IM7 Rounding the Mark (2006) Page 18

  Flicking the flashlight very quickly on and off from time to time to see whether his foot would land on solid ground or merely plunge into the void, and meanwhile cursing, hesitating, staggering, slipping, grabbing onto roots sticking out from the rock face, regretting that he wasn’t an ibex, deer, or even a lizard, he finally, when the Good Lord saw fit, felt cool sand under the soles of his feet. He’d made it.

  He lay down on his back, panting heavily, and watched the stars. He stayed that way for a while, until the bellows in the place of his lungs slowly disappeared. He stood up and looked through the binoculars. The dark shapes of the rocks that broke up the beach and formed the villa’s little harbor looked to be about fifty yards away. He started walking, crouching down and hugging the rock face. Every few steps he would stop, ears pricked, eyes as wide open as possible. Nothing. Total silence. All was still except the sea.

  When he was almost behind the rocks, he looked up. All he could see of the villa was a kind of rectangular railing against the starry sky—in other words, the underside of the vast terrace balcony at the point where it jutted out most. From here he couldn’t advance any farther by land. He put the binoculars down on the sand, hooked the underwater flashlight onto his belt, took another step, and was in the water. He didn’t expect it to be as deep as it was, coming immediately up to his chest. He figured this couldn’t be a natural phenomenon; they must have dug into the sand to create a sort of moat, to add another obstacle for anyone on the beach who felt like climbing the rocks. He started swimming slowly, using a breaststroke, girl-style, to avoid even the slightest splashing, following the curve of that arm of the little harbor. The water was cold, and as he drew near the opening, the waves grew increasingly strong, threatening to send him scraping against some jagged rock. As there was now no longer any need to do the breaststroke—since any noise he might make would blend in with the sound of the sea—in four rapid crawl strokes he reached the last rock, the one marking the opening. He was leaning against it with his left hand, to catch his breath a moment, when a wave more powerful than the rest pushed him forward, knocking his feet against a very small natural platform. He climbed up on it, clinging to the rock with both hands. With each new wave he risked slipping, pulled down by the undertow. It was a dangerous spot, but before proceeding he had to get a few things straight.

  According to his memory of the video, the other rock marking the entranceway should have been farther in, closer to shore, since the second arm of the little harbor described a large question mark, the upper curl of which ended with that very rock. Sticking his head out sidewise, he saw its shadow. He paused a moment to look; he wanted to make certain there was nobody keeping guard on the other side. When he was sure of this, he inched his feet ever so slowly to the edge of the natural platform, then again had to assume a precarious posture, standing and fully stretching out vertically so that his hand could blindly feel about for something metal, the small signal light he’d managed to make out in the photographic enlargement. It took him a good five minutes to find it. It was higher up than it had looked to him in the photo. As a precaution, he ran his hand over it several times. He heard no alarm go off in the distance. So it wasn’t an electric eye, but indeed a beacon turned off at that moment. He waited yet another minute for some sort of reaction, but when nothing at all happened, he dived back into the water. Halfway around the rock, his hand suddenly ran into the metal barrier preventing any surprise visits to the little harbor. Still groping, he ascertained that the barrier slid along a vertical rail that must be electronically controlled from inside the villa.

  All that was left to do now was to go inside. He grabbed onto the barrier so he could hoist himself onto it and climb over it. He’d already got his left foot over when it happened. What “it” was, Montalbano couldn’t quite say. The pain in the middle of his chest was so sudden, so sharp, and so unceasing that the inspector, collapsing while straddling the barrier, was convinced someone had shot him with an underwater rifle and made a direct hit. But at the same time he was thinking this, it became clear to him that he was wrong. He bit his lips to suppress the desperate wail he so wanted to let out, which might have provided some relief. Then he realized at once that the stabbing pain did not come from the outside, as he already obscurely knew, but from the inside—from inside his body, where something had broken or was at the breaking point. It became very difficult to take a breath of air through his closed lips. Then suddenly, as quickly as it had appeared, the pain stopped, leaving him aching and numb, but not scared. Surprise had got the better of fear. He slid his buttocks along the top of the barrier until he could lean his shoulders against the rock. His sense of balance was no longer so precarious. He still had a chance and some time to recover from the malaise that the terrible bout of pain had left behind. But no, he had no chance and no time at all, as a second stab shot through his chest implacably, more ferocious than the first. He tried to control himself but couldn’t. He hunched forward and started crying, eyes closed, weeping from pain and dejection, unable to distinguish the taste of his tears when they reached his mouth from the droplets of seawater trickling down from his hair. As the pain became a kind of hot drill boring into his flesh, he chanted to himself:

  “Oh father, my father, my father . . .”

  He was praying to his dead father and wordlessly asking him to intercede and make someone finally spot him from the villa’s terrace and finish him off with a compassionate burst of machine-gun fire. But his father didn’t hear the prayer, and Montalbano kept on crying until, once again, the pain disappeared, though very slowly this time, as though it regretted leaving his body.

