The Terra-Cotta Dog

'Now it's your turn to tell me,' he said to Mim.

'First sign the statement,' said Augello.

Montalbano signed, and Tortorella said good-bye and headed back to headquarters.

'There wasn't much to tell,' said Augello. 'Ingrassia's car was overtaken by the motorcycle; the guy in back turned around, opened fire, and that was that. Ingrassia's car ended up in a ditch.'

'They were pruning a dead branch,' Montalbano commented. Then, with a touch of melancholy because he felt left out of the game: 'What do you think you'll do?'

'The people in Catania, whom I've informed, promised not to let Brancato get away.'

'We can always hope.'

Augello didn't realize it, 'but by informing his colleagues in Catania, he may have signed Brancato's death warrant. So who was it?'

Montalbano asked bluntly after a pause. 'Who was what? Take a look at this.'

He pressed the remote and showed him the segment reporting the news of the assault on Ragonese. Mim played the part of someone in the dark to perfection.

'You're asking me?'

'Anyway, it doesn't concern us'

'Ragonese lives in Montelusa.'

'You're such an innocent, Mim. Here, bite my pinky.'

And he held out his little finger to him, as one does to teething babies.

18

After a week, the visits, embraces, phone calls, and congratulations gave way to loneliness and boredom. He had persuaded Livia to go back to her cousin in Milan; there was no point in wasting her holidays. The planned trip to Cairo, for the moment, was out of the question. They agreed that Livia would fly back down as soon as Montalbano got out of the hospital. Only then would she decide how and where to spend her two remaining weeks of vacation.

And little by little, the uproar surrounding the inspector and what had happened likewise died down to a mere echo, before disappearing entirely. Every day, however, Augello or Fazio would come to keep him company. But they didn't stay long, just enough to tell him the latest news and the state of certain investigations.

Every morning when he opened his eyes, Montalbano made a point of devoting his thoughts and speculations to the dead couple of the Crasticeddru. He wondered when he would again have the chance to be alone, in precious silence, with no disturbance of any kind, so he could develop a sustained line of reasoning from which he might receive a flash, a spark. He needed to take advantage of this situation, he would say to himself, and he'd begin to replay the whole affair in his mind with the speed of a galloping horse. Soon, however, he would find himself moving at a lazy trot, then at a walk, and finally a kind of torpor would ever-so-slowly overwhelm him, body and mind.

Must be my convalescence, he told himself.

He would sit down in the armchair, pick up a newspaper or magazine, and halfway through an article just a little longer than the rest, he would get fed up, his eyes would start to droop, and he would sink into a sweaty sleep.

Sargint Fasio said you was comin' home today. I am hapy and releved. The sargint also said for me to feed you lite foods. 

Adelina 

The housekeeper's note was on the kitchen table. Montalbano rushed to the fridge to see exactly what she meant by lite. There were two fresh hakes to be served with oil and lemon. He unplugged the phone; he wanted to reaccustom himself at an easy pace to living at home. There was a lot of mail, but he didn't open a single letter or read a single postcard. He ate and went to bed.

Before falling asleep, he asked himself a question: If the doctors reassured him that he would recover all his strength, why did he have that lump of sadness in his throat?

For the first ten minutes he drove apprehensively, paying closer attention to the reactions of his side than to the road. Then, seeing that he was weathering the bumps without difficulty, he accelerated, passed through Vig, took the road to Montelusa, turned left at the Montaperto crossroads, drove another few miles, turned onto an unpaved trail, and pulled up at a small clearing in front of a farmhouse. He got out of the car. Mariannina, Gege's sister, who had been his teacher at school, was sitting in a wicker chair beside the front door, fixing a basket. The moment she saw the inspector, she ran up to meet him.

'Salvo, I knew you'd come.'

'You're the first person I'm visiting since leaving the hospital,' said Montalbano, embracing her.

Mariannina began weeping very softly, without a sound, only tears, and Montalbanos eyes welled up.

'Pull up a chair,' said Mariannina.

Montalbano sat down beside her. She took his hand and began to stroke it.

'Did he suffer?'

'No. I realized while they were still shooting that they'd snuffed out Gege on the spot. This was later confirmed. I don't even think he ever realized what was happening.'

'Is it true you killed the one who killed Gege?'