IM4 The Voice of the Violin (2003)

by Andrea Camilleri

  'He's in the hospital'

  'Eh? What happened?' Montalbano asked, worried.

  'Hit on the head with a stone. They gave him three stitches. But they wanted to keep him there for observation and told me to come back at eight tonight. If everything's all right, 'I'll drive him home.'

  The inspector's string of curses was interrupted by Catarella.

  'Chief, Chief! First of all, Dr Latte with an s at the end called two times. He says as how you're asposta call him poissonally back straightaway. Then there was tree other phone calls I wrote down on dis little piece a paper.'

  'Wipe your arse with it.'

  Dr Emanuele Licalzi was a diminutive man in his sixties, with gold-rimmed glasses and dressed all in grey. He looked as if he'd just been pressed, shaved and manicured. Impeccable.

  'How did you get here?'

  'You mean from the airport? I rented a car and it took me almost three hours'

  'Have you already been to your hotel?'

  'No. I've got my suitcase in the car. I'll go there afterwards'

  How could he be so wrinkle-free?

  'Shall we go to the house? We can talk in the car, that way you'll save time'

  'As you wish, Inspector'

  They took the doctor's rented car.

  'Did one of her lovers kill her?'

  He didn't beat around the bush, this Emanuele Licalzi.

  'We can't say yet. One thing is certain: she had repeated sexual intercourse'

  The doctor didn't flinch, but kept on driving, calm and untroubled, as if it wasn't his wife who'd just been killed.

  'What makes you think she had a lover here?'

  'Because she had one in Bologna.'

  'Ah'

  'Yes, Michela even told me his name. Serravalle, I think. An antiquarian.' 'That's rather unusual'

  'She used to tell me everything. She really trusted me.' 'And did you also tell your wife everything?' 'Of course.'

  'An exemplary marriage' the inspector commented ironically.

  Montalbano sometimes felt irretrievably left behind by the new lifestyles. He was a traditionalist. For him, an 'open relationship' meant nothing more than a husband and wife who cheated on each other and even had the gall to tell each other what they did under or on top of the covers.

  'Not an exemplary marriage,' the unflappable Dr Licalzi corrected him, 'but a marriage of convenience.' 'For Michela or you?' 'For both of us.' 'Could you explain?' 'Certainly.' He turned right

  'Where are you going?' the inspector asked. 'This road won't take you to Tre Fontane.'

  'Sorry,' said the doctor, beginning a complex manoeuvre to turn the car round. 'But I haven't been down here for a year and a half, ever since I got married. Michela saw to all the construction herself; I've only seen photographs. Speaking of photographs, I packed a few of Michela in my suitcase. I thought they might be of some use to you.'

  'You know what? The murder victim might not even be your wife.'

  'Are you serious?'

  'Yes. Nobody has officially identified the body, and none of the people who've seen it actually knew her when she was alive. When we've finished here, I'll talk to the pathologist about identifying her. How long do you plan on staying?'

  'Two, three days at the most. I want to take Michela back to Bologna.'

  'Doctor, I'm going to ask you a question, and I won't ask you again. Where were you Wednesday evening, and what were you doing?'

  'Wednesday? I was at the hospital, operating late into the night'

  'You were telling me about your marriage.'

  'Yes. Well, I met Michela three years ago. Her brother, who lives in New York now, had a rather severe compound fracture in his foot and she brought him to the hospital. I liked her at once. She was very beautiful, but what struck me most was her character. She was always ready to see the bright side of things. She lost both her parents before the age of fifteen and was brought up by an uncle who one day saw fit to rape her. To make a long story short she was desperate to find a place to live. For years she was the mistress of an industrialist but he eventually disposed of her with a tidy sum of money that helped her get along for .a while. Michela could have had any man she wanted, but basically, it humiliated her to be a kept woman.'

  'Did you ask Michela to become your mistress, and she refused?'

  For the first time, a hint of a smile appeared on Emanuele Licalzi's impassive face.

  'You re on the wrong track entirely. Inspector. Oh, by the way, Michela told me she'd bought a bottle-green Twingo to get around town. Do you know what's become of it?'

  It had an accident.'

  'Michela never did know how to drive.'

  'Your wife was entirely without fault in this case. The car was properly parked in front of the drive to the house and somebody ran into it.'

  'And how do you know this?'

  It was us, the police, who ran into it. At the time, however, we still didn't know---'

  'What an odd story.'

  'I'll tell it to you sometime. Anyhow, it was the accident that led us to discover the body.'

  'Do you think I could have the car back?'

  'I don't see any reason why not.'

  'I could resell it to somebody in Vigata who deals in used cars, don't you think?'

  Montalbano didn't answer. He didn't give a shit about what happened to the car.

