Patience of the Spider

Fazio put up a feeble resistance.

“Come on. At any rate, they’re not going to call back until day after tomorrow. They told you themselves, didn’t they?”

o o o

After dropping Fazio off, he headed home. Entering without a sound, he went into the bathroom and then got ready to lie down on the sofa. He was too tired even to curse the saints. As he was taking off his shirt, he noticed, in the dark, that the bedroom door was ajar. Apparently Livia was sorry for having ban-ished him. He went back in the bathroom, finished undressing, tiptoed into the bedroom, and lay down. A short spell later, he stretched out close to Livia, who was in a deep sleep. The minute he closed his eyes he was in dreamland. Then suddenly, clack. Time’s spring jammed. Without looking at the clock, he knew it was three-twenty- seven and forty seconds. How long had he slept? Luckily he fell back asleep almost at once.

Livia woke up around seven the next morning. Montalbano, too. And they made peace.

o o o

Francesco Lipari, Susanna’s boyfriend, was waiting for him in front of the station. The dark circles under his eyes betrayed his agitation and sleepless nights.

“I’m sorry, Inspector, but early this morning I called Susanna’s father and he told me about the phone call, so —”

“What?! I thought Minutolo didn’t want anyone to know!” The kid shrugged.

“All right, come inside. But don’t tell anyone at all about that phone call.”

As he went in, the inspector told Catarella he didn’t want to be disturbed.

“Is there something you have to tell me?” he asked the young man.

“Nothing in particular. But it occurred to me there was something I forgot to tell you the last time I saw you. I don’t know how important it is . . .”

“In this case, everything is potentially important.”

“When I discovered Susanna’s motorbike, I didn’t go straight to her house to tell her father. I took the dirt road all the way back to Vigata, then turned around and went back to where I’d started.” “Why?”

“I dunno. At first it was sort of instinctive. I thought she might have fainted or fallen and lost her memory, so I decided to look for her along that road. Then, on the way back, it wasn’t her I was looking for anymore, but—” “— The helmet she always wore,” said Montalbano.

The boy looked at him, wide-eyed with surprise.

06

“You thought of it, too?”

“Me? Well, when I arrived at the scene, my men had already been there for a while. And when Susanna’s father told them she always wore a helmet, they looked for it everywhere, not only along the road but also in the fields beyond the walls.” “I just can’t imagine the kidnappers forcing Susanna in the car with her struggling and screaming with her helmet on.”

“Me neither, as far as that goes.”

“But do you really have no idea how things went?” asked Francesco, torn between incredulity and hope.

The kids of today! thought the inspector. They put their faith in us so readily, and we do everything we can to disappoint them!

To prevent Francesco from seeing his emotion (but was this not perhaps a first sign of senility and not an effect of his injury?), he bent down to look at some papers inside a drawer.

He didn’t answer until he was sure he could speak in a steady voice.

“There are still too many things we can’t explain. The first is: Why did Susanna take a road she’d never taken before to come home?”

“Maybe there’s somebody around there—”

“Nobody knows her. And nobody even saw her pass by on her motorbike. Of course it’s possible one of them’s not telling the truth. In that case, the person not telling the truth is an accessory to the kidnapping, maybe only as a coordina-tor. Maybe he was the only one who knew that on that specific day, at that specific hour, Susanna would come driving down that road. Do you follow?” “Yes.”

“But if Susanna took that road for no particular reason, then the kidnapping must have resulted from an entirely chance encounter. But that can’t be how it went.”

“Why not?”

“Because the kidnappers are showing that they planned the job in advance and are therefore at least minimally organized. We know from the phone call that this was not a rush job. They seem in no hurry to get rid of Susanna. This means they’re keeping her in a safe place. And it’s unlikely they found such a place in a matter of hours.” The young man said nothing. He was concentrating so hard on the words he was hearing that the inspector thought he could hear the gears churning in his brain. Francesco then drew his conclusion.

“According to your reasoning, Susanna was very probably kidnapped by someone who knew she was going to take the dirt road that evening. Someone who lives around there. In that case we need to get to the bottom of this, find out everybody’s name, verify that—” “Stop. If you’re going to start calculating and forming hypotheses, you must also be able to anticipate failure.”

“I don’t understand.”