‘Hello, Salvo? It’s Anna. I’ve just come from Mrs Di Blasi’s. You were right to tell me to go there. Her family and friends have made a point of not coming round — you know, keeping their distance from someone with a husband in jail and a son who’s a murderer.’
‘How is Mrs Di Blasi?’
‘How do you expect? She’s had a breakdown; I had to call a doctor. Now she’s feeling a litde better; her husband’s lawyer phoned saying he’d be released shortly.’
‘They’re not charging him with complicity?’
‘I really can’t say. I think they’re going to charge him anyway, but release him on bail Are you coming round?’
‘I don’t know, I’ll see.’
‘Salvo, you’ve got to do something. Maurizio was innocent, I’m sure of it, and they murdered him.’
‘Anna, don’t get any wild ideas.’
‘Hullo, Chief ? Zatchoo in poisson? Catarella here. The vikkim’s huzbin called sayin’ as how yer sposta call ‘im poissonally at the Jolly t’nite roundabout ten aclack.’
‘Thanks. How’d the first day of class go?’
‘Good, Chief, good. I unnastood everyting. Teacha complimented me. Said peoples like me’s rilly rare.’
An inspiration came to him shortly before eight o’clock, and he put it into action without wasting another minute. He jumped in the car and drove off in the direction of Montelusa.
‘Nicolo’s on the air’ said a secretary at the Free Channel studios, ‘but he’s almost finished.’
Less than five minutes later, Zito appeared, out of breath.
‘I did what you said; did you see the press conference?’
‘Yes, Nicolo, and I think we hit the mark.’
‘Can you tell me why that grenade is so important?’
‘Do you underestimate grenades?’
‘Come on, tell me what’s behind this’
‘I can’t, not yet. Actually, you’ll probably work it out very soon, but that’s your business. I haven’t told you anything’
‘Come on! What do you want me to say or do on the news? That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? By now you’ve become my secret director.’
‘If you do it, I’ll give you a present.’
He took one of the photos of Michela that Dr Licalzi had given him out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Nicolo.
‘You’re the only journalist who knows what the woman looked like when she was alive. The commissioner’s office in Montelusa doesn’t have any photos. All her IDs, driver’s licence, or passport, if she had one, were in the bag that the murderer took with him. You can show this to your viewers if you want’
Nicolo twisted up his face.
‘You must want an awfully big favour. Fire away’
Montalbano stood up, went over, and lacked the door
to the newsman’s office.
‘No,’ said Nicolo.
‘No what?’
‘No to whatever it is you’re going to ask me. If you need to lock the door, I don’t want any part of it.’
‘Look, if you give me a hand, afterwards I’ll give you all the facts you need to create a nationwide uproar.’
Zito said nothing. He was clearly torn,
‘What do you want me to do?’ he finally asked in a low voice.
‘To say you received phone calls from two witnesses.’ ‘Do they exist?’
‘One does, the other doesn’t.’ j
‘Tell me only what the one who exists said.’ ‘No, both. Take it or leave it’
‘But you do realize that if anybody finds out I invented a witness they’re liable to strike me off the register?’
‘Of course. And in that case, I give you permission to say I talked you into it. That way, they’ll send me home, too, and we can go and grow broad beans together.’
‘Tell you what. Tell me about the fake one first If the thing seems feasible, you can tell me about the real one afterwards.’
‘OK. This afternoon, following the press conference, somebody phoned you saying he was out hunting in the area where the police shot down Maurizio Di Blasi. He said that things did not happen the way Panzacchi said.
Then he hung up without leaving his name. He was clearly upset and afraid You tell your viewers you’re mentioning this episode only in passing and nobly declare that you don’t lend it much weight, since it was, in fact, an anonymous phone call and your professional ethics do not allow you to spread anonymous rumours.’
‘And in the meantime I’ve actually repeated it.’
‘But isn’t that standard procedure for you guys, if you don’t mind my saying so? Throwing the stone but keeping the hand hidden?’