  'That's the house there on the right, isn't it? I think I recognize it from the photograph.'

  'That's it.'

  Dr Licalzi executed an elegant manoeuvre, pulled up in front of the drive, got out of the car, and stood looking at the house with the detached curiosity of a sightseer.

  'Nice. What did we come here for?'

  'I don't really know, truth be told,' Montalbano said grumpily. Dr Licalzi knew how to get on his nerves. He decided to shake him up a little.

  'You know, some people think it was Maurizio Di Blasi, the son of your cousin the engineer, who killed your wife.'

  'Really.' I don't know him. When I came here two and a half years ago, he was in Palermo for his studies. I'm told the poor boy's a half-wit.'

  So there.

  'Shall we go inside?'

  'Wait, I don't want to forget.'

  He opened the boot of the car, took out the elegant suitcase that was inside, and removed a large envelope from it.

  'The photos of Michela.'

  Montalbano slipped it in his jacket pocket. As he was doing this, the doctor extracted a bunch of keys from his own pocket,

  'Are those to the house?'

  Yes. I knew where Michela kept them at our place in Bologna. They're the extra set,'

  Now I'm going to start kicking the guy, thought the inspector.

  'You never finished telling me why your marriage was as convenient for you as it was for your wife.'

  'Well, it was convenient for Michela because she was marrying a rich man, even if he was thirty years older, and it was convenient for me because it put to rest certain rumours that were threatening to harm me at a crucial moment of my career. People had started saying I'd become a homosexual, since nobody'd seen me socially with a woman for more than ten years.'

  'And was it true you no longer frequented women?'

  'Why would I, Inspector? At age fifty I became impotent. Irreversibly.'

  EIGHT

  'Nice' said Dr Licalzi again after having a look around the living room.

  Didn't he know how to say anything else?

  'Here's the kitchen' the inspector said, adding, 'Eat in.'

  All of a sudden he felt enraged at himself. How did that 'eat in' slip out? What was it supposed to mean? He felt like an estate agent showing a house to a prospective client.

  'Next to it is the bathroom. Go and have a look yourself' he said rudely.

  The doctor didn't notice, or pretended not to notice, the tone of voice. He opened the bathroom door, stuck his head in for the briefest of peeks and reclosed it.

  'Nice.'

  Montalba
no felt his hands trembling. He distinctly saw the newspaper headline:

  police inspector goes suddenly berserk, attacks husband of murder victim.

  'Upstairs there's a small guest room, a large bathroom and the main bedroom. Go up.'

  The doctor obeyed. Montalbano remained downstairs in the living room, lit a cigarette, and took the envelope of photographs of Michela out of his pocket. Gorgeous. Her face, which he had only seen distorted in pain and horror, had a smiling, open expression.

  Finishing his cigarette, he realized the doctor hadn't come back down.

  'Dr Licalzi?'

  No answer. He bounded up the stairs. The doctor was standing in a corner of the bedroom, hands covering his face, shoulders heaving as he sobbed.

  The inspector was mystified. This was the last reaction he would have expected. He went up to Licalzi and put a hand on his back.

  'Try to be brave.'

  The doctor shrugged him off with an almost childish gesture and kept on weeping, face hidden in his hands. 'Poor Michela! Poor Michela!'

  It wasn't put on. The tears, the sorrowful voice, were real.

  Montalbano took him firmly by the arm. 'Let's go downstairs.'

  The doctor let himself be led, moving away without looking at the bed, the shredded, bloodstained sheet. He was a physician, and he knew what Michela must have felt during her last moments alive. But if Licalzi was a physician, Montalbano was a policeman, and as soon as he saw him in tears, he knew the man would no longer be able to maintain the mask of indifference he'd put on. The armour of detachment he customarily wore, perhaps to compensate for the disgrace of impotence, had fallen apart,

  'Forgive me,' said Licalzi, sitting down in an armchair. 'I didn't imagine .. .It's just horrible to die like that. The killer held her face down against the mattress, didn't he?'

  'Yes.'

  'I was very fond of Michela, very. She had become like a daughter to me, you-know.'

  Tears started streaming down his face again, and he wiped them away, without much success, with a handkerchief.

  'Why did she decide to build this house here instead of somewhere else?' the inspector asked.

  'She had always mythologized Sicily, without ever knowing the place. The first time she came for a visit, she became enchanted with it. I think she wanted to create a refuge for herself here. See that little display cabinet? Those are her things in there, personal trinkets she brought down with her from Bologna. It says a lot about her intentions, don't you think?'

  'Do you want to check and see if anything's missing?'

  The doctor got up and went over to the display cabinet.

  'May I open it?'

  'Of course.'

