As he was opening the door to his house he heard the phone ringing, but when he went to pick up it was too late. The person at the other end had hung up. He glanced at his watch: eight thirty-five.
He let off some steam by cursing the owner of the yacht a few times for having wasted his time.
He’d given Laura his home phone number and they had agreed that she would call at eight-thirty. Which was why she hadn’t bothered to give him her number. So what would he do now? Call the Harbor Office? Or wait a little while yet, hoping she would try to call again? He decided to wait.
He changed his clothes and then went into the kitchen and opened the oven. Adelina, his housekeeper, had made a casserole of pasta ’ncasciata that could have fed four. And in the refrigerator, in case he was still hungry, which was unlikely, there was a ready platter of nervetti <strong>[8]</strong> with vinegar.
The telephone rang again. It was Laura.
“I called a few minutes ago but-”
“Sorry, I was held up at the office and-”
“Where shall we meet?”
“Listen, there’s a bar in Marinella-”
“No, I don’t feel like it.”
“Like what?”
“Like meeting you there. I don’t like bars.”
“Then I guess we could-”
“Why don’t you tell me how to get to your house?” she cut him off.
In fact it was the easiest thing to do, and she seemed to be a practical girl. He explained to her how to get there.
“Then let’s do this. I’ll come to your place, and while we’re having an aperitif we can decide where to go out to dinner.
“Yes, sir.”
Laura showed up half an hour later. She’d changed out of her uniform and was wearing a skirt down to her knees, a white blouse, and a sort of heavy vest. She had let her hair down, and it fell onto her shoulders. She was beautiful, vivacious, and very likeable.
“It’s so nice here!”
Montalbano opened the French door onto the veranda, and she went outside, enchanted.
“What’ll you have?” he asked her.
“A little white wine, if you’ve got any.”
The inspector always kept a bottle in the fridge. He grabbed it and replaced it with another.
“Can we sit out here?”
“Absolutely.”
They drank their wine sitting beside each other on the bench. But it was chilly, and when they had finished their glasses they went back inside.
“Where are you going to take me?”
“There are two possibilities. We could go to a restaurant outside of Montereale, which means we’d need to take the car, or we could stay here.”
She looked hesitant, and Montalbano misread her.
“You don’t know me very well,” he said, “but I can assure you I-”
Laura burst into laughter that sounded like so many pearls falling to the ground.
“Oh, I certainly wasn’t thinking you wanted to…”
He felt a twinge of melancholy. Did she think him so old that he no longer had any desire? Luckily, however, she continued:
“… but I must confess I’m really hungry, because I skipped lunch today.”
“Come with me.”
He led her into the kitchen, opened the oven, and took out the casserole. She smelled it and sighed, closing her eyes for a second.
“What do you say?” asked Montalbano. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“Let’s stay here.”
They got to know each other a little better. She told him she’d chosen a military career because her father was an admiral, now on the verge of retirement. She’d studied at the Accademia di Livorno, had sailed on the Vespucci, and had a boyfriend named Gianni who was also a naval officer and was serving on a battle cruiser. She was thirty-three years old, had been in Vigàta for barely three months, and hadn’t had time yet to make any friends. This was the first time since moving to Vigàta that she was eating with a man.
Montalbano, for his part, talked at length about Livia. Laura even managed to eat the nervetti. She had a discerning palate.
“Would you like some coffee, or a whisky?” he asked when they were done.
“Actually, do you have any more of this wine?”
“Have you managed to identify the dead body?” Laura asked at a certain point.
“No, not yet. I think it’s going to take a while, and it won’t be easy.”
“I heard he died from getting his face smashed in.”
“No, they did that to him afterwards. He was poisoned.”
“So…” she began.
Then she stopped.
“No, never mind,” she continued. “I had this idea, but it’s too silly to mention it to you… I’ve heard about you, you know. They say you’re not only good, but exceptional in your field.”
Montalbano blushed. And she dropped another string of pearls.
“That’s fantastic! A man still capable of blushing!”
“Come on, stop it. Tell me your idea.”
“I thought it might have been something like a robbery gone wrong. The man could have been mugged while strolling along the jetty. And when he tried to defend himself, the attacker picked up a stone and beat him to death. So he put him in a dinghy… There are so many docked around there… Have you checked to see who the dinghy belongs to?”
By some miracle Montalbano managed not to blush again. He hadn’t thought of this. When, in fact, it should have been his first concern. His brain was misfiring, no question.
“No, because Forensics believes the dinghy had never been used before they put the body in it.”
Laura screwed up her face.
“Well, I would do a little check just the same.”
Better change the subject or risk looking bad.
“Maybe you can answer a question for me. As far as you know, are there a lot of rich people who stay out at sea all year long, going from port to port and doing nothing else?”
“Are you referring to Livia Giovannini?”
“Do you know her?”
