IM10 August Heat (2008)

by Andrea Camilleri

  “You don’t know what being a virgin means? Well, you must know that women who haven’t yet—”

  “You know perfectly well what I was referring to, Doctor.” Montalbano didn’t feel like kidding around. Pasquano said nothing. “If the girl died a virgin, it means the motive for the murder is not what we thought.”

  “Did you know you’re an Olympic champion?”

  Montalbano looked dumbfounded.

  “Explain yourself.”

  “You’re a champion in the hundred-meter dash.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re running too hard, my friend. Going too fast. It’s not your job to reach an immediate conclusion.What’s happening to you?”

  What’s happening to me is that I’ve grown old, thought the inspector, and I want to reach a quick conclusion on a case that’s been weighing on me.

  “So,” Pasquano resumed,“I can confirm that, at the moment she was killed, the girl was in the position I said she was in.”

  “Then explain to me why the murderer had her assume that position, after having forced her to strip, if he wasn’t going to screw her?”

  “Since we didn’t find any clothes, we can’t know whether the killer forced her to strip before he killed her or stripped her himself afterward. Anyway, the question of her clothes is unimportant, Montalbano.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course! As unimportant as the fact that he wrapped up the body and put it in the trunk!”

  “He didn’t do it to hide her?”

  “Do you know, Montalbano, you don’t seem to be in very good form?”

  “Maybe it’s my age, Doctor.”

  “What! The killer’s going to take the trouble to put the body into a trunk while leaving a puddle of blood as big as a lake a couple of yards away?”

  “Well, then, why, in your opinion, did he put her in the trunk?”

  “With all the murders you’ve handled, you’re asking me? To hide her from himself, my dear inspector, not from us! It’s a sort of concrete, immediate repression of reality!”

  Pasquano was right.

  How often had they come across amateur murderers who covered the victim’s face, especially if it was a woman, with the first thing at hand—a rag, a towel, a sheet?

  “You have to start with the only sure thing we’ve got,” the doctor continued, “which is the girl’s position when the killer cut her throat. If you concentrate a little, you’ll see that—”

  “I understand what you’re trying to say.”

  “If you finally understand, then tell me.”

  “That maybe the killer, at the final moment, was no longer able to rape her, and so, in the throes of an uncontrollable rage, he pulled out the knife . . .”

  “Which, as they tell us in psychoanalysis, is a substitute for the penis.Very good.”

  “Did I pass the exam?”

  “Well, there may be another hypothesis,” Pasquano continued.

  “What would that be?”

  “That the killer sodomized her.”

  “My God,” Fazio muttered.

  “What?” The inspector rebelled. “You fill my ears with idle chatter for half an hour and only deign to tell me at the end what you should have told me from the start?”

  “It’s just that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I wasn’t able to establish the fact with any real certainty. Too much time has passed. But, based on certain, very small signs, I would lean towards the affirmative. Mind you, I said I would lean. Conditional tense.”

  “So, in short, you don’t feel you could go from the conditional to another verb tense, such as the present indicative.”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “It keeps getting worse and worse,” Fazio said bitterly, when the inspector hung up.

  Montalbano remained pensive.

  Fazio continued.

  “Chief, do you remember when you said to me that when you catch the killer, you want to smash his face in?”

  “Yes. And I reiterate the promise.”

  “Can I join the party?”

  “You’re perfectly welcome to. Did you summon Dipasquale?”

  “For six o’clock this evening, after he gets off work.”

  As Fazio was leaving the room, the telephone rang again.

  “Chief ? Iss Proxecutor Dommaseo onna line.”

  “Put him on,” said Montalbano.Then, to Fazio:“You listen, too,” and he turned the speakerphone back on.

  “Montalbano?”

  “Judge?”

  “I wanted to let you know that I’ve been to the Morreale home to give them the terrible news.”

  His voice was sorrowful, emotional.

  “That was very good of you, sir.”

  “It was awful, you know.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Tommaseo, however, wanted to tell him about his ordeal.

  “Poor Signora Francesca, the mother, fainted. And the father, you wouldn’t believe it, he started wandering about the house, talking to himself, and couldn’t stand on his own two feet.”

  Tommaseo was waiting for a comment from Montalbano, who obliged him.

  “Poor things!”

  “They’d been hoping, for all these years, that their daughter was still alive . . .What’s the expression? That hope—”

  “—is always the last thing to die,” Montalbano finished his sentence, obliging him again and cursing himself for using a cliché.

  “That’s so true, dear Montalbano.”

  “So they were in no condition to identify the body.”

  “No, it was identified, anyway! The dead girl is indeed Caterina Morreale!”

  Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other in bewilderment. Why was Tommaseo suddenly twittering like a bird? It wasn’t such a pleasant matter he had dealt with, after all.

  “I made a point of taking Adriana myself in my car,” Tommaseo continued.

  “Wait a second.Who’s Adriana?”

  “What do you mean, who’s Adriana? Wasn’t it you who told me the victim had a twin sister?”

  Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other in disbelief. What was the guy talking about? Maybe he was trying to turn the inspector’s trick against him?

  “You were right,” Tommaseo continued, his tone now one of excitement, as if he’d just won the lottery.“The girl is absolutely gorgeous!”

  That certainly explained the twittering!

  “She studies medicine at Palermo, did you know? Mostly, she’s a really strong girl with a lot of character, even though, after identifying the body, she had a little crisis and I had to comfort her.”

  One can only imagine just how ready the good prosecutor was to comfort her, and with every means at his disposal.

  They said good-bye and hung up.

  “But that’s not possible!” said Fazio. “You must have known there was a twin sister!”

  “I swear to you I didn’t. But it’s an important thing to know. The victim probably confided in her. Could you call up the Morreale home and ask if I can drop in tomorrow morning around ten?”

  “Even though it’s August fifteenth?”

  “Where do you think they’re gonna go? They’re in mourning.”

  Fazio went out and came back five minutes later.

  “You know what? Adriana herself answered the phone! She said it’s probably better if you don’t go to their place. Her parents are feeling very bad and they’re not in any condition to talk. She suggested she come here herself, to the station, at the same time tomorrow morning.”

  As the inspector was waiting for Dipasquale, he phoned the Aurora Real Estate agency.

  “Signor Callara? Montalbano here.”

  “Is there any news, Inspector?”

  “I haven’t got any. How about you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I bet you informed Signora Gudrun Speciale about the illegal floor we discovered.”

  “Good guess! I called her the moment I recovered a little from the shoc
k I got opening that trunk. Damn my curiosity!”

  “What can you do, Signor Callara? That’s just the way it goes, unfortunately.”

  “I’ve always been curious! You know, one time, when I was still a kid—”

  “But you were telling me about your phone call to Signora Gudrun . . .”

  The last thing he needed was to hear about Signor Callara’s childhood memories.

  “Ah, yes. But I didn’t tell her about the poor girl who was killed.”

  “You were right.What did Signora Gudrun decide?”

  “She instructed me to take the necessary steps to obtain amnesty, and to send her the papers so she can sign them.”

  “That sounds like the most sensible thing.”

  “Yes, except that in the fax she sent me, she also wrote that, afterwards, she’s going to give me authorization to sell. But you know what I say? I’ve got half a mind to buy that house myself.What do you think?”

  “You’re the real estate agent, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision. Good day.”

  “Wait. There’s another thing I have to tell you. Since I was honestly advising her not to sell the house . . .”—honestly in the sense that, if she sold it, Callara would lose his percentage of the rent—“. . . she replied that she didn’t want to hear about it anymore.”

  “Did you ask her why?”

  “Yes. She said she would write to me about it. And, just this morning, a fax came in explaining why she wants to sell. I think this fax might be of interest to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Yes. She says her son, Ralf, is dead.”

  “What?!”

  “Yes, they found his remains about two months ago.”

  “His remains? What, you mean he died a long time ago?”

  “Yes. Apparently Ralf died on his way back to Cologne with Mr. Speciale. She even sent a German newspaper clipping with a translation.”

  “When can I see it?”

  “This evening, when I close up the office. I’ll come by the station and drop it off with the guy at the entrance.”

  And why had it taken them six years to find this other body, or what remained of it?

  11

  The look Dipasquale gave him upon entering the inspector’s office was more surly than ever.

  “Please sit down.”

  “Will this take long?”

  “As long as is needed. Mr. Dipasquale, before we talk about the house in Pizzo, I’d like to ask you, now that I’ve got you here, where and how I might find the watchman of the construction site in Montelusa.”

  “Are you still stuck on that damned business about the Arab? Inspector Lozupone himself—”

  Montalbano pretended he hadn’t heard his colleague’s name mentioned.

  “Tell me where I can find him. And give me his name and surname again.You told me last time, but I forgot them since I didn’t write them down. Fazio, be sure to make a note of this.”

  “Right away, Inspector.”

  Not bad, as improvised theater.

  “Inspector, I’ll tell the watchman myself that you want to talk to him. His name’s Filiberto Attanasio.”

  “I’m sorry, but how are you going to contact him when the worksite is closed?”

  “He’s got a cell phone.”

  “Please give me the number.”

  “It doesn’t work. The other night . . . the other day, I mean, it fell on the ground and broke.”

  “Okay, then tell him directly yourself.”

  “All right, but I should warn you, he won’t be able to come for two or three days.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s had an attack of malaria.”

  They must have scared the watchman pretty good.

  “Tell you what.When he’s feeling better, ask him to give us a call. Now, back to us. I had you come in because this morning I questioned two masons, named Dalli Cardillo and Miccichè, who worked on the house in Pizzo—”

  “Inspector, don’t waste your breath. I know exactly what happened.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Spitaleri. Miccichè burst into his office acting like he was out of his mind and punched him so hard he gave him a bloody nose. He was convinced Spitaleri wanted to frame him. The guy oughta be caged up with wild animals! Well, now he can start panhandling, ’cause it ain’t gonna be easy for him to find any more work as a mason.”

  “Spitaleri’s not the only builder in town,” said Fazio.

  “Yeah, but all it takes is a word from me or Spitaleri—”

  “—to put him out on the streets?”

  “You said it.”

  “I shall make a note of what you just said and take proper action,” said Montalbano.

  “What’s that mean?” asked Dipasquale, alarmed.

  More than the threatening tone, what most frightened him was the inspector’s formality.

  “It means that you said, in our presence, that you will see to it that Miccichè remains unemployed. You threatened a witness.”

  “Witness? What witness? I think you mean witless!”

  “I won’t have you speaking that way to me!”

  “And anyway, if I’m threatening him, iss not for what he said here, but for punching Spitaleri!”

  Quick and clever, was the foreman.

  “For now, let’s not get off the subject. Spitaleri told us that work on the Pizzo house ended on the twelfth of October. Which you confirmed.Whereas the work didn’t end until the morning of the following day, as we found out from Miccichè.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “That’s up to us to decide. Spitaleri could not have known that the work carried over into the next day, because he’d already left. But did you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, wasn’t it you yourself who made the decision to prolong it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “It slipped my mind.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Anyway, last time I came in, you didn’t tell me about the girl that was killed.”

  He was trying to counterattack, the asshole.

  “Dipasquale, we’re not here to play ‘you tell me one thing, and I’ll tell you another.’At any rate, when you walked in, you already knew, of course, about the dead girl, because Spitaleri had told you about her. And yet you acted as if nothing had happened.”

  “What was I supposed to say? Nothing?”

  “Not at all! You did say something.”

  “What?”

  “You tried to create an alibi for yourself. You said that four days before the work in Pizzo was completed, Spitaleri sent you to Fela to start on a new worksite. So, why is it that, on the eleventh and twelfth of October, in the afternoon, you were at Pizzo and not in Fela?”

  Dipasquale didn’t even try to come up with an excuse.

  “Inspector, you gotta understand. I got really scared when Spitaleri told me about the dead body. So I made up that story about being sent to Fela. But I figured that sooner or later you’s gonna find out it was a lie.”

  “Then tell us exactly what happened.”

  “Well, at eleven o’clock I went into that goddamned apartment. I wanted to see if it was damp or if there was any seepage. I even went into the living room, but I didn’t see nothing strange.”

  “What about the next day, the twelfth?”

  “I went back there in the afternoon. I told Miccichè not to dismantle the tunnel. Then he left and I stayed another half hour to wait for Mr. Speciale.”

  “Did you go inside to check on everything?”

  “Yessir. An’ everything was in order.”

  “In the living room, too?” asked Fazio.

  “In the living room, too.”

  “And then?”

  “Finally, Mr. Speciale arrived.”

  “How did he come?”

  “By car. He’d rented it when he got here.”

  “Was his stepson with him?” />
  “Yessir.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Probably ’round four.”

  “Did you go downstairs?”

  “All three of us.”

  “How were you able to see?”

  “I had a powerful flashlight. And Speciale had one, too. Speciale checked everything very closely. He’s a real fussy man. A stickler. Then I asked him if we could close up the passage and level the ground, and he said okay. He gave one last look, and then we went outside, Mr. Speciale and me.We said good-bye, and I left.”

  “What about Ralf ?”

  “The kid asked his stepfather for the flashlight and stayed downstairs.”

  “To do what?”

  “Dunno. He just liked being underground. He looked at all the wrapped-up casings and laughed. Didn’t I tell you he was crazy?”

  “So, when you left, Speciale and Ralf stayed behind in Pizzo?”

  “That’s where I left ’em. Anyways, Speciale had the keys to the apartment, which was habitable.”

  “Do you remember more or less what time it was when you left?”

  “Around five o’clock.”

  “Why did you wait until nine o’clock that night to inform Miccichè that he could take down the tunnel?”

  “I called him at least three times, and there was never any answer! I didn’t reach him till evening!”

  It made sense. Miccichè and his wife had spent the afternoon and early evening at Montelusa Hospital.

  “What did you do after you left Pizzo?”

  Dipasquale gave a slight chuckle.

  “You want an alibi?”

  “You’re better off if you’ve got one.”

  “I got one. I went into Spitaleri’s office. He was supposed to be calling us—the secretary and me—between six and eight o’clock.”

  “But he hadn’t landed in Bangkok yet!” said Fazio.

  “Of course not. But the flight was making a stop in some place whose name I can’t remember. Spitaleri knows the route. He goes to those places often.”

  “Did he call?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it an important phone call?”

  “It was pretty important. It was about a government contract we was supposed to be getting. If we got it, then I would have to take care of a few things.”

  Such as, for example, doling out to the Sinagras, the Cuffaros, the mayor, and anyone else in charge the wads of bills they had coming to them, thought the inspector. But he didn’t say anything.