The first thing he did when he got back home was to unplug the telephone. God forbid Livia should call. No way he could carry on a conversation with her. Every syllable of his would be a burning twist of the knife of remorse and shame for being forced to lie.
“What did you do today?”
“The usual things, Livia.”
“All right, but tell me anyway.”
And he would go from one whopper to the next, each one bigger than the last. And then the hesitations, the half-spoken words… No, at his age, it really wasn’t right.
He had to reflect calmly, and as lucidly as possible, on the miracle that had happened to him, and then make a decision that was clear and definitive. And if he decided to submit to the miracle, to a grace that both thrilled him and filled him with dread, he owed it to Livia to tell her at once, face-to-face.
But at that moment he wasn’t in any condition to think rationally. The excitement turned his thoughts into one big jumble. If, earlier, he’d heard bells and violins, now, after what had happened on the wharf, the music had disappeared, and all he heard was his blood coursing swift and limpid as an alpine stream, his heart beating fast and strong. He needed to release all this energy, which continued to build up almost unbearably with each minute that passed.
He took off his clothes, put on a bathing suit, went down to the beach as far as the line where the sand was dense and compacted with moisture, and started running.
When he got back home, his watch said twelve-thirty and some.
He’d run for two hours straight without stopping for even a minute, and his legs ached.
He slipped into the shower and stayed there a long time, then went to bed.
Exhausted from the run. And from happiness.
Which, when it is truly great, can cut your legs out from under you, just like severe pain.
He woke up with the impression that the shutter outside the bedroom window was banging as usual. Where had all this strong wind suddenly come from?
He opened his eyes, turned on the light, and saw that the shutter was closed.
So what was banging? Then he heard the doorbell ring. Somebody was ringing and kicking the door. He looked at his watch. Ten past three. He got up and went to the door.
It was Fazio who’d been making all the racket.
“Forgive me, Chief, but I tried to ring you and there was no answer. Your phone must be unplugged.”
“Has something happened?”
“Shaikiri was found dead.”
In a way, he’d been expecting something like this.
“Wait while I go and get dressed.”
He did it in the twinkling of an eye, and five minutes later he was sitting beside Fazio, who was at the wheel of a squad car.
“Tell me how he died.”
“Chief, I don’t know anything yet. It was Catarella who rang me. But the way he pronounced the name, Chaziki or something like that, it took me a good ten minutes to figure out that he was talking about the Arab with the Vanna. And so, after trying for a long time to phone you unsuccessfully, I decided to come and get you.”
“Do you know at least where we need to go?”
“Of course. To the pier, to the Vanna’s berth.”
On the wharf, right in front of the yacht’s gangway, stood Lieutenant Garrufo, a sailor from the Harbor Office, and Captain Sperlì. Montalbano and Fazio shook hands with the group.
“What happened?” Montalbano asked Garrufo.
“Perhaps it’s better to let the captain speak,” said Garrufo.
“I was in my cabin,” Sperlì began, “and about to get into bed, when I thought I heard a scream.”
“What time was it?”
“Quarter past two; I looked instinctively at my watch.”
“Where did it come from?”
“That’s just it. It seemed to me to come from the crew’s quarters. Which is on this side, the one closest to the pier.”
“You heard a scream and nothing else? No other sound?”
“That was all. And the scream was sort of cut off, as though suddenly interrupted.”
“And what did you do?”
“I left the cabin and went to the crew’s quarters. Alvarez, Ricca, and Digiulio were sleeping soundly, but Shaikiri’s bunk was empty.”
“And so?”
“And so I said to myself that maybe the cry had come from the wharf. So I went out on deck with a flashlight. But from what I could see by the light of the lampposts, the quay was deserted. I leaned out over the railing-the one right there, above the gangway-and as I made that movement the flashlight pointed downwards. And that was when I saw him, completely by chance.”
“Show me.”
“You can see him from here, even without going aboard.”
He went to the edge of the wharf and lit up the very narrow space between the quay and the side of the yacht. Montalbano and Fazio bent down to look.
There was a human body wedged vertically, head down, under water up to the bottom of the rib cage. Only the hips and absurdly spread legs remained out of the water.
A question immediately came to the inspector’s mind.
“But with the body in that position, how could you tell it was Shaikiri?” he asked the captain.
Sperlì didn’t hesitate for a second.
“From the color of his jeans. He wore them often.”
The jeans were so yellow they appeared to glow in the dark.
“Have you informed Signora Giovannini?”
This time the captain was unable to hide an ever so brief moment of hesitation.
“N… no.”
“Isn’t she on board?”
“Yes, but… she’s asleep. I’d rather not bother her. Anyway, what use would she be?”