“The Vanna called at port here three days after I started working in Vigàta. There was a bureaucratic matter that had to be settled, and so I went aboard. That’s how we met. They were coming from Tangiers, but they had left some months before that from Alexanderbaai.”
Montalbano balked.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a small port in South Africa.”
“And where were they coming from this time?”
“From Rethymno.”
“And where’s that?”
“In Crete. They were supposed to be going to Oran, but bad weather forced them to change course.”
The inspector seemed astonished.
“Are you surprised?”
“Well, yes. It’s not that the Vanna is a small craft, but still…”
“Actually, it’s one of the finest yachts in all the world, you know. On top of that, Livia’s husband had all the equipment and motors customized.”
“Sperlì said they have an auxiliary motor that doesn’t work very well.”
“Come on! I think they only use the sails for decoration. That boat is an eighty-five-foot sea serpent that originally had twenty-four sleeping berths. The cabins were later expanded and modified, so that now there are barely half a dozen beds, but in exchange they gained a great deal of space and another sitting room.”
“That big motorboat looks pretty serious too.”
“You mean the Ace of Hearts? It measures a good sixty feet and change and has two powerful GM engines and nine sleeping berths. It can go wherever it wants.”
“I see you know about these things.”
“It’s just a personal interest, for fun.”
“Listen, to get back to what we were saying, I asked you if there are a lot of rich people who-”
“-spend their lives at sea? I don’t think so.”
“So how else do you explain it?”
“I have no explanation for it. It may just be some mania of hers. Her husband had the same mania, and I guess she caught it from him.”
Montalbano remained pensive for a moment. Then he asked:
“How could one find out how many ports the Vanna has called at in the past year?”
“It’s probably all recorded in the captain’s log.”
“And how does one go about having a look at it?”
“Only the public prosecutor can do that. But he would have to come up with a brilliant excuse. Can you tell me why you’re so interested in the Vanna? After all, it only came across that dinghy by chance.”
“I can’t really say why… I’m just curious… I don’t know… There’s something about it that doesn’t add up.”
He could hardly tell her that his suspicions had been aroused by a young woman he had met, who said her name was Vanna, the same as the yacht.
Laura didn’t leave until after midnight, with the promise that they would talk by phone the following day.
The inspector stayed up to think about the dead man.
If, as Dr. Pasquano maintained, they’d rendered him unrecognizable on purpose, this meant he was someone who might be recognized. At first glance, this line of reasoning might seem worthy of Catarella or Monsieur de Lapalisse.
But it was a start.
Some poor bastard killed in this fashion did not normally, nowadays, grab the headlines, as they say in the business. The national press might give him five lines, max, and the local papers half a column. The national TV stations wouldn’t even mention it, though the local ones would.
So whoever would have been in a position to identify the corpse, had they left his face intact, had to be somewhere in the vicinity of Vigàta. And the eventual identification would, therefore, have led directly to the killer. Why?
For one simple reason: because the man had been poisoned. To poison someone, you have to put the poison in something to eat or drink, there was no getting around it.
The victim must therefore have known his killer.
Maybe he was invited for an aperitif, or for dinner, as the inspector had just done with Laura, and then, when the poor guy was looking the other way…
Laura! Man, was she ever beautiful! But what the hell was coming over him? What was he thinking? It was hardly imaginable, at his age… Still, what eyes she had! And the way she looked at him!
As he was unable to think straight anymore, he decided that the only thing to do was to go to bed.
“Fazio here?” was the first thing he asked, walking into the station the following morning.
“Yessir, Chief. An’ there’s summon ellis ’e’s got together wit’ ’im.”
“Tell Fazio to come to my office alone.”
He had just sat down when Fazio came in.
“What’s Digiulio like?”
“What do you expect? He’s from Palermo and-”
“I want to know if he got nervous or upset when you told him he had to come to the station.”
“No. He was cool and calm. Actually, he said he was expecting it.”
“He was expecting it?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Bring him in.”
“Can I hang around?”
“No.”
Fazio went out, seeming offended.
Mario Digiulio was about forty and had one of those faces that you forget one second after you’ve seen it.
He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and a pair of dirty jeans. He was completely different from how Montalbano had imagined him. As Fazio had mentioned, he wasn’t the least bit scared. Then, unexpectedly, as soon as Montalbano told him to sit down, the man began to speak.
“So you received the complaint, eh?”
Montalbano made a vague gesture that could have meant nothing or everything.
“The bastards.”
The man paused.
“The fuckin’ bastards!”
Having taken in the high esteem in which Digiulio held those who had reported him, the inspector decided he needed to know a little more.
“Please tell me your version of the story.”
“In Rethymno, me and Zizì went out drinking at a tavern, and there was two Greeks there who-”
“-who provoked you.”
“Exactly. Zizì reacted immediately, and I went to back him up, and before we knew it, there was a brawl and-”
“You smashed the place up.”
“Smashed it up? Come on! Zizì broke a couple a chairs and…”
Zizì. Where had he heard that name before? Someone had mentioned it in passing. But who? And when? He couldn’t quite call it to mind.
