“I wanted to ask you if we could meet at the office tomorrow morning, say around eight. I’ve made an important discovery.”
“What?”
“The connection between the Griffos and Sanfilippo.”
He heard Mimi exhale the way one does when kicked in the stomach. Then Mimi stammered:
“Wh-where are you? I’ll come meet you right away.”
“I’m at my place. But Ingrid’s here.”
“Oh. Let me tell you, Salvo, squeeze her anyway, even if, after what you just said, the infidelity theory doesn’t really hold up anymore.”
“Listen, don’t tell anyone where I am. I’m going to disconnect the phone now.”
“Of course, of course,” Mimi said insinuatingly.
Montalbano went to lie down, limping all the way. It took him half an hour to find the right position. He closed his eyes and reopened them at once. Hadn’t he invited Ingrid to dinner? So how was he going to get dressed, stand up on his feet, and go out to a restaurant? The word “restaurant” immediately gave him a feeling of emptiness in the pit of his stomach. How long had it been since he’d eaten? He got up and went into the kitchen. Enthroned in the refrigerator was a serving dish full of red mullet
“I’ll be right there,” Ingrid called from the dining room.
She came in a few minutes later carrying a small bottle, an elastic bandage, and a roll of gauze.
“I want to pay off my debt,” she said.
“What debt?” asked Montalbano.
“Don’t you remember? When we first met. I sprained an ankle and you brought me here and gave me a massage ...”
Now he remembered, of course. She was lying half-naked on the bed when Anna, a policewoman from Montelusa who’d fallen in love with him, barged in. The girl got the wrong idea and made his life hell. Had Livia and Ingrid ever met? Maybe at the hospital, the time he was wounded ...
Under Ingrid’s slow, continuous caresses he felt his eyelids begin to droop. He surrendered to a delicious somnolence.
“Pull yourself up. I have to wrap you now ... Keep your arm raised ...Turn a little more towards me.”
He obeyed, a satisfied smile on his lips.
“I’m done,” said Ingrid. “In half an hour you’ll start feeling better.”
“What about the big toe?” he asked, his mouth gluey.
“What did you say?”
Without speaking, the inspector pulled his foot out from under the sheet. Ingrid got back to work.
He opened his eyes. From the dining room came the sound of a man’s voice, speaking softly. He looked at his watch: past eleven. He felt quite a bit better. Had Ingrid called a doctor? He got up and, just as he was—in his underwear, with his shoulder, chest, and big toe all wrapped up—he went to investigate. It wasn’t a doctor— actually, it was a doctor, but he was on television, talking about some miraculous weight-loss program. Ingrid was sitting in an armchair. Seeing him enter, she sprang to her feet.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“I got dinner ready, if you’re hungry.”
The table had been set. The mullet, taken, out of the refrigerator, wanted nothing more than to be eaten. They sat down. As they were serving the fish, Montalbano asked:
“Why didn’t you wait for me at the Marinella Bar?”
“For more than an hour, Salvo?”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you come in your car?”
“I haven’t got it at the moment. It’s at the mechanic’s. A friend gave me a ride to the bar. Then, when you didn’t show up, I decided to go for a walk and came here. I knew you’d come home sooner or later.”
While they were eating, the inspector looked at Ingrid. She was becoming more and more beautiful. At the corners of her mouth she now had a little line that made her look more mature, more aware. What an extraordinary woman! It had never even occurred to her to ask him how he’d managed to injure his shoulder. She ate for the pleasure of eating; the mullet had been carefully apportioned, three each. And she drank with gusto: she was already on her third glass when Montalbano was still on his first.
“What did you want from me?”
The question baffled the inspector.
“I don’t understand.”
“Salvo, you called me up to tell me—”
The videocassette! It had completely slipped his mind.
