A Voice in the Night Page 4

  ‘Thanks,’ said Montalbano, and he headed for the manager’s office.

  *

  Borsellino had climbed onto a chair that he’d put on the desk, threaded a rope around a beam, looped the other end around his neck, kicked the chair away, and that was that.

  Montalbano sat down, lit a cigarette, and started studying the corpse – which was swaying ever so slightly first to the right, then to the left, pushed back and forth by a gentle draft.

  Fazio came in.

  ‘I took statements from all the women. Shall I let them go?’

  ‘OK.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Dr Pasquano arrived, fit to be tied.

  ‘There I am, on my way to the club for an important game, only to have you get on my case!’

  ‘Me, on your case? If anything, it’s this corpse here that has.’

  Pasquano had a look at the body.

  ‘Well, looks like a suicide, no?’

  ‘Doctor, you’ll have to forgive me, but it’s very important to me to know at what time of day he died,’ said Montalbano.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s how I feel. I want to be certain about the time of death.’

  ‘I see. But if the prosecutor doesn’t get here, I—’

  ‘Doctor, don’t you think you could get a closer look if you climbed up onto the desk?’

  Swearing, the doctor climbed onto the desk with Fazio’s help and started slowly turning the body like a large, hanging salami.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Quarter to eleven.’

  ‘In my opinion – but I can’t really be sure of it until after the post-mortem – he hanged himself between four and five o’clock this afternoon.’

  ‘He couldn’t have done it around one?’

  ‘I would rule that out.’

  ‘Thanks. Fazio, I’m going home. You wait here for Prosecutor Tommaseo. Good night, Doctor.’

  ‘Hey, what the hell! Would somebody please help me down from here?’ asked the enraged Pasquano.

  FOUR

  He got home too early to go to bed. It would have been a mistake, anyway: he could still feel the octopus struggling in his stomach.

  He got undressed and had a wash, and then, since it was midnight, he turned on the television.

  Immediately the chicken-arse face of Pippo Ragonese, the purse-lipped prince of opinion of TeleVigàta News and Montalbano’s sworn enemy, appeared on the screen.

  . . . is the question this evening. I will review the events as objectively as possible. Upon discovering that the prior day’s proceeds had been stolen during the night, the manager of the Piano Lanterna supermarket, Guido Borsellino, informed the Vigàta Police, and Inspector Augello, the second-in-command of the force, arrived on the scene. After less than half an hour of discussion with Borsellino, the inspector was practically accusing him, in veiled fashion, of having committed the burglary himself. In dismay, Borsellino called Chief Inspector Montalbano, who basically hung up on him. A short while later, however, the peerless Inspector Montalbano turned up at the supermarket, and the two police detectives, without a shred of proof – proof, what am I saying? – without so much as a clue, began to torture – that’s the exact word to use – to torture poor Mr Borsellino with such ferocity that once the interrogation was over, the poor man, upset and out of his mind from the horrible accusations, dismissed his employees for the rest of the day, went into his office, and hanged himself.

  Now, even admitting, for purely academic reasons, as pure hypothesis, that Mr Borsellino, who had no record and was considered a man of great integrity by all, had given in to a momentary temptation and actually committed the theft, this would in no way justify the actions of the inspector and his deputy, which I would characterize as worthy of the Nazis.

  This death is on Inspector Montalbano’s conscience, and I assume full responsibility for this statement. As for his uncivilized, inhumane methods, which dishonour and besmirch our country’s entire police force, an institution that has always . . .

  Before turning the TV off, Montalbano spat at the newsman’s face, recalling that Ragonese had applauded the police after the ‘Mexican butchery’ they’d imported to Genoa for the G8 summit in 2001.

  But he was also convinced that the rascal’s version of events had been passed to him under the table by someone else. All Ragonese had done was read it.

  Clearly showing through the words of Ragonese was the very argument that would be put forward by the Cuffaros’ lawyers, with Mongibello leading the pack. Borsellino himself had stolen the money, and he hadn’t been able to withstand the third degree given him by Montalbano and Augello. The family couldn’t admit to having been betrayed by one of their own; it would have been seen by all as a grave loss of authority.

  In due time, they would quietly take care of the traitor.

  For the first time in his life, a rage too long repressed played a dirty joke on the inspector. He had to run into the bathroom, where he started spitting out all the bitter bile that had come up into his mouth.

  And as he knelt there on the floor with his head half inside the toilet bowl, the telephone started ringing.

  He didn’t manage to answer in time, and the ringing stopped. After he washed his face, it started again.

  It was Livia.

  ‘What were you doing a minute ago, when you didn’t pick up?’

  ‘Do you really want to know? I was spitting up bile.’

  Livia got worried.

  ‘Oh my God! Why?’

  The question made Montalbano angry.

  ‘Just for fun.’

  ‘Don’t be such an idiot! Are you ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you eat too much?’

  ‘No, but I had too much to swallow.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He told her the whole story, starting with the morning encounter with Strangio, getting it all off his chest and barely managing not to cry in rage.

