The Other End of the Line

by Andrea Camilleri

  She showed him into a small living room. Fazio, who was sitting in an armchair with his head in his hands, sprang to his feet, then sat back down when the inspector settled into another armchair.

  “The doctor said that luckily the lesions are only superficial,” Meriam said at once. “Leena’s in my bed. I woke up my niece, and she’s keeping her company now.”

  “And where’s your husband?” Montalbano asked.

  “My husband comes home at seven. He’s a night watchman.”

  “Listen,” the inspector began, “I would like for the questioning to be as untroubling as possible for the child. So, could you tell me whether Leena told you anything about what happened on the barge, and relate it to me? That would spare her the pain of reliving the whole ordeal and reopening the wound.”

  “Yes, unfortunately, she did tell me,” said Meriam. “She said that a few hours after the barge set sail, as she was sleeping at her mother’s side, she felt someone put a hand over her mouth, and then she was lifted bodily by two men and dragged towards the rear. Everyone was exhausted from the long wait to board the ship, nobody had eaten or slept for days, nobody in her family noticed anything, and even Leena herself told me that she’d thought she was dreaming, trapped in a nightmare. The two men who carried her away, keeping her mouth covered the whole time, took turns raping her, forcing her to sit on top of them. Then they picked her back up like a bundle of rags and returned her to her mother’s side, but not before threatening to throw her and her parents into the sea if she told anyone. It took some doing to get her to talk, but after a while she couldn’t hold it in any longer and finally confided in me . . .”

  “Thank you,” said Montalbano. “Did she tell you anything else about these two men?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think we can go and talk to her now?”

  “Yes. Follow me. Just for your information, her name is Leena Marrash.”

  Leena was sitting up in the large double bed, three pillows behind her head. Along with Meriam’s young niece, she was looking at a cell phone emitting the sound of some American pop music.

  “Anna, could you please go into your room for a few minutes?” Meriam asked her.

  The girl got up and left, taking her cell phone with her.

  Montalbano and Fazio sat down in the two chairs that were in the room. Meriam, for her part, sat down on the bed beside Leena. The girl was wearing a veil over her head, and now that he could see her in the light, the inspector realized just how much pain and suffering were etched into that little face.

  Fazio also looked at her, but then lowered his head to avoid her eyes.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” said Montalbano. “I’ll ask her the questions, and then you, Meriam, will translate them and tell me how she answers.”

  “Okay.”

  “Could you ask her if she was able to see the two men’s faces?”

  Meriam hadn’t finished asking the question when Leena started sliding all the way under the bedsheet. Her head and shoulders completely disappeared.

  Meriam said something to her. The only response was that Leena reached out from under the covers with two small hands and grabbed the edge, not to raise it but to hold it more tightly closed and keep herself better sealed in darkness.

  “Maybe it’s better if you go back out into the living room,” said Meriam. “I’ll try and talk to her myself.”

  Montalbano and Fazio went out of the room.

  When they were back in the living room, Montalbano noticed that Fazio was as pale as a corpse.

  “You tired?”

  “Nah.”

  “Unwell?”

  “Nah.”

  “So what’s wrong? Tell me! That’s an order.”

  “Chief, I have an awful, frightening desire to kick all five men repeatedly in the balls, the innocent as well as the guilty.”

  Montalbano gawked in surprise. He’d never heard anything so violent come out of Fazio’s mouth before; but then his assistant, as he was speaking, seemed to gain some control over himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a soft voice.

  Montalbano felt the need to smoke a cigarette. He went over to the window, opened it, and lit the cigarette, making sure to blow all the smoke outside.

  When he’d finished, he stubbed it out on the windowsill, put the butt in his jacket pocket, and said:

  “Fazio, call the station and find out how things are going there.”

  Moments later Fazio reported to Montalbano that Catarella told him the five men in the holding cell were behaving themselves, and the two officers were awaiting further orders.

  Meriam’s sitting room was clean and orderly. Two pieces of furniture were covered with photos of children. Inside a large silver frame the inspector noticed a photo of a diploma in English and a dark-eyed young man, probably Meriam’s son or relative. On the low table between the two armchairs was a hardbound Koran alongside two Italian fashion magazines.

  A modest home like so many others, in other words.

  As Montalbano was looking on, lost in thought, Meriam came in.

  “Inspector, I don’t think Leena is up to talking to you. I think I know what you wanted to know, and so I took the liberty of asking her a few questions.”

  “You did the right thing,” said Montalbano. “What did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t get a good look at them. But I asked her whether the two of them had anything unusual that might help us to identify them.”

  “And?”

  “Leena said she was able to bite the finger of the first man with all her might. The second man defended himself, but she remembers that when he was holding her he was wearing a soft down jacket. But that was all she could tell me.”

  5

  They agreed that Meriam would take the girl to the hospital in the morning.

  By the time Montalbano and Fazio made it back to the station, it was past four a.m.

