A Voice in the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I might be accused of handling the case in a – how shall I say? – less than impartial way. Have I made myself clear?’

  ‘Quite clear. And so?’

  ‘And so I’ll be even more explicit. Have you already talked about this with Nero Duello the lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I have. He’s the first person I told about it.’

  ‘And the second was your father?’

  It just slipped out. He could have bitten his tongue. The young man, however, didn’t notice the provocation.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And what did the lawyer tell you?’

  ‘To report to you just the same.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come with you?’

  ‘He was busy in court.’

  Fazio couldn’t hold out any longer.

  ‘What do you intend to do?’ he asked the inspector.

  ‘Where is the victim?’ Montalbano asked Strangio in turn.

  ‘In our house. We’d been living together for a while.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said the inspector, standing up.

  ‘Shall I inform Forensics, the prosecutor, and Dr Pasquano?’ Fazio asked.

  Montalbano was about to say yes, then stopped in his tracks.

  Wouldn’t it be better to wait and make sure that there actually was a dead woman’s body in the house? Wasn’t it also possible that this madman had made the whole thing up?

  ‘Call them when I tell you to.’

  ‘You don’t want to know anything else?’ the young man asked in surprise.

  ‘What you’ve already told me is enough. If you have anything else to say, I’d rather you save it for the prosecutor.’

  ‘As you wish. Shall we go in my car?’ Strangio asked.

  And end up crashing into a tree?

  ‘No, we’ll go in a patrol car. Is Gallo around?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Fazio went to get Gallo. Montalbano and Strangio exited the station to wait for the patrol car. The young man lit another cigarette.

  Montalbano was watching him out of the corner of his eye, because Strangio’s body now seemed to be quaking all over, as if he had an electric current running through him.

  Then everything happened at once.

  EIGHT

  As soon as the patrol car appeared with Gallo driving, Strangio tossed aside his cigarette, took a big leap forward, and dived into its wheels.

  Luckily the car was already pulling up and therefore moving slowly.

  As a result, Strangio did not succeed in getting run over. He only banged his head hard against the bumper and lay stretched out on the ground, blood gushing out of his forehead like a fountain.

  Fazio and Montalbano crouched down to look at him. At first glance, it didn’t look like anything serious.

  Gallo ran back into the station. Strangio started crying. Gallo returned with disinfectant and cotton and tried to staunch the bleeding.

  But it was useless. The wound was too big.

  ‘Take him to A&E,’ said Montalbano. ‘Then come back here and get me.’

  *

  Instead of going straight back into his office, he preferred to stay outside and smoke a cigarette. He wasn’t the least bit upset by Strangio’s gesture. He immediately knew it was not an impulsive act prompted by sorrow, despair, remorse, or God knows whatever other motive.

  No, it was a gesture made with a lucid mind, conceived and calculated down to the last millimetre. Strangio at that moment was not out of his head, even if that’s what he wanted it to look like. His intention was apparently to achieve a certain effect. But what?

  His act was a gesture typical of a guilty person wanting to appear innocent. It was like putting his personal signature on the murder. He would now claim that he threw himself in front of the car out of despair over losing his girlfriend.

  But the inspector decided to stop thinking about it; otherwise he would end up having preconceived ideas.

  He went into his office.

  And just to force himself not to think about anything, he resumed signing those damn documents.

  *

  Fazio came in about an hour later.

  ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘They gave him five stitches.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘Just outside, in the car.’

  ‘Is he in any condition to—’

  ‘Listen to me, Chief: aside from a little headache, he’s perfectly fine.’

  As soon as they went out, Montalbano saw Gallo with a bucket of water and a sponge, heading for the car.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I want to wash the bumper. It’s got blood on it.’

  ‘Wait a second. Do we have a Polaroid?’

  ‘No. But I’ve got a good camera.’

  ‘That’s even better. Go get it and take some pictures of the car. Then you can wash it.’

  ‘Would you explain to me why?’ Fazio asked.

  ‘Because Strangio is capable of anything, even saying that we broke his head ourselves inside the station to make him confess that he was the murderer.’

  There was nothing to be done about it. He had deeply rooted prejudices against the kid. However well founded.

  Better pass the case on to someone else as soon as the opportunity arose.

  *

  Strangio lived in a small detached two-storey house at Via Pirandello, number 14. The street was a bit outside of town and ran parallel to the main road that Montalbano took to go to Marinella and back.

  Practically attached to the house on the right, but separated by a small alley that could barely fit a car, was a seven-storey building. There wasn’t anyone looking out, except for a woman of a certain age enjoying the sun on her balcony.

  Luckily nobody knew about the murder yet.

  An open gate gave onto a driveway that cut through a small, poorly tended garden with more weeds than flowers. The driveway went as far as the back of Strangio’s house.

  Fazio parked right outside the gate, and they all got out.

  ‘You lead the way,’ Montalbano said to Strangio.