  When the conversation was over, he went and sat on the veranda, smoking a cigarette. Why, he wondered, did Ragonese, and so many others like him of greater importance who wrote for the national newspapers and appeared on more widely watched television programmes, do their jobs the way they did? A serious journalist would have phoned him to learn his version of events, and only after hearing both sides of the story would he have expressed his opinion.

  Whereas journalists like Ragonese only listened to one side of the story: their bosses’ side. And often you couldn’t even say they were doing it for the money.

  Why, then? There was only one answer: because they had a servant’s mentality. They were enthusiastic volunteers of servility; they fell to their knees in the face of Power, no matter which.

  And they couldn’t do anything about it: they were born that way.

  Whatever the case, when the inspector went to bed half an hour later, he fell asleep almost immediately. Apparently his bout of rage had aided his digestion.

  *

  As soon as he was inside the door of police headquarters, just before nine, Catarella intoned the litany:

  ‘Ahh, Chief! Ahh, Chief, Chief!’

  There was no need for the inspector to ask him who had phoned.

  ‘When did he call?’

  ‘Juss now!’

  ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘’E wants ya t’bestake yisself straightawayslike an’ immidiotly t’is office, ’is meanin’ ’im, meanin’ Hizzoner the C’mishner.’

  ‘All right, then, I’ll go. I’ll be back as soon as I can get free.’

  As he started the car, he noticed he’d run out of petrol. All things considered, the nearest garage was the one where he’d had the run-in with Strangio. Speaking of which, he really had to have that window replaced; it was cracked, making it rather dangerous to keep driving around with it in that condition.

  There was no wait; the attendant, whose name was Luicino, came up to his car at once.

  ‘Top it u
p, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes.’

  When it came time to pay, Luicino shook his head, as if to say he didn’t want any money. What was this?

  ‘It’s a present, Inspector, from me to you.’

  Montalbano started the car, went and put it in the parking area, then dug into his wallet, took out the money – having earlier read the amount on the pump – got out of the car, and went back to the filling area.

  The attendant was in his booth. Without a word, but glaring hard at him, Montalbano plopped the notes down in front of him. Luicino looked at them and, without so much as taking a breath, put the money into a pocket of his greasy overalls.

  ‘Now explain to me the reason for this grand gesture on your part.’

  Luicino seemed very ill at ease.

  ‘Inspector, it’s ’cause yesterday I didn’t act right. I wanted to say I was sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For what I told the lawyer.’

  ‘The lawyer of the kid with the BMW?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him you parked in front of his car, and that was why he couldn’t pull out.’

  ‘So? You told him the truth.’

  ‘But I didn’t even want to tell him that! I wanted to deny everything out of respect for you! I wanted to say I didn’t see nothing!’

  ‘So why did you change your mind?’

  ‘He made me!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He mentioned my complaint with the province, which wants to close this garage. ’Cause I made an appeal. And this lawyer knew all about the case, to the point that he told me that if I didn’t . . .’

  ‘I’ll be seeing you, Luì,’ said Montalbano.

  He got back in his car and drove to Montelusa.

  Nice people! They made no bones about blackmailing some poor bastard if he didn’t do as they said. The lawyer Nero Duello could soak himself in all the cologne he wanted, he would still come out smelling like a sewer. Him and his boss, the honourable president of the province.

  *

  ‘The commissioner is busy at the moment. He told me to tell you not to leave, but to please have a seat in the waiting room,’ said an usher sitting outside the door to the office.

  The waiting room was so dingy that after Montalbano had been in it barely five minutes he started having suicidal thoughts.

  On the little table was one lone magazine: Polizia Moderna. The inspector started reading it from page one. By the time he’d finished, an hour had gone by.

  He got up and went over to the usher.

  ‘Still busy?’

  ‘Yes. He asked whether you were already here and wants you to keep waiting.’

  ‘How much longer will he be?’

  ‘If you ask me, another two hours.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He went out into the hallway and instead of going back to the waiting room he kept walking, took the stairs to the ground floor, went outside, got in his car, and drove back to Vigàta.

  *

  He’d been back in his office for about half an hour when Dr Pasquano rang. This was unusual. Whenever Montalbano wanted to know the results of a post-mortem, he had to go to the doctor’s lab and put up with a barrage of insults, slights, and obscenities before he got any information.

  Pasquano not only did not have a nice disposition, but his customary bad mood always worsened if he had lost at poker the previous evening at the club.

  ‘I wanted to duly inform you that yesterday evening, in spite of your untimely efforts at aggravation, I still had time to go to the club and win. Three hours of pure luck. I had a full house, four of a kind, and a royal flush!’

  ‘Congratulations on your run of luck.’

  ‘You can even call it by its proper name: culo.’

  And he hung up. But Montalbano kept his hand close to the receiver, because he’d realized that that phone call was all theatre. In fact, less than a minute later, the phone rang again.

  ‘Ah, I almost forgot. I had also wanted to tell you – quite secondarily, mind you – that this morning I worked on the body of the hanged man. I confirm it.’

  ‘You confirm what?’

  ‘That he got himself hanged, so to speak, around four in the afternoon. He still had what little he’d eaten for lunch in his stomach.’