  Catarella was dead to the world, head resting on his table. Montalbano let him sleep and went into his office after telling Fazio to ring the processing center to inform Leena’s parents that the girl was being taken to the hospital for tests but that in any case she wouldn’t be held up for very long.

  But while Fazio was making the call, a problem occurred to Montalbano: If none of the five men detained spoke a word of Italian, how was he going to interrogate them? Summoning Dr. Osman was out of the question. The only solution was to trouble poor Meriam again. By now she was probably in bed. He looked for the piece of paper with her number on it, found it, and dialed. She answered on the first ring.

  “I’m sorry, Meriam, this is Montalbano again. I feel mortified to ask, but I need you again. Could you come to the station and act as interpreter?”

  “Of course. The girls are both sleeping soundly in the double bed. Just give me time to make a pot of coffee and a bit of porridge for my husband, and I’ll be on my way.”

  The mere thought of it gave Montalbano a nasty twist in the pit of his stomach. Porridge and coffee? At seven in the morning?

  Fazio returned.

  “All taken care of,” he said, sitting down. “So, what do we do now?”

  “We wait for Meriam to get here.”

  Fazio did a double take.

  “What? Did you call her up?”

  “Of course! I happen not to speak Arabic. Did you by any chance study it at school?”

  “No way, Chief. I studied English, though it’s starting to look like Arabic would have been more useful.”

  “I had an idea,” said Montalbano. “You’ve seen the state these poor wretches are in when they arrive. Even if they’re young, they’re exhausted, at the end of their rope. They wait on the shore for days and days, without eating or sleeping, until it’s their turn to leave. And so I asked myself: How could anyone feel like rapi
ng a young girl? . . . And, even if such a thought does cross your mind, where do you find the strength to do it, when you’re barely strong enough to breathe? So, it’s possible these two lowlifes are none other than the boatmen themselves. Remember when Sileci told us that the motorboat had picked them up from a barge that was sinking? Apparently the two boatmen hadn’t managed in time to jump to safety and are now in the holding cell with the migrants.”

  “You’re right!” said Fazio.

  “Do something for me, would you? Go and peek through the spy hole to see what’s going on in there, and then tell me if one of them is wearing a down jacket.”

  Fazio returned a few minutes later.

  “Chief, three of them are sleeping on the floor, and the two others are sitting on the straw mattress and chattering intensely. One of them is in fact wearing a red down jacket.”

  They sat there looking at each other, and then Fazio asked:

  “Shall we make some coffee?”

  “Excellent idea,” said the inspector.

  As they were going into a small room with the camping stove, he saw Pasanisi and Pagliarello, the two uniformed beat cops, sleeping deeply in the two armchairs in the waiting room.

  The coffee lifted his spirits.

  The moment they returned to Montalbano’s office, the telephone rang.

  Catarella’s voice was ragged with sleep.

  “Hello! Hello!” he yelled. “Hello!”

  “Cat, what’s got into you?”

  “I was tryin’ a see fer soitan ’at you was youse ann’at you was onna premisses! ’Cuz, seein’ as how I din’t see ya walk past—”

  “Okay, okay. What is it?”

  “’Ere’s some lady calls ’erself Signura Marianna Ucrìa sayin’ you called ’er.”

  How nice! thought the inspector. Catarella’s becoming interested in literature!

  “Show her into my office.”

  “Hello again. I got here as soon as I could,” said Meriam, coming in.

  “Thank you, and again, my apologies, but your presence here is absolutely indispensable.”

  “I understand,” the woman said.

  Fazio sat her down opposite the desk, leaving the other chair empty.

  “I’m under the impression,” Montalbano began, “that the sixteen-year-old boy I drove here was more frightened than he should have been about what was going on. I think he must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to see, and he’s not talking because the guys who raped Leena are the two boatmen.”

  “What do you mean, the two boatmen?” Meriam asked in surprise. “Usually the minute they spot the motor patrol boat, they throw the migrants into the sea and are the first to flee to safety.”

  “You’re right, but this time they seem not to have had the time to do that, because the barge was sinking.”

  Montalbano then turned to Fazio.

  “Wake up Pagliarello and tell him to go and get the youngest of the group, the sixteen-year-old who was in the car with me, and bring him here to me. And you come right back.”

  Fazio left and then returned.

  “Are you armed?” the inspector asked.

  “Yes,” said Fazio, surprised by the question.

  “Give me your weapon.”

  Fazio handed him his pistol, and the inspector set it down on the table, within reach.

  At that moment Pagliarello came in, pushing the Arab boy from behind. The lad was visibly trembling in fear.

  “Wait,” said Montalbano.

  The two stopped just inside the door.

  The inspector then stood up slowly, pistol in hand, drew near to them, and gestured with the gun for the boy to go and sit down in the chair facing Meriam.

  When the boy was seated, the inspector said to Pagliarello:

  “Handcuff him.”

  The boy hung his head and started crying silently.

  Montalbano sat back down.