  A long time passed before he was in any condition to move a hand or a foot. It was as though his limbs refused to obey his brain’s commands. Were his eyes open or closed? Was it darker than before, or had his sight grown dim?

  He resigned himself. He had to accept things as they were. He’d been stupid to come alone. Something had gone wrong, and now he had to pay the price for his bravado. All he could do was take advantage of the lulls between attacks to slip back in the water and swim slowly around the rock and towards the shore. There was no point in proceeding any further. He had to go back. He needed only to get back in the water, swim just around the buoy, and . . .

  Why had he thought “buoy” instead of “rock”? Then the scene he’d viewed on television came back to him—the proud refusal of that sailboat which, instead of rounding the mark and turning back, had stubbornly careered forward, finally crashing into the referees’ boat—and he realized that, being the way he was, he had no choice. He could never turn back.

  He stayed there, motionless, for half an hour, leaning against the rock, listening to his body, waiting for the slightest sign of a new attack. Nothing else happened. But he couldn’t let any more time go by. He slipped back into the sea on the inside of the barrier and began swimming with a breaststroke, since the water was calm and the waves weak, having already broken against the barrier. Making for the shore, he realized he was inside a kind of canal at least twenty feet wide with cement banks. And while he still could not touch bottom, on his right he saw a whiteness of sand, at the level of his head. Placing his hands on the bank, he hoisted himself up.

  Looking ahead, he was astonished to find that the canal did not end at the beach, but cut it in two and continued into a natural grotto completely invisible to anyone passing by in front of the little harbor or looking out from the cliff overhead. A grotto! A few yards from the entrance, on the right, was another staircase carved into the rock, similar to the one he’d come down, except that this one was blocked by a gate. Crouching down, he went up to the mouth of the cave and listened. No sound at all, other than the lapping of the water inside. He flopped belly-down on the ground, unhooked the flashlight, flicked it on for a second, then turned it off. He stored in his brain everything the flash of light had allowed him to see, then repeated the procedure, taking in a few more precious details. After the third flash, h
e knew what was inside the grotto.

  Rocking in the middle of the canal was a large dinghy, probably a Zodiac, which came with a powerful motor. Along the right-hand side of the canal was a cement quay just over a yard wide. Halfway down this quay there was a huge iron door, which was shut. It probably led to a hangar where the dinghy was kept when not in use, and even more likely to an internal staircase that went up to the villa. Or an elevator. There was no telling. It was also clear that the grotto went even farther back, but the dinghy blocked his view of what lay behind it.

  What now? Should he stop here? Keep going?

  “Here goes nothing,” Montalbano said to himself.

  He stood up and entered the grotto without lighting his torch. Feeling the cement of the wharf under his feet, he slowly advanced. His right hand grazed the rusty iron door. He brought his ear to it. Nothing. Total silence. He put his hand on it and felt it give. It was barely pulled to. He pressed lightly, and this sufficed to open it about an inch. The hinges must have been well oiled. But what if someone had heard him and was waiting for him with a Kalashnikov? Too bad. He grabbed his pistol and switched on the flashlight. Nobody fired, nobody even said hello. He was inside the dinghy’s hangar. It was full of jerry cans. At the back there was an arch carved into the rock and, beyond this, some steps. The staircase leading up to the villa, as he’d imagined. He turned off the flashlight and closed the door behind him. He took another three steps, then gave himself some light. The quay went on for another few yards then suddenly ended, giving way to a kind of lookout at the back of the grotto, a great accumulation of rocks of various sizes piled high, a kind of chaotic, miniature mountain chain under the soaring vault overhead. He turned off the light.

  But what was it about those rocks? There was something strange there. As he tried to understand why the rocks looked strange to him, Montalbano, in the darkness and silence, heard a sound that made his blood run cold. There was something alive in the grotto. It made a continuous scraping noise, staggered by a kind of ticking, like wood against wood. He noticed that the air he was breathing had a rotten yellow color about it. Alarmed, he turned the flashlight on and off again. It was enough to let him see that the rocks, green with sea-moss at the water level, changed color above, because they were literally covered by hundreds, indeed thousands, of crabs of every size and color, continuously moving, swarming, climbing over one another until they formed great living, horrendous clusters that came apart under their own weight and fell into the water. A disgusting spectacle.

  Montalbano also noticed that the back of the grotto was separated from the front by a wire fence that rose about a foot and a half above the water and ran from the edge of the wharf to the rock face opposite. What could that be for? To keep big fish from coming in? What the hell was he thinking? Perhaps, on the contrary, it was to keep something from going out? But what, if there was nothing in the grotto but rocks and crabs?

  All at once he understood. What had Dr. Pasquano said? That the corpse had been eaten up by crabs, and he’d even found two in its throat . . . This was where Errera-D’Iunio, who’d got a bit too headstrong, was punished by drowning. Baddar Gafsa then let the body steep a long time in the water, right here, wrists and ankles bound with metal wire, as the crabs ate it up, another trophy to show to friends and anyone who might feel tempted to betray him. Finally he had it dumped into the open sea. And sailing, sailing, the body ended up off the shore at Marinella.