  They went down the driveway and came to the front door. Strangio, who had the keys in his pocket, slipped a key in the lock, but hesitated for a moment before turning it. Then he made up his mind and opened the door, stepping quickly aside.

  ‘Do I have to go in first?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t feel up to it,’ he said firmly, bringing a hand to his bandaged head.

  He was as pale as a corpse.

  ‘Would you rather wait outside?’ Montalbano asked him.

  ‘If possible . . .’

  ‘Just tell me one thing, I’m curious. Why did you choose to come to the station to inform us, instead of simply making a phone call after you discovered the body?’

  Strangio swallowed; his mouth was probably dry.

  ‘I don’t know . . . my first reaction was to run as far as possible away from here.’

  ‘All right. Gallo, you stay here with him. Where is it?’

  ‘Where’s what?’ asked Strangio, confused.

  ‘The body.’

  ‘Upstairs, in the study.’

  On the ground floor were the dining room, living room, kitchen, and a bathroom. A nice wooden staircase led upstairs. They went up.

  Here there was a large master bedroom with the bed in disorder, a guest room, a bathroom, and the study.

  The whole upstairs was permeated with the sickly sweet smell of blood, a smell that Fazio and Montalbano knew well, which clung to one’s throat like a nauseating taste.

  Lying across the desk in the study was the body of a young woman, completely naked with legs spread. She had very long blonde hair and must have been quite beautiful.

  She’d been slaughtered; there was no other word for it.

  Her body was one giant wound. The killer had lashed out with such fury against her breasts and lower abdomen that you could see the
insides of her rent flesh.

  The blood had formed an enormous puddle on the floor. It was impossible to get near without stepping in it.

  Montalbano couldn’t take any more.

  ‘Alert everyone,’ he said, leaving the room.

  Now he understood why Strangio hadn’t wanted to come upstairs with them.

  He went downstairs, leaned out of the doorway, and called Gallo and Strangio. The three of them went into the living room to wait.

  Nobody spoke until Forensics arrived.

  *

  Then, immediately afterwards, Dr Pasquano arrived.

  He’d come with the ambulance and the two stretcher-bearers who would take the body to the Institute for Forensic Medicine for the post-mortem. He had a dark look on his face and didn’t greet anyone.

  He must have lost at poker the previous evening.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ Fazio replied.

  Pasquano disappeared and then reappeared a minute later, now red in the face and angrier than before.

  ‘What is this shit? They told me I had to wait another half an hour! They’re amusing themselves taking pictures! As if there was any use for them! And I haven’t got any time to waste!’

  He sat down furiously in the armchair beside the one the inspector was sitting in, pulled a newspaper out of his coat pocket, and started reading.

  But since Montalbano happened to crane his neck to have a better look at a headline, the doctor, after giving him a dirty look, went and sat in a chair further away.

  Gallo was staring straight ahead, Strangio had his head in his hands, Pasquano was reading and muttering to himself, while Fazio, who’d come downstairs after Forensics arrived, was looking at a piece of paper.

  Montalbano felt as if he was in a dentist’s waiting room. He got up and went out into the little garden to smoke a cigarette.

  A few minutes later Fazio joined him.

  ‘Chief, could you please tell me why you won’t interrogate Strangio?’

  ‘It would be a waste of time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m convinced that the commissioner, as soon as he regains consciousness, will take the case away from me. And this time he’ll be fairly right to do so.’

  ‘Is that the only reason?’

  Fazio was an intelligent person, as he was showing with that question.

  ‘Fazio, you can work out the other reasons yourself.’

  ‘Are you worried they’re setting a trap for you?’

  ‘In a way, yes. If at some point they come out with the story that I had ulterior hostile motives in Strangio’s regard, then the results of my investigation could easily be invalidated.’

  At that moment Prosecutor Tommaseo arrived with Deluca, the court clerk.

  ‘I apologize for being late. I had a little mishap with the car.’

  Tommaseo not only wore thick glasses that looked like bulletproof glass, he drove like a drunken dog. There wasn’t a single thing along whatever road he was travelling – tree, rubbish bin, pole, what have you – that he might not crash into. And since he always drove at thirty kilometres an hour, all he ever damaged was his car.

  ‘Who’s the victim?’ he asked Montalbano.

  ‘A very young, very beautiful woman.’

  As Tommaseo’s eyes started to sparkle, the inspector threw down his ace.

  ‘Completely naked.’

  ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Tommaseo darted for the door and disappeared inside the house in the twinkling of an eye.

  ‘Follow him,’ Montalbano said to Fazio, ‘and when he starts questioning Strangio, let me know. I want to be present.’

  *

  The young man’s deposition was taken by Tommaseo and written down by the clerk in the living room. Fazio was present, and Gallo was asked to step outside.

  As was Dr Pasquano – who went swearing into the dining room.

  ‘Name, address, date of birth.’

  Strangio complied.

  Upon hearing the young man’s surname, Tommaseo hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Are you by any chance the son of—’

  ‘Yes, my father’s the president of the province.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tommaseo.

