“Angelo lives on the top floor and there’s no elevator.”
The staircase was broad and comfortable. The building seemed uninhabited. No voices, no sound of televisions. And yet it was the time of day when people were normally preparing their evening meal.
On the top-floor landing, there were two doors. Michela went up to the one on the left. Before opening it, she showed the inspector a small window with a grate over it, beside the steel-plated door. The little window’s shutters were locked.
“I called to him from here. He would surely have heard me.”
She unlocked first one lock, then another, turning the key four times, but did not go in. She stepped aside. “Could you go in first?”
Montalbano pushed the door, felt around for the light switch, turned it on, and entered. He sniffed at the air like a dog. He was immediately convinced there was no human presence, dead or alive, in the apartment.
“Follow me,” he said to Michela.
The entrance led into a broad corridor. On the left-hand side, a master bedroom, a bathroom, and another bedroom. On the right, a study, a kitchen, a small bathroom, and a smallish living room. All in perfect order and sparkling clean.
“Does your brother have a cleaning lady?”
“Yes.”
“When did she last come?” “I couldn’t say.”
“Listen, signorina, do you come visit your brother here often?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question flustered Michela.
“What do you mean, ‘why’? He’s…my brother!”
“Granted, but you said Angelo comes to your and your mother’s place practically every other day. So, I suppose you come to see him here on the off days? Is that right?”
“Well…yes. But not so regularly.”
“Okay. But why do you need to see each other when your mother’s not around?”
“Good God, Inspector, when you put it that way … It’s just something we’ve been in the habit of doing since we were children. There’s always been, between Angelo and me, a sort of …”
“Complicity?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
She let out a giggle. Montalbano decided to change the subject.
“Shall we go see if a suitcase is missing? If all his clothes are here?”
She followed him into the master bedroom. Michela opened the armoire and looked at the clothing, one article at a time. Montalbano noticed that it was all very fine, tailored stuff.
“It’s all here. Even the gray suit he was wearing the last time he came to see us, three days ago. The only thing missing, I think, is a pair of jeans.”
On top of the armoire, wrapped in cellophane, were two elegant leather suitcases, one large and the other a bit smaller.
“The suitcases are both here.”
“Does he have an overnight bag?”
“Yes, he usually keeps it in the study.”
They went into the study. The small bag lay beside the desk. One wall of the study was covered by shelves of the sort one sees in pharmacies, enclosed in sliding glass panels. And in fact the shelves were stocked with a great many medicinal containers: boxes, flasks, bottles.
“Didn’t you say your brother was an informer?”
“Yes. An informer for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Montalbano understood. Angelo was what used to be called a pharmaceutical representative. But this profession, like garbagemen turned “ecological agents” or cleaning ladies promoted to the rank of “domestic collaborators,” had been ennobled with a new name more appropriate to our elegant epoch. The substance, however, remained the same.
“He used to be … still is, actually, a doctor, but he didn’t practice for very long,” Michela felt obliged to add.
“Fine. As you can see, signorina, your brother’s not here. If you want, we can go.”
“Let’s go.”
She said it reluctantly, looked all around as if she thought she might, at the last moment, find her brother hiding inside a bottle of pills for liver disease.
Montalbano went ahead this time, waiting for her to turn off the lights and lock the double-locked door with due diligence. They descended the stairs, silent amid the great silence of the building. Was it empty, or were they all dead? Once outside, Montalbano, seeing how disconsolate she looked, suddenly felt terribly sorry for her.
