Game of Mirrors (16 page)

Patience, Montalbà.

“I would like you
please
to tell me whether the kid was alive when they set fire to the car.”

“Yes, he was. But he must have died before the flames got to him, from strangulation, since he’d been goat-tied.”

Montalbano didn’t feel up to seeing the anguished, grief-stricken face of poor Signora Tallarita again.

He sent Officer Mancuso, who was a man of a certain age with a gentle manner.

“Try to find out whether the son, Arturo, broke his arm when he was a little kid. But don’t ask her directly, or she’ll get alarmed. Ask her a whole slew of questions, tell her that the more details we have, the more likely it is that we’ll find him.”

He had a positive answer in barely half an hour. Arturo had broken his arm when he was ten.

He called Dr. Pasquano to tell him.

Then he went out to eat, even though it was still early and he wasn’t hungry. If nothing else, it would help pass the time.

Enzo was intently watching the midday TeleVigàta news report. Ragonese was just finishing his editorial.

There is a rumor going around in well-informed circles that
this ghastly crime will have clamorous and unthinkable
consequences. Apparently it involves individuals who until
now had been considered above suspicion. But as strict
observers of professional protocol, we shall say no more on
this pressing subject until our information is verifiably certain.
Naturally, we will promptly notify our viewers of
any new developments as they emerge.

Montalbano started laughing. These people were making one mistake after another. Ragonese’s words were an indirect confirmation of the truth he had started to glimpse.

He suddenly felt hungry.

“What can I get for you, Inspector?”

“Give me everything you’ve got.”

“I see you came full of good intentions.”

As a result, he took his walk along the jetty at a slow pace and then sat on the flat rock for a long time, thinking about what his next move should be. He couldn’t afford to
make a mistake. This time there was no crab, but still he thought he’d come up with the right idea. And so he returned to the office.

Upon entering, he said to Catarella:

“Get someone else to man the switchboard and then come into my office.”

“Straightaways, Chief.”

Five minutes later there was a knock.

“Yer orders, Chief.”

“Come in, close the door, and have a seat.”

Catarella closed the door, but instead of sitting down, he remained standing at attention in front of the desk.

“Cat, I can’t talk to you with you standing that way. You look like a puppet in the puppet theatre. Sit down.”

“Bein’ in yer presence like diss, poissonally in poisson, it woudna seem right to me, Chief; I woudna wanna make no offense like.”

“Sit down; that’s an order.”

Catarella obeyed.

“What are you doing this evening?”

“Me?!”

“Yes, you.”

“Chief, whattaya aspeck me to do? I’m gonna watch TV an’ try an’ finnish a crassword puzzle I been woikin’ on f’r a month.”

“I see. And what time do you usually go to bed?”

“Rounnabout minnight, Chief.”

Catarella was sweating, but he didn’t dare ask the inspector to explain the reason for this poissonal interrogation.

“Are you prepared to lose a few hours of sleep tonight?” the inspector continued.

Catarella sprang to his feet.

His face was flushed and a slight tremor was running through his entire body.

“Chief, I’d be assolutely perpared a go a whole mont’ wittout shuttin’ my eyes f’yiz, Chief! D’I say a mont’? A whole year! E’en more, Chief, till ya come an’ say t’me, ‘Cat, iss time to go to bed!’”

Montalbano almost started to get emotional.

“All right, then, at midnight tonight I want you to be at my place in Marinella.”

“Yes, sir!”

“And bring whatever tools you’d need to fix a computer.”

“Ayeayeaye sah!”

“And don’t tell anyone.”

“I’s silent azza grave, Chief!”

“You can go back to the switchboard now.”

Catarella moved towards the door, but without managing to bend at the knees. He really did look like a puppet. Such was the effect of his happiness at being assigned a secret mission by Montalbano.

An hour later, Catarella rang him.

“Chief, ’at’d be yer frenn onna line, Pito, the joinalist frenna yiz.”

It was Nicolò Zito.

“I urgently need to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“Not over the telephone. If I come by in half an hour at the latest, will you still be at the office?”

“Yes. But I can probably spare you the trip. I think I know what you want to talk to me about.”

“Did you see Ragonese’s report?”

“Yes.”

“Did you understand who he was referring to?”

“Perfectly.”

“Are you sure you understood?”

“He was referring to me.”

“So what are you going to do? Do you want me to interview you? My TV station is at your disposal.”

“You’re a true friend, I know that. But how did you find out?”

“An anonymous phone call.”

“They must have done the same with Ragonese.”

“Right. So what do you want to do?”

“Nothing, for the moment.”

“As you wish.”

No, this time Montalbano really wanted to see how far other people’s faith in him went.

As he was about to leave for Marinella, another phone call came in from Pasquano.

When had such a phenomenon ever occurred before? Was there going to be an earthquake? Armageddon?

“Tell me sincerely, Doctor, do you suddenly have the hots for me?”

The reply came fast.

“Do you really think that if I decided to take such a leap to the other shore, I would settle for an old geezer like you?”

