else. It often happened that if he read the opening lines of a novel, or the conclusion, a little compartment in his memory would open up, and characters, situations, phrases would come tumbling out. “Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.” That’s how the book began, but these words didn’t tell him anything. “He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.” These were the final words, and they said too much. Then a sentence from the book came back to him: “No pity for anything on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good and all in the service of humanity ...” He hastily put the book back in its place. No, his hand had not acted by itself, independently of his mind; it had been guided, unconsciously of course, by him, by what was inside him. He sat down in the armchair and turned on the television. The first image he saw was of prisoners in a concentration camp, not one of Hitler‘s, but a contemporary one. It wasn’t clear where, because the faces of people subject to horror are the same everywhere. He turned it off. He went out on the veranda, sat there staring at the sea, trying to breathe with the same rhythm as the surf.
Was it the door or the phone? He looked at his watch: past eleven, too early for Mimi.
“Hello? Sinagra here.”
Balduccio Sinagra’s faint voice, which always sounded ready to break like a spider’s web in a gust of wind, was unmistakable.
“If you have anything to say to me, Sinagra, call me at the station.”
“Wait. What’s wrong, you scared? This phone’s not bugged. Unless yours is.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to tell you that I feel bad, really bad.”
“Because you haven’t heard from your beloved grandson Japichinu?”
It was a shot fired straight at the balls. And for a moment, Balduccio Sinagra remained silent, long enough to absorb the blow and catch his breath.
“I’m convinced that my grandson, wherever he is, is better off than I am. ‘Cause my kidneys don’t work no more. I need a transplant, or I’ll die.”
Montalbano said nothing. He let the falcon fly in ever smaller, concentric circles.
“But do you know,” resumed the old man, “how many patients like me need this operation? Over ten thousand, Inspector. While waiting for your turn, you have all the time in the world to die.”
The falcon had stopped circling and was now ready to swoop down on the target.
“And then you have to be sure that the surgeon operating on you is good, dependable ...”
“Someone like Dr. Ingro?”
The inspector had reached the target first; the falcon had dawdled too long. He’d managed to defuse the bomb Sinagra had in his hand. And he would not be able to say, yet again, that he had manipulated Inspector Montalbano like a marionette at the puppet theater. The old man’s reaction was authentic.
“My compliments, Inspector,” he said, “my sincerest compliments.”
And he continued:
“Dr. Ingro is the right man. But I’m told he had to close down his hospital here in Montelusa. Seems he’s hot in the best of health himself, poor man.”
“What do the doctors say? Is it serious?”
“They don’t know yet.They want to be sure before they decide on a treatment. Bah, we’re all in the hands of the Lord, dear Inspector!”
He hung up.
At last the doorbell rang. He was making a pot of coffee.
“There’s nobody watching the villa,” Mimi said as he came in. “And until a little over half an hour ago, when I left to come here, he was alone.”
“Somebody may have gone there in the meantime.”
“If so, Fazio will call me from his cell phone. But you’re going to tell me right now why you’re suddenly so fixated on Dr. Ingro.”
“Because they’re still keeping him in limbo.They haven’t decided whether to let him continue working or kill him like they did the Griffos and Nene Sanfilippo.”
“So the doctor’s mixed up in this too?” asked Mimi in astonishment.
“He’s mixed up in it, all right,” said Montalbano.
“Says who?”
A tree, a Saracen olive tree. This would have been the correct answer. But Mimi would have thought him insane.
“Ingrid phoned Vanya, who’s scared out of her wits because there are certain things she doesn’t understand. For instance, the fact that Nene knew the doctor really well but never said anything to her. Or the fact that her husband, when he caught her in bed with her lover, didn’t get angry or upset. He only got worried. And just this evening, Balduccio Sinagra confirmed it all for me.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Mimi. “What’s Sinagra got to do with this? And why would he turn informer?”
“He didn’t turn informer. He told me he needed a kidney transplant, and said he agreed when I mentioned Dr. Ingro’s name. But he also said the good doctor wasn’t in the best of health. You told me the same thing,
