The Overnight Kidnapper Page 18

  Fazio grabbed the case and left the room.

  When the four of them had settled into their places, the inspector noticed how perfectly silent the room was; the noise of the street failed to penetrate the thick walls, and the building itself seemed uninhabited.

  After slowly dictating his preliminary statements to Garofalo, Platania, with a quick glance, passed the ball to Montalbano.

  “Signor Bonfiglio—” the inspector began.

  “Just a moment,” the lawyer interrupted. “My client was given a notice of investigation following an interrogation that was off the record. And all of this, moreover, without the presence of a lawyer. The whole procedure was unlawful. We have therefore two possibilities before us: Either we repeat, on the record, the previous interrogation, or we do not record the present interrogation, either.”

  From a legal perspective, the lawyer’s argument made perfect sense. But it put everything into question again. Montalbano had an inspiration.

  “In the first case, then, we’ll have to reconduct our search of Signorina Romano’s house and then draft a report of that, too.”

  Those were magic words. The very idea of having to return to that house, where he got so upset, made Bonfiglio start squirming on the sofa. Face beet red, he said to Laspina:

  “I’m never going back to that house, not even after I’m dead.”

  The lawyer gave him a strange look, as if bewildered. But Bonfiglio’s mind was made up.

  “I want to get this all over with as quickly as possible,” he said decisively, “and I really don’t give a damn whether you record the interrogation or not. If these gentlemen wish to question me, I’m ready.”

  The lawyer turned to Platania:

  “May I withdraw to another room with my client? I need to confer with him in private.”

  Bonfiglio intervened before the prosecutor could answer.

  “There’s no point. I’m not going to change my position.”

  The lawyer threw up his hands in resignation.

  “If that’s what my client wants . . .”

  “Then let’s get started,” said Platania.

  The previous evening Montalbano had devised a plan as to how to proceed, but Bonfiglio’s attitude suggested a different approach to him.

  “Signor Bonfiglio, I’m not contesting anything you’ve already said, but I would like a clarification from you. I want you to tell us everything that happened between you, Di Carlo, and Miss Romano at the Palermo airport on the afternoon of August the thirty-first.”

  “But I’ve already told you!”

  “You gave us a general account. What I want you to do now is to tell us the same thing again, in as much detail as possible—with all the details you can remember, and the exact words that were said . . .”

  Bonfiglio closed his eyes as if to concentrate better, then started talking with his eyes still shut.

  “I knew they were going to have to take a taxi back to Vigàta from Palermo . . .”

  “Were you armed?”

  Bonfiglio suddenly reopened his eyes.

  “I was totally unarmed. I believe I’ve already told you that the only time I travel with a weapon is when I have the jewel sampler with me.”

  “Go on.”

  “And so I waited for them in the parking area. Then I saw them come out and look around.”

  “So you moved towards them first?”

  “No, I stayed put. They spotted me almost right away, and then, after fretfully saying something to each other, they came towards me. Silvana was literally clinging to him, and she was white as a sheet and walking in fits and starts. She was clearly afraid.”

  “Did you use to quarrel a lot, when you were together?”

  “Every now and then, like everybody else.”

  “Did you ever strike her?”

  Bonfiglio replied with indignation:

  “I have never struck a woman.”

  “So then why was she so afraid this time?”

  “Because this time she’d really gone too far and she knew that I was in a state worse than she’d ever seen before . . .”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “I was utterly beside myself.”

  He was sweating and took out a handkerchief to wipe his face, seeming lost in thought.

  “Go on.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t move. They came up to me and stopped. At that point Silvana said: ‘Giorgio, please, I beg you,’ or something like that. And she started crying. And I replied: ‘Get out of the way, you slut, I’ll deal with you later.’ Marcello then immediately—”

  “Are those the exact words you said to her?”

  “Well, I don’t know! How do you expect me to remember exactly what . . . I may have said ‘whore’ instead of ‘slut,’ but the substance was the same . . .”

  “Please continue.”

  “Marcello quickly pushed her aside and told me to be civilized. But I was . . .”

  “Stop right there. Did you get a chance, afterwards, to talk to, insult, or argue directly with Silvana?”

  “No, I never even looked at her again. As I said the last time, at a certain point, to avoid coming to blows with Marcello, I got back in my car and drove away.”

  “During our previous meeting you said you’d returned to Vigàta the following day and shut yourself up at home without ever going out. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet nobody, not even your neighbors, is able to confirm your claim.”

  “Well, there’s no doorman here, and I can’t even hear the footsteps of the people upstairs . . .”

  “All right. You claim you received only one phone call during those three days. Would you like to clarify?”

  “There’s nothing to clarify. I left Palermo at nine-thirty and was here two hours later. I was still unpacking when the phone rang. It was my accountant, who said he’d dialed the wrong number and apologized.”

