Authors: Andrea Camilleri

A Voice in the Night (24 page)

‘Do you have proof?’

‘Indirect proof,’ said Montalbano. ‘Did you know that a local television station anonymously received a digital recorder containing—’

‘I know everything.’

‘Did you know that the digital recorder was stolen the night of the broadcast?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘I asked myself why they did it, since the recording of my conversations with Borsellino had already been aired. The only possible answer was that there was more inside that recorder.
Luckily the station manager had a copy made of everything in the recorder. And he gave it to me. And in it I found the phone call I just had you listen to. You see, Sponses, if Borsellino really
had killed himself, that phone call would be of no real importance. But if Borsellino was murdered, then Mongibello, by letting it slip that he knew about the burglary, shows that he’s aware
of a larger plan, which is the elimination of Borsellino himself. Who was killed because the Cuffaros discovered that he was in contact with you. They were unconvinced by the kidnapping that you
set up with him. They did some investigating and found some things out, so they set up the fake suicide, using his complicity in the supermarket burglary as the motive. And all this just so you
wouldn’t suspect that they’d discovered that Borsellino was in touch with you. Some poor nightwatchman even lost his life because of it, because he happened to be passing in front of
the supermarket when the supposed burglar was going in.’

Sponses said nothing, but only got up, went over to the window, hands in his pockets, and looked outside. Then he came and sat back down.

‘Listen, Montalbano. Your argument makes sense. But it’s only one argument, don’t you see? We would never, in a court of law, succeed in establishing Mongibello’s
complicity solely on the basis of that phone call.’

‘Actually, I’d anticipated this observation on your part,’ the inspector said.

And from his other pocket he extracted the recorder with his own phone call to Mongibello and set it down on the desk beside the first one, but before turning it on, he said:

‘I have to explain first that before this call there was another one that was not recorded, in which an unknown person had Mongibello listen to a recording of his phone conversation with
Borsellino, and then told him that he’d be in touch soon.’

‘Wait a second,’ said Sponses. ‘How do you know this?’

‘If you listen to the tape, it’ll become clear to you.’

He turned it on. When it was finished, Sponses’s face was red as a beetroot. Apparently he was shaken by what he’d just heard.

‘Do you know who the blackmailer is?’

‘Yes. Me.’

Sponses leapt forward in his chair as if he’d just sat on a landmine.

‘But that’s totally illegal!’

‘Oh, yeah? And your fake kidnapping of Borsellino I suppose was completely legal? You guys fight terrorism by resorting to methods well outside the law, and you reproach me for doing
something similar? Sponses, I’m offering you a golden opportunity. By agreeing to pay the ransom, Mongibello is implicitly admitting his guilt. And the fact that he hasn’t reported the
blackmail is further confirmation. Think about it.’

Sponses thought it over for a spell, then made up his mind.

‘I can’t make any decision on my own, you realize. Leave me all the materials here. I’ll call you no later than three o’clock this afternoon, OK?’

‘Who do you want to talk to about it?’

‘With my superiors and with the prosecutor.’

‘Who is it?’

‘La Cava.’

You couldn’t ask for more.

‘You’ll have to hurry. The appointment is for midnight tonight. Oh, and I should also tell you, just so you know, that I’ve made a copy of everything I’m leaving you
here.’

‘I didn’t doubt it for an instant,’ said Sponses.

Sponses’s call came at three o’clock sharp. Montalbano hadn’t budged from his office since returning from his meeting with him. He’d felt so nervous
awaiting his reply that he hadn’t even felt hungry for lunch.

‘Come right away.’

He sped off in his car as never before and even raced up the steps to Sponses’s office.

‘Tell me everything,’ he said, out of breath.

‘There’s good news and bad news.’

‘Start with the bad.’

‘La Cava isn’t on board. He says he can’t take a legal action based on an illegal one – your blackmail, in other words. But he gave me some good advice.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘He said that we should both forget – that is, La Cava and I should forget – that we ever spoke about this.’

