He got home after a ferocious run-in with a motorist who, when passing him, had come so close to his car that he very nearly ran him off the road. And so, with his head in a fog of rage, he’d followed the guy, caught up with him, passed him, and then screeched to skidding halt, blocking the road crosswise with his car.
He’d got out of the car with his hair standing on end and eyes bulging, and, yelling like a madman, he’d gone on the attack, charging at the enemy. Who, meanwhile, the moment he’d seen the inspector get out of his car, had thrown his own into reverse, then accelerated forward, shooting past Montalbano, who tried to stop the car with his bare hands, very nearly falling down.
True, he had behaved just like the typical Italian driver, but as soon as he began to feel ashamed of this, he justified himself, thinking that, if nothing else, the episode had allowed him to vent his anger and frustration.
As he was opening the front door, he heard the telephone ringing.
He went to pick up, certain-for no reason in particular-that it was someone from the station.
“Hello?”
“Forgive me for disturbing you at home,” said a priestlike voice, “but as I had no news…”
Who was it? He didn’t recognize the voice, though it sounded both familiar and unfamiliar…
“I’m sorry, but what sort of news do you want?”
“Of the little boy, of course!”
“Look, I think you’ve got the wrong number. This isn’t a kindergarten!”
“Am I not speaking with Inspector Montalbano?”
“Yes, you are.”
“I wanted to know how your little boy, your son, was doing… What did you say his name was?”
Shit! It was that goddamn pain in the ass Lattes! To whom he’d told that big lie about his young son being sick! And what had he said the kid’s name was? The only hope was to keep to generalities.
“There’s been a slight improvement, Doctor. Thanks for asking. And forgive me for not recognizing you at once, but, you know, I’ve been so worried these days, so upset…”
“I understand perfectly, Inspector. And please accept my heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery. May the Blessed Virgin keep you in her heart… And keep me informed-I mean it.”
“It’s the least I can do, I promise.
“As for those files that need to be checked-”
He hung up. He really didn’t want to hear any talk about files at a time like this.
He barely had time to take off his jacket before the phone started ringing again. It was surely Lattes, who must have thought they’d been cut off.
And so Montalbano decided to go into tragic mode to get Lattes out of his hair for a while.
He picked up the receiver and started speaking in an angry voice.
“What is this?! My child, my flesh and blood is fighting for his life in a hospital bed and you want to talk about files? You do have a heart, don’t you?”
Total silence at the other end. Perhaps he had treated the poor Dr. Lattes a bit harshly. Better try to make up.
“I’m sorry if I raised my voice, Doctor, but you must understand my state of mind. My poor little boy…”
“What the hell are you talking about?” interrupted a woman’s voice, which he recognized at once.
Livia!
He felt as if the whole bleeding world was crashing down on his head.
He hung up at once. He was finished. Toast.
Livia would never believe that the story of the little boy was a stupid lie he’d invented out of whole cloth.
The phone started ringing again.
No, until he collected his thoughts, he was in no condition to talk to her. He bent down and unplugged the phone.
Then he undressed on the spot, throwing his clothes to the floor as he ran to the shower.
He urgently needed to refresh his body and his brain.
Once out of the shower, he plugged the phone back in. Now he felt more in a state to talk to Livia without getting overly agitated. He would tell her the truth simply, in a clear, firm tone. And he would convince her. He dialed her number.
“Listen, Livia, I swear I don’t have a son.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” said Livia.
He wasn’t expecting that response and felt rather relieved. It would make everything else a lot easier.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You would never have been able to keep it hidden from me for so long. Who did you think you were talking to?”
“Dr. Lattes. You see, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this before, but he has this obsessive notion that I’m married and have at least two children. I’ve never been able to convince him otherwise. So I had to give him some rope. He was trying to saddle me with some bureaucratic hassle, and so I made up this story that one of my sons was gravely ill. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Livia repeated frostily.
“Yes.”
“And aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Good God, Livia, why should I feel ashamed?”
“For pretending your son was gravely ill, just to-”
“What are you saying? The son doesn’t exist, you said it yourself just a minute ago!”
“That doesn’t matter. For Lattes, he exists.”
“Livia, you’re not making any sense!”
“No, my dear. I find it utterly ignoble that you used a sick child as an excuse for not doing something you didn’t want to do.”
“Livia, try to be rational. The child is pure fiction.”
“But it still shows what kind of mind you have!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you could have come up with a thousand other excuses, but you didn’t! It certainly would never have occurred to me to say a thing like that, and I’m not even a mother!”
Maybe Livia wasn’t entirely wrong. No, in fact she was decidedly right. One should never joke about sick little children, even imaginary ones. But he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
“Listen, Livia, I really don’t feel like hearing about what kind of mind I have, especially from you.”
“Why? What have I done?”
“You didn’t come to my funeral.”
Livia was speechless.
“What…? What are you talking about? Are you insane?”
“No, I’m not insane! I had a dream that I died, and you didn’t feel like coming down from Boccadasse.”
