Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  So, until proven otherwise, Saverio Donzello did not leave the movie theater to go and buy cigarettes, as he’d told his father.

  “We have to catch him immediately,” said Montalbano.

  They started running back to the cinema, where the inspector had left his car. Fazio felt his heart racing: Never had he seen his boss so worried.

  8

  Although the Donzellos’ house was on the far outskirts of town, practically in the open country, they got there in the twinkling of an eye. The inspector had never before tried to drive so fast. You could say a lot of things about Inspector Montalbano, but not that he was someone who knew what to do at the wheel. He missed hitting a stray dog by a hair, while the driver of a Fiat 500 coming in the opposite direction looked death straight in the eye.

  Montalbano pulled up right outside the front door of the house. Everyone got out and had a good look at the place from the outside. No light filtered through the shutters. The house was in total darkness. Saverio Donzello might be hiding inside by a window, waiting for them with a gun in hand—or then again he might not. The only way to find out was to try. The inspector handed the keys to Fazio, who opened the door. Montalbano went in first and turned on the lights.

  They found themselves in a large living room, nicely furnished with nineteenth-century pieces, though a little lugubrious in taste.

  “Saverio!” Montalbano called.

  No reply. Just to be sure, Augello and Fazio both drew their guns, almost simultaneously. They had a thorough look around the ground floor, which consisted of the very large living room, a kitchen, a small bedroom-study, and a bathroom. They found nothing. Not only was there not a soul around, but the rooms, however perfectly clean, gave the impression that they hadn’t been lived in for a while.

  They went carefully upstairs. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms. They opened the armoires, looked under the beds. Nobody.

  Only one of the three bedrooms looked regularly inhabited, given the big mess it was in. The same for one of the three bathrooms. That left the top floor, which consisted of one very large room, a study with a worktable in the middle. Thousands of books everywhere, on shelves, on the floor, in stacks and piles. It immediately looked to the inspector like a replica of Alcide Maraventano’s study. And it took him only one glance to realize that he was looking at a specialized library full of esoteric books on magic, philosophy, history of religions, and so on. The curious thing was that they didn’t look like books that had been recently bought. The newest one must have been a good forty years old.

  At any rate, there could no longer be any doubt: The animal killer, the man who thought he was God, finally had a first and last name. Montalbano felt half-satisfied, but the other half of him felt, if that was possible, even more scared. Yes, he had succeeded in making the madman make a bad move, but the game wasn’t over yet. In fact, it hadn’t even begun.

  “This is our man,” said Montalbano. “And it’s a good thing he didn’t stay at the movie theater. He had all the D’s he could have wanted there.”

  At that moment Fazio, who was rifling through the drawers of the desk, made a discovery.

  “He left his pistol here. It’s a 7.65.”

  Montalbano’s initial reply was to slap himself in the forehead.

  “You stupid fuck!” he exclaimed.

  Mimì and Fazio both turned and looked at him saucer-eyed.

  “You talking to me?” they asked in unison.

  The inspector didn’t clarify that he’d actually meant himself.

  “Lock this house up and come with me, quick!”

  They obeyed, not daring to ask why. Without any prior arrangement having been made, this time it was Augello who sat down behind the wheel. They’d seen too much on the ride out there, and the inspector didn’t protest.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the cemetery.”

  As he was taking a curve practically on two wheels, Augello, upon hearing Montalbano’s reply, went into a brief skid.

  “Mimì, perhaps you don’t realize that we’re supposed to get there alive.”

  “Would you please tell me what we’re going there for?” asked Fazio, trying to make the question sound as respectful as possible.

  “You both should know that the day I went to the funeral for Galluzzo’s mother . . .”

  He trailed off.

  “Well?” said Mimì.

  But Montalbano was following a thought in his head.

  “Fazio, do you know this Saverio Donzello?”

  Suffering from what Montalbano called a “records office complex,” Fazio knew the life story of many of the inhabitants of Vigàta.

  “He’s forty-two years old. He taught high school in Montelusa and lived an orderly life until three years ago, when his whole world changed.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “He lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. The little girl was in the first grade. He wasn’t there—his wife was driving. Since then he’s been living alone in the house his grandfather left him. The one we just visited, I think. He quit his job and doesn’t feel like doing much of anything anymore. He hardly ever goes outside.”

  The entrance gate of the cemetery was locked. They knocked at the door of the sexton’s house, which was right beside it.

  “Open up! Police!”

  The sexton appeared, cursing. He was the same one Montalbano had already met.

  “Unlock the gate.”

  “Welcome,” said the man, opening the gate and standing aside.

  “You come with us,” said Montalbano, who didn’t want any guff. “Listen,” he continued, “has Saverio Donzello been around here lately?”

  “He certainly has. Ever since his wife and daughter died, he comes practically every day. He’s the first to come in and the last to leave. Bah. Poor bastard. He’s no longer all there in the head.”

  “And what does he do when he comes?”

  “He holes himself up in the family vault and prays. At least that’s what he’s told me and my assistants. He’s always carrying a small sort of suitcase. He says he’s got prayer books inside.”

