The Dance of the Seagull Page 6

  “There’s a whole sea of water under the ground here!”

  And so the Fradellas dug the first well, and about a hundred feet down the water started coming up nice and fresh. They dug another two, and within about two years’ time, the land, irrigated by a round-the-clock system of pipes and canals, started to turn green. And whatever they planted there grew. In short, those thirty hectares became a sort of paradise on earth. Then the regional government decided to build a new high-speed road between Montelusa and Trapani. A public works project of great importance, the politicians said. The road was to pass straight through Monte Scibetta, and so they dug a tunnel that pierced the mountain from one end to the other. But once the tunnel was finished, everything else came to an end, too. That is, the high-speed road was never made, because the only thing that moved at high speed in the whole affair was the money allocated for it, which raced straight into the pockets of the contractors and local Mafia. And the kicker was that, from one day to the next, the water under the Fradellas’ land, which was right up against the mountain, disappeared. The hole created by the tunnel had shifted the aquifer. And so the land went back to being what it had always been: arid and unproductive.

  Since that time, the dry wells had started being used as convenient, anonymous tombs.

  After the fireman had been lowered into the first well, duly strapped and attached to a windlass, and found nothing, all the men and equipment moved on to the second well. There, the fireman had descended about twenty yards down when he signaled that he wanted to be pulled back out.

  “But he didn’t go down to the bottom,” the inspector observed.

  “Apparently there’s a problem,” said Mallia.

  When he’d returned to the top, the fireman said:

  “I need a mask.”

  “Is there not enough air down there?”

  “There’s enough air, but there’s a terrible smell of rotting flesh.”

  Montalbano felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He turned pale and didn’t even have the strength to speak. He felt like throwing up. Augello spoke in his stead:

  “Did you see . . . whether . . .”

  “I didn’t see anything. I only smelled.”

  Having noticed the change in Montalbano, the fire chief Mallia cut in.

  “It’s not necessarily a human body, you know. It could easily be a sheep or a dog . . .”

  The fireman put on a mask and went back down. Mimì took Montalbano by the arm and pulled him aside.

  “What’s wrong with you? That can’t be Fazio.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because his body wouldn’t have had the time to . . . to be in that condition.”

  Augello was right, but that didn’t prevent Montalbano from continuing to feel a sort of inner trembling.

  “Why don’t you go sit in the car and rest a little? If there’s any new development, I’ll come and get you.”

  “No.”

  He would never have managed to sit still. He needed to walk, maybe even around the well like a donkey attached to a millstone, as the others looked on with concern.

  The fireman came back up.

  “There’s a dead body.”

  Despite Augello’s words, Montalbano felt a wave of nausea overwhelm him. As he leaned against a car, vomiting up his soul, he heard the fireman add:

  “From the look of it, I’d say it’s been there for at least four or five days.”

  “We have to pull it out,” said the chief.

  “That’s not going to be easy,” the fireman commented.

  Montalbano meanwhile had recovered somewhat from the malaise that had come over him. He’d felt a sort of electrical current run through his body from his brain down to the tips of his toes, and a bitter, acidic taste like regurgitation in his mouth. But if the body had been dead for four or five days, then Augello was right, it couldn’t be Fazio. Except that this logical, reassuring consideration had only come afterwards, after the fright had already done its damage. All the same, Fazio’s disappearance was eating him alive. He would have given anything, his money and his health, to find him.

  “Have you got the right equipment for pulling him up?” he asked Mallia.

  “Of course.”

  “Then, Mimì, inform the prosecutor, Forensics, and Dr. Pasquano.”

  “Can we start right away, or do we have to wait for those gentlemen to get here?” the fire chief asked.

  “It’s better to wait. Meanwhile we can go and have a look at the third well.”

  “Are you thinking the person we’re looking for is not the one we found?”

  “At this point I’m absolutely certain.”

  “But—”

  “You have a problem with that?” the inspector asked, immediately turning defensive.

  He wasn’t in the mood for any disagreement at that moment.

  “No,” said Mallia. “I didn’t mean in any way to . . . Listen, we can go and check the third well, just not right now, but as soon as we’re done pulling out the body in this one. Moving the equipment and setting it back up is tiring and complicated, you see. Do you understand?”

  He understood. With a tugging heart, and against his will, he understood.

  “Okay, all right.”

  Zito, who’d been standing aside the whole time, came up to him. He realized the situation his friend was in. He knew what kind of relationship Montalbano and Fazio had.

  “Salvo, do you think I can call the studio?”

  “Why?”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to have someone come and cover this. It’s important for us.”

  He did owe Nicolò a good turn, by way of thanks. If not for him, he would still be searching for Fazio around the port.

  “Go ahead.”

