The Age of Doubt

by Andrea Camilleri

  He could hardly tell her that his suspicions had been aroused by a young woman he had met, who said her name was Vanna, the same as the yacht.

  Laura didn’t leave until after midnight, with the promise that they would talk by phone the following day.

  The inspector stayed up to think about the dead man.

  If, as Dr. Pasquano maintained, they’d rendered him unrecognizable on purpose, this meant he was someone who might be recognized. At first glance, this line of reasoning might seem worthy of Catarella or Monsieur de Lapalisse.

  But it was a start.

  Some poor bastard killed in this fashion did not normally, nowadays, grab the headlines, as they say in the business. The national press might give him five lines, max, and the local papers half a column. The national TV stations wouldn’t even mention it, though the local ones would.

  So whoever would have been in a position to identify the corpse, had they left his face intact, had to be somewhere in the vicinity of Vigàta. And the eventual identification would, therefore, have led directly to the killer. Why?

  For one simple reason: because the man had been poisoned. To poison someone, you have to put the poison in something to eat or drink, there was no getting around it.

  The victim must therefore have known his killer.

  Maybe he was invited for an aperitif, or for dinner, as the inspector had just done with Laura, and then, when the poor guy was looking the other way . . .

  Laura! Man, was she ever beautiful! But what the hell was coming over him? What was he thinking? It was hardly imaginable, at his age . . . Still, what eyes she had! And the way she looked at him!

  As he was unable to think straight anymore, he decided that the only thing to do was to go to bed.

  “Fazio here?” was the first thing he asked, walking into the station the following morning.

  “Yessir, Chief. An’ there’s summon ellis ’e’s got together wit’ ’im.”

  “Tell Fazio to come to my office alone.”

  He had just sat down when Fazio came in.

  “What’s Digiulio like?”

  “What do you expect? He’s from Palermo and—”

  “I want to know if he got nervous or upset when you told him he had to come to the station.”

  “No. He was cool and calm. Actually, he said he was expecting it.”

  “He was expecting it?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Bring him in.”

  “Can I hang around?”

  “No.”

  Fazio went out, seeming offended.

  Mario Digiulio was about forty and had one of those faces that you forget one second after you’ve seen it.

  He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and a pair of dirty jeans. He was completely different from how Montalbano had imagined him. As Fazio had mentioned, he wasn’t the least bit scared. Then, unexpectedly, as soon as Montalbano told him to sit down, the man began to speak.

  “So you received the complaint, eh?”

  Montalbano made a vague gesture that could have meant nothing or everything.

  “The bastards.”

  The man paused.

  “The fuckin’ bastards!”

  Having taken in the high esteem in which Digiulio held those who had reported him, the inspector decided he needed to know a little more.

  “Please tell me your version of the story.”

  “In Rethymno, me and Zizì went out drinking at a tavern, and there was two Greeks there who—”

  “—who provoked you.”

  “Exactly. Zizì reacted immediately, and I went to back him up, and before we knew it, there was a brawl and—”

  “You smashed the place up.”

  “Smashed it up? Come on! Zizì broke a couple a chairs and . . .”

  Zizì. Where had he heard that name before? Someone had mentioned it in passing. But who? And when? He couldn’t quite call it to mind.

  “I’m sorry, but was Zizì a local?”

  Digiulio gave him a look of astonishment.

  “No, he’s one of the crew.”

  “But his name’s not listed in the—”

  “Ah, sorry, we call him Zizì, but his real name’s Ahmed Shaikiri. He’s North African.”

  Montalbano had a flash.

  “Was he the former owner’s manservant?”

  Digiulio’s astonishment increased.

  “The former owner’s manserv . . . No way! Zizì signed on with us barely three months ago!”

  Montalbano’s brain was now firing on all cylinders.

  “Could you run through the names of the other crew members for me?”

  “But they weren’t involved in the fight.”

  “Please tell me them just the same.”

  “Maurilio Alvarez is the engineer, Stefano Ricca’s the . . .”

  Montalbano stopped paying attention. Ricca! Now it had all come back to him. Vanna had said Ricca was a banker and associate of her uncle Arturo. But it was the yacht that was named Vanna, and Digiulio, Zizì, and Ricca were all crew members . . .

  The girl had certainly been clever. What a subtle edifice of lies! Hats off!

  Want to bet that what he had thought was an elaborate prank on Vanna’s part actually had a precise purpose?

  Meanwhile, however, he had to get rid of the sailor.

  “Listen, do you by any chance have a sister named Vanna?”

  “Me? No, I have a brother named Antonio.”

  “All right, then, you can go.”

  The sailor felt lost.

  “What about the complaint?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one from the tavern’s owner.”

  “We never received it.”

  “Then why did you call me in?”

  “There was another complaint.”

  “There was?”

  “Yes, by a certain Vanna Digiulio against her brother, Mario. But since you claim you have no sisters—”

  “I don’t claim I have no sisters, I really don’t have any sisters!”

