The inspector checked.
“That seems fine.”
“Stay there,” said Nicolo.
He climbed back up on the chair, fussed about, and got back down.
“What’s it doing?” asked Montalbano.
“Filming you.”
“Really? It makes no noise at all.”
“I told you the thing’s amazing.”
Nicolo repeated his rigmarole of climbing onto the chair and stepping back down. But this time he had the camera in his hand and showed it to Montalbano.
“Here’s how you do it, Salvo. To rewind the tape, you press this button. Now bring the camera up to your eye and press this other button. Go ahead, try.”
Montalbano did as he was told and saw a very tiny image of himself ask in a microscopic voice: “What’s it doing?” Then he heard Nicolo’s voice say, “Filming you.”
“Fantastic,” the inspector said. “There’s one thing, though. Is that the only way to see what you’ve filmed?”
“Of course not,” Nicolo replied, taking out a normal-looking videocassette that was made differently inside.
“Watch what I do. I remove the tape from the videocamera, which as you can see is as small as the one in your answering machine, and I slip it inside this one, which is made for this purpose and can be used in your VCR.” “Listen, to make it record, what do I do?”
“Push this other button.”
Seeing the inspector’s expression, which looked more confused than convinced, Nicolo grew doubtful.
“Will you be able to use it?”
“Come on!” replied Montalbano, offended.
“Then why are you making that face?”
“Because I can’t very well climb onto a chair in front of the guy I want to film. It would make him suspicious.”
“See if you can reach it by standing on tiptoe.” He could.
“Then it’s simple. Just leave a book out on the table, then ca-sually put it back on the shelf, meanwhile pressing the button.”
o o o
A traveling salesman of the lowest rank would have expressed himself with more affection and imagination. He rewrote the note and, strangely, it came out exactly the same as the previous one. Nothing doing. It wasn’t true that he had to see the commissioner; he merely wanted to skip the good-byes. It was therefore a big fat lie, and he had never been able to tell one directly to someone he respected. Little fibs, on the other hand, he was very good at. And how.
o o o
At headquarters he found Fazio waiting for him, upset.
“I’ve been trying to call you at home for the last half hour. You must’ve unplugged the telephone.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Some guy called saying he accidentally found the dead body of an old woman in Villaseta, on Via Garibaldi, in the same house where we caught the little kid. That’s why I was looking for you.” Montalbano felt something like an electric shock.
“Tortorella and Galluzzo have already gone there. Galluzzo just called and said it was the same old lady he took to your house.”
Aisha.
The punch Montalbano gave himself in the face wasn’t hard enough to knock out his teeth, but it made his lip bleed.
“What the hell are you doing, Chief ?” said Fazio, flab-bergasted.
Aisha was a witness, of course, just like Francois. But the inspector’s eyes and attention had all been on the kid. A fucking idiot, that’s what he was. Fazio handed him a handkerchief.
“Here, clean yourself up.”
o o o
Aisha was a twisted little bundle at the foot of the stairs that led up to Karima’s room.
