IM5 Excursion to Tindari (2005)

by Andrea Camilleri

  “No, tell me who you are, asshole.”

  “First tell me who you are.”

  Mimi hadn’t recognized him.

  “I’m looking for Nenè. Put him on.”

  “He’s not home. But you can give me a message and I‘ll—”

  “Well, if there’s no Nenè, then this must be Mimì.”

  Montalbano heard a string of curses, then the irritated voice of Augello, who’d recognized him.

  “Only a lunatic like you would think of fucking around on the phone at six in the morning. What’s your problem anyway? Why don’t you see a doctor?”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nothing. If I’d found something, I’d have called you, wouldn’t I?”

  Augello was still upset over the prank.

  “Listen, Mimi, since we’ve got something important to do this evening, I thought it’d be better if you leave off what you’re doing and go rest.”

  “What do we have to do this evening?”

  “I’ll tell you later. We’ll meet back at the office around three in the afternoon. Is that all right?”

  “Yeah, that’s all right. ‘Cause after looking at all these tapes, I’m starting to feel like becoming aTrappist monk. Tell you what: I’ll look at two more, and then go home.”

  The inspector hung up and dialed the office.

  “Hallo! Hallo! Vigàta Police talking! Whoozis onna line?”

  “Montalbano.”

  “Poissonally in poisson?”

  “Yes. Tell me something, Cat. I think I remember you saying you had a friend in the Montelusa forensics lab.”

  “Yessir, Chief. Cicco de Cicco. He’s a rilly tall guy, a Neapolitan, in the sense that he’s from Salerno, a real heart-warmer, sir. Just tink, one morning he calls me up and says...”

  If he didn’t stop him at once, Catarella was liable to tell him Cicco de Cicco’s life story.

  “Listen, Cat, you can tell me another time. What time does he usually get to the office?”

  “He usually falls in roundabout nine o‘clock. Say, like, in maybe two hours.”

  “This De Cicco works in the photo lab, right?”

  “Yessir, Chief.”

  “I want you to do me a favor. Ring De Cicco and arrange to meet him. Sometime this morning I want you to bring him a—”

  “I can’t bring to ‘im, Chief.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you want, I’ll bring him whatever you want anyway, but De Cicco’s not gonna be there no way this morning. De Cicco told me hisself in poisson last night when he called me.”

  “So where’s he going to be?”

  “In Montelusa. At police headquarters. They’re all meeting together.”

  “What for?”

  “Mr. Commissioner brung a rilly rilly big crimologogist from Rome who’s asposta give ‘em a licture.”

  “A lecture?”

  “Yessir. An’ De Cicco tol’ me the licture’s gonna show ‘em how they’re asposta do when they have to do peepee.”

  Montalbano staggered.

  “What the hell are you saying, Catarella!”

  “I swear it, Chief.”

  Then the inspector had a flash.

  “Cat, it’s not peepee, it’s probably a PPA they’re talking about. Which means Probable Profile of the Assailant. Understand?”

  “No sir, Chief. But what’m I asposta take to De Cicco?”

  “A photograph. I need him to make me some enlargements.”

  There was silence at the other end.

  “Hey, Cat, you still there?”

  “Yessir, Chief, I ain’t budged. I’m still here. I’s jes thinkin.”

  A good three minutes passed.

  “Try to think a little faster, Cat.”

  “Y‘see, Chief, if you bring me the photo, I’ll jes scan nafayou.”

  Montalbano balked.

  “What do you want to dp to me?”

  “Not you, Chief, the photo. I wanna scan it.”

  “Let me get this straight, Cat. Are you talking about the computer?”

  “Yessir, Chief. An’ if I don’ scan it m‘self, ’cause you rilly need a rilly good scanner, I’ll bring it to a trusty friend a mine.”

  “Okay, thanks. See you in a bit.”

  He hung up and straight away the telephone rang.

  “Bingo!”

  It was Mimi Augello, all excited.

  “I was right on the mark, Salvo. Wait for me. I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes. Does your VCR work?”

  “Yes. But there’s no point in showing it to me, Mimi. You know that porno stuff only gets me down and knocks me out.”

  “But this isn’t porn, Salvo.”

  He hung up and straight away the telephone rang.

  “Finally!”

  It was Livia. That “finally,” however, was said not with joy, but with utter coldness. The needle on Montalbano’s personal barometer began to plummet towards “Storm.”

  “Livia! What a wonderful surprise!”

  “Are you sure it’s so wonderful?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because I haven’t had any news from you for days. Because you can’t be bothered to give me a ring! I’ve been calling and calling, but you’re never at home.”

  “You could have called me at work.”

  “Salvo, you know I don’t like to call you there. Do you know what I finally did, to get some news about you?”

  “No. What?”

  “I bought Il Giornale di Sicilia. Did you read it?”

  “No. What did it say?”

  “It says you’ve got your hands full with no less than three murders, an old couple and a twenty-year-old. The reporter even insinuated that you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. In short, he said you were over the hill.”

  This might be an escape route. To say he was unhappy, left behind by the times, practically incapable of understanding or wanting anything. That way, Livia would calm down and maybe even feel sorry for him.

  “Ah, that’s so true, my Livia! Maybe I’m getting old, maybe my brain isn’t what it used to be ...”

  “No, Salvo, rest assured, your brain is the same as ever. And you’re proving it by the lousy performance you’re putting on. You want to be coddled? I won’t fall for it, you know. I know you too well. Call me sometime. When you’ve got a free moment, of course.”

  She hung up. Why was it that every phone conversation with Livia had to end with a spat? They couldn’t go on this way; a solution absolutely had to be found.

  He went into the kitchen, filled the espresso pot, put it on the burner. While waiting, he opened the French doors and went out on the veranda. A day to lift the spirits. Bright, warm colors, a lazy sea. He took a deep breath, and at that moment the phone rang again.

  “Hello! Hello!”

  There was nobody there, but the telephone started ringing again. How was that possible, if he had the receiver in his hand? Then he understood: it wasn’t the phone, but the doorbell.

  It was Mimi Augello, who’d arrived faster than a Formula 1 driver. He stood in the doorway, undecided as to whether to come inside, a smile cutting his face in two. He had a videocassette in one hand and was shaking it under the inspector’s nose.

  “Have you ever seen The Getaway, a film with—”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Rather.”

  “This version’s better.”

  “Mimi, are you going to come inside or not? Follow me to the kitchen, coffee’s ready.”

  He poured a cup for himself and one for Mimi, who’d come in behind him.

  “Let’s go into the other room,” said Mimi.

  He’d drunk down his cup in one gulp, surely scalding his pipes, but he was too pressed, too impatient to show Montalbano what he’d discovered and, above all, to glory in his own intuition. He slipped in the cassette, so excited that he tried to put it in upside down. He cursed, righted it, and t
urned it on. After some twenty minutes of The Getaway, which Mimi sped up, there were another five of blank screen, with only dancing white dots and fried audio. Mimi turned the sound off entirely.

  “I don’t think they say anything,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘you don’t think’?”

  “Well, I didn’t watch it straight through. I jumped around a bit.”

  Then an image appeared. A double bed covered with a snow-white sheet, two pillows propped up as headrests, one leaning directly against the light green wall. There were also two elegant nightstands of light wood. It wasn’t Sanfilippo’s bedroom. Another minute passed without anything happening, but it was clear that somebody was fiddling with the camera, trying to get the focus right. All that white created too much glare. Darkness ensued. Then the same shot reappeared, but tighter, the nightstands no longer visible. This time there was a thirtyish woman on the bed, completely naked, with a magnificent tan, in a full-length shot. The hair removal stood out because, in that area, her skin was ivory white; apparently it had been shielded from the sun’s rays by a G-string. At the first sight of her, the inspector felt a tremor. He knew her, surely! Where had they met? A second later, he corrected himself. No, he didn’t know her, but he had, in a way, seen her before. In the pages of a book, in a reproduction. Because the woman, with her long, long legs and pelvis resting on the bed and the remainder of her body raised up by pillows, leaning slightly to the left, hands folded behind her head, was a dead ringer for Goya’s Naked Maja. But it wasn’t only her pose that gave Montalbano this mistaken impression: the unknown woman also wore her hair the same way as the Maja, and had the faintest hint of a smile on her face.

