“How’s Beba?”
“Better. We were finally able to get a little sleep last night.”
Then Fazio appeared.
“I have to tell you,” the inspector began, “that, entirely by chance, I’ve managed to identify the drowned man. You, Fazio, did a great job, finding out that he’d recently been spotted in Spigonella. That’s where he lived. He’d rented the villa with the big terrace overlooking the sea. D’you remember it, Fazio?”
“Of course.”
“He said he was captain of an oil tanker, and went by the name of Ernesto—‘Nini’ to friends—D’Iunio.”
“Why? What was his real name?” asked Augello.
“Ernesto Errera.”
“
“Like the guy in Cosenza?” asked Mimi again.
“Exactly. They were the same person. Sorry to say, Mimi, but Catarella was right.”
“I want to know how you arrived at this conclusion,” Mimi insisted coldly.
Apparently he was finding the news hard to swallow.
“I didn’t arrive at it myself. My friend Ingrid did.”
And he told them the whole story. When he had finished speaking, Mimi put his head in his hands and shook it at intervals.
“Jesus . . . Jesus . . .” he said softly.
“Why are you so surprised, Mimi?”
“I’m not so surprised by the thing in itself, but by the fact that we were breaking our heads over it when Catarella had come to the right conclusion long before.”
“Then you’ve never understood just who Catarella is,” said the inspector.
“I guess not. Who is he?”
“Catarella’s a little kid, a child inside a grown man’s body. And so he reasons like someone barely seven years old.”
“So?”
“What I mean is that Catarella has the kinds of fantasies, brainstorms, and bright ideas a little kid does. And being a little kid, he says what he’s thinking, he doesn’t hold back. And often he’s right on the mark. Because reality, when seen through our eyes, is one thing, but when seen through a child’s eyes, it’s something else.”
“So, to conclude, what are we going to do?” Fazio cut in.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Montalbano.
“Chief, I’d like to say something, if Inspector Augello doesn’t mind. I want to say that this whole business is not so simple. As things now stand, this murder victim—call him D’Iunio or Errera, it makes no difference—has never been officially declared a murder victim, either by the police or the courts. He’s still considered dead by accidental drowning. So my question is: on what grounds do we open a case file and continue the investigation?”
The inspector thought about this a moment.
“We use the old anonymous phone call trick,” he decided.
Augello and Fazio looked at him questioningly.
“It always works. Don’t worry, I’ve used it before.”
He took out the photo of Errera with a mustache and handed it to Fazio.
“Take this immediately to the Free Channel. I want you to hand it to Nicolo Zito in person. Tell him I need an urgent phone call in this morning’s newscast. He should say that Ernesto D’Iunio’s family are distraught because they’ve had no news of him in over two months. Now go.”
Without a peep, Fazio got up and left. Montalbano looked keenly at Augello, as if he’d just noticed at that moment that Mimi was sitting right in front of him. Augello, who knew that look, began to squirm in his chair.
“Salvo, what the hell are you cooking up?”
“How’s Beba?”
Mimi gave him a dismayed look.
“You already asked me that, Salvo. She’s better.”
“So she’s able to make a phone call.”
“Of course. To whom?”
“To the public prosecutor, Tommaseo.”
“And what’s she supposed to say to him?”
“I want her to perform a little drama. Half an hour after Zito broadcasts the photograph on TV, I want Beba to make an anonymous call to Prosecutor Tommaseo and to tell him, in an hysterical voice, that she’s seen the man in the photo. She recognizes him perfectly, there is no doubt in her mind.”
