The Potter's Field

“Where is it?”

“We sent it to Palermo, to Professor Lomascolo’s lab.”

Arqua hung up. Montalbano carefully wiped away the sweat that was drenching his brow and redialed the number.

“Arqua? Montalbano again. I’m truly sorry to bother you again.”

“Speak.”

“If I may, I forgot something important.”

“What did you forget?”

“To tell you to go fuck yourself.”

He hung up. If he hadn’t got it out of his system, he might be on edge for the rest of the evening. All in all, however, the fact that the bridge was in the hands of Professor Lomascolo was good news. The professor was a real authority and would surely be able to glean some information from that bridge. And the inspector, moreover, had always got on well with him. But it was clear by now that if by some stroke of luck this case ever managed to move ahead, it would move very slowly.

Back in Marinella, he dawdled about the house for an hour or so. Before sitting down in front of the television he decided to call Livia and apologize for the quarrel of the previous night.

“Ah, at last the great Montalbano deigns to grant me an audience!” Livia said angrily.

A joyous start is the best of guides, as Matteo Maria Boiardo famously said.

If this was Livia’s tone starting out, how would the phone call end? With an exchange of nuclear missiles? And how should he proceed now? With a nasty retort? No, it was better to take the temperature down a few degrees and find out why she was so upset.

“Darling, you’ve got to believe me, I wasn’t able to call you any sooner because—”

“But it was I who called you, and you refused to talk to me! God Almighty in heaven can’t find a minute to talk to me!”

Montalbano balked.

“You called me? When?”

“This morning, at your office.”

“Maybe they didn’t put the call through to me...”

“But they did! They most certainly did!”

“Are you sure?”

“I talked to Catarella and he told me you were busy and couldn’t pick up.”

He suddenly remembered that Catarella had told him there was a “Signorina Zita” on the line...

“Livia, it was a simple misunderstanding! Catarella didn’t make it clear to me that it was you. He only said there was a ‘Signorina Zita’—zita, you see, means ‘girlfriend’ to us, but it’s also a common surname around here! And since I didn’t know any young women by the name of Zita—”

“Just forget about it.”

“Livia, try to understand. It was a simple mistake, I tell you! On top of that, you never call me at the office. What did you want to tell me?”

“I wanted you to call me tonight, because I had something important to talk to you about.”

“Well, isn’t that what I did? I called you on my own initiative. What’s this important thing, then?”

“This morning, before leaving for work, I got a very long phone call from Beba. She’s mad at you.”

“Beba? Mad at me? Why?”

“She says you’ve been treating Mimi very badly.”

“And what on earth has Mr. Augello been telling Beba?”

“Are you saying it’s not true?”

“Well, it’s true that lately he’s become very irritable and we’ve had a few arguments, but nothing serious . . . Treating him badly! He’s the one who’s become impossible to deal with, and in fact I had planned to ask you if by any chance Beba had mentioned anything to you about all this irritability on Mimi’s part.”

“So you don’t know why he’s so irritable?”

“I assure you I don’t.”

“Have you forgotten all the times you’ve sent him on stakeouts in the middle of the night over the past month? And which you continue to do practically every other night?”

Montalbano remained silent, mouth agape.

What the hell was Livia talking about? Was she just babbling?

Over the past month they had done only one nighttime stakeout, and Fazio had handled it alone.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Well, it’s just that...”