Rounding the Mark

“Okay, Cat, thanks. You can go now.”

He felt rather worried about Catarella. Not because he had any doubts about his sexuality, but because if he, the inspector, resigned—as he’d already decided to do—surely Catarella would suffer terribly, like a dog abandoned by its master.

Ciccio Albanese showed up around eleven-thirty, empty- handed.

“You didn’t bring the charts you mentioned?”

“If I showed them to you, would you understand them?”

“No.”

“So why should I bring them? It’s better if I explain things myself.”

“Tell me something, Ciccio. Do all of you trawler captains use maps?”

Albanese looked at him cockeyed.

“Are you kidding? In our line of work, we know our stretch of sea by heart. Some of it we learned from our dads, some of it we learned by ourselves. For the new stuff, we get some help from radar. But the sea’s always the sea.”

“So why do you use maps?”

“I don’t, Inspector. I look at ’em and study ’em ’cause it’s something I like to do. But I don’t bring ’em aboard with me. I prefer to rely on experience.”

“So, what can you tell me?”

“First of all, I gotta tell you that before coming here this morning, I went to see u zu Stefanu.”

“I’m sorry, Ciccio, but I don’t—”

“Stefano Lagumina, but we all call him u zu Stefanu. He’s ninety-five years old, but his brain’s as sharp as anyone’s. U zu Stefanu don’t go out to sea no more, but he’s the oldest fisherman in Vigata. He used to have a lateener before he got a trawler. Whatever the man says is gospel.”

“So you wanted to consult with him.”

“Yessir. I wanted to make sure my hunch was right. And u zu Stefanu agrees with me.”

“And what are your conclusions?”

“Here’s how I see it. The dead man was carried by a surface current that we all know well, and which runs east to west, always at the same speed. The spot off Marinella where you bumped into the body is where this current comes closest to shore. You follow?”

“Perfectly. Go on.”

“It’s a slow current. You know how many knots?”

“No, and I don’t want to know. And just between you and me, I don’t even know how many knots there are in a mile.”

“Well, a mile’s one thousand eight hundred fifty-one point eighty-five meters long. An Italian mile, that is. ’Cause in England—”

“Forget about it, Ciccio.”

“Whatever you say, Inspector. As I was saying, this current comes from far away. It’s not native. To give you an idea, we run into it way down at Capo Passero. That’s where it enters our waters, and then it hugs the coast up to Mazara. After that it goes its own way.”

And there you have it! This, of course, meant that the body could have been thrown into the sea at just about any point along the southern coast of Sicily! Albanese read the discouragement on the inspector’s face and came to his aid.

“I know what you’re thinking. But I have something important to tell you. A little before Bianconara, this current is cut off by another, stronger current going in the opposite direction. And so a body floating from Pachino over to Marinella would never actually get to Marinella because the second current would carry it into the Gulf of Fela.”

“So that means that my dead body’s story definitely begins after Bianconara.”

“Exactly, Inspector. You’ve understood everything.”

Thus the likely area of investigation was reduced to some sixty kilometers of coastline.

“And I now should tell you,” Albanese continued, “that I also talked to u zu Stefanu about the condition the body was in when you found it. I could see for myself: the man’d been dead at least two months. You agree?”

“Yes.”

“So I say: a corpse isn’t gonna take two months to float from Bianconara to Marinella. Maybe ten, fifteen days, at the most, if you figure in the speed of the currents and all.”

“And so?”

Ciccio Albanese stood up and held his hand out to Montalbano.

“That kind of question’s not for me to answer. I’m only a sailor. That’s where you come in, Inspector.”

A perfect assignation of roles. Ciccio didn’t want to venture into waters not his own. All Montalbano could do