  Like the Mona Lisa, the inspector thought, by this point thinking in terms of painterly comparisons.

  The camera remained stationary, as though spellbound by the image it was recording. On the sheet and pillows, the unknown woman was perfectly at ease, relaxed and in her element. A creature of the bed.

  “Is she the one you thought of when reading the letters?”

  “Yes,” said Augello.

  Can a monosyllable contain all the pride in the world? Mimi had managed to fit it all in there.

  “But how did you do it? It seems like you’ve only seen her a few times in passing. And always with her clothes on.”

  “You see, in the letters, he paints her. Actually, no. It’s not a portrait. It’s more like an engraving.”

  Why, when people spoke of her, did this woman bring to mind the language of art?

  “For example,” Mimi continued, “he talks about the disproportion between the length of her legs and the length of her torso, which, if you look closely, should probably be a little longer. Then he describes her hair, the shape of her eyes—”

  “I get the picture,” Montalbano cut him short, feeling envious. No doubt about it, Mimi had an eye for women.

  Meanwhile the camera had zoomed in on her feet, then ever so slowly ascended the length of her body, lingering momentarily over the pubis, navel, and nipples, before pausing at her eyes.

  How was it that the woman’s pupils shone with an inner light so intense as to surround her gaze in an aura of hypnotic phosphorescence? What was she, some sort of dangerous nocturnal animal? He looked more closely and reassured himself. Those were not the eyes of a witch. The pupils were merely reflecting the light of the floods used by Nenè Sanfilippo to better illuminate the set. The camera moved on to her mouth.The lips, two flames filling the screen, moved and parted; the catlike tip of the tongue peeped out, traced the contour of the upper lip, then the lower lip. Nothing vulgar about it, but the two men watching were dumbstruck by the violent sensuality of the gesture.

  “Rewind and turn the volume up all the way,” Montalbano said suddenly.

  “Why?”

  “She said something, I’m sure of it.”

  Mimi obeyed. The moment the shot of the mouth reappeared, a man’s voice murmured something incomprehensible.

  “Yes,” the woman replied distinctly, then began running her tongue over her lips.

  So there was sound. Not much, but it was there. Augello left it on high volume.

  The camera then went down her neck, passing lightly over it like a loving hand, from left to right and right to left again, and again, an ecstatic caress. In fact they heard a soft moan, from the woman.

  “That’s the sea,” said Montalbano.

  Mimi looked at him perplexed, struggling to take his eyes off the screen.

  “What is?”

  “That continuous, rythmic sound that you hear. It’s not some sort of rustling in the background. It’s the sound the sea makes when it’s a little rough.The house they’re in must be right on the seashore, like mine.”

  This time Mimi’s look was one of admiration.

  “What a sharp ear you’ve got, Salvo! If that’s the sea we hear, then I know where they shot this video.”

  The inspector leaned forward, grabbed the remote control, and rewound the tape.

  “What are you doing?” Augello protested. “Aren’t we going to keep watching? I told you I only saw parts of it!”

  “You can watch the whole thing when you’ve been a good boy. In the meantime, could you give me a synopsis of what you did manage to see?”

  “Well, it continues with the breasts, navel, tummy, mound of Venus, thighs, legs, feet. Then she rolls over and he redoes her whole body from behind. Finally she turns over on her back again, lies down more comfortably, puts a pillow under her buttocks and spreads her legs just enough so the camera can—”

  “Okay, okay,” Montalbano interrupted. “So nothing else happens? Do we never see the man?”

