The Track of Sand Read online

  “They can’t find the carcass,” said Fazio, flummoxed.

  “What do you mean they can’t . . . ?” said Montalbano, upset. “But it was right here!”

  “We’ve looked everywhere and haven’t seen anything,” said the more sociable of the two.

  “What is this, some kind of practical joke? You wanna play games or something?” the other said menacingly.

  “Nobody’s joking here,” Fazio snapped back at the man, who was beginning to get on his nerves. “And watch your tongue.”

  The other was about to reply, but thought better of it.

  Montalbano stepped down from the veranda and went to examine the spot where the carcass had been.The others followed him.

  In the sand were the footprints of five or six different shoes and two parallel tracks from the wheels of a cart.

  Meanwhile the two astronauts got back into their van and drove off without saying goodbye.

  “They stole it while we were having coffee,” said the inspector. “They loaded it onto a hand-drawn cart.”

  “About two miles from here, over near Montereale, there’s about ten shacks with illegal immigrants living in them,” said Fazio. “They’re gonna have a feast tonight. They’re gonna eat horsemeat.”

  At that moment they saw their car returning.

  “We took everything we could find,” said Galluzzo.

  “And what did you find?”

  “Three clubs, a piece of rope, eleven cigarette butts of two different brands, and an empty Bic lighter,” Galluzzo replied.

  “Let’s do this,” said Montalbano. “You, Gallo, go to the Forensics Lab and give them the clubs and the lighter.You, Galluzzo, take the rope and butts and bring them to my office. Thanks for everything.We’ll meet back up at the station. I’ve got a couple of private phone calls to make.”

  Gallo looked doubtful.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What am I supposed to ask Forensics to do?”

  “To take fingerprints.”

  Gallo looked more doubtful than ever.

  “And if they ask me what it’s about, what do I say? That we’re investigating the murder of a horse? They’ll throw me out of there on my ass!”

  “Tell them there was a brawl with several wounded and we’re trying to identify the assailants.”

  Left alone, he went inside the house, took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers, and went back onto the beach.

  This idea of immigrants stealing the horse in order to eat it didn’t convince him in the least. How long had they been in the kitchen, he and Fazio, drinking coffee and chatting? Half an hour, max.

  So, in half an hour the immigrants had the time to spot the horse, run two miles back to their shanties, grab a cart, return to the beach, load it on the cart, and roll it away?

  It wasn’t possible.

  Unless they had spotted the carcass at the crack of dawn, before he opened the window, and then had returned with the cart, seen him next to the horse, and hidden nearby, waiting for the right moment.

  Some fifty yards down the beach, the wheel tracks made a turn and headed inland, where there was a concrete esplanade full of cracks, which had been in that state since the inspector first moved to Marinella.The esplanade provided easy entry onto the provincial road.

  Wait a second, he said to himself. Let’s think about this.

  Yes, the immigrants could move the cart more easily, and more quickly, on the provincial road than on the sand. But was it really such a good idea to let themselves be seen by all the passing cars? What if one of these cars belonged to the police or the carabinieri?

  They would surely be stopped and made to answer a lot of questions. And quite possibly a repatriation order would come out of it all.

  No, they weren’t that stupid.

  And so?

  There was another possible explanation.

  Namely, that the people who stole the horse were not illegals, but legals and then some.That is, from Vigàta.

  Or the surrounding area.

  So why did they do it? To recover the carcass and get rid of it.

  Perhaps the whole thing had gone as follows: The horse manages to escape and someone chases after it to finish it off. But he is forced to stop because there are people on the beach, maybe even the morning fisherman, who could become dangerous witnesses. So he goes back and informs the boss. The boss decides they absolutely have to get the carcass back. And he organizes the business with the cart. But at a certain point he, Montalbano, wakes up and throws a wrench into the boss’s plans.

  The people who stole the dead horse were the same ones who killed it.

  Yes, that must be exactly the way it went.

  And, at the side of the provincial road, right where the esplanade abutted it, there had surely been a van or truck ready for loading the horse and cart.

  No, illegal immigrants had nothing to do with this.

  2

  Galluzzo set down on the inspector’s desk a large plastic bag with the rope inside it, along with another, smaller bag with the cigarette butts.

  “You said there were two brands?”

  “Yeah, Chief. Marlboro and Philip Morris, with the double filter.”

  Very common. He had hoped for some rare brand smoked by no more than five people in Vigàta.

  “You take all this,” Montalbano said to Fazio,“and take good care of it. The stuff may turn out to be useful to us later on.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Fazio, not very convinced.

  At that moment a high-powered bomb seemed to explode behind the door, which flew open and crashed against the wall, revealing Catarella sprawled out on the floor with two envelopes in his hand.

  “I’s bringin’ the mail,” said Catarella, “but I slipped.”

  The three men in the office tried to collect themselves after the scare.They looked at one another and immediately understood.They had only two options before them. Either go ahead with a summary execution of Catarella, or make like it was nothing.

