The Potter's Field

by Andrea Camilleri

  “So much the better,” said Montalbano. “Why should we be the only ones to get soaked to the bone?”

  “And what am I supposed to do for these two hours?” Mimì asked sullenly.

  “You can play cards,” said the inspector. Then, seeing Ajena walking away, he added: “Why did you call Catarella and tell him my presence was indispensable here?”

  “Because I thought that—”

  “Mimì, you didn’t think anything. You wanted to make me come here for the sole purpose of busting my balls, so I could get drenched like everybody else.”

  “Salvo, you just said it yourself: Why should only Fazio and I get soaked while you’re still lying in bed?”

  Montalbano couldn’t help but notice how much anger there was in Augello’s words. He hadn’t done it as a joke. What on earth was happening to the guy?

  When he got back to Marinella it had started pouring again. It was well past lunchtime by then, and spending the morning in the open air had, moreover, whetted his appetite. He went into the bathroom, changed out of his rain-soaked suit, and hurried into the kitchen. Adelina had made him pasta’ncasciata and, as second course, rabbit cacciatore. She very rarely made this, but whenever she did, it brought tears of happiness to his eyes.

  By the time Fazio straggled back into the station, night was falling. He must have gone home first, showered, and changed. But he was visibly tired. It hadn’t been an easy day at ’u critaru.

  “Where’s Mimì?”

  “Gone home to rest, Chief. He felt a bit of fever coming on.”

  “And Catarella?”

  “Him too. Over a hundred, I’d say. He wanted to come in anyway, but I told him to go home and lie down.”

  “Did you recover the bag with the body?”

  “You know what, Chief? When we went back to ’u critaru in the pouring rain with the Forensics team, the prosecutor, Dr. Pasquano, and the stretcher-bearers, and we looked inside the bushes where Catarella said he saw the bag, the bag was gone!”

  “Jesus Christ, what a pain in the ass! The corpse that wouldn’t stay put! So where was it?”

  “The water and sludge had carried it about ten yards farther down. But part of the bag got torn, so a few of the pieces—”

  “Pieces? What pieces?”

  “Before the body was put in the bag, it had been cut up into small pieces.”

  So Ajena was right about what he’d seen: The toes had been cut off the feet.

  “So what did you do?”

  “We had to wait till Cocò arrived from Montelusa.”

  “And who’s Cocò? Never heard of him.”

  “Cocò’s a dog, Chief. A really good dog. He found five body parts that had fallen out of the bag and got scattered about, including the head. After which Dr. Pasquano said that as far as he could tell, the corpse seemed complete. And so we were finally able to leave.”

  “Did you see the head yourself ?”

  “I did, but you couldn’t tell anything from it. The face was gone. It’d been totally obliterated by repeated blows from a hammer or mallet, or some heavy object.”

  “They didn’t want him recognized right away.”

  “No doubt about it, Chief. ’Cause I also saw the index finger of the right hand, which had been cut off. The whole fingertip had been burnt off.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Chief. That the victim had a record and could have been identified from his fingerprints. So they took the necessary measures.”

  “Was Pasquano able to determine how long ago he was killed?”

  “He said two months, at the very least. But he needs to have a better look at him in the autopsy.”

  “Do you know when he’ll do that?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “And there was no report of this man’s disappearance over those two months?”

  “There are two possibilities, Chief: either it wasn’t reported, or it was.”

  Montalbano gave him a look of mock admiration.

  “Well put, Fazio! Ever heard of Monsieur de la Palisse?”

  “No, Chief. Who was he?”

  “A man who fifteen minutes before he died was still alive.”

  Fazio immediately got it.

  “Come on, Chief! You didn’t let me finish my thought!”

  “All right then, go on. For a brief moment I thought you’d been infected by Catarella.”

  “What I meant was that it’s possible somebody reported the dead man’s disappearance, but since we don’t know who the dead man is—”

  “I get your point. The only thing we can do is wait till tomorrow to see what Pasquano has to tell us.”

  Once home, Montalbano was greeted by the telephone, which started ringing as he was trying to unlock the door, fumbling with the keys.

  “Ciao, darling, how are you?”

  It was Livia, sounding cheerful.

  “I’ve had a pretty rough morning. How about you?”

  “I’ve been great, for my part. I didn’t go to the office today.”

  “Oh, really? Why not?”

  “I didn’t feel like it. It was such a beautiful morning. It seemed like a terrible shame to go to work. You should have seen the sun, Salvo. It looked like yours.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went out and had fun.”

  “Well, you can allow yourself such luxuries.”

  It had slipped out, and Livia didn’t let it slide.

  A little while later, still in a bad mood, he settled in to watch some television. On a chair beside his armchair he had set two dishes, one full of green and black olives and salted sardines, the other with cheese, tumazzo and caciocavallo di Ragusa. He poured himself a glass of wine but kept the bottle within reach, just in case. Then he turned on the TV. The first thing that came on was a film set in some Asian country during the monsoon. What? It’s deluging outside and now he has to watch a fake deluge on TV? He changed the channel. Another movie. A woman lay naked on a bed, batting her eyelashes at a young guy undressing and seen from behind. When the kid took off his underpants, the woman’s eyes opened wide and she brought a hand to her mouth, surprised and amazed by what she saw. He changed the channel. The prime minister was explaining why the country’s economy was going to the dogs: the first reason was the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers; the second was the tsunami in the South Seas; the third was the euro; the fourth the Communist opposition that refused to cooperate, and . . . He changed the channel. There was a cardinal talking about the sacred institution of the family. In the first row of the audience were an array of politicians, two of whom had been divorced, another who was living with a minor after leaving his wife and three children, a fourth who maintained an official family and two unofficial families, and a fifth who had never married because, as was well known, he didn’t like women. All nodded gravely in agreement with the cardinal’s words. He changed the channel. The screen filled with the chicken-ass face of Pippo Ragonese, the top honcho newsman of TeleVigàta.

  “. . . and so the discovery of the corpse of a man brutally murdered, cut into small pieces, and put into a garbage bag disturbs us for several reasons. But the principal reason is that the investigation has been assigned to Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano of the Vigàta Police, on whom we have, unfortunately, had occasion to focus our attention in the past. Our criticisms were directed not so much at the fact that he has political ideas—indeed every word he says is steeped in Communist beliefs—but at the fact that he has no ideas at all during his investigations. Or else, when he does, they are always absurd, outlandish, and utterly groundless. So we would like to give him some advice. But will he listen? The advice is the following. Only two weeks ago, in the area around the place called ’u critaru, where the corpse was found, a hunter ran across two plastic bags containing the remains of two suckling calves. Might there not be a connection between these two occurrences? Might it not involve some satanic rite that—”

&
nbsp; He turned off the TV. Satanic rite my ass! Aside from the fact that the two bags had been found two and a half miles away from ’u critaru, it was discovered that they’d been dumped following an operation by the carabinieri to stop unauthorized animal slaughter.

  He went to bed feeling fed up with all of creation. But before lying down he took an aspirin, cursing the saints all the while. Given the soaking he’d endured that morning and his wretchedly advancing age, perhaps it was best to be cautious.

  The following morning, after awaking from a night of rather agitated sleep and opening the window, the inspector rejoiced. A July sun shone in a sky scrubbed perfectly clean and sparkling. The sea, which for two days had completely covered the beach, had receded, but had left the sand littered with garbage bags, empty cans, plastic bottles, bottomless boxes, and various other filth. Montalbano recalled how in now distant times, when the sea withdrew, it would leave behind only sweet-smelling algae and beautiful shells that were like gifts to mankind. Now it only gave us back our own rubbish.

  He also remembered a comedy he had read in his youth, called The Deluge, which claimed that the next great flood would be caused not by water from the heavens, but by the backing up and overflowing of all the toilets, latrines, cesspools, and septic tanks in the world, which would start chucking up their contents relentlessly until we all drowned in our own shit.

  He went out on the veranda and stepped down onto the beach.

  He noticed that the space between the cement slab holding up the veranda’s tiled floor and the sand below had become clogged with a fine assortment of smelly debris, including the carcass of a dog.

  Cursing like a madman, he went back inside, slipped on a pair of dishwashing gloves, grabbed a sort of grapple that Adelina used for mysterious purposes, went down to the beach again, threw himself belly-down on the sand, and started cleaning up.

  After fifteen minutes of this, a sharp pang seized him across the shoulders, paralyzing him. Why on earth was he undertaking such tasks at his age?

  “Could I really be in such bad shape?” he wondered.

  In a fit of pride, however, he went back to work, the pain be damned. When he had finished putting all the rubbish into two large garbage bags, every bone in his body ached. But he’d had an idea in the meantime, and he wanted to see it through. He went inside and wrote in block letters on a blank sheet of paper: ASSHOLE. He put this in one of the two bags, which he then picked up and put into the trunk of his car. He went back into the house, took a shower, got dressed, got into his car, and drove off.

  3

  Just outside a town called Rattusa, he spotted a telephone booth that miraculously worked. He pulled up, got out of the car, and dialed a number.

  “Is this Pippo Ragonese, the newsman?”

  “In person. Who is this?”

  “The name’s Russo, Luicino Russo. I’m a hunter,” said Montalbano, changing his voice.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Russo?”

  “Iss happened again,” said the inspector in a conspiratorial tone of voice.

  “I’m sorry, what’s happened again?”

  “That satanic stuff you talked about lass night on TV. I foun’ two more bags.”

  “Really?” asked Ragonese, immediately interested. “Where did you find them?”

  “Right here,” said Montalbano, playing dumb.

  “Here where?”

  “Right here where I am.”

  “Yes, but where are you?”

  “In Spiranzella district, right by the four big olive trees.”

  That is, about thirty miles from the newsman’s house.

  “Wha’ should I do? Call the police?” asked Montalbano.

  “No, there’s no need, we can do that together. You stay put for the moment. I’ll be there straightaway. And don’t tell anyone else, please, it’s very important.”