  He started walking alone down the footpath that led to the third well. It went uphill, and after barely ten steps he was out of breath. He was too tired, and his concern for Fazio raged in his mind like a furious wind, preventing him from putting his thoughts in order, from thinking with the least bit of logic. He wasn’t just exhausted; he still felt scared.

  He was waiting, at any moment, to hear some bad news or to see, with his own eyes, what he could never put into words. At last he came to the third well. On the ground beside the opening there were still some rusted remains of what must have once been a large suction pump.

  He sat down on the crumbling wall of the well to rest. The sun beat down hard, and the day had turned hot, but he was in a cold sweat. The ground all around the well was a sort of fine dust like sand, and he noticed some shoeprints on the surface. But since it seldom rained, and there wasn’t much wind in that dead land, he was unable to determine whether they were recent or old. Then he rolled over onto his belly and started gazing down into the well. Total darkness. No, they needed the fireman to go down there. And, at any rate, if Fazio had ended up in there, there wasn’t the slightest chance he might still be alive.

  As the inspector walked back towards the firemen and his own men, he had an idea, and it seemed like a good one to him. He pulled Mimì aside.

  “Listen, Mimì, the fire chief and I agreed that after they pull the body out, we’ll go and check the third well.”

  “Yeah, he told me.”

  “If, as I’m hoping, Fazio’s not in there, I want us to stay behind after everybody else leaves.”

  “To do what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘to do what?’ To look for Fazio. I’m positive he’s around here somewhere.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Fazio was wounded at the port, right? Then they put him in a car and brought him here, right? Once he was here, it’s not like they treated him so well, you know, they kept on punching him, right? Therefore, if they didn’t
kill him and get rid of the body, then Fazio is somewhere around here, still wounded, because it would make no sense for them to put him back in the car and take him back to the port.”

  “But what can we do, in your opinion?”

  “As soon as we’ve taken care of this cadaver, I want you to get in the car, go straight to the commissioner, and tell him everything. We have to organize a large search party.”

  “All right. And what about you?”

  “Me and Gallo, together with Galluzzo and Lamarca, are going to start looking around.”

  “Okay.”

  The traveling circus that normally came together whenever there was a killing took two hours to arrive on the scene from Montelusa. The first to straggle in were the Forensics team, who began taking a few of the thousands of photographs, most of them useless, that they usually took on these occasions. This time they concentrated on the rim of the well and environs. Since Vanni Arquà, the chief of Forensics whom Montalbano didn’t like one bit, wasn’t present, the inspector went up to the guy who was giving orders and told him that it might be a good idea to inspect the drinking trough very carefully, as there could be blood stains on it.

  “But how do you know they held him in the trough before throwing him into the well?” the man asked with a suspicious glint in his eye.

  Shit, the guy was right! Montalbano had made a colossal mistake, confusing Fazio with the corpse in the well! He was completely fried, his head wasn’t working anymore.

  “Just do as I said!” he said sternly.

  The guy replied that he would get to it as soon as he was done with the corpse.

  Then Dr. Pasquano arrived with the ambulance and stretcher bearers and immediately began to bellyache:

  “What are you thinking? That I’m going to go down into the well to examine the corpse? Just pull him out for me, for the love of God!”

  “We have to wait for Prosecutor Tommaseo to get here.”

  “For heaven’s sake, the guy drives so slow the snails pass him on the highway! Next time don’t call me until he’s already here!”

  It wasn’t true. Prosecutor Tommaseo did not go so slowly that the snails passed him on the highway. The reality, known to one and all, was that he drove like a drunken dog. And, in fact, when he arrived on the scene, he said that it had taken him three hours to get there from Montelusa because he’d run off the road twice and a third time had crashed into a tree. He added that in running into the tree, he’d hit his forehead and therefore felt a little confused.

  “Is it a man or a woman?” he asked the fire chief.

  “Man.”

  Immediately Tommaseo lost all interest in the case. All he cared about were corpses of the female variety, preferably naked, and crimes of passion.

  “Okay, okay. Pull him up. Good day.”

  And he turned his back, got into his car, and drove off. Probably towards another tree. Everyone present, without exception, wished him Godspeed to you-know-where.

  This time they added a second sling to the windlass, a large piece of oilcloth with many ropes hanging from its sides. Montalbano felt sorry for the fireman, whose work was not going to be easy or pleasant. It was a job for a gravedigger. And as he was thinking this, the cars, the men, and the landscape started spinning all around him. He lost his balance, and to avoid falling to the ground like an empty sack, he grabbed Mimì’s arm.

  “Salvo, get out of here and go home. I’ll stay and take care of things. You should see your face,” said Mimì.

  “No.”

  “You can’t even stand up!” Zito cut in. “Do me a favor and go sit in the car at least.”

  “No.”

  If he sat down, he would be out like a light in seconds.

  At last, after many attempts and failures, the corpse appeared at the top of the well, wrapped like a mummy in the oilcloth and bound by the ropes, and was set down on the ground and untied.