  They chose the second and said nothing.

  “Sorry to repeat myself, but I don’t think it’s gonna be so easy to identify the horse’s owner,” said Fazio.

  “We should have at least taken some photographs of it,” said Galluzzo.

  “Isn’t there some sort of registry for horses, like there is for cars?” asked Montalbano.

  “I don’t know,” replied Fazio. “Anyway, we don’t even know what kind of horse it was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we don’t know if it was a draft horse, a stud horse, a show horse, a racehorse . . .”

  “Horses are banded,” said Catarella, under his breath, still outside the door, envelopes in hand, since the inspector had never told him to come in.

  Montalbano, Fazio, and Galluzzo looked at him, stupefied.

  “What did you say?” asked Montalbano.

  “Me? I din’t say nothin’!” said Catarella, frightened for having made the mistake of opening his mouth.

  “Yes you did! You said something just now! What did you say horses were?”

  “I said they was banded, Chief.”

  “And how are they banded?”

  Catarella looked doubtful.

  “They’s banded wit’ whatever’s they’s banded wit’, Chief, I dunno, mebbe wit’ bands.”

  “All right, set down the mail and get out of here.”

  Mortified, Catarella put the letters on the desk and went out with his eyes downcast. In the doorway he nearly collided with Mimì Augello, who was rushing in.

  “Sorry I’m late, but I had to lend a hand with the kid, who—”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “And what are those exhibits there?” Mimì asked, seeing the rope and cigarette butts on the desk.

  “A horse was bludgeoned to death,” said Montalbano. And he told him the whole story.

  “You know anything about horses?” Montalbano asked him when he had finished.
<
br />   Mimì laughed.

  “All they have to do is look at me to scare me, just to give you an idea.”

  “But isn’t there anyone here at the station who knows anything about them?”

  “I really don’t think so,” said Fazio.

  “Then we’ll drop it for the moment. How did the business with Pepè Rizzo turn out?”

  This was a case that Mimì had been working on. Pepè Rizzo was suspected of being the wholesaler for all the vocumprà in the province, supplying them with every kind of object in the world that could be faked, from Rolexes to Lacoste alligator shirts to CDs and DVDs. Mimì had found the warehouse, and the previous day he had succeeded in getting a search warrant from the prosecutor. Upon hearing the question, Mimì started laughing.

  “We found everything but the kitchen sink, Salvo! There were brand-name shirts that looked so much like the real thing, it made my heart—”

  “Stop right there!” the inspector ordered him.

  They all looked at him in bafflement.

  “Catarella!”

  The inspector’s shout was so loud that it blew Fazio’s exhibits, which he was gathering together, off the desktop.

  Catarella arrived at a run and, slipping again in front of the door, managed to grab on to the jamb to keep from falling.

  “Catarella, listen carefully.”

  “Atcha service, Chief.”

  “When you said that horses were banded, did you mean that they’re banded by their owners?”

  “’Assit, Chief, ’ass azzackly what I mint.”

  And that was why it was so important for the killers to recover the carcass!

  “Thanks, you can go now.” Then, turning to the others: “Understand?”

  “No,” said Augello.

  “Catarella has reminded us, in his own way, that horses are often heat-branded with the initials of the owner or the stable. Our horse must have fallen on the side with the brand, which is why I didn’t see it. And, to be honest, it never even crossed my mind to look for it.”

  Fazio turned slightly pensive.

  “I’m beginning to think that maybe the illegal aliens—”

  “—have nothing to do with this,” Montalbano completed his sentence.“After you all left this morning, I became convinced of it.The cart’s tracks did not lead all the way to their shanties; after some fifty yards or so, they turned towards the provincial road.Where there must certainly have been a truck waiting for them.”

  “From what I can gather,” Mimì intervened, “it looks like they got rid of the only lead we had.”

  “And that’s why it won’t be easy to identify the owner,” Fazio concluded.

  “Barring some stroke of luck,” said Mimì.

  Montalbano noticed that for some time now, Fazio seemed to lack confidence, as if finding things more and more difficult. Maybe the years were beginning to weigh on him, too.

  But they were wrong, dead wrong, to think it would be so difficult to identify the horse’s owner.

  At lunchtime the inspector went to Enzo’s, but he didn’t do justice to the dishes he was served. In his head he still had the scene of the bludgeoned horse lying on the sand. At a certain point he came out with a question that surprised him.

  What’s it like to eat horsemeat?

  I’ve never tasted it.They say it’s sort of sweet.

  As he had eaten very little, he felt no need to take his customary stroll along the jetty. When he returned to the office, there were papers for him to sign.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, the telephone rang.

  “Chief, that’d be a lady named Esther.”

  “She didn’t give you her full name?”

  “Yessir, she did, an’ iss what I juss tol’ you.”

  “So she’s Miss or Mrs. Esther?”

  “Zackly, Chief. An’ her lass name is Man.”

