“No. You see, the owners of these luxury villas very rarely use agencies, at least not around here.”
“So how do they rent them, then?”
“You know, they’re all rich and they all know each other . . . They just get the word out in their circles . . .”
Meanwhile the girl was looking at him and noticed the binoculars and video camera.
“Are you a tourist?”
“How could you tell?” said Montalbano.
After that jaunt over the waves he felt irresistibly hungry, his appetite swelling inside him like a river in spate. Though the surest course would have been to head straight to the Trattoria Da Enzo, he had to take his chances with what awaited him in the refrigerator or the oven in Marinella, since he needed to view what they’d filmed right away. As soon as he got home, he dashed into the kitchen, anxious to see what Adelina’s imagination had cooked up for him. In the oven he found rabbit alla cacciatora, as unexpected as it was ardently desired. While warming it up, he grabbed the phone.
“Torrisi? Montalbano here.”
“Everything go all right, Inspector?”
“I think so. Could you pop over to my place in about an hour?”
When eating alone, one indulges oneself in ways one would never dare in the company of others. Some sit down at the table in their underwear, others stuff themselves in bed or set up in front of the TV. Often the inspector allowed himself the pleasure of eating with his hands. Which is what he did with the rabbit alla cacciatora. Afterwards he had to spend half an hour scrubbing his hands under the kitchen faucet to wash off the grease and the smell.
He went to answer the door. It was Torrisi.
“Let me see what we filmed,” said the inspector.
“Here’s how you do it, Chief. Watch. You flip this switch and . . .”
He performed the procedure as he spoke, but Montalbano wasn’t even listening. He was utterly hopeless in these matters. The first images Tanino had filmed appeared on the television screen.
“What beautiful shots, Inspector!” Torrisi said with admiration. “You’re really good, you know. After only one technical lesson last night . . .”
“Well,” Montalbano said modestly, “it wasn’t hard . . .”
In the footage shot on the first run, the rocks below the villa looked like a bottom row of uneven teeth in a giant mouth, one jutting out, another recessed, one shorter than the rest, one longer, one slanting crosswise, another standing upright. When filmed on the return run, the same mouth of rocks appeared to be missing a tooth, revealing a gap that was not very wide, just enough to allow a dinghy or small motorboat to pass through.
“Stop there.”
Montalbano studied the image carefully. Something about that gap looked odd to him, as though the sea hesitated slightly before entering. In spots, it even looked like it wanted to turn back.
“Can you enlarge?”
“No, Chief.”
When Tanino stopped zooming, one saw the very steep staircase, carved directly into the rock, leading from the villa to the small, natural harbor formed by the rocks.
“Go back a little, please.”
This time he noticed a tall wire fence welded to some metal poles planted in the rocks, preventing anyone from climbing up and seeing what was going on inside the little harbor. Thus not only was the villa built without authorization, but its owners had illegally interrupted the shoreline. There was no way to walk along the water’s edge there, not even by climbing the rocks, since at a certain point one’s path was blocked by an insurmountable barrier of wire fencing. Yet even on this second viewing, he couldn’t figure out why the sea acted so strangely in front of that missing tooth.
“Good enough, Torrisi. Thanks. You can take back your video camera.”
“There is a way to enlarge the image you wanted, Chief. I could print out a copy of the still and give it to Catarella, who then could scan—”
“Fine, fine, you take care of it,” Montalbano cut him off.
“My compliments again on the beautiful shots,” said Torrisi as he went out.
“Thanks,” said the inspector, with the cheek he was able to summon in certain situations. The usurper didn’t even blush.
“Cat, any news from Marzilla?”
“No sir, Chief. But I wanted a tell you that a litter came this morning, addrissed to you poissonally in poisson.”
The plainest of envelopes, with no letterhead. The inspector opened it and pulled out a newspaper clipping. He looked inside the envelope but found nothing else. There was a short article dated Cosenza, March 11. The headline said: FUGITIVE ERRERA’S BODY FOUND. It said:
