A Voice in the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  ‘Fazio. Sorry, I know it’s late, but—’

  ‘What is it, Chief?’

  ‘You were there when Tommaseo sequestered Strangio’s car and told him to put it in the garage, weren’t you? Tell me how it went.’

  ‘Strangio’s car had been left with us. So Gallo and I brought him back to Vigàta, and then Strangio drove it back to his place with us following behind him. But Strangio didn’t turn onto Via Brancati; he went in through his front gate, down the driveway that leads to the garage, raised the garage door, and put the car inside. Tommaseo then had seals put on both garage doors.’

  ‘One more thing. Do you remember Strangio saying that when he got home from the airport, he put the car in the garage and then went through the garden to get to the house?’

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’

  ‘And then he said that, after discovering the body, he took his car back out to come to us?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘Thanks. Good night.’

  To pre-empt the danger of the wind, he lined up the leaflets on the dining-room table and then sat down in front of them.

  So poor Mariangela was murdered the evening of the seventh. Strangio, who had already left – as proved by the leaflet marked the seventh, which had fallen on the floor of the garage – came back the morning of the following day, the eighth, and, according to his declaration, opened the garage door. As a result, the slip for the eighth should have fallen to the ground.

  Whereas in fact it had stayed in place.

  Nor could it have fallen when Tommaseo ordered Strangio to put the car in the garage, because he came in through the other door.

  The slip for the eighth should no longer have been there, if things had gone the way Strangio said they had.

  And if it was still there, this meant that things had not gone the way the young man had said.

  So what had actually happened?

  What happened was that Strangio, home from the airport, had not gone through the garage, but had parked the BMW outside the gate.

  As if he already knew that he would need the car again shortly afterwards to race to the police station. As if he already knew what he would find in the study.

  He gathered the slips, stuck them in his pocket, went out on the veranda, and knocked back half a glass of whisky while waiting for Livia to call.

  He didn’t want to think about anything. Staring at the sea was good enough for him.

  *

  He woke up at seven-thirty. Why bother to get up? he thought. It was Sunday; he could take things a bit easy. He closed his eyes again. Less than ten minutes later the phone rang. He got out of bed to answer. It was Nicolò Zito, sounding upset. ‘Half an hour ago I got a phone call at home from a woman with the cleaning service who’d found the front door to the Free Channel studios broken in. I called the commissioner’s office and then raced to the scene.’

  ‘What did they steal?’

  ‘Can’t you imagine for yourself? There was only one thing on my desk.’

  ‘The digital recorder?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Montalbano felt his heart sink.

  ‘What about the copy?’

  ‘No, luckily I’d brought it home with me. But I wanted to let you know.’

  The inspector breathed a big sigh of relief.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But there’s one thing I can’t understand. Don’t they realize it’s pointless and stupid on their part? They should also have stolen the tapes of last night’s news broadcast. They were right there.’

  ‘Nicolò, it’s not like these people are always that smart.’

  He hung up. There was no point in going back to bed. He went into the kitchen to make coffee.

  Though he hadn’t wanted to say so to Zito, the burglars’ act made sense. It was clear that they were interested in everything that was on the recorder, not just the part that had been broadcast.

  At this point he started thinking about the fact that to cover up a burglary of limited scope – Fazio was right about this – they’d already killed two people and committed another burglary that would certainly make some noise, because it had happened at a television studio. Zito was certain to describe it on the air as an intimidation tactic and ask for solidarity on the part of his professional colleagues.

  In short, whoever stole the recorder knew that it would unleash total pandemonium, but they did it just the same the moment they heard that Borsellino had kept a recorder hidden in his office. They must have said to themselves: Want to bet he also recorded the conversations he had with us before reporting the burglary?

  And they had acted accordingly, wasting no time and not giving a damn about what the papers and TV would say.

  *

  He showered, shaved, dressed, drank another half-mug of espresso, then the telephone rang again. And this was supposed to be a quiet Sunday morning?

  By now it was eight-thirty, and this time it was Fazio who was calling.

  ‘Sorry, Chief, but last light I forgot to tell you that Mariangela’s girlfriend is coming into the station at ten o’clock, after she gets out of Mass. I’ll be there too.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Did you watch Strangio’s press conference yesterday, which they broadcast again at midnight?’

  ‘No, I forgot. How’d it go?’

  ‘Strangio said the same things he told us, except that he said he’d slept at the hotel in Rome. And you know what? The most troubling question he had to deal with was put to him by none other than Ragonese.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Actually, it wasn’t really a question. Ragonese pointed out to him, timetable in hand, that in leaving his meeting a little early, he had all the time he needed to catch a plane, come here, kill his girlfriend, and go back to Rome.’

  They’d all thought the same thing!

  ‘Strangio,’ Fazio continued, ‘said only that he didn’t kill his girlfriend. But Ragonese’s harangue had its effect. I’d been expecting him to defend the kid, whereas he threw down an ace.’

  ‘Thanks, Fazio, I’ll see you in a bit.’

  And this meant simply that there were two orders from on high: the supermarket burglar must turn out to be Borsellino, and Mariangela’s killer must turn out to be Giovanni Strangio.

  But how on earth could his father, Michele, the powerful president of the province, let his son be accused in this fashion without reacting?

  *

  So how was he going to pass the time now? Lolling about the house? No, there was a better way. He went out, got in the car, and headed for Vigàta. But instead of continuing on to the centre of town, when he got to the first houses he turned onto Via Pirandello and pulled up in front of the gate outside Strangio’s house. He got out of the car and looked up. The lady on the fourth floor was on her balcony. He went on foot to Via Brancati and came to a stop in front of Strangio’s garage. He raised his hand and waved to the lady. She waved back. He cupped his hands around his mouth and said:

  ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Fourth floor, apartment sixteen,’ the woman said, using the same method.

  As he approached the main door, he looked at the names on the intercom system. Apartment sixteen corresponded with the name Concetta Arnone. The door clicked; he pushed it open, went inside, and took the lift. The woman was waiting for him outside her door.

  ‘Please come in, Inspector.’

  ‘How do you know who I am?’

  ‘I’ve seen you on TV. What, you think I’d let in a total stranger just because he waved to me from the street?’

  FIFTEEN

  She looked somewhere between sixty-five and seventy years old, was well groomed, didn’t wear glasses, had a well-preserved face, with few wrinkles and lively eyes, but she must have had something wrong with her legs, as she couldn’t bend them. She sat the inspector down on the sofa in the small living room and then sat herself down beside him.

  ‘My legs are stiff;
it’s very hard for me to walk,’ she began.

  In the first fifteen minutes of their talk, Montalbano learned that she’d lost her husband five years earlier, had no children, had a married sister in Fiacca, had her shopping done by a woman neighbour of the kind they don’t make any more, had trouble making ends meet with her pension, had nothing to do all day but stand out on the balcony leaning on the railing, since sitting was too uncomfortable, and watched television late into the night . . .

  The inspector interrupted the monologue.

  ‘Signora, I need you to tell me whether you were on your balcony on the morning of the eighth, and whether by any chance you saw—’

  ‘The eighth was a Thursday,’ said the woman. ‘Cannoli day.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I have a sweet tooth, Inspector, and on Thursdays I ask my neighbour to buy me a cannolo. One on Thursday, and the other today, which is Sunday.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you whether on the morning of Thursday the eighth, around ten-thirty, you saw Giovanni Strangio, the young man who lives in the house—’

  ‘Of course I know Strangio, and I knew his girlfriend too, poor thing. Yes, I saw him that morning.’

  ‘He told us that when he got back from Palermo, he put his car in the garage and then—’

  ‘No, sir, he did not put it in the garage.’

  Montalbano pricked up his ears.

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘No, sir. He stopped outside the garage – I recognized the car – but he didn’t get out. He just stayed there a few minutes and then left. Come with me.’

  She got up with effort, and Montalbano followed her.

  So he’d been right about the security service’s slips of paper!

  From the balcony you could see the garage and the entire garden of Strangio’s house.

  ‘The young man just sat still inside the car as if thinking things over, then started it up again and drove away. When he got to Via Pirandello, he turned left.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Montalbano asked in surprise. If he turned left, this meant that he went directly to the police station. For him to stop in front of the gate and then go and find his girlfriend’s dead body, he would have had to turn right.

  Therefore Strangio hadn’t even felt the need to go into the house. There was no point. He’d already been told what had happened inside. And the only person who could have told him this was the killer himself. A killer whom Strangio didn’t want to accuse, as in so doing he would risk being taken for the killer himself.

  ‘. . . and that’s why, I repeat, he turned left,’ the woman concluded.

  Montalbano had missed what she’d just said.

  ‘I’m not doubting you, signora.’

  ‘An’ I can see well even in the dark,’ she said. ‘All I need is the light from that streetlamp there – see it? – and I can see like it’s day.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘An’ you know what? I want to tell you something with no disrespect to the soul of that poor girl who was killed.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Let’s just say that for the last three months and more, even four, there was a man who came to see her in the evenings when Strangio was away.’

  Montalbano held his breath.

  ‘What he would do was this,’ the woman continued. ‘He would pull up outside the garage, get out of the car, open the door – apparently he had the keys – put the car inside, and then come out the back. I would see him walk through the garden and then disappear round the corner of the house.’

  ‘So he went into the house.’

  ‘Of course, otherwise I’d have seen him coming out the gate.’

  ‘Did you ever have a chance to see his face?’

  ‘Never. I always saw him from behind.’

  ‘But when he came back out of the house to go back to his car—’

  ‘He must have always left very early in the morning. I never saw him come out. I’m always sleeping at that hour. The only thing I can say is that he wasn’t a young man, but at least fifty years old. I could tell by the walk.’

  ‘You said these visits occurred when Strangio was away?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  *

  Before going back to the station, he went first to a pasticceria and ordered a tray of twelve cannoli.

  Catarella had the day off and was replaced by an officer named Sanfilippo.

  ‘Is Fazio here?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell him to come to my office.’

  As soon as Fazio came in, Montalbano handed him the pastry tray.

  ‘Take this into your office, and after we’ve finished with the girl, I want you to deliver it to Mrs Concetta Arnone, who lives on the fourth floor of the apartment building on Via Brancati.’

  Fazio’s eyes sparkled.

  ‘Did she tell you something important?’

  ‘Extremely important. Go and put this tray away and I’ll tell you everything.’

  But they didn’t manage in time, because the moment Fazio sat back down, Sanfilippo came and announced that a woman by the name of Amalasunta Gambardella had just arrived.

  *

  The inspector had noticed in the past that the bosom friends of beautiful girls were usually rather plain. And Amalasunta did not break the mould.

  Bespectacled and shabbily dressed, she nevertheless had a determined air about her.

  ‘If you hadn’t sought me out, I would have come to you myself,’ was the first thing she said.

  ‘We summoned you here because Inspector Fazio, when looking through the deceased’s correspondence, realized you were her best—’

  ‘He’s right,’ Amalasunta cut him off. ‘She used to tell me everything.’

  ‘So you can be a big help to us.’

  ‘I think so too.’

  ‘So let’s start at the beginning. When did you first meet Mariangela?’

  ‘We used to be classmates in elementary school and remained friends ever after.’

  ‘So you must know how Mariangela and Giovanni met?’

  ‘Of course. The father introduced her to him.’

  Montalbano was momentarily at a loss.

  ‘I’m sorry, but whose father?’

  ‘Giovanni’s father, the Honourable Michele Strangio, president of the province.’

  Clearly Amalasunta wasn’t terribly fond of the Honourable Strangio.

  ‘And how did Giovanni’s father know her?’

  ‘He was her teacher at secondary school, at the liceo scientifico. Her maths professor. Mariangela was his pupil. When Giovanni and Mariangela met, she was in her third year.’

  ‘I see,’ said the inspector.

  ‘No, I don’t think you do,’ the girl said breezily.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that four months ago Professor Strangio resumed the relationship he had with Mariangela when she was still in secondary school.’

  Montalbano felt as if the chair beneath him were wobbling from a mild tremor in the earth.

  ‘But are you sure about what you’re—’

  ‘Shall I go into the details? How and where it happened the first time?’

  ‘And nobody ever found—’

  ‘Do you know Professor Strangio? He’s a very good-looking man, a widower, extremely charming, he speaks like a god, he’s spellbinding. As soon as he entered politics it became his career.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Fifty-five, fifty-six. But he looks younger.’

  ‘So nobody at the school ever found out?’

  ‘No. People used to whisper that Strangio went with his girl students, but it was always just rumours, just gossip.’

  ‘Was Mariangela in love with him?’

  ‘Sort of. Just enough, in her own mind, to justify sleeping with him. But when the professor introduced his son to her, Mariangela had the impression that his intention was . . . well, that he wasn’t introducing him without some
self-interest . . . that he was . . . I don’t know how to put this . . . that he was sort of trying to “park” her with Giovanni.’

  ‘Why didn’t she rebel?’

  ‘Mariangela had many gifts, on top of her beauty. But she was weak-willed and would let herself be dragged into things.’

  ‘And why did Giovanni accept?’

  ‘Inspector, Giovanni is totally dominated by his father. He does everything the man asks of him, without saying a word. And Mariangela was gorgeous. Boys used to lose their heads over her. And Giovanni has been under the sway of his father ever since childhood. His father has always wanted him to be like a real son to him . . .’

  Another mild tremor in the ground.

  ‘Why, is he not the professor’s son?’

  ‘No, he was adopted at the age of five. The professor’s wife, who died four years after the adoption, couldn’t have children. And that was how Giovanni grew up, and it’s why he’s not really all there. It’s his father’s fault, because of the way he’s always treated him.’

  Fazio and Montalbano exchanged a glance. They’d struck gold.

  ‘Listen, I have to ask you a question, and I’d like you to answer with the same frankness you’ve shown us thus far. Did Mariangela tell you she was pregnant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was Giovanni the father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know who was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me his name?’

  Before answering, Amalasunta heaved a long sigh. ‘Inspector, when we entered the university, Mariangela chose architecture and I chose law. And I like it a lot. None of what I’ve told you so far is of any strictly criminal consequence to anyone. But if I tell you that name, the whole picture changes. On top of that, I don’t think that there’s any evidence that might prove the guilt of the person I would name. And Mariangela is dead, so no one could ever ask her whether I’m telling the truth or not.’

  She would become an excellent lawyer, this Amalasunta; that much was clear.

  ‘Was the father of the child the man who had been going to see her for four months when Giovanni was out of town?’

  The girl didn’t answer.

  ‘There’s an eyewitness,’ Montalbano pressed on.