  Everybody drew near to look, covering their noses and mouths with their handkerchiefs. From what they could tell, it was a man just under sixty years old, completely naked, and in a rather bad state. His face was a pulp of flesh and bone. The fireman went back down into the well.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to go get the blanket that was under the body.”

  Pasquano, meanwhile, had a quick look at the dead man.

  “I can’t do anything here,” he said. “Bring it to the lab for me.”

  “How did he die, Doctor?”

  “What’s wrong with you, Montalbano? Has old age made you blind? Can’t you see they emptied at least an entire cartridge of bullets in his face?”

  The Free Channel team arrived just in the nick of time to film the scene.

  When they were done, Zito approached Montalbano, gave him a big hug, and left with his colleagues.

  As the Forensics team was also leaving, fire chief Mallia came up to the inspector.

  “It might have been better for them to stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we’re unlucky enough to find some remains in the last well, we’ll have to call them all back.”

  “What a tragedy! Listen, please don’t waste any time.”

  Mallia gave an order, and the truck started on towards the third well.

  “Get in the car,” Mimì said to him.

  “No, I’ll walk.”

  They didn’t seem to realize that if he sat down, he was finished.

  When he got to the well, he was drenched in sweat. Lighting a cigarette, he noticed that his hand was trembling. There was nothing to be done about it.

  What was keeping him on his feet was his anticipation of the fireman’s response after he went down into the well.

  How fucking long were they going to take to strap him in?

  “Can’t they move a little faster?” he said in frustration.

  “Calm down, Salvo. They’re moving as fast as they can.”

  At last they began to lower the fireman into the hole. Matre santa, how slow they were doing it! Just taking their merry old time! What, were they doing it just to drive him crazy? He couldn’t stand waiting any longer. Taking a few steps back, he bent down, picked up a rock and threw it against a piece of scrap iron.

  He missed by a good ten feet. He threw another rock and missed again. And again and again . . . After an eternity, he could tell by the sound of the crane that the fireman was coming back up to the surface.

  But when the man got to the rim of the well, he didn’t come all the way out. Only his head was visible. The fire chief drew near and whispered something in his ear. What the hell was this? And at that moment the inspector intercepted a glance between the fire chief and Mimì Augello. It was a matter of a split second, the batting of an eyelash. But enough for him to understand the meaning of it, as though the two had actually spoken.

  “You’ve found him! He’s in the well!”

  He leapt forward, but was blocked by Mimì, who grabbed him and held on tight. Gallo, Galluzzo, and Lamarca, as if by prior arrangement, encircled the two.

  “Come on, Salvo, stop this nonsense,” said Mimì. “Just calm down, for Chrissakes!”

  “Anyway, Chief, we don’t know yet whose body that is,” Gallo interjected.

  “Lamarca, do me a favor and call them all back here: Forensics, the prosecutor, the—” Augello began to say.

  “No!”

  Montalbano shouted so loudly that even the firemen turned around.

  “I’ll tell you when to call them. Got that?” he said, shoving Augello aside.

  Everybody looked at him in bewilderment. Suddenly he no longer felt tired. Now he was standing firm and steady, hands no longer trembling.

  “But why not? We’ll all save time that way,” said Augello.

>   “I don’t want any outsiders to see him, all right? I don’t want it! We’ll cry over him first ourselves, and then we can call the others.”

  6

  Walking with a decisive step, Montalbano went right up to the edge of the well so that he would be the first to see him. Dead silence fell over the scene, so dense that it weighed tons. The noise made by the crane sounded like a drill.

  The inspector then bent his whole body forward, came back up, turned towards his men, and said:

  “It’s not him.”

  Then his legs gave out, and he dropped slowly to his knees. Augello was quick to catch him before he fell on his face.

  Montalbano then confusedly saw someone seize hold of him and put him in the squad car. He saw them lay him down on the backseat. And this was the last thing he saw, because he immediately fell asleep, or lost consciousness, he couldn’t tell which. Gallo drove off like a rocket.

  After he didn’t know how long, he was woken up by a sudden braking that spilled him onto the floor of the car. He cursed the saints. Then he heard Gallo’s voice, also cursing.

  “Motherfucking dog!”

  To his surprise, he realized he felt rested. As if he’d had a whole night’s sleep.

  “How long have we been on the road?”

  “About an hour, Chief.”

  “So we’re near Montereale?”

  “That’s right, Chief.”

  “Have we already passed the Bar Reale?”

  “We’re just coming up to it.”

  “Good. Stop there.”

  “But, Chief, you need to rest and—”

  “Stop at the bar. I’ve had my rest, don’t you worry.”

  He downed two coffees, gave himself a thorough washing in the bathroom, then got back into the car.

  “Let’s go back.”