  “But you don’t really know what he’s doing when he’s inside the vault.”

  “No, Inspector, it’s got tinted windows. But what do you think the poor guy’s going to be doing in there? He’s praying, I tell you. One time he talked to me about it. He said that he’d found a way to bring his wife and daughter back to life. The guy’s nuts. We can’t do nothin’ about it. That’s some bad stuff that happened to him.”

  They reached the Donzello family chapel.

  “Have you got the key?”

  “No, sir, but it don’t take much to open the door. If you’ll allow me and step aside for just a second . . .”

  Despite the darkness in the cemetery, Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other in amazement. The sexton was showing himself to be a very able lock picker. But at that moment they had other things on their mind.

  With the light turned on, the inside of the vault proved to be clean as a whistle and in perfect order. There were fresh flowers in front of the niches of Saverio Donzello’s wife and daughter. Maybe the poor guy really did come only to pray. But then the inspector noticed a sort of dark rectangle on the floor beside the altar. He went up to it. It was an open trapdoor; the thick slab that served to shut it was leaning against the wall. He bent down to look inside, but it was too dark.

  “Where does this lead?”

  “To the mortuary chamber,” replied the sexton, “where you put old coffins or fresh corpses waiting for a place to be buried. But I’m a little surprised to see that.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t expect it from him. You need authorization to open the chamber. And Signor Donzello never asked us for it. An’ you’re not supposed to leave it open.”
/>   “Is there a light down there?”

  Without answering, the sexton flipped a light switch near the entrance.

  “Signor Donzello had it put in a couple of years ago.”

  They went down in single file, the inspector leading the way. The chamber was as large as the chapel above. The walls were unplastered. Three old coffins were arranged in the middle of the space. They’d been moved to free up the walls. And all four walls, up to a height of about six feet, were literally upholstered with sticks of dynamite. The sticks’ fuses were bound together and linked up with a fatter, longer fuse that needed only to be lit to blow the whole place up.

  “Holy shit!” said Augello, almost under his breath.

  “So that’s what he was carrying in his suitcase! Prayer books, right!” said the sexton, wiping his brow with his hand.

  “We got here just in time. He was going to light the fuse tomorrow, on All Souls’ Day, when the cemetery was packed. Let’s go.”

  They climbed back up in silence, each lost in thought. Once outside the vault, Montalbano said to Fazio:

  “Get me Gallo on the cell phone.”

  “Hello? Montalbano here. How are things over there?”

  “All relatively calm, Chief.”

  “Listen, I want you to send someone here to the cemetery—Imbrò or whoever you want. The sexton will show him which tomb he needs to guard, and I don’t want him to move even one step from his post.”

  “I’ll send him right away, Chief. But I wanted to tell you something: That guy, Saverio Donzello, came back and is sitting in the parquet. He excused himself, saying that he had to take care of something really urgent before being shut up inside the movie theater.”

  Montalbano felt his blood run cold.

  As soon as Gallo saw them getting out of the car, which had pulled in as fast as a bullet, he went up to them.

  “Where is he? Where is he?” asked Montalbano, panting heavily as if he, and not the car, had been racing.

  Gallo looked at him confusedly, being in the dark about everything.

  “He sat down in the last row. He’s alone. All the other seats in that row are empty. But what’s going on?”

  “Just listen to me and think before answering. Did he seem, I dunno, agitated or strange?”

  “Well, yeah, a little. But they’re all a bit agitated in there.”

  “Was he carrying anything?”

  “Yeah, one of those big handbags like women use when they go shopping.”

  “Good God!” Mimì blurted out.

  “But what’s going on?” Gallo asked again, getting more and more worried seeing how worried everyone else was.

  “You stay here in the lobby,” said the inspector. “I’m going inside to have a look.”

  He was ready for anything, except for Signor Mezzano to have had the brilliant idea of projecting cartoons, which now had the audience laughing and commenting. A few oldsters were sleeping.

  Montalbano saw Saverio Donzello at once: He was alone with his head down, engrossed in the insane thoughts swirling around in his brain. The inspector approached him slowly. Donzello didn’t even notice, and didn’t move. Montalbano’s eyes searched carefully on the floor beside the man, but didn’t find what he was looking for. And so he bent down as if to tie his shoe. This time he was sure: The large handbag wasn’t there.

  He left the auditorium.

  “He hid the bag somewhere before going and sitting down. We have to find it.”

  They searched all over the lobby, between the curtains, behind the flower vases, inside the box office. Nothing. The inspector looked at his watch: one minute past midnight.

  It was already the Day of the Dead. He had no more time to waste. He had to take immediate action. Saverio Donzello might have a remote control device in his pocket that could at any moment set off the explosives in the handbag, wherever he happened to have hidden it.

  “We have to arrest him,” he said. “But we need to go about this carefully. You, Fazio, should go into the auditorium to the aisle behind him and make sure he isn’t holding anything in his hand. If he is, hit him in the head and put him out of commission. If he doesn’t have anything in his hand, grab him and make sure he’s unable to put his hands in his pockets. Got that?”

