He said nothing to Arquà, who, for his part, hadn’t greeted him upon arriving.You certainly couldn’t say they were fond of each other.
In the effort he had made to pull the car out of the ditch, the dust had not only soiled his clothes, it had filtered through his shirt, and the sweat made it stick to his skin.
He didn’t feel like spending the day at the station in that condition. It was, moreover, almost noon.
“Take me to Marinella,” he said to Gallo.
Opening the front door, he realized at once that Adelina had finished her work and gone.
He went straight into the bathroom, got undressed, took a shower, tossed the dirty clothes into the hamper, then went into the bedroom and opened the armoire to pick a clean suit. He noticed that one of the pairs of trousers was still in the plastic dry-cleaners’ bag; apparently Adelina had picked them up that same morning. He decided to wear them with a jacket he liked, and to break in one of the shirts he had just bought.
Then he got back into the car and drove to Enzo’s trattoria.
Since it was still early, there was only one customer in the room aside from him.The television was reporting that the dead body of an unknown man had been found by a fisherman in a canebrake in the district of Spinoccia. Police had ruled his death a crime, as clear signs of strangulation had been detected around the man’s neck. It also appeared, though had not yet been confirmed, that the killer had ferociously bitten the corpse all over. The case was being investigated by Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano. More details on the next newscast.
And so, this time, too, the television had done his job for him, which was to convey information dressed up in details and circumstances that were either completely wrong, utterly false, or pure fantasy.And yet the public swallowed it all. Why did the TV people do it? To make an already horrifying crime as hair-raising as possible? It was no longer enough to report a death; they had to provoke horror. After all, hadn’t the United States unleashed a war based on lies, stupidities, and mystifications that the most important figures in the country swore to by all that was holy in front of the whole world’s television cameras? After which, those same television cameras, and the people behind them, on their own, put the icing on the cake.And by the way, that anthrax case, what ever became of that? How was it that, from one day to the next, everybody stopped talking about it?
“Excuse me, but, if the other customer doesn’t mind, could you please turn off the television?”
Enzo went over to the other client, who, turning towards the inspector, declared:
“Yeah, you can turn it off. I don’t give a shit about that stuff.”
Fat and about fifty, the man was eating a triple serving of spaghetti with clam sauce.
The inspector ate the same thing. Followed by the usual mullets.
When he came out of the trattoria, he decided there was no need for a stroll along the jetty, and so returned to the office, where he had a mountain of papers to sign.
By the time he had finished most of his bureaucratic chores, it was already well past five o’clock. He decided to do the rest the following day. As he was setting down his ballpoint, the telephone rang. Montalbano looked at it with suspicion. For some time now, he was becoming more and more convinced that all telephones were endowed with an autonomous, thinking brain. There was no other way to explain the fact that telephones were ringing with increasing frequency at either the most opportune or the most inopportune moments, and never at moments when you weren’t doing anything.
“Ahh Chief, Chief! That’d be the lady Esther Man. Do I put ’er true?”
“Yes . . . Ciao, Rachele. How are you doing?”
“Great. And you?”
“Me too.Where are you?”
“In Montelusa. But I’m about to leave.”
“You’re going back to Rome? But you said—”
“No, Salvo, I’m just going to Fiacca.”
The sudden pang of jealousy he felt was unwarranted. Worse than that, it was totally unjustified. There was no reason in the world for him to feel that way.
“I’m going with Ingrid, to attend to some business.”
“Do you have business interests in Fiacca?”
“No. I meant sentimental business.”
And this could mean only one thing: that she was going there to give Guido his walking papers.
“But we’ll be back this evening. Shall we get together tomorrow?”
“Let’s try.”
15
Barely five minutes later, the telephone rang again.
“Ahh, Chief! ’At’d be Dr. Pisquano.”
“On the line?”
“Yissir.”
“Put ’im on.”
“How is it you haven’t busted my balls yet today?” Pasquano began, with the courtesy for which he was famous.
“Why should I have done that?”
“To find out the results of the autopsy.”
“Whose?”
“Montalbano, this is a clear sign of old age. A sign that your brain cells are disintegrating with increasing speed. The first symptom is memory loss. Did you know that? For example, does it sometimes happen that you’ll do something one minute, and the next minute you’ll forget that you did it?”
“No. But aren’t you, Doctor, five years older than me?”
“Yes, but the actual age doesn’t mean anything. There are people who are already old at twenty. In any case, I think it’s clear to all concerned that you’re the more doddering of the two of us.”
“Thanks.You want to tell me what autopsy you’re talking about?”
“This morning’s corpse.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, Doctor! The last thing I might imagine was that you would perform that autopsy so soon! What, were you good friends with the dead man or something? Normally you let days and days go by before—”
“This time I happened to have two free hours before lunchtime, and so I got him out of my hair. It turns out there are two minor new developments, with respect to what I told you this morning. The first is that I’ve recovered the bullet and sent it at once to Forensics, who, naturally, won’t have any news on it until after the next presidential election.”
“But the last one was barely three months ago!”
“Precisely.”
It was true. He recalled that he’d sent them the iron clubs used to kill the horse for fingerprints, but still hadn’t heard back from them.
“And what’s the second development?”
“I found some traces of cotton wool inside the wound.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the one who shot him is not the same person as the one who dumped him by the roadside.”
“Care to elaborate on that a little?”
“Gladly, especially considering the age of the person involved.”
“Whose age?”
“Yours, of course. That’s another product of aging: increasingly slow to comprehend.”
“Doctor, why don’t you go get—”
“I wish! It might improve my luck at poker! Anyway, I was explaining that, in my opinion, someone shot the