  “Then it’s clearly a case of two people with the same name. Good day, my friend.”

  The inspector was certain it wasn’t Digiulio who had informed Vanna of the yacht’s change of course. He absolutely needed to speak to the other crew members. He called Fazio, who still seemed offended for having been excluded from the questioning.

  “Have a seat.”

  Montalbano stared at him for a moment. Should he tell him about Vanna or not? Now that the whole business seemed to have taken on a new meaning, wasn’t it better to have Fazio as an ally?

  “Do you remember when, the other day, it rained so hard that the road collapsed?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Do you remember that pathetic creature I brought into the station, whose name was Vanna Digiulio?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well, you know what? Her name wasn’t actually Vanna Digiulio, and she wasn’t a pathetic creature but a sly little bitch who made a great big monkey out of me.”

  Fazio looked stunned.

  “Really?” he said.

  Montalbano told him the whole story.

  “And what do you make of it?” Fazio asked him when he’d finished.

  “Several things seem clear to me. One, that the moment I introduced myself to her as Inspector Montalbano, the girl—whom we’ll keep calling Vanna for the sake of convenience—started sneezing and didn’t stop.”

  Fazio balked.

  “Wait a second. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “It’s got everything to do with it. I would bet my family jewels that those sneezes were faked. She did it to buy time to decide whether she should tell me what she wanted to tell me. And then she immediately put me, indirectly, on the trail of the yacht.”

  “Why?”

  “I could venture a guess. She did it for future reference.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If anything bad happened to her, she had given me
sufficient information as to who to put the squeeze on.”

  “But Vanna never even showed her face to the people on the yacht.”

  “That’s true. Because, in my opinion, something unexpected happened.”

  “And what was that?”

  “The yacht brought a corpse aboard. Which meant the presence of the police, the Harbor Office, the coroner, the Forensics department . . . Too many people, in short. And so she decided to disappear. Make sense to you?”

  “Sure. But the fact remains that we still don’t know what she had come to do.”

  “And that’s why it’s important to find out who she was in contact with. Someone at the Harbor Office? I don’t think so. Mario Digiulio of the Vanna? No, definitely not. This is where I need your skills, Fazio.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We need to talk to the other crew members, but we can’t use the same set-up we did with Digiulio. You need to find a way to approach the North African, what’s his name . . .”

  “Shaikiri.”

  “Right, but his friends call him Zizì. Try to see what you can find out from him. See if you can get him drunk . . . Do they ever come ashore?”

  “Are you kidding? They’ve been hanging out all over town.”

  “Well, find a way to get friendly with him.”

  At that moment Mimì Augello appeared. Sharply dressed and smiling.

  “And where have you been?”

  “What? You mean Catarella didn’t tell you? Yesterday I took Beba and the kid to her parents’ place. Can’t you see the look on my face? I slept like a god last night! Finally!”

  Montalbano just sat there in silence, staring at him.

  “What’s wrong?” Augello asked.

  “I’ve just had an idea.”

  “Well, that’s news! Does it concern me?”

  “Yes it does. Do you feel up to wooing a fifty-year-old woman who looks forty?”

  Mimì didn’t hesitate for a second.

  “I can try,” he said.

  6

  He went to Enzo’s to eat, feeling rather satisfied at finding, he thought, a key to understanding a little about the behavior of the girl who called herself Vanna. He was now almost convinced that she had acted the way she did as part of a precise plan she had devised in her head when she learned that he was Inspector Montalbano.

  Therefore it wasn’t just a silly game, but something serious. Quite serious.

  At any rate, he felt—even if he didn’t exactly know why—that he was acting the way she would have wanted him to.

  On the other hand, he had nothing to congratulate himself about when it came to the corpse in the dinghy. Things were practically still at square one. The inability to identify the corpse was paralyzing everything. Whoever had smashed the guy’s face in had achieved his purpose.

  And if the guy was a foreigner, there was no point searching all the hotels and inns in Vigàta, Montelusa, and environs. That wouldn’t only take a lot of time, but the question would remain unchanged: How do you identify someone without papers who no longer has a face?

  And if by chance he was a local, how come nobody had reported him missing?

  In the trattoria, the inspector did find some consolation. Fish was back on Enzo’s menu, and to make up for his forced abstinence of the day before, Montalbano gorged himself. He ordered a mixed fry of mullet and calamari that could have fed half the staff at the station.

  As a result, a walk along the jetty to the lighthouse became an absolute necessity. This time, too, he went out of his way, passing by the Vanna and the Ace of Hearts, which still were side by side.

  No sooner had he passed them than he heard laughter and shouting behind him. He turned around to look as he kept walking.

  At that moment Livia Giovannini, the Vanna’s owner, and Captain Sperlì were descending the gangway of the Ace of Hearts as a man of considerable size, a colossus a good six-foot-three-inches tall with shoulders like a truck and red hair, waved bye-bye to them from the cruiser’s deck. The Ace of Hearts might be a huge boat, but the guy probably had to walk with his head bent when he was below decks. Then the lady and her captain started going up the gangway to the Vanna.

