The Age of Doubt Read online

  “Do whatever you think best, but get rid of the story about the little boy. And if it really means so much to you, I apologize for not coming to your funeral. Next time, I won’t miss it.”

  They laughed, at last.

  “How are you?” Montalbano asked.

  “I’m fine. And you?”

  “I’m bogged down in an investigation that’s . . . Speaking of which, do you know anyone called Émile Lannec?”

  “What is this? Another one of your strange jokes?”

  “Come on. Do you know him or don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. We met him together.”

  “Where?”

  “In Marinella.”

  He had no recollection whatsoever of it.

  “Really? And who is he?”

  “He’s . . . ,” she started and then stopped. Then she giggled. “He’s someone who’s exactly like your son.”

  “Come on, Livia, don’t . . .”

  But she’d already hung up. He called back, but the phone rang and rang with no answer.

  So this was how Livia would punish him for the story of the sick little boy. Damn! The woman never pardoned him a single weakness! Not one!

  As he wasn’t the least bit hungry, he didn’t look to see what was in the refrigerator or the oven. Instead he grabbed a bottle of whisky, a glass, his cigarettes, and went out on the veranda and sat down.

  Émile Lannec.

  He went back inside, picked up the Frenchman’s passport, then sat down again outside.

  From what he could gather from the visas, Lannec had been three times to South Africa, twice to Namibia (which he would never have been able to find on a map), four times in Botswana (which he didn’t know either), and then in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.

  Except for Israel, he’d been to every country on the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Middle East.

  What line of business was Monsieur Lannec in?

  Finishing his first glass, he got up, went and got a world atlas, and looked for Namibia and Botswana. They were two countries bordering on the upper regions of South Africa.

  Then, all at once, the name South Africa made him remember that the Vanna had also been splashing about in that area. It was Laura who’d told him. He felt a twinge in his heart.

  Laura!

  By now she was alone with Mimì. They had definitely finished eating, and imagine Mimì not trying to take advantage of the situation! Boat fuel, right! Camouflage, right! The guy was worse than Don Juan! There was a good chance he already had her in his arms and was holding her tight . . .

  To erase the image from his mind, he inhaled a whole glass of whisky in a single gulp.

  The only hope was to concentrate, like an Indian holy man, on the question of Lannec.

  He succeeded, with some effort, in doing so.

  Might there be a connection between Lannec and the Vanna? But by the time the Vanna entered the port, Lannec had already been dead for a while. Besides, the arrival of the Vanna had been entirely unexpected. And so? Whom had the Vanna come to meet? How was it possible he couldn’t remember having met Lannec, and in Marinella of all places?

  What had Livia said?

  That Lannec was exactly like the little boy Montalbano had invented.

  Wait a second, Montalbà, stop right there. You’re getting very warm.

  Livia had therefore implied that Lannec didn’t exist in reality and was thus an imaginary person.

  A flash went off in his brain. An invented character! A character in a novel!

  He shot to his feet, dashed inside, and went up to the bookcase. It had to be a book he had read together with Livia.

  Almost independently of his brain, his right arm reached up, and his right hand picked out a book with a light-blue cover: Les Pitard, by Georges Simenon. A masterpiece. He had liked the book very, very much, so much that he’d read it two more times on his own. He opened it.

  There he was, the novel’s protagonist, Captain Émile Lannec of Rouen, the owner and captain of a very old steamboat called the Thunderbolt.

  He leafed through the book, which now started coming back to him. It told a marvelous story. Unfortunately, however, it had nothing to do with the case currently on his hands.

  Couldn’t it be just a coincidence? That a murder victim happened to have the exact same name as a Simenon character? Not really. What would be the chances of that? One in a billion?

  Or could it have been a joke on the part of the Frenchman, to take a name that, in any case, no one would ever recognize?

  All the same, there was something worth trying: to check the passport’s authenticity. But how could it be that of all those people who stamped and pasted visas on it, nobody noticed that it was a counterfeit document? Well, actually, it was possible.

  He went and sat back down on the veranda, and poured himself another glass of whisky.

  But then, was it really so important to know whether the passport was authentic or not?

  Was it really so critical to the investigation to know whether the victim was named Lannec, Parbon, or Lapointe?

  No, he was wrong here. It was important. Very important. Because it was possible that the inspector’s colleagues in France could find out whose passport had been counterfeited, and then, through this person, trace the process back to Lannec’s real identity. And it was possible it would lead to someone well known to the French authorities, and that . . .

  At this point he could no longer think. He felt a little drunk. Actually, he didn’t feel drunk, he was, in fact, drunk. He stood up, head spinning slightly, went back inside, closed the French door behind him, and lay down in bed, falling asleep immediately.

  At a certain point, around dawn, he had a dream.

  He was on the terrace of an unfamiliar house, at night, with a pair of binoculars in his hands, looking through them at an illuminated window that he knew was the window to Mimì Augello’s bedroom. He’d just brought the image into focus when a black shadow descended, completely covering the light of the window.

  What could it be? Looking harder, he realized it was a large bird, a seagull, perched on a television antenna.

