6
At five-thirty in the morning, after having spent the night repeatedly getting up and going back to bed, Montalbano decided on a plan for Gege, one that would indirectly pay him back for his silence about the lost necklace and his joke about the visit he’d made that afternoon at the Pasture. He took a long shower, drank three coffees in succession, then got in his car. When he arrived in Rabato, the oldest quarter of Montelusa, destroyed thirty years earlier by a landslide and now consisting mostly of ruins refurbished higgledy-piggledy and damaged, ramshackle hovels inhabited by illegal aliens from Tunisia and Morocco, he headed through narrow, tortuous alleyways toward Piazza Santa Croce.
The church stood whole amid the ruins. He took from his pocket the sheet of paper Gege had given him: Carmen, known in the real world as Fatma Ben Gallud, Tunisian, lived at number 48. It was a miserable
“Who that?”
“Police,” Montalbano fired back. He had decided to play rough, catching her still drowsy from the sudden awakening. Certainly Fatma, because of her work at the Pasture, must have slept even less than he. The door opened, the woman covering herself in a large beach towel that she held up at breast level with one hand.
“What you want?”
“To talk to you.”
She stood aside. In the
“Let me see your residence permit.”
As if in fear, the woman let the towel fall as she brought her hands to her face to cover her eyes. Long legs, slim waist, flat belly, high, firm breasts—a real woman, in short, the type you see in television commercials. After a moment or two, Montalbano realized, from Fatma’s expectant immobility, that what he was witnessing was not fear, but an attempt to reach the most obvious and common of arrangements between man and woman.
“Get dressed.”
There was a metal wire hung from one corner of the room to another. Fatma walked over to it: broad shoulders, perfect back, small, round buttocks.
He imagined the men lining up discreetly in certain offices, with Fatma earning “the indulgence of the authorities” behind closed doors, as he had happened several times to read about, an indulgence of the most self- indulgent kind. Fatma put on a light cotton dress over her naked body and remained standing in front of Montalbano.
“So . . . your papers?”
The woman shook her head no. And she began to weep in silence.
“Don’t be afraid,” the inspector said.
“I not afraid. I very unlucky.”
“Why?”
“Because you wait few days, I no here no more.”
“And where did you want to go?”
“Man from Fela he like me, I like him, he say Sunday he marry me. I believe him.”
“The man who comes to see you every Saturday and Sunday?”
Fatma’s eyes widened.
“How you know?”
She started crying again.
“But now everything finish.”
“Tell me something. Is Gege going to let you go with this man from Fela?”
“Man talk to Signor Gege, man pay.”
“Listen, Fatma, pretend I never came to see you here. I only want to ask you one thing, and if you answer me truthfully, I will turn around and walk out of here, and you can go back to sleep.”
“What you want to know?”
“Did they ask you, at the Pasture, if you’d found anything?”
The woman’s eyes lit up.
“Oh, yes! Signor Filippo come—he Signor Gege’s man—tell us if we find gold necklace with heart of diamond, we give it straight to him. If not find, then look.”
“And do you know if it was found?”
“No. Also tonight, all girls look.”
“Thank you,” said Montalbano, heading for the door. In the doorway he stopped and turned round to look at Fatma.