“But it was a dream!”
“So what? And the little boy was imaginary!”
“No, no, no! It’s not the same thing at all! You were dead, and hopefully resting in peace, whereas that poor little boy is alive and you’re making him suff-”
“Listen, let’s forget about it. You know what I’m going to do? Tomorrow I’m going to call Lattes and set everything straight.”
“Do whatever you think best, but get rid of the story about the little boy. And if it really means so much to you, I apologize for not coming to your funeral. Next time, I won’t miss it.”
They laughed, at last.
“How are you?” Montalbano asked.
“I’m fine. And you?”
“I’m bogged down in an investigation that’s… Speaking of which, do you know anyone called Émile Lannec?”
“What is this? Another one of your strange jokes?”
“Come on. Do you know him or don’t you?”
“Of course I do. We met him together.”
“Where?”
“In Marinella.”
He had no recollection whatsoever of it.
“Really? And who is he?”
“He’s…,” she started and then stopped. Then she giggled. “He’s someone who’s exactly like your son.”
“Come on, Livia, don’t…”
But she’d already hung up. He called back, but the phone rang and rang with no answer.
So this was how Livia would punish him for the story of the sick little boy. Damn! The woman never pardoned him a single weakness! Not one!
As he wasn’t the least bit hungry, he didn’t look to see what was in the refrigerator or the oven. Instead he grabbed a bottle of whisky, a glass, his cigarettes, and went out on the veranda and sat down.
Émile Lannec.
He went back inside, picked up the Frenchman’s passport, then sat down again outside.
From what he could gather from the visas, Lannec had been three times to South Africa, twice to Namibia (which he would never have been able to find on a map), four times in Botswana (which he didn’t know either), and then in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.
Except for Israel, he’d been to every country on the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Middle East.
What line of business was Monsieur Lannec in?
Finishing his first glass, he got up, went and got a world atlas, and looked for Namibia and Botswana. They were two countries bordering on the upper regions of South Africa.
Then, all at once, the name South Africa made him remember that the Vanna had also been splashing about in that area. It was Laura who’d told him. He felt a twinge in his heart.
Laura!
By now she was alone with Mimì. They had definitely finished eating, and imagine Mimì not trying to take advantage of the situation! Boat fuel, right! Camouflage, right! The guy was worse than Don Juan! There was a good chance he already had her in his arms and was holding her tight…
To erase the image from his mind, he inhaled a whole glass of whisky in a single gulp.
The only hope was to concentrate, like an Indian holy man, on the question of Lannec.
He succeeded, with some effort, in doing so.
Might there be a connection between Lannec and the Vanna? But by the time the Vanna entered the port, Lannec had already been dead for a while. Besides, the arrival of the Vanna had been entirely unexpected. And so? Whom had the Vanna come to meet? How was it possible he couldn’t remember having met Lannec, and in Marinella of all places?
What had Livia said?
That Lannec was exactly like the little boy Montalbano had invented.
Wait a second, Montalbà, stop right there. You’re getting very warm.
Livia had therefore implied that Lannec didn’t exist in reality and was thus an imaginary person.
A flash went off in his brain. An invented character! A character in a novel!
He shot to his feet, dashed inside, and went up to the bookcase. It had to be a book he had read together with Livia.
Almost independently of his brain, his right arm reached up, and his right hand picked out a book with a light-blue cover: Les Pitard, by Georges Simenon. A masterpiece. He had liked the book very, very much, so much that he’d read it two more times on his own. He opened it.
There he was, the novel’s protagonist, Captain Émile Lannec of Rouen, the owner and captain of a very old steamboat called the Thunderbolt.
He leafed through the book, which now started coming back to him. It told a marvelous story. Unfortunately, however, it had nothing to do with the case currently on his hands.
Couldn’t it be just a coincidence? That a murder victim happened to have the exact same name as a Simenon character? Not really. What would be the chances of that? One in a billion?
Or could it have been a joke on the part of the Frenchman, to take a name that, in any case, no one would ever recognize?
All the same, there was something worth trying: to check the passport’s authenticity. But how could it be that of all those people who stamped and pasted visas on it, nobody noticed that it was a counterfeit document? Well, actually, it was possible.
He went and sat back down on the veranda, and poured himself another glass of whisky.
But then, was it really so important to know whether the passport was authentic or not?
Was it really so critical to the investigation to know whether the victim was named Lannec, Parbon, or Lapointe?
No, he was wrong here. It was important. Very important. Because it was possible that the inspector’s colleagues in France could find out whose passport had been counterfeited, and then, through this person, trace the process back to Lannec’s real identity. And it was possible it would lead to someone well known to the French authorities, and that…
At this point he could no longer think. He felt a little drunk. Actually, he didn’t feel drunk, he was, in fact, drunk. He stood up, head spinning slightly, went back inside, closed the French door behind him, and lay down in bed, falling asleep immediately.
At a certain point, around dawn, he had a dream.