  “You comin’ alone?”

  “No, I’ll bring a cameraman as well.”

  “Will he take me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will he take my pitcher? Will I be on TV? So all my friends’ll see me an’ I can brag about it?”

  He got back into the car, drove to Spiranzella, left the two bags under one of the four olive trees, and drove off.

  Entering the station, he found Catarella at his post.

  “But didn’t you have a fever?”

  “I got rid of it, Chief.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Took four aspirins an’ then drunk a glass o’ hot spicy wine an’ then got in bed an’ covered m’self up. An’ now iss gone.”

  “Who’s here?”

  “Fazio in’t here yet, an’ Isspector Augello called sayin’ as how he still had a little fever but would come in later in the morning.”

  “Any news?”

  “There’s a ginnelman wants a talk to yiz who’s name is—wait, I got it writ down somewheres—iss an easy name but I forgot it, wait, here it is: Mr. Giacchetta.”

  “Does that seem like a forgettable name to you?”

  “It happens to me sometimes, Chief.”

  “All right, then, send him into my office after I go in.”

  The man who came in was a well-dressed gentleman of about forty with a distinguished air, perfectly coiffed hair, mustache, eyeglasses, and the overall look of an ideal bank clerk.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Giacchetta.”

  “Giacchetti. Fabio Giacchetti’s the name.”

  Montalbano cursed to himself. Why did he still believe the names Catarella passed on to him?

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Giacchetti?”

  The man sat down, carefully arranging the creases in his trousers and smoothing his mustache. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the inspector.

  “Well?” said Montalbano.

  “The truth of the matter is, I’m not sure I was right to come here.”

  O matre santa! He’d happened upon a ditherer, a doubting Thomas, the worst kind of person who might ever walk into a police station.

  “Listen, I can’t help you with that. It’s up to you to decide. It’s not like I can give you little hints the way they do on quiz shows.”

  “Well, the fact is that last night I witnessed something . . . and that’s just it, I don’t know what it was . . . something I really don’t know how to define.”

  “If you decide to tell me what it was, perhaps together we can arrive at a definition,” said Montalbano, who was beginning to feel something breaking in the general area of his balls. “If, on the other hand, you don’t tell me, then I’ll have to send you on your way.”

  “Well, at the time, it seemed to me . . . at first, that is, it looked to me like a hit-and-run driver. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Or at least I can tell a hit-and-run driver from a hit-and-run lover—you know, the kind with bedroom eyes and a little black book. Listen, Mr. Giacchetti, I haven’t got much time to waste. Let’s start at the beginning, all right? I’ll ask you a few questions, just to warm you up, so to speak.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you from here?”

  “No, I’m from Rome.”

  “And what do you do here in Vigàta?”

  “I started three months ago as manager of the branch office of the Banco Cooperativo.”

  The inspector had been right on the money. The man could only be with a bank. You can tell right away: Those who handle other people’s money in the cathedrals of wealth that are the big banks end up acquiring something austere and reserved in their manner, something priestlike proper to those who practice secret rites such as laundering dirty money, engaging in legalized usury, using coded accounts, and illegally exporting capital offshore. They suffer, in short, from the same sorts of occupational deformities as undertakers, who, in handling corpses every day, end up looking like walking corpses themselves.

  “Where do you live?”

  “For now, while waiting to find a decent apartment, my wife and I a
re staying at a house on the Montereale road, as her parents’ guests. It’s their country home, but they’ve turned it over to us for the time being.”

  “All right, then, if you’d be so kind as to tell me what happened . . .”

  “Last night, around two A.M., my wife started going into labor, and so I put her in the car and we headed off to Montelusa Hospital.”

  The man was finally opening up.

  “Just as we were leaving Vigàta, I noticed, in the headlights, a woman walking ahead of me, with her back to me. At that exact moment a car came up beside me at a high speed, lightly swiping my car as it passed—it looked to me like it was swerving—and then it aimed straight for the woman. She quickly realized the danger, probably hearing the car’s engine, and jumped to her right and fell into the ditch. The car stopped for a second and then took off again with a screech.”

  “So, in the end it didn’t hit her?”

  “No. The woman was able to dodge it.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I stopped, though my wife was crying—she was feeling very bad by this point—and I got out. The woman had got back up in the meantime. I asked her if she was hurt and she said no. So I told her to get in the car and I would take her into town, and she accepted. On the way, we all agreed that the person driving that car must have had a bit too much to drink, and that it must have been some sort of stupid prank. Then she told me where she wanted to be dropped off, and she got out of the car. Before she left, however, she begged me not to tell anyone about what I had seen. She gave me to understand that she was returning from an amorous encounter...”

  “She didn’t explain how she happened to be out alone at that hour of the night?”

  “She made some reference . . . she said her car had stalled and wouldn’t start up again. But then she realized she had run out of gas.”

  “So, how did things work out?”

  Fabio Giacchetti looked confused.

  “With the lady?”

  “No, with your wife.”