  What else was there to see? He retraced his steps, went out of the grotto, got in the water, swam, climbed over the barrier, swam around the rock, and felt suddenly overwhelmed by a deadly, endless fatigue. And this time he felt scared. He hadn’t even the strength to raise his arm to keep swimming. He’d suddenly run out of gas. Apparently the only thing that had kept him going was nervous tension, and now that he’d done what he had to do, there was nothing left in his body to give him even a little jolt. He turned over onto his back and began to float. It was all he could do. Sooner or later the tide would carry him ashore. At some point he seemed to wake up, when he felt his back scrape against something. Had he nodded off? Was it possible? In that sea, and in those conditions, had he fallen asleep as in a bathtub? Whatever the case, he realized he’d reached a beach, but he couldn’t stand up. His legs wouldn’t support him. He lay down on his belly and looked around. The current had taken pity on him and carried him back very near the spot where he’d set down the binoculars. He couldn’t very well leave them there. But how to get to that spot? After trying two or three times to stand, he resigned himself to crawling on all fours like an animal. Every yard or so he had to stop, out of breath and sweating. When he was next to the binoculars, he couldn’t grab them. His arm wouldn’t reach out; it refused to solidify; it was like a mass of quivering jelly. He gave up. He would have to wait. But he didn’t have much time to waste. At daybreak the people in the villa would see him.

  “Just five minutes,” he said to himself, closing his eyes and curling up on his side like a child.

  He needed only to put a finger in his mouth to complete the picture. For the moment he wanted to sleep a little, to recover his strength. In any case, in his current state, he could never manage to climb that terrible staircase. But no sooner had he closed his eyes than he heard a noise very near, and a violent light shone straight through his eyelids, as if they’d disappeared.

  They’d found him! He knew it was the end. But he was so drained of strength, so happy just to keep his eyes closed, that he didn’t react and didn’t move from his position, utterly indifferent to what was about to happen to him.

  “Just shoot me and go fuck yourself,” he said.

  “And why would you want me to shoot you?” asked Fazio in a strangled voice.

  Going up the stairway, he had to stop after almost every step, even though Fazio had a hand on his back and was pushing him from behind. They had only five stairs to go when he needed to sit down. His heart was up in his windpipe, and he felt that at any moment it might leap right out of his mouth. Fazio also sat down, in silence. Montalbano couldn’t see his face, but felt his agitation and anger.

  “How long have you been following me?”

  “Since yesterday evening. After Miss Ingrid dropped you off at home, I didn’t leave right away. I decided to wait a bit. I had a feeling you might go out again. Which you did. I managed to follow you easily up to Spigonella, then I lost you. You’d think I ought to know the area by now. It took me almost an hour to find your car.”

  Montalbano looked down. The sea had swelled with the rising wind, which already smelled of the imminent dawn. If not for Fazio, he would surely still be down on the beach, half conscious. It was Fazio who had picked up the damned binoculars, put him on his feet, practially carried him on his shoulders, and forced him to react. He had, in other words, saved him. He took a deep breath.

  “Thanks.”

  Fazio didn’t answer.

  “But you never came here with me,” the inspector continued.

  Again Fazio said nothing.

  “Will you give me your word?”

  “Yes. But will you give me yours?”

  “What for?”

  “Promise me you’ll go see a doctor. As soon as possible.”

  Montalbano swallowed this bitter pill.

  “Promise,” he said, getting up.

  He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one’s guardian angel. And he resumed the climb.

  He had no problem driving along the still deserted streets, dogged by Fazio’s car behind him. There’d been no convincing his sergeant that he could easily make it home by himself. Slowly, as the sky began to brighten, the inspector began to feel better. The day looked promising. They went into his house.

  “Jesus Christ! You’ve been robbed!” yelled Fazio as soon as he saw the state the rooms were in.

  “No, it was me. I was looking for something.”

  “Did yo
u find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a good thing you did, or you would have torn down the walls!”

  “Listen, Fazio, it’s almost five. I’ll see you at the office sometime after ten, okay?”

  “Okay, Chief. Get some rest.”

  “And I want to see Inspector Augello, too.”

  After Fazio left, the inspector wrote a note to Adelina, in block letters:

  ADELINA, DON’T BE ALARMED. THE HOUSE HAS NOT BEEN ROBBED. PLEASE TIDY UP BUT DON’T MAKE ANY NOISE BECAUSE I’M SLEEPING. PLEASE MAKE ME SOMETHING TO EAT.

  He opened the front door and stuck the note to it with a push-pin, so the housekeeper would see it before she came in. He unplugged the phone, went in the bathroom, took a shower, dried himself off, and lay down on the bed. The terrible bout of weakness had miraculously passed. In truth, he felt a bit tired, but no more than usual, and it had, after all, been a rough night, there was no denying it. He ran a hand over his chest, as if to check if the two terrible pangs had left some kind of mark, some kind of scar. Nothing. No wound opened, no wound healed. Before falling asleep, he had one last thought, with all due respect to his guardian angel: was it really so necessary to see a doctor? No, he concluded. He really saw no need for it.