  “Please tell him,” Montalbano said to Meriam, “that he’s been identified by a little girl who was raped during the journey as one of the culprits. And that’s not all; the girl also told us he was one of the boatmen. He is therefore under arrest and tomorrow will be immediately repatriated and sent to prison.”

  “Inspector, I think you’re going a little too far!” said Meriam, frightened by what she was seeing and hearing.

  And so the inspector looked at her intently and spoke to her with his eyes, and the expression on Meriam’s face reassured him completely that she realized they were playacting. And indeed, she started translating, in a soft but firm voice, what Montalbano had just said.

  Once she finished speaking, the boy slid off his chair, went down on his knees, brought his cuffed hands in front of his face, and began striking himself in the forehead and shouting. The tears ran in rivers down his face.

  “What is he saying?” asked the inspector.

  “He says he’s innocent, that he had nothing to do with it. He’s desperate, Inspector,” said Meriam.

  “Then ask him if he witnessed the rape and who the rapists were.”

  The boy’s answer was a literal torrent of words, and in the end he collapsed on the floor and curled up into a ball.

  Montalbano looked at Meriam questioningly.

  “He said they told him they would kill him if he talked,” the woman said. “And that if he goes to the processing center with his companions they will definitely kill him. He swears up and down that he’s innocent, but doesn’t feel up to risking his life yet again.”

  “Fazio, go get him a little water and have him sit down,” said Montalbano. Then, turning to Meriam: “Ask him if he feels up to answering simply with a nod or by shaking his head. Also tell him that I will ask the same questions of all the other five men we’ve detained, and therefore they’ll never know who talked.”

  Meriam did as asked. Then the inspector followed up with:

  “The first question is this: Did he see who committed the rape?”

  The boy nodded yes.

  “The second question is: Was one of the two wearing a red down jacket?”

  The boy nodded again.

  “The third and last question is: Are the rapists the boatmen themselves?”

  With one last nod, the boy started weeping desperately.

  And so the inspector asked Pagliarello to remove the boy’s handcuffs, take him into Augello’s office, and stand guard over him. Then he asked Fazio to go and wake up Pasanisi and, with his help, bring him the man who was talking to the one in the red down jacket.

  * * *

  While waiting he informed Meriam that he would be changing tactics entirely, and that she should still translate everything he said, exactly as he said it.

  As soon as the man appeared, flanked by Fazio and Pasanisi, Montalbano donned a broad, toothy smile. He stood up, went over to the man, and reached out and shook the man’s hand vigorously. The other couldn’t help but grimace in pain.

  “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

  Meriam translated at once, and the man replied.

  “He says no. It’s just that he has a wound on that hand, which he got during the journey.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! Let me see,” said Montalbano, grabbing the man’s hand again.

  Between the thumb and forefinger, he could see the girl’s tooth marks.

  “Please sit down,” said Montalbano, “and give me your personal particulars.”

  As the man gave him this information, Fazio wrote it down.

  Montalbano asked him only one question:

  “During the navigation, did you notice anything strange happening on board the barge?”

  The man shook his head no.

  “Do you intend to ask for political asylum?”

  The man shook his head again, and then added a few comments.
<
br />   Meriam translated.

  “Not me. I’m only here for work.”

  For Montalbano, this answer meant that the man was fervently hoping to be sent back home as quickly as possible. It was the only way he could continue to ply his dirty trade.

  “That’s enough for me,” said Montalbano. “I hope you’ll soon make it to the processing center. Pasanisi, please escort the gentleman back to the holding cell, then bring me all the others.”

  When they came in, the inspector had them all stand facing his desk. The two that Fazio had seen sleeping were managing to remain upright only because they were leaning against each other. The man in the red down jacket, on the other hand, was pointing two intense eyes straight at the inspector and was so nervous that he couldn’t refrain from tapping his left foot continuously against the floor.

  “I want everyone’s name and particulars.”

  Meriam translated for them, and Fazio took it all down.

  “I will ask you the same thing I asked the others,” the inspector went on. “During the journey, did any of you notice anything strange happening on board?”

  The answer was a chorus of “no.”

  Montalbano then turned to the man in the down jacket.

  “How did the boatmen treat you all?”

  Before answering, the man grew more visibly nervous than ever, tapping his foot even faster than before, and sort of shrugged his shoulders.

  Meriam translated what he said, which was that the boatmen behaved as they always did in these situations.

  “One last question,” said the inspector. “Do you intend to ask for political asylum?”

  The answer of the two propping each other up was immediate, and in Italian:

  “Yes!”

  Apparently they knew what “political asylum” meant.

  “And what about you?” Montalbano asked the man in the down jacket.

  Meriam translated his answer.

  “Not me. I’m only here for work.”

  Apparently the two boatmen had agreed on the answer they would give.

  Montalbano ordered Pasanisi to take them all back to the holding cell. He glanced at his watch. Between one thing and another, it was now almost seven.