“Yes. His name is Michele Spitaleri. Would you like his phone number?”
“Yes.”
Montalbano jotted that down, too.
“Listen, Inspector. Can’t you tell me why—”
“I’ll tell you on the way there. Here’s the key. Keep it with you.”
“Will this take long?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Callara gave him an inquisitive look. Montalbano donned an expressionless mask.
“Maybe I’d better tell the secretary,” said Callara.
They headed off in Montalbano’s car. On the way, the inspector told Callara how little Bruno had disappeared, how hard it had been to find him, and finally how they’d pulled him out with the help of the firemen.
Callara was worried about one thing only.
“Did they do any damage?”
“Who?”
“The firemen. Did they damage the house in any way?”
“No, not inside.”
“That’s a relief. ’Cause one time when a fire broke out in the kitchen of a house I’d rented, they did more damage than the fire.”
Not a word about the illegal apartment.
“Do you intend to inform Signora Gudrun?”
“Of course, of course. But she certainly doesn’t know anything about this. It must have been an idea of Angelo Speciale’s. I’ll have to take care of everything myself.”
“Are you going to apply for amnesty?”
“Well, I don’t know if—”
“Look, Signor Callara, don’t forget I’m a public official. I can’t just look the other way.”
“What if—just supposing, mind you—what if I inform Spitaleri and have everything put back the way it was—”
“Then I will charge you, Signora Gudrun, and Spitaleri with illegal construction.”
“Well, if that’s the way it is . . .”
“Look at that! Look at that!” was Signor Callara’s exclamation of wonderment as he entered through the bathroom window and saw everything ready for use.
With flashlight in hand, Montalbano led him into the other rooms.
“Look at that! Look at that!”
They arrived in the living room.
“Look at that! Look at that!”
“See?” said Montalbano. “Even the casings are ready for installation.”
“Look at that! Look at that!”
As if by chance, the inspector let the beam of the flashlight fall upon the trunk.
“And what’s that?” asked Callara.
“Looks like a trunk to me.”
“What’s inside? Have you opened it?”
“Me? No.Why would I have done that?”
“Would you lend me the flashlight a minute?”
“Here.”
Everything was going as planned.
Callara opened the trunk, and when he aimed the beam inside, he did not say “Look at that,” but took a great leap backwards.
“Ohmygod! Ohmygod!”
The beam of the flashlight trembled in his hand.
“What is it?”
“But . . . but . . . there’s a . . . there’s a . . . dead person!”
“Really?”
5
Thus, with the dead body’s deadness now official, the inspector could look into doing something about it.
First, however, he had to do something about Signor Callara, who, having dashed outside through the window, was now vomiting up what he had eaten the week before.
Montalbano opened the real apartment upstairs, made Signor Callara, who was feeling very dizzy, lie down on the sofa in the living room, and went to get him a glass of water.
“Can I go home?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t drive you home.”
“I’ll call my son and have him come get me.”
“Not on your life! You have to wait for the public prosecutor! It was you who discovered the body, no? Would you like a little more water?”
“No, I feel cold.”
Cold? In this heat?
“I’ve got a blanket in the car. I’ll go get it.”
His role as Good Samaritan over, he called the station.
“Catarella? Is Fazio there?”
“He’ll be comin soon.”
“What does that mean?”
“He phoned just now sayin zackly: I’ll be there in five minutes.What I mean is,
he
will be here in five minutes, not me, since I’m already here.”
“Listen, a dead body’s been found, and I want him to call me at this number.”
He gave him the telephone number of the house.
“Hee, hee!” said Catarella.
“Are you laughing or crying?”
“Laughin, Chief.”
“Why’s that?”
“ ’Cause normalwise iss always me tellin you when summon finds a dead body, an’ now iss you tellin me!”
Five minutes later, the telephone rang.
“What is it, Chief? You find a dead body?”
“The head of the agency that rented the apartment to my friends found it. Luckily they’d already left before this wonderful discovery was made.”
“Is it fresh?”
“I don’t think so. In fact, I would rule that out. But I didn’t get a good look at it, ’cause I had to give a hand to Signor Callara, poor guy.”
“So, it’s the same house where I sent the firemen?”
“Exactly. Marina di Montereale, Pizzo district, the house at the end of the dirt road. Bring some support. And inform the prosecutor, Forensics, and Dr. Pasquano. I don’t feel like doing it myself.”
“I’ll be right over, Chief.”
As he was putting on his gloves, Fazio, who’d come with Galluzzo, asked Montalbano:
“Can I go down and have a look?”
The inspector was reclining in a deck chair on the terrace, enjoying the sunset.
“Sure. Be careful not to leave any fingerprints.”
“You’re not coming?”
“What for?”
Half an hour later, the usual pandemonium broke out.
First the Forensics team arrived, but since they couldn’t see a goddamn thing in the underground living room, they lost another half hour setting up a temporary electrical connection.
Then Pasquano arrived with the ambulance and his team of undertakers. Realizing immediately that he would have to wait his turn, the doctor pulled up another deck chair, sat down beside the inspector, and dozed off.
An hour or so later, by which time the sun had almost entirely set, someone from Forensics came and woke him up.
“Doctor,” he said, “the body’s all wrapped up. What should we do?”
“Unwrap it” was the laconic reply.
“Yes, but who should do the unwrapping, us or you?”
“I guess I’d better unwrap it myself,” said Pasquano with a sigh.
“Fazio!” Montalbano called out.
“Reporting, Chief.”
“Has Prosecutor Tommaseo arrived yet?”
“No, Chief, he called to say it would take him at least an hour to get here.”
“You know what I say?”
“No, sir.”
“I say I’m gonna go eat and come back. Looks to me like things are gonna take a long time.”
