The Other End of the Line

by Andrea Camilleri

  “And did the doctor come?”

  “Sure he came. He’s a good man! An’ he stayed with my boy for at least forty-five minutes, talkin’ to him an’ tryin’ to get him to take a pill so he could rest.”

  And this erased any doubt that might remain as to Lillo’s innocence.

  Since the youngster hadn’t opened his mouth the whole time his mother was talking, the inspector turned to him.

  “How long had you been working at Elena’s shop?”

  “In a week it would have been two years,” the mother replied.

  Montalbano moved his chair a little bit to get a better angle on the son.

  “Tell me, Lillo, did you immediately feel comfortable with the other people working there?”

  “He was all excited when he come home from work the first day, Inspector. They were all very fond of my son, you see . . .”

  At this point Montalbano looked up and his eyes met Fazio’s.

  They immediately understood each other.

  “Signora,” said Fazio. “You’re going to have to wait outside. Please come with me.”

  “Why?” the woman protested. “Why? I’m the boy’s mother, for heaven’s sake! And I want to hear everything you want to know about my poor Lilluzzo.”

  “Please, signora. Lillo is a legal adult,” the inspector said firmly. “Please go and wait outside.”

  The woman stood up, went over and kissed Lillo once on the forehead, twice on the cheeks, again on the forehead, and then on the lips, until Fazio grabbed her by the arm and took her out.

  “I had your mother leave because I need to ask you some strictly personal questions. Did you immediately fall in love with Signora Elena?”

  Lillo blushed. He then brought his hands to his face and stayed that way for a few moments before replying.

  “No, not immediately.”

  “When, then?”

  “One day when Signora Elena was in her apartment she called me upstairs to lend her a hand in the bathroom, ’cause she cut her finger badly on a rusty tool. The blood was coming out so fast that I instinctively grabbed her hand and started sucking the blood. I was about to spit it into the sink when I thought maybe that was the wrong thing to do, and so I swallowed it. Then I opened the medicine chest and disinfected it for her and put some gauze and then a Band-Aid over it. But the whole time I was doing that I noticed she was watching me, an’ she never stopped watching me. An’ so I did my whole routine really, really slowly, ’cause I was starting to like feeling her eyes on me. Then, when I was done, Elena gave me a hug and held me tight and said, ‘Thank you, Lillo, thank you so much.’ But she said it in my ear, in a voice I’d never heard before that got me all worked up. I don’t really know what happened to me. Maybe it was her blood, which I could still taste in my mouth. But from that moment on I lost my head. I couldn’t stay away from her, an’ all I could think about was her. It’s like I wasn’t myself anymore. I was like a puppet in the puppet theater, after he drinks the love potion. I was under a spell . . .”

  Lillo trailed off and started weeping.

  Fazio, the good Samaritan, ran to get him a glass of water.

  “One last question,” said Montalbano, “and then you’re free to go. I’ve learned that a few days before her death, Signora Elena scolded you harshly and decided to terminate your employment with her. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “As I said, Inspector, I was completely out of my head, an’ so I suddenly got insanely jealous an’ would try to answer the phone whenever it rang so I could see if she had a lover or boyfriend. That day I was alone in the big room because Nicola had gone to deliver a garment to a client. Meriam was in the fitting room, and Elena was upstairs in her apartment. All of a sudden I heard a cell phone ring, and I realized Elena had left hers on the table,” said Lillo, pausing for a moment. “Could I have another glass of water?” he asked.

  Fazio got up and brought him another glass.

  “As you can imagine,” the youth resumed, “I didn’t want to miss this chance. So I grabbed the cell phone and saw a name, but I couldn’t tell if it was a first or last name . . .”

  “Stop right there!” said Montalbano. “Think this over carefully and try to remember this name . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector, but I just draw a complete blank. But I can tell you it was a woman’s voice, and—”

  “Was her accent from around here or was she from another part of the country?”

  “She was definitely from far away, Inspector. She had a strange way of talking.”

  “Lillo, did her name sound anything like the word ‘navy’?”

  “I dunno, Inspector. I just remember her asking me why Elena didn’t answer instead of me, and I was telling her why, but then Elena came storming into the room, jumped on me, and yanked the phone out of my hand. Man, I never seen her so mad! She looked at the phone and then said: ‘I’ll call you back.’ Then she grabbed me by my jacket and started shaking me like she wanted to shake something out of me, and she asked me in the strangest voice: ‘What did she say to you? What did she say to you? Did she say she was coming here? Did she say when? Speak, speak, you fool!’ I tried to tell her she didn’t really say anything to me, but Elena wasn’t listening anymore. She just turned her back and went upstairs with her cell phone, and I just sat there in a daze.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “When she came back downstairs about ten minutes later, Inspector, she told me, in front of Nicola and Meriam, that she didn’t want me coming back to the store after the end of the month.”