‘And that seems like good advice to you?’

‘Look, he didn’t say we shouldn’t conduct the operation. He just said he didn’t want to hear about it before the fact. But if we tell him the whole story after all has
been said and done – the whole story except for the blackmail part, that is – with our excuse being, say, that we didn’t have enough time to tell him about it, then he’ll
act accordingly without asking us too many embarrassing questions.’

‘I get the picture. The whole story of my blackmail has to disappear. And what’s the good news?’

‘My bosses have decided to go through with the operation anyway.’

‘And what are you going to replace my blackmail with?’

‘We’re going to say a mole informed us that Mongibello was being blackmailed by an unknown person and so on. Got that?’

‘Got it.’

‘One last thing, maybe the worst thing for you. You’re no longer operational.’

He’d been expecting this. He would have bet his balls that this was the price they would make him pay.

‘So I have to stay out of it?’

‘Right. As of this moment, everything passes into our hands.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘Because before you could take any action you would need to request the authorization of the prosecutor, who, since this involves a Member of Parliament, would be required to inform the
undersecretary, who would be required to inform the minister . . .’

Montalbano swallowed the bitter pill.

But Sponses was right. The fewer politicians were involved in the matter, the better. They were liable to undermine all the work that had been done. ‘I understand perfectly. fine. Whatever
you say.’

He got up to leave.

‘Thanks for everything,’ said Sponses. ‘I’m glad to have met you.’

‘Me too. Oh, listen, there’s something I should warn you about. Mongibello will almost certainly have spoken to the Cuffaros about the blackmail. I don’t think he’ll come
alone to the appointment. I think the Cuffaros will have decided to spring into action as soon as the blackmailer comes and picks up the money.’

‘But if they kill him they won’t have the tape!’

‘I don’t think they’ll want to kill him. I think their intention will be to kidnap him and torture him until he tells them where he’s hidden it.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

‘Listen, would you do me a favour? Could you call me at home tonight after you’ve completed the operation?’

‘Absolutely. Give me the number.’

How was he going to make the hours go by, since he wasn’t the least bit hungry? After his meeting with Sponses he’d gone straight home, undressed, and plunged into
the icy sea. He’d swum until he lost all strength and sense of time. Then he went back to the house and sat down on the veranda with his cigarettes and whisky within reach. There was half a
bottle and he drank it all down.

Afterwards, he went inside and sat down in the armchair. He watched a spy film about which, as usual, he didn’t understand a thing. After that he switched to a love story that took place
in India. Halfway through the third film, which was about samurai, he fell asleep.

The ringing of the phone woke him up. He looked at his watch. Three-thirty. Shit, it was late! He ran to the phone. It was Sponses.

‘Sorry to call you at this hour, but it’s a big mess. Something terrible happened.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, we’d taken up our positions and saw Mongibello arrive with a briefcase in his hand. He put it down on the ground outside the signal box, and at that exact moment we heard a
gunshot and Mongibello collapsed. I ran up to him as my men raced to the spot where the shot had come from. All they found was a precision rifle with an infrared sight. They’d clearly used a
marksman: Mongibello died instantly.’

‘Apparently the Cuffaros felt he’d become a weak link in the chain, or even a traitor, and decided to eliminate him.’

‘But they still haven’t got the tape!’

‘What the fuck do they care about the tape? Their name is never mentioned in it! They’ll just say that it was a private matter of Mongibello’s that they knew nothing about!
They’ll say they’re shocked! So, what line are you guys going to take now?’

‘Well, that’s the big mess I was referring to. We had no choice but to inform the ministry. Someone called La Cava to suggest that he pass it off as a hunting accident. But La Cava
retorted that he had the wrong person. He said that the dead, at least as far as he knew, were not granted parliamentary immunity, and therefore he was going to institute proceedings against
unknown persons for murder. He said he was going to turn Mongibello’s life inside out like a sock. He would start with trying to find out what he was doing wandering about in some godforsaken
place at midnight, carrying a briefcase with two million counterfeit euros in it.’

