Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  At that very point, a few hours later, the light of day would dawn and make its way through the darkness.

  JUDICIAL REVIEW

  The first time Montalbano saw the man walking along the beach was early one morning, but it really wasn’t a day to be walking along the beach. On the contrary, the best thing you could do was go back to bed, pull the covers up over your head, close your eyes, and best wishes to one and all. Indeed a nasty, ice cold north wind was blowing, and the sand got in your eyes and mouth; the breakers started high at the horizon line, lay flat and hid behind those in front of them, reappeared high above the shoreline, and then hurled themselves as though famished against the beach, eating it up. Little by little, the sea had managed to come almost all the way up to the inspector’s wooden veranda. The man was dressed all in black. With one hand he held his hat firmly planted on his head to prevent the wind from carrying it away, while the heavy overcoat clinging to his body worked its way between his legs. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular—you could tell by the way he walked, which, despite all the pandemonium, remained steady and regular. After going some fifty yards past the inspector’s house, the man turned and headed back towards Vigàta.

  He saw him other times as well, early in the morning, sometimes hatless, after the season had changed, but always dressed in black, and always alone. One time when the weather had improved enough to allow Montalbano a nice long swim in the cold water not yet warmed by the sun, as he turned round to swim back to shore he’d seen the man standing still at the water’s edge, watching him. Continuing to swim in that direction, Montalbano was inevitably going to come out of the water right in front of him. And this made him uncomfortable, so he directed his arm strokes in such a way that they would take him out of the water some ten yards downshore from the man, who was still staring fixedly at him. When the man realized that the face-to-face encounter wasn’t going to happen, he turned his back and resumed his customary stroll. And for a few months things went on in this fashion. One morning the man didn’t come by, and Montalbano got worried. Then he had an idea. He stepped down from the veranda and onto the beach and saw, distinctly, the man’s footprints in the wet sand. Apparently he’d taken his walk a little earlier than usual, when the inspector was still in bed or in the shower.

  One night there was a lot of wind, but towards daybreak the wind dropped as if tired from being up all night. A clear day was in the offing, warm and sunny, if not yet summery. The wind in the night had cleaned up the beach, evened out the little holes, and the sand was all perfectly smooth and shiny. The man’s footprints stood out as though sketched, but their path perplexed the inspector. After walking along the water’s edge, the man had headed straight for Montalbano’s house, then turned back towards the water. What had he had in mind to do? The inspector stood there a long time studying that sort of V traced by the footprints, as if through careful observation he might be able to enter the man’s head and the thoughts that had driven him to make that sudden detour.

  When he got to the office, he called Fazio.

  “Do you know of a man who dresses in black and comes and walks along the beach every morning in front of my house?”

  “Why, does the guy bother you?”

  “No, Fazio, he hasn’t bothered me at all. And even if he had, don’t you think I could handle it myself? I only asked if you knew him.”

  “No, Chief. I didn’t even know there was a man dressed in black coming and walking along the beach. Do you want me to look into it?”

  “No, never mind.”

  The matter, however, kept popping back into his head every so often. By the time he went home that evening, he’d come to the conclusion that the V he’d seen in the sand was in reality a question mark. A question that the man dressed in black had determined to ask him but at the last minute lacked the courage to ask. For this reason, the inspector set his alarm clock for five the next morning. He wanted to avoid the risk of not seeing the man if for whatever reason he decided to come earlier than usual.

  When the alarm rang, he bolted out of bed, made coffee, and sat down on the veranda. He waited till nine, time enough to read a detective novel by Lucarelli and drink six cups of coffee.

  Of the man, however, not a trace.

  “Fazio!”

  “At your service, Chief.”

  “Do you remember yesterday I mentioned a man all dressed in black who every morning—”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “He didn’t pass by this morning.”

  Fazio gave him a bewildered look.

  “Is that a serious problem?”

  “Serious, no. But I want to know who he is.”

  “I’ll try,” said Fazio, sighing.

  Sometimes the inspector was downright bizarre. Why was he obsessed with this guy who liked to walk along the beach in peace? Why did this bother the good inspector?

  That afternoon, Fazio knocked on the inspector’s door, asked permission to come in, sat down, extracted from his pocket a couple of pieces of paper covered with dense writing, and cleared his throat with a gentle coughing sound.

  “Are you going to give a lecture?” asked Montalbano.

  “No, Chief. I’m going to give you the information you asked for concerning the person who walks past your house every morning.”

  “Before you start reading I’d like to warn you that if you give vent to your records office complex and recite me all this man’s personal details, which I don’t give a fuck about, I’m going to get up out of this chair and get myself a cup of coffee.”

  “Tell you what,” said Fazio, folding up the pieces of paper and putting them back in his jacket pocket. “I’ll come with you for this coffee.”