  As he began to lose hope, the bird flew away, and the window suddenly appeared before him. Through it he couldn’t actually see the bed, but projected on the bedroom wall were two shadows, one male, one female, and they were making love . . . Mimì and Laura!

  He woke up with a start.

  Curiously, though, instead of getting upset over the two shadows making love, he felt perplexed over a detail of the dream: the bird, which, in landing on the antenna, had prevented him from seeing past it.

  What did it mean? Because, if the bird was there, it must definitely mean something.

  He got up, opened the French door, and went out on the veranda.

  The dawning day came armed with the best of intentions. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not a trace of wind. The boat of his fisherman friend was already out on the water, and for a moment a trawler returning to port covered it up, making it disappear. Then, once the trawler passed, the little boat reappeared.

  At that moment, in an instant, Montalbano understood the meaning of his dream.

  He saw himself standing again in Lannec’s hotel room, binoculars in hand, looking in the direction of the port.

  What had he seen?

  The hatch on the Vanna’s deck, leading below decks. But if the Vanna hadn’t been there, what would he have seen? He would have seen the cruiser, the Ace of Hearts.

  The day that Lannec arrived in Vigàta, the Vanna wasn’t there yet, in the port.

  Wasn’t it possible that Lannec had come to meet someone from the Ace of Hearts? And that he had received, through the binoculars—with no need for phone calls, which are always dangerous—instructions as to the hour and place of the meeting?

  As soon as it was six-thirty, Montalbano looked up the telephone number of the Bellavista Hotel and called.

  “Is thi
s Signor Scimè?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Montalbano here.”

  “Good morning, Inspector. What can I do for you?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, but the other day I forgot to ask you something.”

  “I’m at your service.”

  “When Mr. Lannec arrived at the hotel, did he ask you anything in particular that you can recall?”

  The porter didn’t answer right away.

  “Do you not remember, or—”

  “Well, Inspector, some time has gone by and . . . Wait, yes, that’s it! He asked me for a room with a view of the sea . . .”

  “Were those his exact words?”

  “Well, now that you mention it . . . He asked me for a room with a view of the port.”

  Bingo!

  So, to sum up. They let Lannec know that when he gets to Vigàta, he’s supposed to go to the Bellavista Hotel equipped with a powerful set of binoculars and have them give him a room with a view of the port. Knowing more or less the Frenchman’s hour of arrival, they put someone on guard on the Ace of Hearts, also equipped with binoculars or something similar.

  As soon as Lannec appears on the balcony of his hotel room, the people on the Ace of Hearts make contact with him.

  How? With binoculars as powerful as the Frenchman’s, they could have written their instructions from the boat on a small blackboard.

  They give him an appointment to meet them in front of the Pesce d’Oro restaurant. Lannec has a taxi take him around town a few times to cover his tracks and then arrives at the appointed place. Then he starts walking, taking the first right.

  At this point in his reconstruction, the inspector became convinced that just around the corner there was a car waiting to take Lannec to the cruiser at the port.

  But why go there by car and not on foot, since it’s only a stone’s throw away?

  Probably because he had to pass by the Customs Police at the north entrance to the port, and in a car he was less likely to be noticed. He could, for example, partially hide his face, pretending to be asleep or reading a newspaper . . .

  So the Frenchman goes aboard the Ace of Hearts. They talk about whatever it is they need to talk about, and they probably fail to come to an agreement. And so they decide to silence him.

  Or else Lannec’s fate had already been sealed before he even came to Vigàta. His journey only served to lead him to his killers. And so they invite him to lunch and poison him.

  But why use rat poison?

  Shooting him, of course, was out of the question. The noise might attract someone’s attention—say, a fisherman or sailor who happened to be passing along the quay at that moment.

  Would it have made more sense to knife him?

  No, using a knife would have left bloodstains everywhere, which would have been easily found in any eventual investigation.

  What about strangling him? A colossus like the guy the inspector had seen on the Ace of Hearts could have done it with one hand.

  This business of the poison was rather strange. It needed further reflection.

  Whatever the case, once the guy’s dead, they strip him naked, smash his face in, and deposit him somewhere. On the morning of the storm, they decide it’s the right time to get rid of the corpse.

  They start up the engines, take a few spins around the port, meanwhile inflating a brand-new dinghy, put the victim’s body in it, and when they reach the lighthouse at the tip of the eastern jetty, they lower the dinghy into the water, certain that the current will take it out to sea.

  But there’s an unlucky hitch. The Vanna, as it’s heading towards the port, comes across the dinghy.

  Montalbano felt satisfied with his reconstruction.

  Most of all, he felt pleased that he’d been able to go a whole hour without thinking of Laura—Laura, who was opening her eyes and smiling at Mimì, as she lay beside him in bed . . .

  10

  He got into his car and headed straight for Montelusa Central Police, without dropping by the station.

  Luckily for him, the office he needed to go to was located on the opposite side of the building from the commissioner’s office. At least there was no danger of running into that colossal pain in the ass Lattes.

