“So it’s up to you to remove it?”
“It certainly is.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
The clerk became worried.
“Why are you asking me—”
“I wouldn’t want the people at the Office of Hygiene to take it the wrong way. You know how prickly these questions of jurisdiction can be . . . I say this for your sake. I wouldn’t want—”
“No need to worry, Inspector. It’s an Article 11. Somebody will be there in half an hour. No trouble at all. My respects, sir.”
Montalbano and Fazio drank coffee in the kitchen while waiting for Gallo and Galluzzo to return.The inspector then took a shower, shaved, and got dressed, changing his shirt and trousers, which had got soiled.When he went back into the dining room he saw Fazio on the veranda, talking to two men dressed like astronauts who had just stepped out of a space shuttle.
On the beach was a little Fiat Fiorino van with its rear doors closed.The horse was no longer visible; apparently it had been loaded inside.
“Hey, Chief, can you come here a minute?” asked Fazio.
“Here I am. Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Good morning,” said one of the two astronauts.
The other gave him a dirty look over the top of his mask.
“They can’t find the carcass,” said Fazio, flummoxed.
“What do you mean they can’t . . . ?” said Montalbano, upset. “But it was right here!”
“We’ve looked everywhere and haven’t seen anything,” said the more sociable of the two.
“What is this, some kind of practical joke? You wanna play games or something?” the other said menacingly.
“Nobody’s joking here,” Fazio snapped back at the man, who was beginning to get on his nerves. “And watch your tongue.”
The other was about to reply, but thought better of it.
Montalbano stepped down from the veranda and went to examine the spot where the carcass had been.The others followed him.
In the sand were the footprints of five or six different shoes and two parallel tracks from the wheels of a cart.
Meanwhile the two astronauts got back into their van and drove off without saying goodbye.
“They stole it while we were having coffee,” said the inspector. “They loaded it onto a hand-drawn cart.”
“About two miles from here, over near Montereale, there’s about ten shacks with illegal immigrants living in them,” said Fazio. “They’re gonna have a feast tonight. They’re gonna eat horsemeat.”
At that moment they saw their car returning.
“We took everything we could find,” said Galluzzo.
“And what did you find?”
“Three clubs, a piece of rope, eleven cigarette butts of two different brands, and an empty Bic lighter,” Galluzzo replied.
“Let’s do this,” said Montalbano. “You, Gallo, go to the Forensics Lab and give them the clubs and the lighter.You, Galluzzo, take the rope and butts and bring them to my office. Thanks for everything.We’ll meet back up at the station. I’ve got a couple of private phone calls to make.”
Gallo looked doubtful.
“What’s wrong?”
“What am I supposed to ask Forensics to do?”
“To take fingerprints.”
Gallo looked more doubtful than ever.
“And if they ask me what it’s about, what do I say? That we’re investigating the murder of a horse? They’ll throw me out of there on my ass!”
“Tell them there was a brawl with several wounded and we’re trying to identify the assailants.”
Left alone, he went inside the house, took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers, and went back onto the beach.
This idea of immigrants stealing the horse in order to eat it didn’t convince him in the least. How long had they been in the kitchen, he and Fazio, drinking coffee and chatting? Half an hour, max.
So, in half an hour the immigrants had the time to spot the horse, run two miles back to their shanties, grab a cart, return to the beach, load it on the cart, and roll it away?
It wasn’t possible.
Unless they had spotted the carcass at the crack of dawn, before he opened the window, and then had returned with the cart, seen him next to the horse, and hidden nearby, waiting for the right moment.
Some fifty yards down the beach, the wheel tracks made a turn and headed inland, where there was a concrete esplanade full of cracks, which had been in that state since the inspector first moved to Marinella.The esplanade provided easy entry onto the provincial road.
Yes, the immigrants could move the cart more easily, and more quickly, on the provincial road than on the sand. But was it really such a good idea to let themselves be seen by all the passing cars? What if one of these cars belonged to the police or the carabinieri?
They would surely be stopped and made to answer a lot of questions. And quite possibly a repatriation order would come out of it all.
No, they weren’t that stupid.
And so?
There was another possible explanation.
Namely, that the people who stole the horse were not illegals, but legals and then some.That is, from Vigàta.
Or the surrounding area.
So why did they do it? To recover the carcass and get rid of it.
Perhaps the whole thing had gone as follows: The horse manages to escape and someone chases after it to finish it off. But he is forced to stop because there are people on the beach, maybe even the morning fisherman, who could become dangerous witnesses. So he goes back and informs the boss. The boss decides they absolutely have to get the carcass back. And he organizes the business with the cart. But at a certain point he, Montalbano, wakes up and throws a wrench into the boss’s plans.
The people who stole the dead horse were the same ones who killed it.
Yes, that must be exactly the way it went.
And, at the side of the provincial road, right where the esplanade abutted it, there had surely been a van or truck ready for loading the horse and cart.
No, illegal immigrants had nothing to do with this.
2
Galluzzo set down on the inspector’s desk a large plastic bag with the rope inside it, along with another, smaller bag with the cigarette butts.
“You said there were two brands?”
“Yeah, Chief. Marlboro and Philip Morris, with the double filter.”