  “Got it,” said Fazio.

  “Mimì will go in after you and give you a hand. Then I’ll come in right behind him. It’s important that we arrest him with as little commotion as possible. If anyone notices and starts yelling, it could create a panic—the worst thing that could possibly happen. Now let’s go!”

  Fazio went in, and five seconds later, Augello came in behind him. When the inspector finally entered the auditorium, he stopped dead in his tracks. Saverio Donzello was gone, and Fazio and Augello were just standing there looking at him, speechless.

  Obeying a gesture from Montalbano, Fazio started going quickly up and down the central aisle, looking to his right and left.

  “He’s not here,” he said, coming back to the inspector’s side.

  Montalbano had a plan and knew that he had at most a few minutes left.

  “You,” he said breathlessly to Mimì, “have them stop the projection, thank everyone for having cooperated, and send everyone home as quickly as you can. Tell them the danger has passed. And ask them to be orderly and not make any trouble. I want the cinema emptied in five minutes’ time.”

  Mimì dashed off.

  “You come with me,” the inspector said to Fazio.

  He headed decisively towards a door covered by a thick curtain over which, in neon lettering, was the word: RESTROOMS. They went into the first one, the women’s room. The doors to the four stalls were open. There was nobody there. In the men’s room, the door to one stall was closed from the inside.

  Montalbano and Fazio exchanged a glance and understood each other: Saverio Donzello had to be behind that door. In the silence they could distinctly hear his labored breathing, which sounded like a rattle.

  The inspector tasted blood in his mouth. He must have bitten his tongue. His teeth were clenched so tightly that his jaws hurt.

  Montalbano explained his plan through gestures. He would count to three on his fingers, whereupon Fazio was to thrust his shoulder into the door and break it open. Fazio nodded to show that he’d understood, and handed the inspector his pistol. Montalbano refused it and started counting.

  Fazio slammed his shoulder into the door so hard that it flew off its hinges. Montalbano was quick to pull it outside the stall. The sight that greeted them was worse than a nightmare.

  In his hand Saverio Donzello was holding a kerosene torch. At his feet lay some thirty sticks of dynamite. The handbag was in the corner, empty. Donzello didn’t move. His wild eyes probably didn’t even see the two men standing in front of him.

  Then Fazio, to his utter confusion, saw his superior bow deeply, his hand over his heart.

  “Your greatness, I beg you to forgive my boldness and listen to me. Please deign to cast your gaze upon me!”

  Montalbano took two slow steps forward, head bowed, and bent down on one knee.

  “Your greatness, let your humble servant carry out your great task! Grant me the grace of lighting the flame!”

  Fazio likewise fell to his knees, arms spread in a gesture of devout entreaty.

  Donzello gazed at them. Then, moving as though in slow motion, as a happy smile broke out on his face, he extended his arm and handed Montalbano the torch.

  Fazio sprang forward and grabbed the man by the arm. Saverio Donzello’s face twisted up into a frown.

  “You tricked me! You tricked me!”

  He didn’t try to struggle free. Big tears started streaming down his face.

  “I could have brought them back, don’t you see? I could have had them back again with me! With me! In my light! For all eternity!”r />
  Montalbano understood. The meaning of those desperate words shook him to the core. He threw the torch into a sink, left the bathroom, and went back into the auditorium, which was now empty.

  He sat down and just stayed there, staring at the blank screen. He felt as if he was suffocating under a dense, heavy blanket of disconsolate melancholy.

  A short while later, Fazio came and sat down in the seat next to his.

  “Inspector Augello’s taking him to a clinic in Montelusa. I’ve already spoken with the father and the brother.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They can hardly believe what’s happened. They didn’t know Saverio went out at night. All they knew was that he would spend all day reading his grandfather’s books. What kind of books were they, do you know?”

  “They were the books of a Kabbalist.”

  “You mean someone who divines the lotto numbers?” Fazio asked in amazement.

  “No, it’s something else. He just kept reading that stuff and finally lost his mind, especially since his mind had already taken a hard hit with the death of his wife and child. And one day he ended up believing that if he could become God, he could bring his loved ones back.”

  “Okay, but what was that stuff about contracting?”

  “Well, you see, God is so great that, in order to imagine him, we have to make him smaller, and so—”

  “No, wait, Chief, stop right there. I’m getting a headache. Do you have any orders for me?”

  “Yes. The Donzello family tomb has to be cleaned out, tonight. I don’t feel safe leaving all that dynamite there with all the people who are going to be at the cemetery tomorrow. In the morning you can buy two bouquets of flowers and put them—”

  “Got it. It’ll be done.”

  Back home in Marinella, the inspector didn’t feel like washing up and changing clothes. He’d made his decision. There was a flight leaving at seven a.m. that always had vacancies. He needed Livia and would be at her place in Boccadasse by ten o’clock at the latest.

  At the moment, however, he wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel sleepy. He went outside and sat down on the veranda. It was a warm night, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He started staring at a point in the sky that he knew well.