The civilities could now be considered over.

“To what do I owe the honor?”

“Didn’t I already tell you that today is my day for being generous? I’ve just finished working on the woman.”

“Any news?”

“None. Just confirmation of everything I said before. She was kept bound for a long time, was murdered between midnight and two a.m., and was raped in a particularly brutal fashion. They actually wounded and penetrated her with a knife. But there was no ejaculation. Odd, wouldn’t you say?”

If what Montalbano was thinking was right, it wasn’t odd at all.

On the contrary.

It was another confirmation.

He went home. Adelina had prepared a big platter of eggplant parmesan. He savored it on the veranda, eating it slowly to allow the flavor on the palate enough time to reach his heart, brain, and soul.

Then he went inside, turned on the television, and tuned in to TeleVigàta. Pippo Ragonese talked about the problems caused by the closure of two factories in the province and declared himself certain that the government would intervene in a timely fashion and that the laid-off workers would be relocated in new jobs.

Yeah, right,
thought Montalbano.

Of the Lombardo murder, only the briefest of mentions was made at the end of the report:

The rumors concerning clamorous new developments in
the case are rapidly intensifying. We are confident we shall
soon be in a position to give our viewers a full report. For
now, however, to put you on the right path, we invite you
to view the upcoming program in our broadcast day, a
superb film starring the unforgettable Gian Maria Volonté,
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Have a
good evening, and enjoy the film.

Montalbano remembered the film well. Volonté plays a police inspector who murders his mistress and then purposely leads the investigation astray. Ragonese was a clever sonofabitch.

He changed the channel and started watching a film with one gunfight after another. At eleven o’clock he turned the TV off, got up, went into the kitchen, grabbed a pair of latex gloves, put them on, put his bunch of skeleton keys in his pocket along with a flashlight, and went out of the house, leaving the door slightly ajar. He didn’t want Catarella to know where the things he was going to work on came from. To avoid being seen by any motorists driving by on the main road, he went to the Lombardo house by way of the beach and would return by the same route. He was unable to enter through the veranda door, however. It had been boarded up with planks. He had no choice but to enter through the front door, at the risk of being seen.

“If somebody sees me, Ragonese certainly won’t let slip an opportunity to say that the killer always returns to the scene of the crime,” he thought as he was removing the seals.

He didn’t shine the flashlight into the bedroom. Even though he knew Liliana’s body was no longer on the bed, he was sure that he would still see her there, naked, and with her throat slit. It wasn’t the sort of image you could get quickly out of your head.

Some forty minutes later, he set a computer and a printer down on his dining room table. Beside them he laid the latex gloves.

Catarella arrived punctually carrying a briefcase. He was so worked up that he couldn’t get his words out.

“A . . . awa . . . awa . . . yer . . . orders, Chief!”

Montalbano took him into the dining room.

“Sit down, Cat.”

“Izzat an order?”

“It’s an order.”

Catarella obeyed.

“Put these gloves on.”

Catarella put them on.

“Now take this computer apart.”

“Straightaways, Chief. But if ya stay ’ere watchin’ me whilst I woik i’ makes me noivous.”

“I’ll go out on the veranda and smoke.”

He went outside. He wasn’t the least bit worried. In fact, he was convinced he was on the right track.

After five minutes had passed, he heard Catarella cry out in wonder.

“
Matre santa
, Chief! Come ’n’ see!”

Montalbano didn’t move. He didn’t need to go and see. He already knew what Catarella had found.

“Now put the computer back together, and the printer, too,” he said from the veranda.

Forty-five minutes later, after Catarella had left, he
took the computer back to the Lombardo house, put the seals back in place, then went home to bed and slept the sleep of the just.

The frantic ringing of the doorbell woke him up. The first light of dawn shone through the window. He looked at his watch. Quarter to seven. The person ringing seemed to have forgotten his finger on the button.

The inspector yawned, stretched, got out of bed, and slipped on a pair of underpants.

“Coming!”

When he opened the door he found a uniformed police officer of his acquaintance, whom he knew to be in the employ of the commissioner’s office of Montelusa. Behind him was a squad car with another cop at the wheel.

“Good morning, sir. I’ve come on orders of the commissioner to pick you up. He wants to see you immediately.”

Montalbano didn’t want to appear the least bit surprised at being summoned at that hour of the morning.

“Let me take a shower and get dressed. I’ll be quick. In the meantime, if you’d like to come in and sit down . . .”

“No, thank you.”

He left the door ajar and put a pot of coffee on the stove, shaved, drank the coffee, got into the shower, and got dressed.

He couldn’t refrain, every so often, from laughing to himself. The clamorous consequences predicted by that asshole Ragonese were beginning.

“Here I am, all ready to go.”

He locked his front door, the uniformed cop gestured to him to get in the backseat, and they drove off. The driver turned on the siren and started speeding worse than Gallo. But did they all have the same vice? Why did they drive so fast when there was no need?

Sitting in one of the two chairs in front of C’mishner Bonetti-Alderighi’s desk was Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics. This was something Montalbano had expected.