“And have you told the crew?”
“Well, when those guys get drunk, it takes a while to wear off. And last night they must have had a lot to drink. It would only create confusion.”
“Maybe you’re right. I doubt they could tell us much. And what do you think happened, Captain?”
“What else? Poor Ahmed, drunk as he certainly must have been, probably took a wrong step and fell into the water, getting stuck with his head down. He must have drowned.”
Montalbano made no comment.
“What should we do?” the lieutenant asked the inspector.
“If things went the way the captain says, then the case doesn’t fall into my jurisdiction, but yours, Lieutenant. It looks like an accident that occurred within the precincts of the port. Don’t you think?”
“I guess so,” the lieutenant said reluctantly.
This time it would be his turn to stay up all night. As for Signora Giovannini, she could forget about leaving any time soon.
As he was driving the inspector back to Marinella, Fazio asked him:
“Do you really think it was just an accident?”
Montalbano answered with another question.
“Can you explain to me why the captain felt the need to grab a flashlight to go out and see if there was anyone on the wharf? The wharf is lit up, isn’t it?”
“Of course. So why’d he grab it?”
“So he could feed us that bullshit about how he happened to find the corpse, that’s why. No flashlight, no way he notices the body.”
“So you don’t think it was an accident.”
“I’m convinced it wasn’t.”
Fazio was confused.
“Then why didn’t you-”
“Because it’s better this way, I tell you. We’ll let him believe we’ve swallowed his story. The body’s going to end up in Pasquano’s hands anyway. And tomorrow I’ll give the doctor a ring.”
When he got undressed again, it was almost five o’clock in the morning. But he no longer felt the least bit sleepy.
He prepared a pot of coffee, drank a mug of it, and sat down at the kitchen table with a sheet of paper and ballpoint pen.
He started wondering how the killers had managed to discover that the poor Arab was a sort of fifth column in their midst. Maybe the guy had done something stupid. Like getting himself arrested twice.
As he was thinking, his hand started tracing lines randomly on the paper.
When he looked down, he realized he’d tried to sketch a portrait of Laura.
But since he didn’t know how to draw, the portrait looked as if it had been done by an abysmal imitator of Picasso in a moment of total drunkenness.
At six o’clock, despite all the coffee he’d drunk, an irresistible need to sleep came over him. He went and lay down, slept three hours, and woke up to the sound of clatter in the kitchen.
“Adelina?”
“Ah, you’s aweck? I bring you coffee now.”
As he was drinking it, he asked her:
“How are you feeling? Is the headache gone?”
“Yes, iss much better.”
Thank God for Adelina’s headache! If not for the fact that his housekeeper hadn’t made him anything to eat for dinner, he wouldn’t have dined at Enzo’s, would not have gone for a walk along the jetty, and would not have run into Laura.
He left the house around ten o’clock. As soon as he sat down in his office, he phoned Pasquano.
“The doctor’s busy and doesn’t want-”
“Listen, could you give him a message from me?”
“Of course.”
“Tell him the mountain needs Mohammed.”
The switchboard operator balked.
“But… but…”
The inspector hung up. And the very next second Mimì Augello came in. He looked a bit haggard.
“Busy night, eh, Mimì?” Montalbano said sarcastically.
“Leave me alone.”
“So it went badly?”
“In a sense…”
“So she said no?”
“Are you kidding?”
“So tell me, then!”
“Look, Salvo, before I start talking, I need to drink a double coffee. I sent Catarella to get some.”
“And a nice zabaglione to give you strength, no? You look a little worn out to me.”
Augello didn’t reply. He just sat there in silence, waiting for Catarella to return.
He spoke only after he’d drunk the coffee, as promised.
“Yesterday evening, as I think I mentioned to you on the phone, I took Livia out to dinner.”
Montalbano, who at that moment was lost in thoughts of Laura, leapt out of his chair.
“You did what to Livia?!”
“Salvo, have you forgotten that Signora Giovannini has the same first name? Don’t worry, it wasn’t your Livia. So, anyway, I look her to a restaurant in Montelusa. She ate heartily and downed a bottle and a half of wine. Am I going to be reimbursed for expenses?”
“Weren’t you reimbursed in kind? Go on.”
“Well, on the way back, she took the initiative.”
“How?”
“Listen, I’d rather skip the details.”
“Just tell me how it started. What did she say?”
“What did she say? She didn’t say a word!”
“Then what did she do?”
“We’d been in the car barely five minutes when she put her hand you know where.”
So romantic, La Giovannini!
“And then she asked me where I intended to take her. I replied that, if she liked, we could go to my place, but she said she would feel more comfortable in her cabin.”
“What time was it?”