He was on the terrace of an unfamiliar house, at night, with a pair of binoculars in his hands, looking through them at an illuminated window that he knew was the window to Mimì Augello’s bedroom. He’d just brought the image into focus when a black shadow descended, completely covering the light of the window.
What could it be? Looking harder, he realized it was a large bird, a seagull, perched on a television antenna.
As he began to lose hope, the bird flew away, and the window suddenly appeared before him. Through it he couldn’t actually see the bed, but projected on the bedroom wall were two shadows, one male, one female, and they were making love… Mimì and Laura!
He woke up with a start.
Curiously, though, instead of getting upset over the two shadows making love, he felt perplexed over a detail of the dream: the bird, which, in landing on the antenna, had prevented him from seeing past it.
What did it mean? Because, if the bird was there, it must definitely mean something.
He got up, opened the French door, and went out on the veranda.
The dawning day came armed with the best of intentions. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not a trace of wind. The boat of his fisherman friend was already out on the water, and for a moment a trawler returning to port covered it up, making it disappear. Then, once the trawler passed, the little boat reappeared.
At that moment, in an instant, Montalbano understood the meaning of his dream.
He saw himself standing again in Lannec’s hotel room, binoculars in hand, looking in the direction of the port.
What had he seen?
The hatch on the Vanna’s deck, leading below decks. But if the Vanna hadn’t been there, what would he have seen? He would have seen the cruiser, the Ace of Hearts.
The day that Lannec arrived in Vigàta, the Vanna wasn’t there yet, in the port.
Wasn’t it possible that Lannec had come to meet someone from the Ace of Hearts? And that he had received, through the binoculars-with no need for phone calls, which are always dangerous-instructions as to the hour and place of the meeting?
As soon as it was six-thirty, Montalbano looked up the telephone number of the Bellavista Hotel and called.
“Is this Signor Scimè?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Montalbano here.”
“Good morning, Inspector. What can I do for you?”
“Sorry to disturb you, but the other day I forgot to ask you something.”
“I’m at your service.”
“When Mr. Lannec arrived at the hotel, did he ask you anything in particular that you can recall?”
The porter didn’t answer right away.
“Do you not remember, or-”
“Well, Inspector, some time has gone by and… Wait, yes, that’s it! He asked me for a room with a view of the sea…”
“Were those his exact words?”
“Well, now that you mention it… He asked me for a room with a view of the port.”
Bingo!
So, to sum up. They let Lannec know that when he gets to Vigàta, he’s supposed to go to the Bellavista Hotel equipped with a powerful set of binoculars and have them give him a room with a view of the port. Knowing more or less the Frenchman’s hour of arrival, they put someone on guard on the Ace of Hearts, also equipped with binoculars or something similar.
As soon as Lannec appears on the balcony of his hotel room, the people on the Ace of Hearts make contact with him.
How? With binoculars as powerful as the Frenchman’s, they could have written their instructions from the boat on a small blackboard.
They give him an appointment to meet them in front of the Pesce d’Oro restaurant. Lannec has a taxi take him around town a few times to cover his tracks and then arrives at the appointed place. Then he starts walking, taking the first right.
At this point in his reconstruction, the inspector became convinced that just around the corner there was a car waiting to take Lannec to the cruiser at the port.
But why go there by car and not on foot, since it’s only a stone’s throw away?
Probably because he had to pass by the Customs Police at the north entrance to the port, and in a car he was less likely to be noticed. He could, for example, partially hide his face, pretending to be asleep or reading a newspaper…
So the Frenchman goes aboard the Ace of Hearts. They talk about whatever it is they need to talk about, and they probably fail to come to an agreement. And so they decide to silence him.
Or else Lannec’s fate had already been sealed before he even came to Vigàta. His journey only served to lead him to his killers. And so they invite him to lunch and poison him.
But why use rat poison?
Shooting him, of course, was out of the question. The noise might attract someone’s attention-say, a fisherman or sailor who happened to be passing along the quay at that moment.
Would it have made more sense to knife him?
No, using a knife would have left bloodstains everywhere, which would have been easily found in any eventual investigation.
What about strangling him? A colossus like the guy the inspector had seen on the Ace of Hearts could have done it with one hand.
This business of the poison was rather strange. It needed further reflection.
Whatever the case, once the guy’s dead, they strip him naked, smash his face in, and deposit him somewhere. On the morning of the storm, they decide it’s the right time to get rid of the corpse.
They start up the engines, take a few spins around the port, meanwhile inflating a brand-new dinghy, put the victim’s body in it, and when they reach the lighthouse at the tip of the eastern jetty, they lower the dinghy into the water, certain that the current will take it out to sea.
But there’s an unlucky hitch. The Vanna, as it’s heading towards the port, comes across the dinghy.
Montalbano felt satisfied with his reconstruction.
Most of all, he felt pleased that he’d been able to go a whole hour without thinking of Laura-Laura, who was opening her eyes and smiling at Mimì, as she lay beside him in bed…