The Pyramid of Mud

by Andrea Camilleri

“Cat, can you tell the difference between a P and an R?”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “Then tell me what that is, when they’re written in capital letters.”

  “Cappital litters? Okay, lemme tink. So, the R’s gotta belly an’ a li’l leg, but the P’s only gotta belly.”

  “Good. But you got it wrong. You’re taking me to a place that’s got a little leg, when you should be taking me to a place that’s only got a belly.”

  “So I made a mistake?”

  “You made a mistake.”

  Catarella turned first as red as a turkey cock and then as pale as a corpse.

  “Ohhh, no! A’ss terrible, terrible, jess terrible! Unfergivable! I took the chief the wrong ways!”

  Forlorn and on the verge of tears, he buried his face in his hands. The inspector, to keep things from getting any worse, patted him amicably on the back.

  “Come on, Cat, don’t take it so hard. A minute more, a minute less, doesn’t make any difference. Chin up. And now take the cell phone and have Fazio explain to you which way we should go.”

  To the right-hand side of a former country road, now reduced to a sort of muddy riverbed hacked up by hundreds of truck-tire furrows, was a vast, wide-open construction site that had turned into a sea of mud. Piled up to one side were a great many concrete pipes wide enough for a man to stand up in.

  There was also a large crane, along with three trucks, two excavators, and three earthmovers. Clustered on the other side were a number of cars, including Fazio’s and the two cars belonging to Forensics.

  Once past the worksite, the country road went back to being a normal country road, all uphill. Some thirty yards up you could see a sort of small house, and then another, a bit farther up.

  Fazio approached the inspector.

  “What’s the construction site for?” Montalbano asked.

  “They’re building a new water main. The workers haven’t been to work for four days because of the bad weather, but this morning two employees came here to assess the situation. It was they who found the dead body and called us.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Montalbano noticed that Fazio was about to add something but then stopped.

  “What is it?”

  “You’d better have a look for yourself.”

  “But where is this body, anyway?”

  “Inside the pipe.”

  Montalbano balked.

  “What pipe?”

  “You can’t see it from here, Chief. It’s hidden by the machines. They were boring through the hillside so they could run the pipes through it. Three of them are already in place. The body was found deep inside a kind of tunnel.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  “The Forensics guys are in there, Chief. You can’t really fit more than two people at a time. But they’re almost done.”

  “Did Dr. Pasquano come?”

  “Yeah, he had a look and then left.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “The two workers found the body at six-fifteen this morning. Pasquano said the guy died about an hour earlier. It was clear he was shot before he went into the pipe.”

  “So he was brought there by whoever it was that killed him?”

  Fazio looked uneasy.

  “Chief, I’d rather you saw it with your own eyes.”

  “Is the prosecutor here yet?”

  It was known to one and all that Prosecutor Tommaseo always ended up crashing his car, in every way conceivable, even on sunny days with no traffic, so one could only imagine what might happen with all the rain they’d been having.

  “Yes, but it’s Prosecutor Jacono, ’cause Tommaseo’s got the flu.”

  “Listen, I want to talk to the two workmen.”

  “Hey, guys! Come over here for a minute, would you?” Fazio called over to the two men, who were standing beside one of the cars, smoking.

  He and the inspector slid around in the mud as they approached, then said hello.

  “Good morning. I’m Inspector Montalbano. What time did you both get here this morning?”

  The two men exchanged glances. The older guy, who looked about fifty, replied.

  “Six o’clock sharp.”

  “Did you come in the same car?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And the first thing you did was go into the tunnel?”

  “That was supposed to be the last thing we did, but we went in as soon as we saw the bicycle.”

  Montalbano balked.

  “What bicycle?”

  “There was a bicycle on the ground right outside the entrance to the tunnel. We thought maybe someone had gone inside to take cover, and—”

  “Wait a second. How could anyone have ridden a bicycle through all this mud?”

  “There’s a sort of walkway, Inspector, which we made out of wooden planks, otherwise we couldn’t get around. You can only see it from up close.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  “What were we supposed to do? We went into the tunnel with our flashlights and when we reached the end we saw the body.”

  “Did you touch it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “When somebody’s dead, you know they’re dead.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “We have no idea who he is. He was lying facedown.”

  “Did you have any sense he might be someone who works here?”

  “I don’t think we could say one way or the other.”

  “Do you have anything else to tell me?”

  “No, that’s all. We came right out and I called you.”

  “All right, then, thanks. You can go now.”

  The two men said good-bye and ran away. All they wanted to do was go home. Then there was some activity around the parked cars.

  “The Forensics guys are done,” said Fazio.

  “Go and see if they found anything.”