  “Okay, thanks, Lillo,” said Montalbano. “You’ve been very helpful to me.”

  17

  From the hallway came the loud voice of Lillo’s mother.

  “Wha’d they ask you, my boy? Tell me everything, dear, you must tell your mother everything.”

  It occurred to Montalbano that to be orphaned of a Southern Italian mother might not necessarily be a bad thing.

  Fazio returned at once, closed the door behind him, sat down, and stared at the inspector.

  “What is it? Do you not recognize me or something? Shall I introduce myself? Hello, I’m Inspector Montalbano.”

  “You may feel like joking, but I don’t.”

  “What’s got into you?”

  “What’s got into me is the fact that you still haven’t told me what you’re thinking. Why did you ask Lillo that question about the navy?”

  “Fazio, it’s not as if we’ve had a lot of free time. At any rate, here I am. I’ll tell you the conclusions I’ve come to and how I got there.”

  It took him about half an hour to tell him the whole story, and when he’d finished he asked:

  “So, does that make sense to you?”

  “It makes enough sense, Chief, but there are a few things still on shaky ground. For example, there’s no guarantee this Nevia is the killer, just because hers is the only out-of-towner’s name in an address book from three years ago.”

  “You’re right,” said the inspector. “But there are also some other things that don’t add up. Elena’s sister-in-law said that she’d broken off all contact with her prior married life. Apparently she was lying, since at least until three years ago, she still had a relationship with someone from that world.”

  “And there’s another thing,” said Fazio. “If this murderess, as you call her, got so covered in blood that she needed to take a shower, how was she able to leave the house in all her bloodstained clothes? Being from out of town she would have had to take some kind of public transportation, and she would have been noticed.”

  “Unless she came here in her car.”

  “But then she wouldn’t have been able to get out of the car until she was back home in Friuli. She couldn’t very well have gone into some roadside restaurant to pee or gotten out to refill the gas tank . . .�
��

  Fazio’s point was a good one, and at that moment Montalbano had an idea. He started looking for something on his desktop. He found a small piece of paper and started pressing buttons on the telephone.

  “Meriam, I’m sorry, but I need you again.”

  “What is it, Inspector?”

  “Could you meet me in half an hour outside Elena’s front door in Via Garibaldi?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What are looking for?” asked Fazio.

  “I’ll tell you when I get back.”

  * * *

  He pulled up outside Elena’s front door, parked the car, got out, and looked around. Meriam wasn’t there yet. He fired up a cigarette and had barely the time to take three drags before Meriam drove up.

  “I’ll go and park.”

  “I’ll wait for you upstairs,” said the inspector.

  He left the front door ajar, climbed the stairs, and headed into Elena’s bedroom.

  He stopped in the middle of the room, in front of the white armoire.

  “Where are you?” Meriam called.

  “In here. In Elena’s bedroom.”

  “Hello, Inspector. Have you discovered something?”

  “Maybe. But only you can help me. Could you tell me if there are any dresses missing from Elena’s armoire?”

  Meriam looked at him inquisitively.

  “Do you live alone, Inspector?”

  “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “Because otherwise you would know that no woman can really tell you exactly what is supposed to be in her wardrobe. So you can imagine how well I’d be able to tell if a dress was missing from Elena’s. She must have owned hundreds.”

  “Here’s another way to look at it,” said the inspector. “On the day Elena was killed, when I came here in the afternoon, she was wearing a green dress, but it was a special sort of green . . .”

  “Ultramarine,” said Meriam.

  “But when she was found dead, she was wearing a different dress, which you would have no way of knowing. Do you think you could find that green dress?”

  “Of course. Elena was very orderly.”

  She opened the armoire, and Montalbano noticed that Elena arranged her dresses according to color. And there were many green ones, in different shades of green.

  Meriam started going through them one by one. A short while later, she said:

  “It’s missing. Not here. Maybe it’s in the laundry.” As she was saying this she went into the bathroom to have a look inside the hamper. “No, I can’t find it.”

  “Maybe she took it to have it laundered.”

  “I can check,” said Meriam, taking her cell phone out of her pocket.

  A minute later they had the laundry’s answer: no dress.

  “So where could it have gone to?” Meriam asked herself.

  Montalbano preferred not to answer.

  “Listen, there’s another favor I need to ask of you. Please come with me,” he said as they were about to go downstairs into the tailoring shop. “Remember when I last saw you, I asked you about a piece of fabric that was on the table?”

  “Yes, the piece of old fabric.”

  “I asked you to go and have a closer look at it, and you did. Could you do the same again?”

  Meriam, a bit confused, did as she was asked.

  “Then I walked over to you,” said the inspector as he approached her. “And then, all of a sudden, you made a move to get a new roll of fabric. Could you do that for me again?”