  When he got to the flat rock under the lighthouse, the inspector sat down, fired up a cigarette, and started thinking about what he had just seen.

  What were the owner and captain of the Vanna doing aboard the Ace of Hearts?

  Perhaps just a courtesy visit, a good-neighborly sort of thing? Was it common practice for those kinds of people to do that? Given the time of day, it was also quite possible, even likely, that the Vanna people had been invited to lunch.

  Or did they all know each other from before? Were they old friends? Or business associates or something similar?

  There was only one way to find out: try to learn more about the Ace of Hearts.

  This, however, would mean that the investigation, instead of becoming smaller and more focused, would expand by involving more people. Which was the worst thing that could happen to an ongoing investigation.

  At any rate, the only way to get any information on the Ace of Hearts was to ask Laura, whom he had something else to ask as soon as possible.

  Laura! Man, was she ever . . .

  Once again he got lost in his thoughts about her. He didn’t like the fact that the moment she came to mind, he could no longer concentrate on anything else. In his head there was only her: the way she walked, the way she laughed . . . Deep down, he felt a little ashamed of this. It didn’t seem proper for a man his age. But he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Once inside the car, instead of going to the station, he took the road to Montelusa. Pulling up in front of the Forensic Medicine Institute, he got out and went inside.

  “Is Dr. Pasquano here?”

  “He’s here, for what it’s worth.”

  Which, translated, meant: He’s here, but it is not advisable to go and bother him.

  “Listen, all I need is a copy of the memo the doctor wrote after performing the autopsy on the disfigured corpse.”

  “I can get that for you myself, but you should know you can’t take it away with you.”

  “I only need some information from it, which I can get here, on the spot, right in front of you. Please do me this favor.”

  “All right, but don’t tell the doctor.”

  Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of the broadcasting studios of the Free Channel, one of the two local television stations.

  “Is Zito in?”

  “He’s in his office,” said the secretary, who knew Montalbano well.

  The inspector and Zito embraced. They were old friends and were always genuinely happy to see each other.

  Montalbano gave him the information he had copied down. Height, weight, hair color, width of shoulders, length of legs, teeth . . . Zito promised to make the announcement on the eight o’clock evening news and the midnight edition, which were the two most watched. Anyone who happened to call the studio in response would be told to contact the Vigàta police directly.

  Back at the office, he found Fazio waiting for him, looking like a beaten dog.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re fucked, Chief!”

  “You think that’s news? What’s so unusual about that? I happen to believe I’ve been fucked since birth. So, a little more fucked, a little less fucked, makes no difference . . . What’s this about?”

  “Shaikiri.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Well, just by chance, as I was on my way to eat, I saw Digiulio, Ricca, and Alvarez going into Giacomino’s tavern. So I waited a few minutes and went in myself, and I sat down at a table not far from theirs. When I heard them talking about Zizì, I pricked up my ears. And you know what?”

  “If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it. But tell me anyway.”

  “Zizì was arrested last night.”

  Montalbano cursed.

  “By whom?”

  “The carabini
eri.”

  “For what?”

  “Apparently, as they were heading back to the ship last night, Zizì saw a carabinieri squad car parked near the port. He’d been drinking a lot, and he went up to the car, unbuttoned his trousers, and pissed on it.”

  “What, is the guy crazy? And were there carabinieri inside the car?”

  “Yup.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, as they were arresting him, he managed to punch one of the carabinieri.”

  Montalbano started cursing again.

  “What should we do?” Fazio asked.

  “What can we do? We can’t very well phone the carabinieri and tell them to let him go because I need him! Listen, try and make friends with Ricca. It’s the only move we can make at this point.”

  He and Laura had agreed the previous evening that she would call him at the office around seven o’clock, but it was now almost eight and he still hadn’t heard from her. Since this time he’d had her give him her cell phone number, after a bit of mental tug-of-war with himself, he called her up.

  “Montalbano here.”

  “I recognized your voice.”

  She’d said it without any enthusiasm at all.

  “Did you forget that you—”

  “No, I didn’t forget.”

  Damn, was she ever expansive!

  “Too busy?”

  “No.”

  “So then why didn’t you—”

  “I’d decided not to call you.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence fell.

  And suddenly Montalbano was gripped by a hysterical fear that they’d been cut off. It was idiotic, but he could do nothing about it. Whenever he thought he’d lost his telephone connection, he went into a terrible panic, like a child abandoned in a starship adrift in space.

  “Hello! Hello!” he started yelling.

  “Don’t shout! I’m here!” she said.

  “Can you explain to me why—”

  “Not over the telephone.”

  “Try.”

  “I said no.”

  “Well then let’s meet, if you don’t mind! There’s also something I have to ask you about the Vanna.”

  Another pause.

  This time, however, Montalbano heard her breathing.