  Fazio walked away. Montalbano would never exchange a word with the head of Forensics, not even with a gun to his head. He had a profound dislike for the man, who felt the same way about him.

  Fazio returned five minutes later.

  “They didn’t find any shell, but they’re certain the man entered the tunnel after he was shot. There’s a bloody handprint on the inside wall of one of the pipes, as if he was bracing himself to keep from falling.”

  The Forensics cars drove off. That left Fazio’s car and the van from the morgue.

  “Here, Chief, take my arm. Otherwise you risk slipping and getting mud all over you.”

  Montalbano didn’t turn down the offer. They walked along gingerly, taking short steps, and once they got past the two cars, Montalbano could finally see the hole at the base of the hill and the entrance to the tunnel.

  “How long are the pipes?”

  “Twenty feet each. The tunnel itself is sixty feet, and the body’s at the far end.”

  On the ground to the left of the entrance lay a bicycle half-covered in mud, which the Forensics technicians had cordoned off with yellow ribbon attached to a few slender poles.

  The inspector stopped to have a look at it. It was a rather old bike, quite worn-out, and at one time must have been green in color.

  “I wonder why he left the bike outside and didn’t just ride it straight into the pipe,” said Fazio. “There was plenty of room.”

  “I don’t think he did it on purpose. He must have fallen and didn’t have the strength to get back on.”

  “Take my flashlight, Chief, and go in ahead of me,” said Fazio.

  Montalbano grabbed the torch, turned it on, and went in, with Fazio following behind.

  After taking two steps, however, he turned and ran back out
, panting.

  “What happened?” Fazio asked, perplexed.

  The inspector couldn’t very well tell him about the dream.

  “I felt short of breath. Are you sure this tunnel’s safe?”

  “Totally.”

  “Okay. Let’s go,” he said, turning the flashlight back on and taking a deep breath, as though about to plunge underwater.

  2

  It was hopeless. He knew it would be this way. The scene was exactly the same as in his dream, and he didn’t like the situation one bit. The only difference was that Fazio, who was following behind him, luckily didn’t have a kitchen knife stuck between his shoulder blades.

  It was muddy inside the tunnel as well, though a lot less than outside. Still, there was plenty of mud. At last the beam of the flashlight centered on the corpse. Montalbano’s jaw dropped.

  That was because the dead man, who lay facedown and looked like a statue of mud, wasn’t wearing any clothes aside from a pair of underpants and a sleeveless undershirt. He was even barefoot.

  He’d been killed by a single gunshot that hit him right between the shoulder blades. The bullet’s entry wound was plainly visible in his undershirt, which was once white but now reddish-brown from a mix of blood and muddy water.

  “I wish I could see his face,” said the inspector.

  “Let’s go,” said Fazio.

  Once outside, the inspector went over to talk with the morgue orderlies tasked with transporting the body, who were playing cards inside the van.

  They gave him a dirty look, kept on playing for a few minutes, then got out of the van and went into the tunnel.

  “At five o’clock this morning it was raining like there was no tomorrow,” said Fazio. “Why would anyone go out into the deluge for a ride on his bike, barefoot and in his underwear?”

  “He wasn’t out for a ride; he was fleeing,” the inspector replied. “And he was probably shot after he’d already hopped on the bike. Which leads me to think . . .”

  “To think what?”

  “That someone mortally wounded wouldn’t have the strength to cycle uphill in a storm.”

  “Explain.”

  “What’s to explain? The man could only have—”

  “All done!” said one of the orderlies, coming out of the tunnel.

  Montalbano and Fazio went back inside. The orderlies had turned the body over and even cleaned the man’s face.

  The body had belonged to a good-looking young man of about thirty, with black hair and a row of healthy white teeth visible through his half-open mouth. Under his left eye he bore a scar in the shape of a crescent moon. There was no exit wound in the front of his undershirt, which meant that the bullet had remained inside his body.

  “Okay, that’s enough for me,” said the inspector.

  They went back outside.

  “Can we bag ’im?” asked one of the orderlies.

  “Be my guest,” said Fazio.

  Montalbano looked around. The landscape depressed him and wrung his heart. And it made him uncomfortable. The huge crane looked like the skeleton of an ancient mammoth, while the large pipes were like the bones of some gigantic, unknown beasts, and the trucks misshapen from the thick layer of mud encrusted on them were all dead. There wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. All greenery had been covered by a dark gray semiliquid that looked in every way like open-air sewage water that had throttled all living beings from ants to lizards. Montalbano recalled a line from Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the one that evokes “rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their bones.”

  “But how long have they been working on this water main, anyway?”

  “Seven years, Chief.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Because after five years they had to stop all work when they realized the costs had tripled. The usual stuff.”

  “And then they started up again afterwards?”

  “That’s right. They got a new subsidy from the regional administration. But in the meantime the water seems to have run out.”

