o o o
Before discussing everything they’d just learned, they ordered some coffee and drank it slowly, in silence.
“Obviously the guy didn’t sign on to learn how to fish,” Valente began.
“Or to get killed.”
“We’ll have to see how the captain of the fishing boat tells the story.”
“You want to summon him here?”
“Why not?”
“He’ll end up repeating what he already told Augello. It might be better first to try and find out what people down on the docks think. A word here, a word there, and we might end up learning a lot more.” “I’ll put Tomasino on it.”
Montalbano grimaced. He really couldn’t stand Valente’s second-in-command, but this wasn’t a very good reason, and it especially wasn’t something he could say.
“You don’t like that idea?”
“Me? It’s you who have to like the idea. Your men are yours. You know them better than I do.”
“C’mon, Montalbano, don’t be a shit.”
“Okay, I don’t think he’s right for the job. The guy acts like a tax collector, and nobody’s going to feel like confiding in him when he comes knocking.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll put Tripodi on it. He’s a smart kid, fearless. And his father’s a fisherman.”
“The important thing is to find out exactly what happened on the night the trawler crossed paths with the motor patrol. There’s something about the whole story that doesn’t add up, no matter which way you look at it.” “And what would that be?”
“Let’s forget, for the moment, how he managed to sign on with the boat. Ahmed set out with specific intentions, which are unknown to us. Here I ask myself: Did he reveal these intentions to the captain and the crew? And did he reveal them before they put out or when they were already at sea? In my opinion, he did state his intentions—though I don’t know exactly when—and everyone agreed to go along with him. Otherwise they would have turned around and put him ashore.” “He could have forced them at gunpoint.”
“But in that case, once they put in at Vigata or Mazara, the captain and crew would have said what happened. They had nothing to lose.”
“Right.”
“To continue. Unless Ahmed’s intention was to get killed off the shores of his native land, I can come up with only two hypotheses. The first is that he wanted to be put ashore at night, at an isolated spot along the coast, so he could steal back into his country undercover. The second is that he’d arranged some sort of meeting at sea, some secret conversation, which he absolutely had to attend in person.” “The second seems more convincing to me.”
“Me too. And then something unexpected happened.”
“They were intercepted.”
“Right. But here that hypothesis becomes more of a stretch. Let’s assume the Tunisian motor patrol doesn’t know that Ahmed’s aboard the fishing boat. They intercept a vessel fishing in their territorial waters, they order it to stop, the fishing vessel takes off, a machine gun is fired from the patrol boat, and purely by accident it happens to kill Ahmed Moussa. This, in any case, is the story we were told.” This time it was Valente who grimaced.
“Unconvinced?”
“It reminds me of the Warren Commission’s reconstruction of the Kennedy assassination.”
“Here’s another version. In the place of the man he’s supposed to meet, Ahmed finds someone else, who then shoots him.”
“Or else it is in fact the man he’s supposed to meet, but they have a difference of opinion, an altercation, and it ends badly, with the guy shooting him.”
“With the ship’s machine gun?”
He immediately realized what he’d just said. Without even asking Valente’s permission, and cursing under his breath, he grabbed the phone and asked for Jacomuzzi in Montelusa. While waiting for the connection, he asked Valente: “In the reports you were sent, did they specify the caliber of the bullets?”
“They spoke generically of firearms.”
“Hello? Who’s this?” asked Jacomuzzi at the other end of the line.
“Listen, Baudo—”
“Baudo? This is Jacomuzzi.”
“But you wish you were Pippo Baudo. Would you tell me what the fuck they used to kill that Tunisian on the fishing boat?”
“Firearms.”
“How odd! I thought he’d been suffocated with a pillow!”
“Your jokes make me puke.”
“Tell me exactly what kind of firearm.”
“A submachine gun, probably a Skorpion. Didn’t I write that in the report?”
