“I sent him home. He was exhausted and worried to death.”
“I was thinking. You don’t think maybe it was Lipari himself who moved the motorbike? Maybe he found it on the ground, in the middle of the road—”
“No, Salvo. He swore up and down that he found it exactly the way you see it there.”
“Post a guard next to it. And don’t let anybody touch it, or forensics will go ballistic. Have you found anything?”
“Not a thing. And to think the girl had a small knapsack with her books and things, a cell phone, a wallet she always kept in the back pocket of her jeans, the housekeys . . . But nothing. It’s as if she ran into somebody she knew and propped the motorbike against the wall so she could talk to him.” Montalbano seemed not to be listening, and Mimi noticed.
“What is it, Salvo?”
“I don’t know, but something doesn’t look right to me,” Montalbano muttered.
And he started taking a few steps backward, as one does to get a better look at something, to take it all in from the right angle. Augello also stepped back, but only mechanically, because the inspector had done so.
“It’s backwards,” Montalbano concluded a moment later.
“What is?”
“The motorbike. Look at it, Mimi. The way we see it right now, at a standstill, we should think it was going to Vigata.”
Mimi looked, then shook his head.
“That’s true. But on that side of the road, it would be going the wrong way. If it was going in the direction of Vigata, it should be on the other side, leaning against the wall opposite.” “As if a moped cared if it was going the wrong way! Hell, you find those things on the landing outside your apartment!
They’ll drive right through your legs if they can! Forget about it. But if the girl was coming from Vigata, the front wheel of the motorbike should be pointed in the opposite direction. So my question is: Why is the bike positioned the way it is?” “Jesus, Salvo, there could be a lot of reasons for that.
Maybe she turned the bike around to prop it up a little better against the wall . . . Or maybe she herself turned around after she saw someone she recognized . . .”
“Anything is possible,” Montalbano cut him off. “I’m going over to the house. Come and join me after you’ve finished searching here. And don’t forget to post a guard.”
o o o
The villa was a two-storey building and must have once been rather beautiful. Now, however, it showed signs of neglect.
And when one loses interest in a house, it can tell, and it seems to plunge into a kind of premature old age. The sturdy wrought-iron gate was ajar.
The inspector entered a large living room furnished with dark, massive nineteenth-century antiques, but at first glance it looked like a museum, as it was full of small Pre-Columbian statues and African masks. Travel souvenirs of the geologist, Salvatore Mistretta. In one corner of the room there were two armchairs, a small table with a telephone on top, and a television. Fazio and a man who must have been Mistretta were sitting in the armchairs, eyes glued to the television screen. When Montalbano entered, the man gave Fazio a questioning look.
“This is Inspector Montalbano. And this is Signor Mistretta.”
The man came forward with his hand extended. Montalbano shook it without speaking. The geologist was a thin man of about sixty, with a face as baked as one of those South American statuettes, stooped shoulders, a mop of white hair, and a pair of blue eyes that wandered around the room like a drug addict’s. Apparently the tension was eating away at him.
“No news?” asked Montalbano.
The geologist threw his hands up disconsolately.
“I’d like to have a word with you,” the inspector went on.
“Could we go outside?”
For no apparent reason he felt like he couldn’t breathe. It was stuffy in the living room, and not a ray of light filtered in, despite two big French doors. Mistretta hesitated, then turned to Fazio.
“If somebody rings the bell upstairs, could you please let me know?”
“Of course,” said Fazio.
They went out. The garden surrounding the villa was in a state of utter abandon, now little more than a field of wild, yellowing plants.
“This way,” said the geologist.
He led the inspector to a hemicycle of wooden benches at the center of a kind of orderly, well-tended oasis of green.
“This is where Susanna comes to stu—”
Unable to continue, he collapsed onto a bench. The inspector sat down beside him and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Do you smoke?”
What had Dr. Strazzera advised him to do? “Try to stop smoking, if possible.”