Passing through the living room, he noticed that Callara hadn’t moved from the sofa. He took pity on him.
“Come with me, I’ll give you a lift to Vigàta. I’ll tell the prosecutor how things went.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” said Callara, handing him the blanket.
He dropped Callara off in front of his agency, which was now closed.
“Don’t forget: Not a word to anyone about the corpse you found.”
“My dear Inspector, I think I’m running a fever of a hundred and two. I don’t even feel like breathing, let alone talking!”
Since going to Enzo’s would surely take too long, he headed back to Marinella instead.
In the fridge he found a rather sizeable platter of caponata and a big piece of Ragusan caciocavallo cheese. Adelina had even bought him some fresh bread. He was so hungry, his eyes were burning.
It took him a good hour to polish it all off, to the accompaniment of half a liter of wine.Then he washed his face, got in his car, and drove back to Pizzo.
The moment the inspector arrived, Tommaseo, the public prosecutor, who’d been standing in the parking area in front of the house getting a breath of air, came running up to him.
“It looks like a sex-related crime!”
His eyes were sparkling, his tone almost festive. That’s how Prosecutor Tommaseo was: Any crime of passion, any killing related to infidelity or sex, was pure bliss for him. Montalbano was convinced he was a genuine maniac, but only in his mind.
Tommaseo would drool like a snail after every woman he interrogated, and yet nobody knew of any female friends or lovers in his life.
“Is Dr. Pasquano still inside?” asked Montalbano.
“Yes.”
It was stifling in the illegal apartment. Too many people going in and out, too much heat given off by the two floodlights the Forensics team had turned on. The already close atmosphere of before was a lot closer, with the difference that now it stank of men’s sweat, and now, indeed, one also smelled the stench of death.
The corpse had, in fact, been taken out of the trunk, unwrapped as best as was possible, considering that one could see pieces of the plastic still sticking to the skin, having perhaps fused with it over time. The men had placed the body, naked as they’d found it, on a stretcher, and Dr. Pasquano, cursing under his breath, was finishing his examination. Montalbano realized that it wasn’t a good time to ask him anything.
“Get me the prosecutor!” the doctor suddenly ordered.
Tommaseo came in.
“Listen, Judge, I can’t go on working in here. It’s too hot, the thing’s liquefying before my eyes. Can I take it away?”
Tommaseo looked inquiringly at the head of Forensics, Vanni Arquà.
“If you ask me, yes,” said Arquà.
Arquà and Montalbano got on each other’s nerves.They didn’t say hello when they met, and they spoke to one another only in cases of pure necessity.
“Okay, take the body out of here and put seals over the window,” Tommaseo ordered.
Pasquano looked at Montalbano. Without saying anything to anyone, the inspector went back upstairs, took a bottle of beer from the fridge—Guido had restocked—and returned to the terrace, settling into the same deck chair. He heard the noise of cars leaving.
A few minutes later Dr. Pasquano appeared, and sat down as before.
“I see you know the house well. Could I have a beer, too?”
As the inspector was headed towards the kitchen, Fazio and Galluzzo came in.
“Chief, can we go now?”
“Sure. Here, take this piece of paper. It’s the phone number of a developer named Michele Spitaleri. I want you to track him down, right now; you absolutely have to find him and tell him that I’ll be waiting for him at the station tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp. Good night.”
He brought the cold beer out to Pasquano and told him how and why he knew the house so well.Then he said:
“Doctor, it’s too beautiful an evening to get you pissed off. You tell me if you want to answer a few of my questions or not.”
“No more than four or five.”
“Did you manage to determine her age?”
“Yes. She was probably fifteen or sixteen years old. That’s one.”
“Tommaseo told me it was a sex-related crime.”
“Tommaseo is a perverted asshole.That’s two.”
“What do you mean, two?You can’t count that as a question! Don’t cheat! We’re still on the first one!”
“Oh, all right.”
“Second question:Was she raped?”
“I’m not in a position to say. Maybe not even after the autopsy. Although I would assume she was.”
“Third: How was she killed?”
“They cut her throat.”
“Four: How long ago?”
“Five or six years. She was well preserved because they wrapped her up well.”
“Five: In your opinion, was she killed down there or somewhere else?”
“You should ask Forensics. Whatever the case, Arquà found plenty of traces of blood on the floor.”
“Six—”
“No, no, no! Time’s up and beer’s finished. Good night.”
He got up and left. Montalbano also stood up, but only to get himself another beer in the kitchen.
He didn’t have the heart to leave the terrace on a night like this. All of a sudden, he missed Livia. Just the previous evening, they’d been sitting in this exact same place, in harmony and in love.
Suddenly the night felt cold to him.
Fazio was already at the station by eight o’clock the next morning. Montalbano arrived half an hour later.
“Chief, you gotta forgive me, but I just don’t believe it.”
“You just don’t believe what?”
“The story of how the body was discovered.”
“How else was it supposed to have been discovered, Fazio? Callara happened to see the trunk, he lifted the lid, and—”
“Chief, if you ask me, you arranged things so that Callara would be the one to open it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’d already found the body the day before, when you went to get the kid.You’ve got a nose like a hunting dog, Chief! Like you’re not going to open that trunk! And you didn’t say anything right away so your friends could leave in peace.”
He had understood everything. That wasn’t exactly the way things had gone, but by and large Fazio was right on the mark.
“Listen, you can believe whatever you like. Did you find Spitaleri?”
“I tried him at home and his wife gave me his cell phone number. At first there was no answer because it was turned off, but then, an hour later, he picked up. He’ll be here at nine o’clock sharp.”
“Find out anything?”
“Of course, Chief.”
He pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket and started reading.