  But sooner or later they were bound to cross paths. How was he going to resolve the problem once and for all? He’d promised Livia he would tell him the truth—that is, that he wasn’t married and had no children, and was a bachelor though he’d been with the same woman for many years. But hadn’t he already told him this at least five times in the past, and each time the guy seemed not to hear him, so that, when next they met, he was immediately back to square one and asking the inspector how his family was doing? Trying to convince Lattes was therefore a waste of breath.

  Perhaps, however, there was a solution: to show up in front of Lattes one fine morning, dressed in deep mourning and unshaven, and say, between sobs, that his wife and sons had died in a car accident. Yes, that seemed to be the only solution.

  But wouldn’t Livia then make a big stink? Wouldn’t she accuse him at the very least of having wiped out his whole family? Was it worth the risk?

  To say nothing of the fact that there would be no mention of the crash in the papers.

  No, he had to find another solution.

  Meanwhile, he’d arrived at Montelusa Central. Going in through a back door, he climbed two flights of stairs and stopped in front of a small table at which a uniformed policeman he knew was seated.

  “Is Inspector Geremicca in?”

  “Yes, the inspector’s in his office. You can go in.”

  Montalbano knocked and entered.

  Attilio Geremicca was about fifty years old, thin as a beanpole, and smoked foul-smelling cigars. Montalbano was convinced he had the things specially made for him out of a blend of chicken shit and tobacco. Geremicca was standing and looking at a fifty-euro note through a sort of gigantic microscope on a tall counter.

  Looking up, he saw Montalbano and went up to him with open arms. They embraced, genuinely happy to see each other.

  After chatting a bit, Geremicca asked Montalbano if he needed anything, and the inspector, after handing him Lannec’s passport, told him the whole story.

  “And what do you want from me?” Geremicca asked.

  “I want you to find out if that passport is authentic or not.”

  Geremicca studied it carefully while lighting another cigar.

  Thinking he would never manage to hold his breath for the whole time, Montalbano pretended to sneeze, giving himself an excuse to put his handkerchief over his nose and keep it there.

  “It’s not easy to say,” Geremicca commented. “But if it’s not authentic, it was made, at least in part, by a real master. Look how many borders it’s crossed without ever arousing any suspicion.”

  “So you’re inclined to say it’s authentic.”

  “I’m not inclined to say anything. Do you have any idea how many people there are who travel for years and years with phony passports? Hundreds! And this Lannec . . .”

  “Actually, as far as the name is concerned, there’s something you ought to know that might be important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve discovered that this Émile Lannec, born in Rouen, has the same name and birthplace as the protagonist of a novel by Simenon. Could that be of any use to you?”

  “I can’t say yet. Listen, could I hang on to this for a few days?”

  “Not for too long. One week enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “I want to show it to a French colleague of mine who is quite the specialist on the subject.”

  “Will you mail it to him?”

  “No, there’s no need.”

  “But how will your colleague know whether the paper, the stamps—”

  “A passport’s not a banknote, Salvo!” Geremicca said, smiling. “Normally passport counterfeiters work with authentic documents
obtained illegally or stolen from some office while still fresh. That’s why I said a minute ago that it looked to me, but only in part, like the work of a master. Anyway, if my French friend needs any further clarification, there’s always the Internet. Don’t worry, a week should be more than enough time.”

  The first thing he did upon entering the station was to call Fazio into his office.

  “Have the carabinieri brought back Shaikiri?”

  “Yessir. He’s here.”

  The inspector was about to tell him to bring him into the office when the telephone rang.

  “Wait a second,” he said, picking up the receiver.

  “Ahh Chief! That’d be proxetutor Gommaseo onna line wantin’ a talk to . . .”

  “All right, put him on.”

  “Montalbano?”

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Listen, I wanted to let you know that yesterday afternoon a rather irritated Signora Giovannini, owner of the Vanna, descended on me . . . Fine-looking woman . . . you know who I mean?”

  “Yes I do, sir.”

  “She must be a dominatrix, I’m sure of it.”

  Montalbano didn’t understand.

  “A what? Dominate what?”

  “She dominates her partner, my friend! You can bank on it. In the intimacy of her bedroom, that lady dresses up in leather pants and spike heels and uses whips on her lover, whom she treats like an animal and probably puts a bit in his mouth and rides him like a horse . . .”

  Montalbano felt like laughing but managed to restrain himself. For a brief moment, the prosecutor’s words conjured in his mind an image of Mimì naked and sprawled out on the floor like a bear rug, with La Giovannini grinding her heel into his back . . . Ah, the sexual fantasies of Prosecutor Tommaseo! Who, to all appearances, had never been with a woman. With all these fantasies about La Giovannini in his head, his eyes were probably popping out and his hands trembling at that very moment, drool collecting at the corners of his mouth.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, she came by yesterday and adamantly insisted that it’s unreasonable to force her to keep her boat in the port for so long. She said we’re engaging in an obvious abuse of power, they have nothing to do with that man’s murder, and all they did was recover a dead body adrift on the water . . . And, indeed . . .”