  “No. And nothing else happens. That’s why I said it wasn’t pornographic.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. That sequence is a love poem.”

  Mimi was right, and Montalbano made no reply.

  “Care to introduce me to this lady?” he asked.

  “With great pleasure. Her name is Vanya Titulescu, thirty-one years old, Romanian.”

  “A refugee?”

  “Not at all. Her father was minister of health in Romania. She herself has a degree in medicine, but she doesn’t practice here. Her future husband, already a celebrity in his field, was invited to Bucharest to give a series of lectures. They fell in love, or at least, he fell in love with her, brought her back to Italy, and married her. Even though he’s twenty years her senior. But the girl jumped at the opportunity.”

  “How long have they been married?”

  “Five years.”

  “Are you going to tell me who the husband is? Or do you plan to tell the story in installments?”

  “Doctor and Professor Eugenio Ignazio Ingrò, the transplant magician.”

  A famous name. He was often in the papers, made television appearances. Montalbano tried to call him to mind, saw a hazy image of a tall, elegant man of few words. He really was considered a surgeon with magic hands, in demand all over Europe. He also had a clinic of his own in Montelusa, where he’d been born and still lived.

  “Do they have any children?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me, Mimi, but did you gather all this information this morning after watching the tape?”

  Mimi smiled.

  “No, I informed myself after I became convinced she was the woman in the letters. The tape was only a confirmation.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “That around here, in our area—more specifically, between Vigàta and Santoli—they have a villa by the sea, with a small, private beach. And I’m sure that’s where they shot the video. They must have taken advantage when the husband was traveling abroad.”

  “Is he jealous?”

  “Yes, but not excessively so. But that’s probably also because her infidelity didn’t spark any rumors, not that I know of, at least. She and Sanfilippo were very good at not letting anything about their affair leak out.”

  “Let me ask
you a more specific question, Mimì. Is Dr. Ingrò the kind of person who would be capable of killing his wife’s lover, or having him killed, if he discovered she was being unfaithful?”

  “Why do you ask me? That’s the kind of question you should ask Ingrid, who’s her friend. Speaking of which, when are you going to see her?”

  “We’d planned to meet tonight, but I had to postpone.”

  “Ah, that’s right, you mentioned something important, something we’re supposed to do at nightfall. What’s this about?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. The cassette you should leave here, with me.”

  “You want to show it to Ingrid?”

  “Of course. So, to wrap things up temporarily, what’s your take on the murder of Nenè Sanfilippo?”

  “What do you think, Salvo? They don’t come any clearer than this. Dr. Ingrò, somehow or other, gets wise to their affair, and has the kid offed.”

  “Why not her, too?”

  “Because that would have triggered a huge scandal of international proportions. And he can’t have any shadows hanging over his private life, since that might diminish his earnings.”

  “But isn’t he rich?”

  “Extremely rich. At least, he would be if he didn’t have an obsession that’s siphoning off rivers of cash.”

  “Gambling?”

  “No, he doesn’t gamble. Maybe at Christmastime, playing gin rummy. No, his mania is for paintings. People say he’s got paintings of enormous value stored in a variety of bank vaults. Apparently when he sees a painting he likes, he can’t control himself. He’d be capable of having it stolen for him. One gossip told me that if the owner of a Degas proposed a trade for his wife, Vanya, he’d accept without hesitation. What is it, Salvo? Aren’t you listening?”

  Augello had realized that his boss’s mind was far away. Indeed, the inspector was wondering why whenever anyone saw or mentioned Vanya Titulescu, the subject always turned to painting.

  “So, you seem to think,” said Montalbano, “that it was the doctor who ordered Sanfilippo’s murder.”

  “Who else, if not?”

  The inspector’s thoughts flew over to the photograph still lying on the bedside table. But he immediately let those thoughts go; he first had to wait for an answer from Catarella, the new oracle.