Patience of the Spider

Which was surely when she got that other idea.”

“What other idea? Listen, Inspector, don’t you think you’re abusing—”

“I’m warning you,” Montalbano said icily. “You’re giving the wrong answers and asking the wrong questions. I came here to lay my cards on the table and reveal my suspicions . . .

or rather, my hopes.”

Why had he said “hopes”? Because hope was what had tipped the scales entirely to one side, in Susanna’s favor. Because that word was what had finally convinced him.

The word completely flummoxed the doctor, who wasn’t able to say anything. And for the first time, out of the silence and darkness came the girl’s voice, a hesitant voice, as though laden, indeed, with hope: the hope of being understood, to the bottom of her heart.

“Did you say . . . hope?”

“Yes. The hope that a great capacity for hatred might turn into a great capacity for love.”

From the bench where the girl was sitting he heard a kind of sob, which was immediately stifled. He lit a cigarette and saw, by the lighter’s glow, that his hand was trembling slightly.

“Want one?” he asked the doctor.

“I said no.”

They were firm in their resolutions, these Mistrettas. So much the better.

“I know there was no kidnapping. That evening, you, Susanna, took a different road home, a little-used dirt road, where your uncle was waiting for you in his SUV. You left your motorbike there, got in the car, and crouched down in back. And your uncle drove off to his villa. There, in the building next to the doctor’s villa, everything had been prepared some time before: a bed, provisions, and so on. The cleaning woman had no reason whatsoever to set foot in there. Who would ever have thought of looking for the kidnap victim at her uncle’s house? And that was where you recorded the messages. Among other things, you, Doctor, in your disguised voice, spoke of billions. It’s hard for people over a certain age to get used to thinking in euros. That was also where you shot your Polaroids, on the back of which you wrote some words, trying your best to make your handwriting legible, since, like all doctors’ handwriting, yours is indecipherable. I’ve never been inside that building, Doctor, but I can say for certain that you had a new telephone extension installed—” “How can you say that?” asked Carlo Mistretta.

“I know because the two of you came up with a truly brilliant idea for averting suspicion. You seized an opportunity on the fly. After learning that I was coming to the villa, Susanna called in the second recorded message, the one specifying the ransom amount, as I was speaking with you. But I heard, without understanding at first, the sound a phone makes when the receiver on an extension is picked up. Anyway, it wouldn’t be hard to get confirmation. All I need to do is call the phone company. And that could constitute evidence, Doctor. Shall I go on?” “Yes.”

It was Susanna who’d answered.

“I also know, because you told me yourself, Doctor, that there is an old winepress in that building. Thus there must be an adjacent space with the vat for the fermentation of the must. I am willing to bet that this room has a window. Which you, Doctor, opened when you took the snapshot, since it was daytime. You also used a mechanic’s lamp to better illuminate the inside of the vat. But there’s one detail you neglected in this otherwise elaborate, convincing production.” “A detail?”

“Yes, Doctor. In the photograph, right below the edge of the vat, there’s what appears to be a crack. I had that detail enlarged. It’s not a crack.”

“What is it?”

The inspector could feel that Susanna had been about to ask the same question. They still couldn’t figure out where they’d made a mistake. He sensed the motion of the doctor’s head as it turned toward Susanna, the questioning look in his eyes, even though these things were not visible.

“It’s an old fermentation thermometer. Unrecognizable, covered with spiderwebs, blackened, and so encrusted into the wall that it looks like it’s part of it. And therefore you couldn’t see it. But it’s still there. And this is the conclusive proof. I need only get up, go inside, pick up the phone, have two of my men come and stand guard over you, call the judge for the warrant, and begin searching your villa, Doctor.” “It would be a big step forward for your career,” Mistretta said mockingly.

“Once again, you’re entirely wrong. My career has no more steps to take, neither forward nor backward. What I’m trying to do is not for you, Doctor.”

“Are you doing it for me?”

Susanna sounded astonished.

Yes, for you. Because I’ve been spellbound by the quality, the intensity, the purity of your hatred. I am fascinated by the fiendish nature of the thoughts that come into your head, by the coldness and courage and patience with which you carried out your intentions, by the way you calculated the price you had to pay and were ready to pay it. And I’m also doing it for myself, because it’s not right that there’s always someone who suffers and someone who benefits from the other’s suffering, with the approval of the so-called law. Can a man, having reached the end of his career, rebel against a state of things he himself has helped to maintain?

Since the inspector wasn’t answering, the girl said something that wasn’t even a question.

“The nurse told me you wanted to see Mama.” I wanted to see her, yes.To see her in bed, wasted away, no longer a body but almost a thing, yet something that groaned, that suffered horribly . . . Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I wanted to see where your hatred had first taken root and grown uncontrollably with the stench of medications, excrement, sweat, sickness, vomit, pus, and gangrene that had devastated the heart of that thing lying in bed.The hatred with which you infected those close to you . . . But not your father—no, your father never knew a thing, never knew that it was all a sham . . . He anguished terribly over what he believed was a real kidnapping . . . But this, too, was a price you were willing to pay, and to have others pay, because true hatred, like love, doesn’t balk at the despair and tears of the innocent.

“I wanted to understand.”

It began to thunder out at sea. The lightning was far away, but the rain was approaching.