‘I’ll tell you something about that when we’re through. For now, let’s hear about the real witness.’
‘His name is Gillo Jacono, but you’re to give only his initials, G.J., nothing more. This gentleman, shortly after midnight last Wednesday, saw the Twingo pull up by the house in Tre Fontane, and saw Michela and an unidentified man get out of the car and walk quietly towards the house. The man was carrying a suitcase. Not an overnight bag, a suitcase. Now, the question is this: why did Maurizio Di Blasi bring a suitcase when he went to rape Mrs Licalzi? Did it maybe contain clean sheets in the event they soiled the bed? Also: did the Flying Squad find this suitcase anywhere? It was certainly nowhere inside the house.’
Is that it?’
‘That’s it,’
Nicolo had turned chilly.
Apparently Montalbano’s criticism of journalistic methods hadn’t gone down well with him.
‘As for my professional ethics, this afternoon, following the press conference, I received a phone call from a hunter who told me that things had not happened the way the police said. But since he wouldn’t give me his name, I didn’t report it.’
‘You’re shitting me.’
‘Let me call my secretary, and you can listen to the tape recording of the call,’ said the journalist, standing up. Tm sorry, Nicolo. There’s no need.’
ELEVEN
Montalbano tossed about in bed all night, unable to fall asleep. He kept seeing the scene of Maurizio falling to the ground and managing to throw his shoe at his tormentors, the simultaneously comical and desperate gesture of a poor wretch hunted down like an animal. ‘Punish me!’ he had cried out, and everyone rushed to interpret that exclamation in the most obvious, reassuring manner possible. That is, punish me because I raped and killed, punish me for my sin. But what if, at that moment, he had meant something else entirely? What was going through his head?
Punish me because I’m different, punish me because I loved too much, punish me for being born … One could go on for ever, but here the inspector stopped himself, both because he didn’t like to slip into cheap philosophizing, and because he had suddenly understood that the only way to exorcize that obsessive image, and that cry, lay not in generic self-questioning but in examining the facts. To do this, one path, and only one, presented itself. And at this point he managed at last to shut his eyes for a couple of hours.
‘All of you,’ he said to Mimi Augello, entering headquarters.
Five minutes later, they were all standing before him in his office.
‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ said Montalbano. ‘This is not an official meeting, but a talk among friends.’
Mimi and two or three others sat down, while the rest remained standing. Grasso, Catarella’s replacement, leaned against the door frame, listening for the phone.
‘Yesterday, Inspector Augello, when he learned that Di Blasi had been killed, said something that hurt me. He said, more or less: if you’d remained on the case, today that kid would still be alive. I could have answered that it was the commissioner who’d taken the investigation away from me, and that therefore I bear no responsibility. And this, strictly speaking, is true. But Inspector Augello was right. When the commissioner summoned me and ordered me to stop investigating the Licalzi murder, pride got the better of me. I didn’t protest, I didn’t rebel, I basically gave him to understand that he could go and fuck himself. And in so doing, I gambled away a man’s life. Because one thing’s certain, none of you would ever have shot down some poor guy who wasn’t right in the head.’
They’d never heard him speak this way before and everyone looked at him flabbergasted, holding their breath.
‘I thought about this last night, and I made a decision. I’m going to resume the investigation.’
Who was it that applauded first? Montalbano managed to turn his emotion into sarcasm.
‘I’ve already told you once you’re a bunch of fucking idiots, don’t make me say it again.’ And he continued, The case, as of today, is closed. Therefore, if you’re all in agreement, we’re going to operate underwater, with only our periscope showing.
But I’m warning you: if they find out about this in Montelusa, it could mean real trouble for every one of us.’
Inspector Montalbano? This is Emanuele Licalzi.’
Montalbano remembered that Catarella had told him the night before that the doctor had called. He’d forgotten.
Tm sorry, but yesterday evening I had–’
‘Oh, not at all,