  “Of course,” said the young woman.

  She walked past him, turned her back to him, and reached out to the shelves.

  “Okay, thanks, that’s good enough,” said Montalbano.

  They went back up and down the stairs, and when they were in the doorway, the inspector said:

  “Thank you so much. You’ve been extremely valuable to me, as always. By the way, do you have any news of Dr. Osman?”

  “Yes, he’s taking some time off to rest. He said he was going to Tunisia, to an archaeological dig that an old friend of his is working on.”

  After she left, Montalbano closed and locked the door this time, retraced his steps up the stairs and back down to the big room, and sat down in the usual armchair.

  He started thinking about the movements he and Meriam had made, and as he was reviewing them, it was as if he was seeing them again.

  He saw himself come into the big room followed by Meriam, then Meriam went behind the table to look at the fabric.

  He saw himself approach Meriam, who then walked in front of him and reached out towards the shelves.

  Cut.

  The two images disappeared.

  Then he and Meriam reappeared and went through the exact same motions.

  Cut.

  From the top again.

  This time the first person entering the big room was Elena, who was speaking, but there was no sound.

  She was talking to a woman of almost the same height as her, who was standing behind her.

  Then Elena stopped and pointed at the table, and the second woman went and positioned herself in the exact same spot where Meriam had been standing moments before. Elena approached her and spoke again; the woman replied, Elena retorted, the woman spoke again, this time with a sneer; Elena raised her voice, but this time she did not do the same as Meriam; she didn’t pass in front of the woman but turned her back to her and reached out with one arm towards the shelf.

  Cut.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated deeply. He could feel himself sweating intensely from the effort. Then he felt ready and, keeping his eyes closed to avoid all distraction, he replayed the scene again from the top.

  Elena came in.

  She spoke to the woman following behind her.

  “. . . to show you . . .”

  Montalbano managed to grasp only these three words.

  The other woman went over to the table and bent down to look at the cloth.

  She said something that might have been: “I remember.”

  Elena spoke for a long time. But this time there was no voice. Nor could he hear the words of the other woman, who again had a sneer on her face.

  Still speaking, Elena then turned her back and reached out towards the shelf.

  Darkness.

  Montalbano saw only a pair of scissors in the air being thrust violently downwards.

  More darkness.

  Elena’s bloodied body now conformed perfectly to the chalk outline on the floor.

  The images vanished.

  He opened his eyes.

  Yes, that must be what had happened.

  He stood up, turned off the light in the great room, climbed the stairs, walked down the corridor, turned off the light in the corridor, went outside, and locked the front door.

  * * *

  “Find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes,” said Montalbano. “Here’s the solution to the puzzle: The murderess—because I no longer have any doubt that it was a woman—after taking a shower, put on the dress that Elena had worn earlier that day and had probably left on the bed.”

  “So what do you think you’ll do now?” asked Fazio.

  “If my hypothesis is correct,” said the inspector, “this woman came down here from the north. She may have driven in her car, or she may have taken the train, or she may have flown. That’s what you need to find out.”

  “Chief, if she came by car or train, we’re screwed,” said Fazio. “Our only hope is that she flew down here and then rented a car.”

  “Then we’ll start with the plane hypothesis,” said Montalbano. “I’m giving you ten minutes to inform yourself.”

  Fazio shot off like a ball on a tether.

  He returned seven minutes later with a smile so bi
g, it was as if he’d seen a choir of angels pass.

  “You were right on target, Chief. Nevia Sirch took a plane from Trieste to Trapani on the day Elena was murdered. Her flight landed in the afternoon, and she’d already reserved a car from the car rental, which she returned the following morning, two hours before boarding the flight back to Trieste.”

  They’d done it.

  “Now I need another favor from you.”

  “At your service.”

  “Find out more about those flights: departure times, arrival times . . .”

  “Why, do you want to go up there?”

  “It’ll be a pain in the ass, but that’s the only place I’ll ever find the answer to all of this.”

  Fazio stood up and left the room.

  Montalbano looked at his watch.

  Matre santa! It was already half past two. He grabbed the telephone.

  “Enzo! Be sure to leave me a piece of bread.”

  “Actually we’re just now sitting down at the table. We’ll wait for you.”

  Montalbano was off like a rocket.

  * * *

  While he was eating a sumptuous seafood salad, the inspector noted that the dish was not featured on the menu. For his second course he ate a sort of potpourri of all the leftover fish parts fried up in a skillet, the kind of thing that has you licking your fingers down to the bone. In short, and in conclusion, Enzo’s family treated themselves even better than they did their customers. This was something to bear in mind. It might be better, henceforth, to arrive late at the trattoria more often.

  He came out feeling heavier, to the point that it took him twice as long as usual to reach the flat rock under the lighthouse.

  He put a flame to the usual cigarette.