  He heaved a sigh and continued:

  ‘Tell me how you discovered the murder.’

  The young man must have regained his self-control. Now he seemed actually relaxed; his hands had even stopped trembling. Maybe the bump on the head and loss of blood had done him good.

  ‘When I got into Punta Raisi airport this morning . . .’

  ‘Where were you coming from?’

  ‘Rome.’

  ‘What were you doing in Rome?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘You work in Rome?’

  ‘No, I work here, but I had to go to Rome for a meeting.’

  ‘Who’s your employer?’

  ‘Ugotti. They make computers, printers, that kind of thing . . . But I’m not a normal employee. I’m the company’s sole representative in Sicily. Every month there’s a meeting in Rome of all the representatives. It lasts one day, and the date changes each month, though it’s always during the first week.’

  ‘So you were in Rome all day yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At what time did you leave Palermo?’

  ‘Yesterday? I took the seven-thirty morning flight.’

  ‘OK, go on.’

  ‘When I landed in Palermo this morning on the nine o’clock flight, which got in on time, I went and got my car, which I’d left the previous day in the car park, and headed straight back to Vigàta. But . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I felt uneasy. Something didn’t seem right.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘Well, normally, whenever I come into Punta Raisi, I call Mariangela, my girlfriend. I did the same thing this morning, but there was no answer. I called repeatedly from the car as I was driving back. She never answered. So I was worried.’

  ‘Why? She might just have gone out to buy groceries or for some other reason.’

  ‘Mariangela never got up before ten o’clock.’

  ‘She could have gone to see her parents.’

  ‘They don’t live in Vigàta.’

  ‘Did you call her mobile or her land line?’

  ‘I called the land line. One phone is on the nightstand right beside the bed. I let it ring a long time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try her mobile?’

  ‘Because Mariangela keeps . . . used to keep it turned off until she got up. On top of that, she knew I was going to call her as usual, as soon as I got in, and so . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I got home, I put the car in the garage, which is behind the house, and I entered the house through the garden. I opened the door and called out, but there was no answer. I thought maybe she was still sound asleep. She sometimes takes sleeping pills. So I went upstairs and went into the bedroom. She wasn’t there. I went into the hallway and from there I saw something . . . something terrible on the desk in the study. I took one step and . . . and that’s all.’

  ‘So you never went into the study?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . . partly because my legs wouldn’t move . . . partly because I realized that there was nothing I could do by that point . . . And then . . . because I just couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how else to put it . . .’

  ‘How did you know she was dead?’

  For the first time Strangio raised his eyes and looked at Tommaseo, as though shocked.

  ‘Good God, it was perfectly obvious!’

  ‘What was your girlfriend’s name?’

  ‘Mariangela Carlesimo; she was twenty-three years old and was studying architecture at the University of Palermo.’

  ‘How long had you been together?’

  ‘Together, over a year and a half. But we moved here ab
out six months ago.’

  At this point Montalbano got up and went out.

  ‘Gallo, take me to Enzo’s.’

  There was no point in staying any longer to listen to Tommaseo’s questions. It was better to go and eat.

  Outside the gate there were television crews and newspapermen who had descended on the scene like flies drawn to shit.

  *

  He didn’t give Enzo the satisfaction his dishes deserved. He ate little, and listlessly at that.

  He had no explanation for his malaise.

  Was it perhaps because he couldn’t get the sight of that poor girl’s hacked-up body out of his mind? Or was it because Strangio’s whole attitude seemed fishy to him?

  The customary stroll along the jetty was more a way to pass the time than a digestive necessity.

  *

  Back at the office, the first thing he did was to call the commissioner. Lattes answered the phone and told him the commissioner was still indisposed, but that Deputy Commissioner Concialupo was replacing him in all respects for the time being. If the inspector had anything urgent to discuss, he should address the deputy commissioner.

  But Montalbano didn’t feel like talking to Concialupo, who was perfectly nice but had to be told things three times before he understood them.

  ‘Dr Lattes, do you know when the commissioner—’

  ‘Surely tomorrow morning, with God’s help.’

  What to do?

  The best thing was not to have anything to do directly with Strangio until he’d spoken to the commissioner.

  Questioning him before that would be a mistake.

  *

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Chief, onna phone I got the proxecutor onna phone.’

  ‘Tommaseo?’

  ‘Poissonally in poisson.’

  ‘Put him through.’

  ‘But did you see what a gorgeous girl she was?’ Tommaseo began.

  What a surprise! He must be drooling at the other end. Whenever a beautiful young woman was murdered, a crime of passion committed, or amorous intrigues figured in the background of a case, Tommaseo was in his element.

  The inspector’s own theory was that it was a sort of compensation for the fact that the prosecutor was not known to have ever had any kind of relations with a woman.

  ‘I have her photos here in front of me, and I’m telling you, when she was alive she was a rare beauty,’ Tommaseo continued.

  Montalbano was horrified.