the rest, utter darkness. With patience and grace, the girl put in the cassette, then started to rewind it, stopping the image every time Montalbano asked. By the time he left the Free Channel offices, the inspector was convinced he'd seen exactly what had aroused his interest. But what had aroused his interest seemed not to make any sense.
10
He stood outside the Trattoria San Calogero, undecided. It was indeed time to eat, and his stomach certainly felt empty; and yet an idea that had come to him while watching the videotape and which demanded to be verified was pushing him to continue on to the Crasticeddru. The scent of fried mullet coming from the restaurant won the duel. He ate a special appetizer of shellfish, then had them bring him two sea perches so fresh they seemed to be still swimming in the sea.
'Youre eating without conviction, Inspector.'
'It's true. The fact is, I've got something on my mind.'
'The mind should be forgotten when the Lord in His grace puts such perches in front of you,' Calogero said solemnly, walking away.
He passed by the office to see if there was any news.
'Jacomuzzi called several times for you,' German informed him.
'If he calls again, tell him I'll get back to him later. Do we have a very powerful flashlight?'
After turning off the main road and stopping near the Crasticeddru, he abandoned the car and decided to proceed on foot. It was a beautiful day, with a light breath of wind that cooled the air and lifted Montalbanos spirits.
The ground around the rocky spur was marked by tire tracks apparently left by people who had come up there out of curiosity. The boulder that served as the door had been pulled open several yards, the cave entrance now entirely exposed. As he was about to enter, he stopped, pricking up his ears. From inside came a low murmur occasionally interrupted by some stifled moans. He became alarmed: want to bet theyre torturing someone in there? There wasn't time to run back to the car to get his pistol. He bounded inside, simultaneously turning on the powerful flashlight.
'Everybody freeze! Police!'
The two people inside the cave froze, but the greatest chill was felt by Montalbano himself. They were a very young couple, completely nude, making love: she with her hands braced against the wall, arms extended, he glued to her from behind. In the glare of the flashlight they looked like statues, beautiful. The inspector felt his face burning with shame. Turning off the flashlight, he started to withdraw, awkwardly muttering:
'I'm sorry...It was a mistake . . . Don't let me bother you.'
They came out less than a minute later. (It doesn't take long to put ones jeans and T-shirt back on.) Montalbano was truly sorry for having interrupted them. In their way, the two youths had been reconsecrating the cave, now that it was no longer a depository of death. The boy passed in front of him, head bowed and hands in his pockets; the girl instead glanced at him a moment, smiling faintly, an amused glint in her eye.
A simple, superficial reconnaissance of the site was all the inspector needed to confirm that what he had noticed in the videotape corresponded to what he was seeing in reality: that while the sides of the cave were relatively smooth and solid, the lower part of the rear wall, that is, the surface opposite the entrance, was quite uneven in texture, with protuberances and recesses, and might at first glance appear sloppily chiseled. But there was nothing chiseled about it. In fact, it consisted of stones stacked one atop and beside the other. Time had since taken care of binding and cementing them, camouflaging them with dust, earth, seeping water, and saltpeter, finally transforming the rough surface into an almost natural wall.
He continued looking very closely, exploring inch by inch, and in the end he no longer had any doubt: at the back of the cave, there must be an opening at least three feet square that had been covered over quite a few years ago.
...
'Jacomuzzi? Montalbano here. I absolutely need you to..'
'Do you mind telling me where you've been hiding your ass? I spent the whole morning looking for you!'
'Well, I'm here now.'
'I found a piece of cardboard, from a package or, rather, from a large box, the kind used for shipping.'
'You tell a secret, I tell a secret: I once found a red button.'
'What an asshole you are! Im not going to say any more.'
'Aw, come on, honeybuns, don't be offended.'
'On this piece of cardboard are some printed letters. I found it under the wooden underframe of the cave; it must have slipped through one of the interstices between the planks.'
'What was that word you said?'
'Underframe?'
'No, after that.'
'Interstices?'
'Yes. My, my, aren't we educated? And so well-spoken! Did you find anything else under this whatever-it-was you called it?'
'Yes. Rusted nails, a button, in fact, but this one was black, a pencil stub and some scraps of paper, but the dampness had turned them all to mush. That piece of cardboard is still in good condition because it apparently had been there only a few days.'
'Send it down to me. Listen, have you got an echo sounder and anyone who might know how to use it?'
'Yes. We used it at Misilmesi just last week to look for three dead bodies, which we eventually found.'