“Please sit down,” said the commissioner.

He was wearing a dark expression.

Montalbano settled into the other chair. He and Arquà didn’t even exchange greetings.

“I’ll get right to the point,” said the commissioner.

But he didn’t. First he opened and closed a drawer of his desk, then he stared at the tip of a pencil as though not knowing what it was for, and finally he said:

“It’s better if you talk, Arquà.”

The chief of Forensics stared at his shoe tops as he spoke.

“When taking evidence samples from the Lombardo house, we found a great many of your fingerprints.”

“How did you know they were mine?” asked Montalbano.

“The way I always do. I compared them. All of our fingerprints are on file.”

“I see. So, as soon as you saw the fingerprints taken from the house, you said to yourself: Want to bet these are Montalbano’s? And indeed they were. Congratulations on your intuition. So tell me: Is that the way it went?”

He knew that it couldn’t be the way it went. But he wanted to know who had put the idea in Arquà’s head. And, in fact, Arquà squirmed uncomfortably in his chair and looked at the commissioner.

Who decided to intervene.

“Late yesterday morning, Dr. Arquà received an anonymous letter. He turned it over to me immediately, and I read it and gave him authorization to compare the fingerprints. He acted quite correctly. If you want to read the letter . . .”

He pulled it out of a drawer and held it out for Montalbano. Who didn’t reach out to take it, and did not even move.

“Don’t you want to read it?”

“I’m sorry, but I find it rather distasteful to read anonymous letters, especially first thing in the morning. At any rate, I don’t need to read it. I can easily imagine the contents. It says that I was madly in love with Signora Lombardo, kept her prisoner in her house while conducting
searches for her far and wide, and finally, the other night, slit her throat after raping her. And then I set fire to her house in the hopes of destroying all trace of my repeated visits. Have I guessed right?”

“Yes,” said the commissioner.

He’d imagined that was the way it was, but to hear it confirmed made him start to seethe with rage.

He turned to Arquà but his words were for other ears.

“And you, Arquà, you felt no shame at lending credence to an anonymous letter? Are you aware that a copy of this defamatory letter was sent to Pippo Ragonese the TV journalist, who now expects ‘clamorous consequences’?”

“It certainly wasn’t me who sent it,” said Arquà.

“I don’t doubt that for an instant. It was the murderers themselves who sent it, and in whom you place such trust.”

Arquà didn’t react. The commissioner was studying the ceiling intently. The inspector turned to him.

“Excuse me, sir, but did you inform Dr. Arquà that I’d already been inside the house, having been invited there by Signora Lombardo, and that I was the victim of attempted blackmail on that occasion?”

“Yes, and I also told him that there was an investigation in progress being conducted by Prosecutor Tommaseo.”

“So of course you found my fingerprints there!”

This time it was Bonetti-Alderighi who looked at the chief of Forensics.

“There’s one fingerprint in particular that cannot be from the evening you went there to dinner,” said Arquà.

“Oh yeah? And where’d you get it?”

“From the bloodstained sheet on the bed.”

It was true! He’d touched the sheet after asking the fire sergeant for the flashlight, to check whether the blood was dry or not. But he was alone at that moment; there were no witnesses. It was a stupid fucking mistake.

No matter what he said, there was no guarantee they would believe him. He decided to change tactics.

“Well?” said the commissioner. “How do you explain it?”

A little theatre at this point might not hurt. But was it really theatre? Or did he feel genuinely offended at being suspected of murder? He shot to his feet, twisted his face up into a frown, and spoke in an angry tone.

“In short, it seems you both believe me capable of such a revolting murder. All I can do at this point is make two requests. The first is to have Dr. Arquà take one of those psychiatric tests similar to the one that you, Mr. Commissioner, had me subjected to!”

Bonetti-Alderighi looked flummoxed.

“I had you take a psychiatric test?! When?”

“I don’t know, maybe I dreamed it, but it’s the same thing.”

“How is it the same thing?!”

“It is! Haven’t you ever read
Life Is a Dream
by Calderón de la Barca? My second request is: I want my lawyer! I won’t answer any more of your questions until my lawyer is present!”

He sat back down, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his brow, though there wasn’t a drop of sweat on it.

Bonetti-Alderighi and Arquà exchanged glances.

“Good God, Montalbano, nobody’s accusing you of anything!” said the commissioner. “We’re just trying to clear up—”

“On the basis of an anonymous letter?”

“No!” said Arquà. “On the basis of a fingerprint for which you haven’t been able to give us an explanation.”

So that was the conclusion? Did Bonetti-Alderighi and Arquà really believe what they were saying? Montalbano was beginning to feel overwhelmed by a blind rage. Should he react now or wait and embarrass their asses later? He chose the second option and remained silent.

“For the time being, let’s do this,” said the commissioner. “You, Montalbano, are relieved of all ongoing investigations, effective immediately. And you’re excused from duty. But you must remain available. I shall turn your investigations of the two crimes over to the chief of the Flying Squad.”