The Terra-Cotta Dog

'There's no need to get upset.'

...

The barber, his young helper, and a client who was sitting in one of the two rotating chairs that barely fit into the shop, which was actually only a recess under a staircase, were in the midst of an animated discussion, but fell silent as soon as the inspector appeared. Montalbano had entered with what he himself called his barber-shop face, that is, mouth shrunken to a slit, eyes half-closed in suspicion, eyebrows furrowed, expression at once scornful and severe.

'Good morning. Is there a wait?'

Even his voice came out deep and gravelly.

'No sir. Have a seat, Inspector.'

As Montalbano took his place in the vacant chair, the barber, in accelerated, Chaplinesque movements, held a mirror behind the clients head to let him admire the finished product, freed him of the towel round his neck, tossed this into a bin, took out a clean one and put it over the inspectors shoulders. The client, denied even the customary brush-down by the assistant, literally fled from the shop after muttering Good day.

The ritual of the haircut and shave, performed in absolute silence, was swift and funereal. A new client appeared, parting the beaded curtain, but he quickly sniffed the atmosphere and, recognizing the inspector, said:

'I'll pass by later.' Then he disappeared.

On the street, as he headed back to his office, Montalbano noticed an indefinable yet disgusting odor wafting around him, something between turpentine and a certain kind of face powder prostitutes used to wear some thirty years back. The stink was coming from his own hair.

'Ingrassias in your office,' Tortorella said in a low voice, sounding conspiratorial.

'Where'd Fazio go?'

'Home to change. The commissioners office called. They said Fazio, Gallo, Galluzzo, and German should also take part in the press conference.'

I guess my phone call to that asshole Sciacchitano had an effect, thought Montalbano.

Ingrassia, who this time was dressed entirely in pastel green, started to rise.

'Don't get up,' said the inspector, sitting down behind his desk. He distractedly ran a hand through his hair, and immediately the smell of turpentine and face powder grew stronger. Alarmed, he brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed them, confirming his suspicion. But there was nothing to be done; there was no shampoo in the office bathroom. Without warning, he resumed his barber-shop face. Seeing him suddenly transformed, Ingrassia became worried and started squirming in his chair.

'Is something wrong?' he asked.

'In what sense do you mean?'

'Well...in every sense, I suppose,' said Ingrassia, flustered.

Montalbano shrugged evasively and went back to sniffing his fingers. The conversation stalled.

'Have you heard about poor Cavaliere Misuraca?' the inspector asked, as if chatting among friends in his living room.

'Ah! Such is life!' The other sighed sorrowfully.

'Imagine that, Mr. Ingrassia. I'd asked him if he could give me some more details about what he'd seen the night of the robbery, we'd agreed to meet again, and now this...'

Ingrassia threw his hands up in the air, inviting Montalbano, with this gesture, to resign himself to fate. He allowed a respectful pause to elapse, then:

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but what other details could the poor Cavaliere have given you? He'd already told you everything he saw.'

Montalbano wagged his forefinger, signaling no.

'You don't think he told you everything he saw?' asked Ingrassia, intrigued. Montalbano wagged his finger again. Stew in your own juices, scumbag, he was thinking. The green Ingrassia started to tremble like a leafy branch in the breeze.

'Well, then, what did you want him to tell you? What he thought he didn't see.'

The breeze turned into a gale, the branch began to lurch. 'I don't understand. Let me explain.'

'You're familiar, are you not, with a painting by Pieter Brueghel called Childrens Games?'

'Who? Me? No,' said Ingrassia, worried.

'Doesn't matter. But you must be familiar with the works of Hieronymus Bosch?'

'No sir,' said Ingrassia, starting to sweat. Now he was really getting scared, his face starting to match the color of his outfit, green.

'Never mind, then, don't worry about it,' Montalbano said magnanimously. 'What I meant was that when someone sees a scene, he usually remembers the first general impression he has of it. Right?'

'Right,' said Ingrassia, prepared for the worst.

'Then, little by little, a few other details may start coming back to him, things that registered in his memory but were discarded as unimportant. An open or closed window, for example, or a noise, a whistle, a song..what else? a chair out of place, a car where it's not supposed to be, a light ...That sort of thing. You know, little details that can