  They both left the room in silence, irritated. They went to the bar at the corner, and each paid for his own coffee. They returned to the office, still without speaking, and assumed the same places as before, except that this time Fazio didn’t take the pieces of paper out. Montalbano realized that it was up to him to start talking. Otherwise Fazio was liable to remain silent and resentful for the rest of the day.

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “Leonardo Attard.”

  Therefore—like those named Cassar, Hamel, Camilleri, and Buhagiar—he was of distant Maltese origin.

  “What does he do in life?”

  “He used to be a judge. He’s retired now. He was an important judge, a chief of the Corte d’Assise.”

  “And what’s he doing here?”

  “Dunno. Actually he was born in Vigàta and stayed here till he was eight. Then his father, who was commander of the Harbor Office, got transferred. So he grew up in the North, where he also studied and made his career. When he came here eight months ago, he didn’t know anyone.”

  “Did he own a house in Vigàta? Maybe an old family property?”

  “No sir. But he bought one. A nice big house with five large bedrooms, though he lives there alone. He’s got a housekeeper to help him out.”

  “He never married?”

  “He did. And he has a son. But his wife died three years ago.”

  “Has he made any friends in town?”

  “You must be kidding! He doesn’t know anyone. He only goes out early in the morning, takes his walk, and then vanishes from circulation. His housekeeper gets him everything he needs, from food to the daily paper. Her name is Prudenza . . . I can’t remember her last name. Can I look at my notes?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Anyway, I talked with this housekeeper, and I can tell you straightaway that the judge has gone away.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Of course. To Bolzano. He’s got a son there. Married and the father of two boys. The judge spends summers with his son.”

  “And when will he be back?”

  “In early September.”


  “Know anything else?”

  “Yeah. After he’d been living for three days in this house in Vigàta—”

  “Where is it?”

  “The house? Right where Vigàta ends and Marinella begins. About half a kilometer from where you live.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “So, as I was saying, after he’d been there for three days, a tractor-trailer showed up.”

  “With the furniture.”

  “Not a chance! You know how many pieces of furniture the guy has? Bed, nightstand and armoire in the bedroom; a refrigerator in the kitchen, where he also eats. He has no TV. And that’s all.”

  “So what was the tractor-trailer for?”

  “To bring him his papers.”

  “What papers?”

  “From what the housekeeper told me, they are copies of all the documentation of every trial the judge presided over.”

  “Good God! Don’t you know that for every trial there are at least ten thousand pages of documents?”

  “Exactly. The housekeeper told me there’s not an inch of space in that house that isn’t stacked up to the ceiling with files, papers, and binders. She says her primary responsibility is to dust all these papers, since they get dusty really fast.”

  “And what does the guy do with the documents?”

  “He studies them. I forgot to tell you that the furniture also includes a big table and an armchair.”

  “He studies them?”

  “Yeah, Chief. Day and night.”

  “Why does he do that?”

  “You’re asking me? You should ask him, when he comes back in September!”

  Judge Leonardo Attard reappeared one morning in early September, a morning that was shaping up to be languid—or perhaps, more than languid, downright exhausted.

  The inspector saw him walk by, still dressed in black and looking like a crow. And he sort of had the same elegance and dignity that crows have. For a moment Montalbano felt like running up to him and welcoming him back in some way. Then he restrained himself, but felt happy to see him walking again along the wet sand, self-assured and harmonious.

  Then, one morning in late September, as the inspector was reading the newspaper out on the veranda, a sudden gust of wind blew in from the sea, with two immediate effects: rumpling the pages of Montalbano’s newspaper and simultaneously blowing the judge’s hat off in the direction of the veranda. As Signor Attard started running after his hat, the inspector hopped down, grabbed it, and handed it to the judge. In the end nature herself had intervened to bring the two together. Because it was natural, and inevitable, that sooner or later the two should meet.

  “Thank you. Attard’s the name,” said the judge, introducing himself.

  “I’m Montalbano,” said the inspector.

  They didn’t smile, didn’t shake hands. They just stood there for a moment, eyeing one another in silence. Then, each in turn, they exchanged a funny little bow, like the Japanese. The inspector returned to his veranda, and the judge resumed walking.

  Montalbano was once asked what, in his opinion, was the most essential talent for a cop to have. Was it intuition? Perseverance in the search? The ability to find the connection between apparently unrelated facts? Knowing that if two plus two always equals four in the normal order of things, in the abnormality of crime two plus two can also equal five?

  “A clinical eye,” was Montalbano’s answer.

  And everyone present had a good laugh over this. But the inspector hadn’t meant to make a witty quip. The problem was that he hadn’t explained his answer; he’d preferred to gloss over it, since there were two doctors amongst the company present. What he’d meant by “clinical eye” was precisely that ability that doctors used to have to realize, at a glance, in fact, whether or not a patient was sick. Without needing—as so many doctors do nowadays—to subject the patient to a hundred different tests before realizing that he or she is fit as a fiddle.