  ‘Why do you say he got himself hanged?’

  ‘Does the idea upset you? Don’t play innocent with me! And don’t tell me you didn’t suspect as much!’

  ‘OK, I won’t. But what did you discover?’

  ‘I think he was strangled with somebody’s bare hands. They immobilized him by holding his arms so tight that they left bruises. There were at least two killers. The rope, the beam, and the chair were all props to make it look like a suicide.’

  ‘Are you one hundred per cent certain?’

  ‘No. In fact I’m not going to mention it in the report.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because in court a good lawyer could come up with a hundred explanations for the bruises.’

  ‘But if you don’t express your opinion officially, how am I going to take any action?’

  ‘Up yours,’ said Dr Pasquano, with his customarily exquisite politeness.

  And he hung up.

  *

  ‘I heard that complete bastard Ragonese on TV last night,’ Mimì Augello said as he came in. ‘Can’t we do anything to defend ourselves?’

  ‘What do you want to do? Sue him? You’d be lucky if the law gave you satisfaction in three or four years, by which time everyone will have forgotten the whole thing.’

  ‘It makes my palms itch so badly I can’t tell you. One of these days, if I see him in the street, I’m going to knock him out.’

  ‘Mimì, if your palms itch, get your wife to scratch them. Anyway, aside from the nonsense and insults, Ragonese gave you the answer you were looking for.’

  ‘Gave me the answer?!’

  ‘Yes indeed. Yesterday you said you had your doubts about the fact that the outside door hadn’t been forced, and you said they’d made a big mistake by using the keys. Whereas Ragonese indirectly let you know that the thief purposely arranged things to set Borsellino up and make him look like the culprit.’

  ‘That makes me feel even worse! It means that not only is that journalist an idiot, but he’s a rogue with multiple ties to the Cuffaros.’

  ‘Those are your conclusions,’ said Montalbano.

  Mimì went out even more upset than when he’d come in, practically colliding with Fazio in the doorway.

  ‘You’ve come at just the right moment,’ the inspector said to Fazio. ‘There’s something I need to know. Try and find out what night-time security service the supermarket employs.’

  Fazio smiled.

  ‘Already taken care of.’

  Fazio was undoubtedly a terrifically good policeman, but whenever he used that phrase, it made Montalbano want to box his ears, just as Mimì wanted to do to Ragonese.

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘There’s nobody, Chief. There was no need. Everybody knew that the supermarket belonged to the Cuffaros. And so no thief in his right mind would ever dream of burgling it. However . . .’

  ‘However?’

  ‘Right next door there’s a branch office of the Banca Regionale. And you can be sure they subscribe to a night-time security service. Any nightwatchman checking on the bank would have to pass in front of the supermarket. Shall I look into it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  At that moment the outside line rang. Montalbano picked up the receiver almost automatically. He froze in terror. What he was hearing was surely a human voice, but one that was imitating some enormous prehistoric animal along the lines of Tyrannosaurus rex.

  ‘Mooooo . . . aaaaa . . . nooooo!’

  Moano? Was that a surname? Or the masculine form of Moana?

  Good thing he wasn’t Moano, because talking to a Judgement Day trumpet would have been rat
her awkward.

  ‘You have the wrong number,’ he said.

  And he hung up.

  ‘Shall I go, then?’ Fazio asked.

  ‘Go.’

  Fazio left and the phone rang again. When he picked up the receiver, Montalbano held it at a safe distance from his ear, as a precaution.

  ‘Inspector Montalbano? This is Lattes.’

  The chief of Hizzoner Mr C’mishner’s cabinet was nicknamed ‘Lattes e Mieles’ for his priestly, simpering way of talking.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

  ‘The commissioner wants to see you at once. He asked me to call you, because he had to run to the toilet.’

  He couldn’t hold it in? This was no doubt precious information, but Montalbano didn’t quite know what to do with it. Then he had a revelation that made his blood turn cold.

  ‘Was . . . he . . . the p . . . person who rang me a moment ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Matre santa, what had happened to him? Had he turned into a giant reptile?

  ‘I’m sorry, but why was the commissioner talking that way?’

  ‘Because he was beside himself with anger. Because of you.’

  ‘Me?!’

  ‘It is my duty to inform you that the commissioner is very angry with you for the mess you’ve made—’

  ‘That I’ve made?! What have I—’

  ‘And above all because you were unwilling to wait for his meeting to end, as he had asked you to do.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And why did you hang up on him just a few minutes ago? Come without a moment’s delay, I beg you. Come immediately. Fly. For the love of God, don’t make him even more upset!’

  ‘But the fact is that I took him for a—’

  He managed to stop himself in time. Could he really say he’d mistaken him for a dinosaur?

  ‘Come at once, please.’

  What the fuck! So that wild, tropical-forest voice belonged to Hizzoner the C’mishner Bonetti-Alderighi? You could say a great many things about the man, but not that he was uncivilized. The man must be enraged to death. Two options, therefore, remained for the inspector: either go and let himself be mauled like an ancient Roman in the Colosseum, or shoot himself immediately in the head. He opted for the first.