  Esther Mann. He’d never heard of her.

  “Did she tell you what it was about?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Well, have her talk to Fazio or Augello.”

  “They ain’t presentable, Chief.”

  “All right then, send her in.”

  “My name is Esterman, Rachele Esterman,” said a fortyish woman in sport coat and jeans, tall, with blond hair falling onto her shoulders, blue eyes, long legs, and a solid, athletic body. In short, the way one imagines the Valkyries looked.

  “Make yourself comfortable, signora.”

  She sat down and crossed her legs. How was it that, when crossed, her legs looked even longer?

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’m here to report the disappearance of a horse.”

  Montalbano gave a start in his chair, but concealed the movement by feigning a coughing fit.

  “I can see you’re a smoker,” said Rachele, gesturing towards the ashtray and pack of cigarettes on the desk.

  “Yes, but I don’t think my cough has got anything—”

  “I wasn’t referring to your cough, which, in any case, sounded clearly faked. I meant that since you smoke, I can smoke, too.”

  And she pulled a pack out of her purse.

  “Well, actually . . .”

  “You mean it’s prohibited here? Do you feel like transgressing a little, for as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette? We can open the window afterwards.”

  She stood up, went to close the door, which had been left open, sat back down, stuck a cigarette between her lips, and leaned towards the inspector so he could light it.

  “So, tell me,” she said, blowing the smoke out her nose.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s you who came here to tell me something . . .”

  “At first. But when you reacted so clumsily to my words, I realized you were already informed of the disappearance. Am I right?”

  The bright-eyed goddess could probably see flutters in the nose hairs of anyone in front of her. He might as well lay his cards on the table.

  “Yes, you are. But shall we proceed in orderly fashion?”

  “Let’s.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “I’ve been in Montelusa for three days, staying at a friend’s house.”

  “If you’re living in Montelusa, even temporarily, then by law you should file your report in—”

  “But the horse had been put in the care of someone from Vigàta.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Saverio Lo Duca.”

  Shit. Saverio Lo Duca was easily one of the richest men in Sicily and had a stable in Vigàta.With four or five prized horses he kept just for the fun of it, for the pleasure of owning them. He never entered them in shows or races. Every so often he would come into town and spend an entire day with the animals. He had powerful friends, and it was always a pain to have any dealings with him, because there was always the danger that one would say the wrong thing and piss outside the urinal.

  “Let me get this straight.You brought your horse along with you when you came to Montelusa?”

  Rachele Esterman gave him a puzzled look.

  “Of course. I had to.”

  “And why’s that?

  “Because, day after tomorrow, at Fiacca, there’s going to be the ladies’ race, the one organized every two years by Baron Piscopo di San Militello.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  It was a bluff. He had never heard of this race.

  “When did you realize the horse had been stolen?”

  “Me? I didn’t realize anything. I received a phone call in Montelusa at dawn this morning from the chief hand at Chichi’s stable.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’m sorry. Chichi is Saverio Lo Duca.”

  “But if you were informed of the disappearance first thing in the morning—”

  “—why did I wait so long to report it?”

  She was smart. But her way of finishing his sentences got on his nerves.

  “Because my sorrel—”

  “Your what? Is that the horse’s na
me? Like Julien Sorel?”

  She laughed heartily, throwing her head backwards.

  “You really don’t know the first thing about horses, do you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Chestnut horses with light manes and tails are called sorrels. As I was saying, my horse—whose name, as it happens, is Super—has a habit of running away from time to time, forcing us to go out and look for him. So they looked for him but then phoned me around three to tell me they hadn’t found him. And I concluded that he hadn’t run away.”

  “I see.You don’t think that, in the meantime, they may have—”

  “They would have called me on the cell phone.”

  She had him light another cigarette.

  “And now give me the bad news.”

  “What makes you surmise that—”

  “Inspector, you’ve been very shrewd. With the excuse that we should proceed in orderly fashion, you’ve avoided answering my question.You’re stalling. And this can mean only one thing. Has he been kidnapped? Should I expect a demand for a great deal of money?”

  “Is he worth a lot?”

  “A fortune. He’s a Thoroughbred English racehorse.”

  What to do? Better tell her everything, in small steps, since he would have to come out with it in the end anyway.

  “He hasn’t been kidnapped.”

  Rachele Esterman leaned back stiffly in her chair, suddenly pale.

  “How can you know that? Have you spoken with anyone at the stable?”

  “No.”

  Looking at her, Montalbano felt as if he could hear the gears whirring in her brain.

  “Is he . . . dead?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman pulled the ashtray towards herself, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and extinguished it with great care.

  “Was he run over by—”

  “No.”

  She must not have understood the meaning of this at once, because she repeated the word “no” several times, under her breath, to herself.

  Then she suddenly understood.

  “Was he killed?”

  “Yes.”

  Without saying a word, she got up, went over to the window, opened it, leaned out with her elbows on the sill. Every so often her shoulders heaved. She was silently crying.