  Well, in the brief exchange of glances that Montalbano had with the judge, he became immediately convinced that the man was ill. Not physically ill, however. He had something eating at him inside, which made his pupils too still, too fixed, as though he were lost in some recurrent thought. Thinking this over carefully, however, he had to admit it was only an impression. But he’d had another impression as well, this one much more precise, which was that the judge had in his way been rather pleased to meet the inspector. He must certainly have already known, ever since he’d first stopped in front of his house months before, unable to make up his mind whether to knock or resume his walk, what line of work Montalbano was in.

  A week after their meeting, as Montalbano was drinking his morning coffee on the veranda, Leonardo Attard, when he came within earshot, looked up from the sand he’d been staring at as he walked, glanced at the inspector, and raised his hat in greeting.

  Montalbano quickly stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted:

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  The judge deviated from his customary route without altering his calm, measured step and came towards the veranda. Montalbano went into the house, and came back out with a clean demitasse. They shook hands, and the inspector poured the coffee. They sat down on the bench beside one another. Montalbano said nothing.

  “It’s very beautiful here,” the judge said suddenly.

  They were the only words he pronounced. Having finished his coffee, he tipped his hat, muttered a few words that the inspector took to be “Good day” and “thank you,” stepped down onto the beach, and resumed his morning walk.

  Montalbano gathered that he’d won a point in his favor.

  The invitation to drink a cup of coffee, with the accompanying ritual of silence, was repeated two more times. On the third visit, however, the judge looked at the inspector and began slowly to speak.

  “I would like to ask you a question, Inspector.”

  He was laying his cards out on the table. Attard had never once asked him directly what he did for a living.

  “Ask me anything you like, Your Honor.”

  Montalbano too was laying his cards on the table.

  “But I wouldn’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

  “That’s unlikely.”

  “Tell me, in your work, have you always been certain, mathematically certain, that the people you’ve arrested were truly guilty?”

  The inspector was ready for anything except a question like that. He opened his mouth and immediately closed it again. It wasn’t the sort of question you could answer off the cuff, without prior reflection. Especially with the firm gaze of the judge’s eyes fixed on you. And he seemed very much the judge at that moment. Attard sensed Montalbano’s uneasiness.

  “You needn’t answer me right now, on the spot. Think it over a little. Have a good day, and thank you.”

  He stood up, raised his hat, stepped back down onto the beach, and resumed his walk.

  Thank you, my ass, thought Montalbano, standing stiff as a pole. The judge had just thrown him a tough pitch.

  That same afternoon, the judge phoned the inspector.

  “Forgive me for bothering you at work. But the question I asked you this morning was, at the very least, inappropriate, and I apologize for that. Listen, if you’ve got nothing else planned for this evening, could you come by my place after work? It’s on your way home, after all. Let me explain to you where I live.”

  The first thing the inspector noticed upon setting foot in the judge’s house was the smell. Not unpleasant, but penetrating—a smell similar to that of hay that has lain a long time in the sun. Then he realized it was paper he was smelling, old, yellowed paper. Hundreds upon hundreds of files stacked from floor to ceiling on solid wooden bookshelves in every room: bedrooms, kitchen, entrance hall. That wasn’t a house, but an archive where a little space, just enough,
had been made for a man to live in.

  Montalbano was shown into a room with a large table in the middle covered with paper, as well as an armchair and a chair.

  “My answer would have to be yes,” Montalbano began.

  “Yes to what?”

  “To the question you asked me this morning. I can say that I am mathematically certain—within the limits of my knowledge—that the people I have arrested were indeed guilty. Even though on a few occasions the courts didn’t agree and acquitted them.”

  “That’s happened to you?”

  “On a few occasions, yes.”

  “Did it upset you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m too experienced to get upset. By now I know well that the truth of the courts runs on a track parallel to the real truth. But the two tracks don’t always lead to the same station. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.”

  Half of the judge’s face smiled. The lower half. The upper half remained serious, and his eyes grew more immobile, colder.

  “Your argument misses the point,” said Judge Attard. “My question was another.”

  With a broad gesture, opening his arms wide until he looked crucified, he indicated all the papers lying around.

  “My question concerns a review.”

  “What kind of review?”

  “A review of the trials over which I presided during my life.”

  Montalbano felt a little sweat start to form on his skin.

  “I had the court documents of all my cases photocopied and sent here to Vigàta, because here I’ve found the ideal conditions for my work. I spent a fortune on it, believe me.”

  “But who asked you to conduct this review?”

  “My conscience.”

  Montalbano finally reacted.