“I’m sorry, but was Zizì a local?”
Digiulio gave him a look of astonishment.
“No, he’s one of the crew.”
“But his name’s not listed in the-”
“Ah, sorry, we call him Zizì, but his real name’s Ahmed Shaikiri. He’s North African.”
Montalbano had a flash.
“Was he the former owner’s manservant?”
Digiulio’s astonishment increased.
“The former owner’s manserv… No way! Zizì signed on with us barely three months ago!”
Montalbano’s brain was now firing on all cylinders.
“Could you run through the names of the other crew members for me?”
“But they weren’t involved in the fight.”
“Please tell me them just the same.”
“Maurilio Alvarez is the engineer, Stefano Ricca’s the…”
Montalbano stopped paying attention. Ricca! Now it had all come back to him. Vanna had said Ricca was a banker and associate of her uncle Arturo. But it was the yacht that was named Vanna, and Digiulio, Zizì, and Ricca were all crew members…
The girl had certainly been clever. What a subtle edifice of lies! Hats off!
Want to bet that what he had thought was an elaborate prank on Vanna’s part actually had a precise purpose?
Meanwhile, however, he had to get rid of the sailor.
“Listen, do you by any chance have a sister named Vanna?”
“Me? No, I have a brother named Antonio.”
“All right, then, you can go.”
The sailor felt lost.
“What about the complaint?”
“Which one?”
“The one from the tavern’s owner.”
“We never received it.”
“Then why did you call me in?”
“There was another complaint.”
“There was?”
“Yes, by a certain Vanna Digiulio against her brother, Mario. But since you claim you have no sisters-”
“I don’t claim I have no sisters, I really don’t have any sisters!”
“Then it’s clearly a case of two people with the same name. Good day, my friend.”
The inspector was certain it wasn’t Digiulio who had informed Vanna of the yacht’s change of course. He absolutely needed to speak to the other crew members. He called Fazio, who still seemed offended for having been excluded from the questioning.
“Have a seat.”
Montalbano stared at him for a moment. Should he tell him about Vanna or not? Now that the whole business seemed to have taken on a new meaning, wasn’t it better to have Fazio as an ally?
“Do you remember when, the other day, it rained so hard that the road collapsed?”
“Yessir.”
“Do you remember that pathetic creature I brought into the station, whose name was Vanna Digiulio?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, you know what? Her name wasn’t actually Vanna Digiulio, and she wasn’t a pathetic creature but a sly little bitch who made a great big monkey out of me.”
Fazio looked stunned.
“Really?” he said.
Montalbano told him the whole story.
“And what do you make of it?” Fazio asked him when he’d finished.
“Several things seem clear to me. One, that the moment I introduced myself to her as Inspector Montalbano, the girl-whom we’ll keep calling Vanna for the sake of convenience-started sneezing and didn’t stop.”
Fazio balked.
“Wait a second. What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s got everything to do with it. I would bet my family jewels that those sneezes were faked. She did it to buy time to decide whether she should tell me what she wanted to tell me. And then she immediately put me, indirectly, on the trail of the yacht.”
“Why?”
“I could venture a guess. She did it for future reference.”
“What do you mean?”
“If anything bad happened to her, she had given me sufficient information as to who to put the squeeze on.”
“But Vanna never even showed her face to the people on the yacht.”
“That’s true. Because, in my opinion, something unexpected happened.”
“And what was that?”
“The yacht brought a corpse aboard. Which meant the presence of the police, the Harbor Office, the coroner, the Forensics department… Too many people, in short. And so she decided to disappear. Make sense to you?”
“Sure. But the fact remains that we still don’t know what she had come to do.”
“And that’s why it’s important to find out who she was in contact with. Someone at the Harbor Office? I don’t think so. Mario Digiulio of the Vanna? No, definitely not. This is where I need your skills, Fazio.”
“Meaning?”
“We need to talk to the other crew members, but we can’t use the same set-up we did with Digiulio. You need to find a way to approach the North African, what’s his name…”
“Shaikiri.”
“Right, but his friends call him Zizì. Try to see what you can find out from him. See if you can get him drunk… Do they ever come ashore?”
“Are you kidding? They’ve been hanging out all over town.”
“Well, find a way to get friendly with him.”
At that moment Mimì Augello appeared. Sharply dressed and smiling.
“And where have you been?”
“What? You mean Catarella didn’t tell you? Yesterday I took Beba and the kid to her parents’ place. Can’t you see the look on my face? I slept like a god last night! Finally!”
Montalbano just sat there in silence, staring at him.
“What’s wrong?” Augello asked.
“I’ve just had an idea.”
“Well, that’s news! Does it concern me?”
“Yes it does. Do you feel up to wooing a fifty-year-old woman who looks forty?”
Mimì didn’t hesitate for a second.
“I can try,” he said.
<a l:href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> Marinated veal shanks, often served as antipasto.