  “How can you remember such a negligible phone call after all this time?”

  “I remember it because I unplugged the phone immediately afterwards and turned off my cell phone so that nobody else could call. I doubt my accountant would remember, but you can check with him, if you like. At any rate I don’t see how something like that could be of any importance.”

  “That’s up to us to decide,” Platania intervened. “What’s this accountant’s name?”

  “Virduzzo. Alfredo Virduzzo.”

  Montalbano gave a start.

  Virduzzo!

  Well, well! Look where he resurfaces! Why had he never gotten back in touch? What had happened to him? Didn’t he say he was going to write a letter?

  Then all at once Montalbano remembered hearing someone say that Bonfiglio had first met Silvana at the office of his accountant.

  Without wondering why, he decided it was important to confirm this.

  “Did you first meet Silvana at Virduzzo’s office?”

  “Yes. When my former accountant, Deluca, died earlier this year, this Virduzzo was recommended to me, and when I went to his office, I met—”

  “What was Silvana’s job there?”

  Bonfiglio waited a few seconds before answering.

  “Officially, she was one of three women in his employ.”

  “What do you mean by ‘officially’?”

  “That she was a lot more than that.”

  “Was she Virduzzo’s girlfriend?”

  A hint of a smile appeared on Bonfiglio’s lips. He shook his head no.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then explain what you mean.”

  “Silvana was a distant relative of his and lost her parents when she was fifteen. She was an only child, and so Virduzzo, who’d always been a solitary, rather unsociable man, suddenly brought
her into his house, paid for her to finish her studies, and began treating her and loving her like a daughter. He used to call her ‘light of my life.’ And their relationship, over time, always remained . . .”

  He trailed off.

  “Always remained?” asked Platania.

  “I was about to say ‘always remained unchanged,’ but that’s not really true. Actually their relationship did change.”

  “Please clarify,” said Montalbano.

  “Well, at a certain point the idyll came to an end. It was when Silvana began to have her first boyfriends, her first love affairs . . . Virduzzo was worried that someone might take her away from him. He considered her his property. Poor Silvana had to resort to all kinds of bizarre subterfuges to enjoy a little freedom . . .”

  “Then, if that’s the way it was, why was Silvana no longer living with Virduzzo?”

  “It was Virduzzo himself who rented her a house after she graduated. But he had free access to her place. He even had a set of keys.”

  “And was Virduzzo aware of your relationship with her?”

  Bonfiglio remained silent for a few moments before answering.

  “Silvana was very careful. But I can’t rule out that something might have come to his attention. And that would explain why I was sometimes forced to make sudden escapes in the middle of the night when Virduzzo would show up unannounced.”

  “And why didn’t you, Signor Bonfiglio, want Virduzzo to know about your relationship?”

  “I’m sixty-two years old, Inspector, only two years younger than Virduzzo. Silvana was thirty-six. Don’t you think that’s a good enough reason? Virduzzo would have raised the roof . . .”

  “Do you know we’ve found Silvana’s body?”

  Bonfiglio turned pale. A mild tremor began to shake his whole body.

  He clenched his teeth and said nothing.

  “The killer pummeled her with punches and kicks and then, after savagely ending her life, got rid of the body by tossing it into a garbage dump. We literally had to tear it away from the rats to recover it.”

  The inspector had purposely laid it on thick.

  Bonfiglio bent his whole body forward, buried his head in his hands, and began to emit a soft, continuous wail.

  Then he muttered something incomprehensible.

  “What did you say?” Platania asked him.

  “He said, ‘I’m so sorry,’” said Laspina.

  “What are you sorry about? Tell us,” Platania insisted.

  Bonfiglio sat back up, looked at him, and replied with effort:

  “I’m sorry I made . . .”

  He stopped. Then he shook his head several times, as if to recover some semblance of lucidity.

  “I’m sorry I wished for all those terrible things to happen to her,” he said.

  Montalbano decided it was time to fire the cannon:

  “Could you tell me when the meeting of the Hermès firm is scheduled to be held in Milan?”

  Bonfiglio gave him a confused look.

  “What did you say?”

  The inspector repeated the question.

  “Normally it’s held in late September.”

  “What about this year?”

  “I really can’t tell you, because I still haven’t received the letter announcing the dates. Why do you ask?”

  “You haven’t received it?” Platania pressed him.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If I say I—”

  “The fact is that Inspector Montalbano has found this letter,” Platania continued.

  “Where?”

  “Well, strangely enough, right under the bed in which Di Carlo and Miss Romano were murdered.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Bonfiglio shot to his feet. He turned so red in the face that it looked like he was about to have a stroke.

  “Show it to me!” he shouted.

  “I can’t. The forensics lab has it.”

  “You’re lying! Why do you want to ruin me? I never saw that letter! My God! I just don’t understand how . . . You . . .”