  The doctor stared at it a long time, then raised a hand and picked up the old violin case, opened it, showed the inspector the instrument that was inside, reclosed it, put it back in its place, and shut the door.

  'At a glance, there doesn't seem to be anything missing'

  'Did your wife play the violin?'

  'No, she didn't play the violin or any other instrument. It belonged to her maternal grandfather from Cremona, who made them. And now, Inspector, if it's all right with you, I want you to tell me everything.'

  Montalbano told him everything, from the accident on Thursday morning to what Dr Pasquano had reported to him.

  Emanuele Licalzi, when it was over, remained silent for a spell, then said only two words, 'Genetic fingerprinting'

  'I'm not really up on scientific jargon.' 'Sorry. I was referring to the disappearance of her clothes and shoes.' 'Might be a decoy.'

  'Maybe. But it might also be that the killer felt he had no choice but to get rid of them'

  'Because he'd soiled them?' asked Montalbano, thinking of Signora Clementina's thesis.

  'The coroner said there was no trace of seminal fluid, right?'

  'Yes'

  'That reinforces my hypothesis, that the killer didn't want to leave the slightest biological trace that could be used in DNA testing -- that's what I meant by genetic fingerprinting. Real fingerprints can be wiped away, but what can you do about semen, hair, skin? The killer tried to make a clean sweep.'

  'Right,' said the inspector.

  'Excuse me, but if you don't have anything else to tell me, I'd like to leave this place. I'm starting to feel tired.'

  The doctor locked the front door with his key, Montalbano put the seals back in place, and they left.

  'Have you got a mobile phone?'

  The doctor handed him his. The inspector called Pasquano, and they decided on ten o'clock the following morning for identifying the body.

  'Will you come, too?'

  'I should, but I can't, I have an engagement outside of Vigata. I'll send one of my men for you, and he can take you there.'

  He had Licalzi drop him off at the first houses on the outskirts of town. He needed a little walk.

  'Chief! Chief! Dr Latte with an s at the end called tree times, more and more pissed off each time, with all due respect. You're asposta call 'im 'mediately in poisson.'

  'Hello, Dr Lattes? Montalbano here.'

  'Thank heavens! Come to Montelusa immediately, the commissioner wants to talk to you.'

  He hung up. It must be something serious, since the Caffe-Lattes wasn't even lukewarm.

  As he was turning the key in the ignition, he saw a squad car pull up with Galluzzo at the wheel.

  'Any news of Inspector Augello?'

  'Yeah, the hospital called to say they were discharging him. I went and picked him up and drove him home.'

  To hell with the commissioner and his urgency. He stopped at Mimi's first.

  'How are you feeling, you intrepid defender of capital?'

  'My head feels like it could burst' That'll teach you.'

  Mimi Augello was sitting in an armchair, head bandaged, face pale.

  'I once got clobbered on the head by some guy with a blackjack. They had to give me seven stitches, and I still wasn't in as bad a shape as you.'

  'I guess you thought you took your clobbering for a worthy cause. You got to feel clobbered and gratified at the same time.'

  'Mimi, when you put your mind to it you can be a real arsehole.'

  You too, Salvo. I was going to phone you tonight to tell you I don't think I'm in any condition to drive tomorrow.'

  We'll go to your sister's another time.'

  'No, you go ahead, Salvo. She was so insistent on seeing you.'

  'But do you know why?' 'I haven't the slightest idea.'

  'Listen, tell you what. I'll go, but I want you to go to the Hotel Jolly tomorrow morning at nine thirty to pick up Dr Licalzi, who arrived today, and take him to the mortuary. OK?'

  'How are you, old friend? Eh? You look a bit down. Chin up, old boy. Sursum corda! That's what we used to say in the days of Azione Cattolica.'

  The Caffe-Lattes had warmed up dangerously. Montalbano began to feel worried.

  'I'll go and inform the commissioner at once.'

  He vanished, then reappeared.

  'The commissioner's momentarily unavailable. Come, let me show you into the waiting room. Would you like a coffee or something else to drink?'

  'No, thank you.'

  Dr Lattes, after flashing him a broad, paternal smile, disappeared. Montalbano felt certain the commissioner had condemned him to a slow and painful death. The garrotte, perhaps.

  On the table in the dismal little waiting room there was a magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, and a newspaper,

  L'Osscrvatore Romano, manifest signs of Dr Lattes's presence in the commissioner's office. He picked up the magazine and began reading an article on Susanna Tamaro. Inspector! Inspector!'

  A hand was shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw a uniformed policeman.

  'The commissioner is waiting for you.'

  Jesus! He'd fallen into a deep sleep. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was eight o'clock. The fucker had made him wait two hours.

  'Good evening, Mr Commissioner.'r />