before calling the girl’s friend, who told him that Susanna had left as usual at eight o’clock, give or take a couple of minutes. Then he’d phoned a boy whom his daughter considered her boyfriend, and the kid seemed surprised, since he’d seen Susanna in the afternoon in Vigata, before she went to study with her friend, and the girl had told him she wouldn’t be coming with him to the movies that evening because she had to go home to study.
At this point the father started to get worried. He’d tried reaching his daughter several times on her cell phone, but every time the phone was turned off. At a certain point the home phone rang, and the father rushed to pick up, thinking it was Susanna. But it was the brother.
“Susanna has a brother?”
“No, she’s an only child.”
“So, whose brother was it?” Montalbano asked in exasper-ation. Between Gallo’s speeding and the pothole- riven road they were traveling on, his head was not only numb, but the wound in his shoulder was throbbing.
The brother in question was the brother of the father of the kidnapped girl.
“Don’t any of these people have names?” asked the inspector, losing patience, hoping that knowing their names might help him follow the story a little better.
“Of course they do, why wouldn’t they? It’s just that nobody told me what they are,” said Gallo. He went on: “Anyway, the kidnapped girl’s father’s brother, who’s a doctor—” “Just call him the doctor uncle,” Montalbano suggested.
The doctor uncle had called to find out how his sister-in-law was doing. That is, the kidnapped girl’s mother.
“Why? Is she sick?”
“Yessir, Chief. Very sick.”
And so the father told the doctor uncle—
“No, in this case you should say his brother.” Anyway, the father told his brother that Susanna had disappeared and asked him to come to the house to lend a hand with his sick wife, to free him up so he could look for his daughter.
But the doctor had to take care of some obligations first, and it was already past eleven when he arrived.
The father then got in his car and very slowly retraced the route that Susanna normally took to go home. At that hour in winter there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, and very few cars. He went back and forth along the same route a second time, feeling more and more bereft of hope. At a certain point a motorbike pulled up beside him. It was Susanna’s boyfriend, who had phoned the villa and was told by the doctor uncle that there still was no news. The kid told the father that he planned to scour every street in Vigata, to see if he could at least find Susanna’s motorbike, which he knew well. The father retraced Susanna’s route from her friend’s house to his own home four more times, occasionally stopping to examine even the spots on the pavement. But he seemed not to notice anything unusual.
By the time he gave up and went home, it was almost three o’clock in the morning. At this point he suggested that his doctor brother phone all the hospitals in Vigata and Montelusa, telling them who he was. But they all answered in the negative, which on the one hand set their minds at rest, but on the other alarmed them even further. Thus they wasted another hour.
At this point in the story—they’d been driving in the open countryside for a while and were now on a dirt road —
Gallo pointed to a house about fifty yards ahead.
“That’s the villa.”
Montalbano didn’t have time to look at it, however, because Gallo suddenly turned right, onto another dirt road, this one in pretty bad shape.
“Where are we going?”
“To where they found the motorbike.”
It was Susanna’s boyfriend who had found it. After searching in vain up and down the streets of Vigata, he’d taken a much longer route back to the villa. And there, about two hundred yards from Susanna’s house, he’d spotted the abandoned moped and run to tell the father.
Gallo pulled up, stopping behind the other squad car.
When Montalbano got out, Mimi Augello came up to him.
“I don’t like the smell of this, Salvo. That’s why I had to bother you. But things don’t look good.”
“Where’s Fazio?”
“Inside the house, with the girl’s father. In case the kidnappers call.”
“Mind telling me the father’s name?”
“Salvatore Mistretta.”
“What’s he do?”
“Used to be a geologist. He’s been halfway across the world. Here’s the motorbike.”
It was leaning against a low dry-wall outside a vegetable garden. The bike was in perfect condition, no scratches or scrapes, just a little dusty. Galluzzo was in the garden, seeing if he could find anything of interest. Imbro and Battiato were doing the same along the dirt road.
“Susanna’s boyfriend . . . what’s his name?”
“Francesco Lipari.”
“Where is he?”
