Fernà, let’s talk about something else. That suit was born under a bad star,” said Montalbano, cutting him short. “Tell me about the cat instead.”

  “The cat’s fur was soaked with the victim’s blood. He may even have attacked the killer and scratched him. But we were unable to isolate any DNA under the animal’s claws, because apparently he cleaned himself carefully afterwards, on the carpet next to the victim. And there you have it.”

  “Any idea why the killer spared her breasts?” the inspector asked.

  “Well, it’s certainly a sign of something, a conscious decision. But, sorry to say, I’m not in any position to interpret it.”

  They looked at each other.

  Leanza threw up his hands.

  Montalbano got up, thanked his friend, said good-bye, and headed back to Vigàta. Along the way he glanced at his watch. He was going to be right on time for his appointment with Meriam.

  * * *

  The first thing that struck him was the woman’s obvious fatigue.

  She seemed utterly exhausted. Tiny wrinkles that Montalbano had never noticed before had appeared on her face.

  Being a smart girl, Meriam immediately understood the meaning of the inspector’s look.

  “This has been such a terrible blow for me. I still can’t find any reason for it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Montalbano. “I’m sorry if I’m prolonging your suffering, but unfortunately I need some information from you.”

  “I want to help you in any way I can, Inspector. I’m entirely at your disposal,” said Meriam, forcing a hint of a smile.

  “I’ve been told about that young assistant at the shop, Lillo Scotto. Were you aware that Elena was intending to fire him?”

  “Yes, of course I was. She talked about it with me and Nicola. Believe me, Inspector, Elena tried to avoid it, right up until the end, but the situation kept getting more and more intolerable by the day.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Lillo had been working at the shop for a couple of years. He’s an excellent tailor, and had always been a good kid and a hard worker, always punctual, polite, and well-behaved. And he knew his place. But then . . .”

  She stopped, as if to put her thoughts in order, and then continued:

  “Then his behavior suddenly changed, and we didn’t know why. But we realized immediately that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with Elena.”

  “But what could have happened to trigger that kind of passion? Had Elena perhaps taken on a somewhat more, let’s say, affectionate attitude towards him?”

  “No, Inspector, absolutely not. It wasn’t triggered by anything specific, believe me. Lillo just lost his head over Elena. He stopped working, he wanted always to be the last one out of the shop, and he was forever finding excuses for sticking close to Elena. At first we just laughed at him, and Elena did, too. We figured it was just a hormonal thing, then some sort of illusion of love that Lillo harbored within himself and wanted to live out with Elena. But then this love, or infatuation, never diminished. On the contrary. Lillo only became more and more obsessed. Just imagine, when he would answer the phone and there was a man at the other end of the line asking for Elena, he would hang up in that person’s face. Elena tried talking to him about it—at first gently, with affection, like a mother. Then she became more stern and imperious, but even that didn’t work. Lillo wouldn’t listen to reason. He wanted Elena and was convinced—though it’s anybody’s guess why—that sooner or later she would give in.”

  “But was there a specific episode that led to Elena’s decision to sack him?”

  “I can’t think of any in particular, but just a few days ago I heard them arguing. I was in the fitting room. And after that Elena refused to go back on her decision. Lillo had to go.”

  “Let me ask you a very specific question,” Montalbano cut in. “Do you think he would be capable of committing a violent act? Do you think, for example, that if he was alone with her, an even firmer refusal than all the others from her could have caused him to lose all control?”

  Meriam didn’t have to give this any thought before answering.

  “No, Inspector. But, given the kinds of things you read about in the papers, I couldn’t really swear to it. Still, in all good conscience—and this is why I hadn’t mentioned him to you—I don’t think he would be capable of what you’re thinking. Lillo always limited himself to courting her intensely; I am
quite sure he never laid a hand on Elena.”

  Montalbano’s question was a rhetorical one, since the killer had actually had dinner with the victim, and, given the way things were, Elena would never have invited Lillo Scotto into her apartment, in the evening, with her there alone.

  He changed the subject:

  “And what can you tell me about Diego Trupia? Did you know about her affair with him?”

  “Yes, Inspector, of course. He would often drop in to say hello to her, and a few times we even went out together.”

  “I’m sorry, Meriam, but I know they had a serious relationship.”

  “I don’t know how to put this, Inspector, but I’ve seen Elena when she’s in love. And she was not in love with Trupia. She liked spending time with him, of course; she enjoyed his company, they sometimes went away together on vacation, but nothing more than that. Trupia was not the love of Elena’s life.”

  “Was Osman?”

  “He used to be. I’d never seen such a beautiful couple. And the friendship that came after their love affair was also a beautiful thing.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Mimì Augello appeared, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I have to tell you something important.”

  Montalbano stood up and said to Meriam: “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” And he went out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

  “I turned Trupia inside out like a sock,” Augello said, assailing him with a dark stare. “That son of a bitch made me work, made me sweat like a pig, but he wouldn’t confess.”

  “And so?”

  “And so the only objective fact is that he has no alibi. He claims he stayed at home that whole evening and didn’t even receive any calls. But he’s the only person with a serious motive.”

  “And what would that be?” asked Montalbano.

  “He admitted he’d quarreled with Elena. And probably what he’s not saying is that their quarrel was maybe final.”

  “Did you say ‘probably,’ Mimì?”