  “What water?”

  “The water that was supposed to be piped through this new main, which was supposed to come from the Voltano.”

  “And why does the Voltano not have any more water?”

  “It’s not that the Voltano doesn’t have any more water; it just doesn’t have enough to fill this conduit.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, what happened was that the Consortium of Caltanissetta won the competition for the water from the Voltano.”

  “So this conduit serves no purpose?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So why do they keep working on it?”

  “Chief, you know as well as I do that it’s because the contracts have already been granted and certain people’s economic interests have to be respected or the whole affair will end up in the gutter.”

  But wouldn’t it be better for it to end up in the gutter once and for all?

  This little discussion with Fazio was exactly like the proverbial drop that makes the glass overflow.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “But, Chief . . .”

  “No, Fazio, if we stay any longer the mud’s liable to seep into my brain. I can’t stand it. Go tell Catarella to go back to town by himself. You can give me a ride home to Marinella.”

  He had Fazio drop him off outside his front door. They’d agreed to meet back up at the station right after lunch.

  When he reached for the keys in the pocket he usually kept them in, they weren’t there. He searched in his other pockets, to no avail. Then, cursing the saints, he realized that Catarella, after locking up the house, had never given them back to him.

  He rang the doorbell in the hopes that Adelina might still be inside. Nobody answered. He rang again, frantically, then, to his relief, he heard his housekeeper’s voice.

  “Geez, whassa big hurry? Comin’!”

  The door opened, and Adelina took one look at him and cried out:

  “Stoppa righ’ there!”

  Montalbano froze, stunned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I jess washa da flo’! If you wanna come in here all filty witta mud, I gonna hafta star’ cleanin’ all over again!”

  “So, in your opinion, I can’t come in?”

  “Tekka offa ya boots an’ I bringa you somma shoes.”

  It wasn’t easy pulling his boots off while standing in the doorway.

  “I should warn you I also want to take a shower.”

  “Butta batroom izza spacklin’ clean!”

  “So I’ll buff it up a little, okay?”

  “I can’ta stoppa you, sir. I jess live witt it.”

  An hour later, after showering, changing clothes, and leaving Adelina behind, muttering to herself as she put the bathroom back in order, he got into the car and drove off to headquarters.

  He felt a lot better. The shower had washed away the mud but not the invisible muck that Fazio’s words about the construction of the conduit had made him feel all the way under his skin.

  The first thing he noticed as he walked in was that Catarella was not at his post at the switchboard.

  “There’s been no sign of him,” said the officer on duty.

  Want to bet he got lost on the drive back and wouldn’t return until late morning?

  “Would Inspectors Augello and Fazio happen to be on the premises?”

  The officer gave him a strange look. Damn. The inspector had forgotten he wasn’t talking to Catarella.

  “Are they here?” he corrected himself.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please summon them to my office.”

  They showed up at the same time, said hello, and sat down.

  “Do you know about the guy we found murdered?” the
inspector asked Augello.

  “Fazio filled me in.”

  “Anything new at your end?”

  “This morning when you guys were out, Tano Gambardella phoned.”

  “The journalist?”

  “Right.”

  Gambardella ran a feisty newsweekly that dealt with all the crooked things that went down in Vigàta. He was a brave man who’d already survived two Mafia attacks on his life. He also sometimes worked for the Free Channel, the news program of which was run by Nicolò Zito, a good friend of Montalbano’s.

  “What did he want?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he only wanted to talk to you. Poissonally in poisson, as Catarella would say.”

  “But you’re my second-in-command! You should have—”

  “Listen, Salvo, I couldn’t insist because there’s an old story between Gambardella and me that goes back a ways.”

  Montalbano understood in a flash. Any “old stories” concerning Mimì could only involve one thing.

  “Does it have anything to do with his wife?”

  “Yes. And a fine-looking woman she is.”

  “And how far back does this story go?”

  Mimì squirmed in his chair.

  “Let’s say about three months.”

  “Mimì, if you don’t straighten yourself out, and fast, one of these days some jealous husband is going to shoot you, and I’ll give him a hand fleeing justice, you can count on that. So, how did you leave things with him?”

  “He’ll call you back.”

  “Okay, guys, now listen up. As I started to say to Fazio this morning, our murder victim could only have lived somewhere near the construction site, and, more precisely, in the elevated part of Pizzutello.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because, mortally wounded as he was, he could never have pedaled uphill, and in the mud to boot. At best he might have been able to ride downhill, with the bike coasting on its own. And there’s another important detail. He knew that there was a sort of walkway of planks above the mud which the workers had built at the construction site, but which you couldn’t see with all the mud around. This means that he went that way often and had probably seen them building the gangway.”