  He was at a loss for words. Suddenly his legs buckled; he began to teeter wildly back and forth and would have fallen on the floor, unconscious, had Montalbano not grabbed him in time.

  “The interrogation ends here,” Laspina said angrily.

  * * *

  They descended the stairs in silence.

  Montalbano felt confused and uneasy.

  He’d come to Bonfiglio’s place with the hope that the interrogation would resolve things, and here he was coming away with a whole slew of new doubts. Because all too often he’d clearly heard the ring of truth in Bonfiglio’s words.

  “Just a minute,” he said as they were passing in front of the row of mailboxes in the front hall of the building. On the fourth one in the row was the name: BONFIGLIO. Montalbano stuck his hand into the slot, pulled, and the little door came open. There was no lock. Anyone at all could have taken whatever letters were in there.

  * * *

  Once they got back to the station, Platania wanted to have a few words alone with the inspector before heading back to Montelusa.

  “On our way back here,” he said, “I got a phone call from Forensics. They found a great many overlapping fingerprints on both the envelope and the letter inside, to the point that it’s impossible to get a clear definition of any single one. It’s a point against us.”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” said Montalbano. “What struck me most was Bonfiglio’s attitude.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he could have grabbed hold of the pretext his lawyer offered him, but he didn’t, and he didn’t once refuse to answer any of our questions. Was he playing poker with us? I don’t think so. Even the boldest gambler knows that luck eventually runs out.”

  “So how should we proceed?”

  “Let’s buy some time. If you agree, we can tell the lawyer that we’re waiting for his client to recover completely before resuming the interrogation.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me.”

  * * *

  Since he hadn’t felt like eating the previous evening, when he got to the trattoria he was hungry as a wolf. To Enzo’s great satisfaction, he gave it his all.

  By the time he got up from the table, he felt as if he’d gained weight. Stepping out of the restaurant, he noticed the wind had risen. He remained undecided for a moment. Then he realized that a walk along the jetty was an absolute necessity. He took it more slowly than usual, stopping every so often to look at the waves crashing against the breakwater.

  He sat down on the flat rock and tried to light a cigarette, without success. The wind kept blowing out his lighter. He finally gave up and started thinking about things.

  There was no point trying to hide it from himself. He’d set out with the firm conviction that Bonfiglio was the killer, and now, far from being certain, he was full of doubts.

  And this was because he had attributed imaginary actions to Bonfiglio in his mind. For example, he’d been sure that, at the airport, Bonfiglio hadn’t spoken to Silvana, when in fact he had.

  Another example: He was more than convinced that Bonfiglio would admit he’d lost the letter on the night he went to Silvana’s house with the jerry can, and that it had been the killer who, in murdering his victims, had made it end up under the bed. This was a possible line of defense, and yet Bonfiglio had actually denied ever even receiving it.

  He wasn’t telling a lie that was difficult to disprove; he was perhaps telling a truth that was almost impossible to verify.

  To judge from appearances, however . . .

  But what had Guttadauro the Mafia lawyer said?

  Never be fooled by appearances.

  Want to bet the Mafia knew what had actually
happened, knew who the killer was and was trying to warn him that he was heading up the wrong path?

  He got up from the rock feeling more unsure than ever.

  And anyway, truth be told, Bonfiglio had made a statement that had struck him like cudgel. When he told him they’d found Silvana’s body, and the condition it was in, the last thing he expected Bonfiglio to say was the words:

  “I’m sorry I wished for all those terrible things to happen to her.”

  They weren’t the kinds of words that would come to the lips of someone who’d murdered a young woman with his bare hands.

  He started up the car but, instead of driving away, just sat there.

  He felt disoriented and didn’t know what to do.

  Maybe—he admitted through clenched teeth—Pasquano was right when he said that he was getting too old and the time had come to retire. But he couldn’t just leave the investigation hanging. He had to carry on. And since Pasquano was already on his mind, he decided to go and talk to him.

  17

  Half an hour later he was walking into the institute.

  “Is the doctor in?”

  The usher and switchboard operator was probably daydreaming, because at the sound of Montalbano’s voice he gave a start in his chair and took a few seconds to bring him into focus.

  “Uh . . . he’s not back yet.”

  So the good doctor was taking things easy. Maybe, since he’d been wasting his nights at the club, he’d decided to have a postprandial siesta.

  Montalbano decided to go and smoke a cigarette while waiting for him outside, but then in the doorway he nearly ran straight into Pasquano, who was just coming in. The doctor bowed and stepped aside.

  “Please, please, don’t let me prevent you from leaving. You have no idea how lovely the sight of your back is.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Doctor, but I wasn’t leaving. I was just going to wait for you outside.”

  “I should warn you that I’m extremely busy and unfortunately can’t see you right away.”

  “Please take your time, then. I can wait.”

  Pasquano threw in the towel.