“I didn’t look at my watch, but it must have been past midnight. So we went aboard and the minute we went below decks we ran into the captain.”
“But they say he’s La Giovannini’s lover! Did he get upset? Angry? Did he say anything?”
“Not a word. He politely wished us goodnight and went up on the deck.”
“Maybe they’re lovers in the sense that La Giovannini turns to him when she hasn’t got anybody else.”
“Maybe. At any rate, he didn’t make a scene. So, the minute we went into her cabin, Livia took off all her clothes and-”
“Would you do me a favor, Mimì?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t call her Livia.”
“Why not?”
“It makes me feel weird.”
“All right, then. So, anyway, she got right down to business. And never stopped. Believe me, she’s not a woman but an electrical meat grinder that’s always plugged in. Maybe that’s why the captain grinned at me when he saw me with her. I was sparing him a night of forced labor! Luckily, around two-thirty, we heard that something serious had happened.”
“What do you mean, ‘luckily’?”
“I mean that she pulled the plug, even if only for a little while.”
“Mors tua vita mea, in short.”
“I’m sorry, Salvo, but that’s really the way it is.”
“So you heard a scream.”
“A scream? There wasn’t any scream.”
“What did you hear, then?”
“We heard the captain talking loudly over the telephone, saying that there’d been an accident.”
“And then what?”
“Then Liv-I mean La Giovannini-got up, put on a bathrobe, and left the cabin. When she got back she said it was nothing serious. One of the crew had got drunk and fallen into the water, but they’d fished him back out.”
“But do you know that in fact the man died?”
“Of course, I found that out later. She’d told me a different story.”
“And why’d she do that?”
“Why? Because she wanted to grind the pestle in the mortar some more! She was afraid that if I found out that the guy was not only dead but stuck right there, just a few yards away from us, I wouldn’t feel like doing it anymore.”
“When were you able to leave the yacht?”
“Around six-thirty this morning, after they took the body away. I went home, dozed a bit, and now here I am. I’m going to go and get some more sleep in a little while, because tonight, Liv-La Giovannini wants a second round.”
“Were you able to talk to her during any lulls in the action?”
“Yes. At one point she wanted to know how much I earned, and so I came up with a figure a little higher than what our government hands out.”
“Did she comment?”
“No. She wanted to know if I was married and whether I had any children. I said no. It’s a good thing we didn’t go to my house! She would have immediately noticed Salvuzzo’s toys all over the place.”
“They seem like perfectly normal questions.”
“Yes, except that I was convinced they were asked with a specific purpose in mind. And so I told her I was unhappy at my job, and if I could find another I would be so much happier and grateful to anyone who gave me the chance… In short, I let her know I was available. I think she’s already percolating something in her head.”
“Listen, so, how did you make out on the boat?”
“Not too badly, if I may say so myself. I think I was up to the task.”
“I wasn’t referring to the excellence of your performance in bed, about which I haven’t the slightest doubt, but to the fact that you didn’t get to have your lesson in boat fuels with Lieutenant Belladonna.”
“Ah, so you heard? But we were still able to have the lesson. It was all very quick, there wasn’t much time.”
A rafter falling on his head would have stunned the inspector less.
“Wh… when? Wh… where?”
“The poor thing! After being on her feet all night she phoned me at six in the morning.”
“And she c… came to y… your place?”
“Salvo, what’s got into you? Have you become a stutterer? No, she had me come to the Harbor Office.”
Ding dang dong, ding dang dong.
“My dear Mimì,” he said, standing up suddenly and going over and putting his arms around Augello. “Now go and get some rest, so you’ll be strong for tonight.”
Fazio, who was entering at that very moment, stopped dead in his tracks. What was happening to the inspector to make him go around embracing everybody?
“What do you want?” Montalbano asked him after Augello had gone.
“I’ve come to remind you about calling Dr. Pasquano.”
“I’ve already called him, you know. What do you think, that I’ve gotten so old I’m starting to forget things?”
“What are you talking about, Chief? I didn’t-”
“Look what I can still do.”
And the inspector hopped up, feet together, onto the desktop.
“Upsy daisy!”
Fazio just looked at him, eyes popping out of his head. No doubt about it, the inspector needed to see a doctor.
“Ahh Chief! ’At’d be Dacter Pasquino who-”
“Lemme talk to him.”
“The phones are out of order here, Montalbano. All service has been interrupted.”
“So where are you calling from?”
“I’m calling from a stinking cell phone. But don’t keep me on this gadget for long. What does Mohammed want?”
“Today you were brought a sailor who’d fallen-”
“I worked on him early this morning.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Not over the cell phone. If you can be here in half an hour, I’ll wait for you.”