‘Counterfeit euros?!’

‘Yes, though very skilfully made. I think Mongibello got them from the Cuffaros and didn’t even know they were counterfeit. I think La Cava, for his part, wants to scare the living
daylights out of the Cuffaros. And we’re going to do our level best to help him.’

Montalbano felt himself grow jubilant at the sound of these words – despite Sponses’s overuse of clichés.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Thank
you
,’ said Sponses, ‘and good night.’

A wolflike appetite suddenly came over him. He laid the table on the veranda and went to see what was in the fridge.

Adelina had prepared two vegetarian dishes for him: an aubergine Parmigiana that practically made him faint with its fragrance, and a salad with everything in it from lettuce and passuluna
olives to potatoes and cucumbers.

He sat down outside. It was a dark night, but peaceful. Far out at sea he could see a few fishing lamps.

As he put the first forkful in his mouth, Montalbano thought that, when all was said and done, things could not have gone any better.

Author’s Note

This novel was written a number of years ago. Any attentive reader who notices the more or less accentuated crises of ageing, or the more or less decontextualized quarrels with
Livia, and so on, should not blame it on the author but on the secret alchemy of publishers’ schedules. The names of the characters, companies, situations, and places are entirely the fruit
of my imagination. I need to say this so that nobody gets the wrong idea.

Notes

Pagelink
–
Ragonese had applauded the police after the ‘Mexican butchery’ they’d imported to Genoa for the G8
summit in 2001.
During the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, Italian police used heavy-handed tactics against protesters who’d come from all over Europe. Perhaps the worst incident
involved raiding the youth hostel where many were sleeping, dragging them violently out of bed, inflicting serious injury on several of them, and then arresting them. Later a young man was killed
when he threatened carabinieri with a dustbin during a demonstration.

Pagelink
–
‘Congratulations on your run of luck.’ / ‘You can even call it by its proper name:
culo
.’
In Italian slang,
culo
(ass, arse, buttocks) means ‘good luck’. It can have the negative connotation of ‘undeserved luck’, especially
in sporting situations.

Pagelink
–
. . . a man who’d been a minister and Prime Minister a great many times had been found definitively guilty of the
crime of collusion with the Mafia, and yet continued to enjoy the status of senator for life?
A reference to Giulio Andreotti (1919—2013), repeatedly a fixture at the head of the
Italian government for many decades.

Pagelink
–
‘Ever since your government made it legal for people to shoot at thieves.’
In one of his several
terms as Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, trying to emulate lax American laws concerning firearms and their use, used his parliamentary majority to break with tradition and eased national
restrictions on the possession of firearms and their use, making it legal to shoot at burglars and trespassers, even when the shooter’s life isn’t endangered.

Pagelink
–
He’d once had a similar lapse of memory involving a horseshoe and had nearly lost his life over it.
This
occurs in the novel
The Track of Sand
(Mantle, 2011).

Pagelink
–
Cillintano:
that is, Adriano Celentano (b. 1938), an Italian rocker who has been a steady fixture on the pop
music scene since ca. 1960.

Pagelink
–
The three biggest private television stations are the personal property of the head of the majority party, and two of
the state television stations are headed by men chosen personally by the head of the majority party.
This novel was written when Silvio Berlusconi was still Prime Minister.

Notes by Stephen Sartarelli

Also by Andrea Camilleri

Inspector Montalbano mysteries

THE SHAPE OF WATER

THE TERRACOTTA DOG

THE SNACK THIEF

THE VOICE OF THE VIOLIN

EXCURSION TO TINDARI

THE SCENT OF THE NIGHT

ROUNDING THE MARK

THE PATIENCE OF THE SPIDER

THE PAPER MOON