The Potter's Field

2

“What the . . . ?” said Ajena, looking downwards. “It was right here!”

They stood all in a row, elbow to elbow, on a narrow footpath, looking down below towards a very steep stretch of earth, practically a sheer drop. But it wasn’t actually earth, properly speaking. It was an assortment of grayish, yellowish slabs of clay that the rainwater did not penetrate, all of them covered, or rather, coated, with a sort of treacherous shaving cream. You could tell from the look of the slabs that you had only to set your foot down on them to find yourself suddenly twenty yards below.

“It was right here!” Ajena repeated.

And now it was gone. The traveling corpse, the wandering cadaver.

During the descent towards the spot where Ajena had spotted the corpse, it was impossible to exchange so much as a word, because they had to walk in single file, with Ajena at the head, leaning on a shepherd’s crook, Montalbano behind, leaning on Ajena, hand on his shoulder, Augello next, hand on Montalbano’s shoulder, and Fazio behind him, hand on Augello’s shoulder.

Montalbano recalled having seen something similar in a famous painting. Brueghel? Bosch? But this was hardly the moment for art.

Catarella, who was the last in line, and not only in a hierarchical sense, didn’t have the courage to lean on the shoulder of the person in front of him, and thus slid from time to time in the mud, knocking into Fazio, who knocked into Augello, who knocked into Montalbano, who knocked into Ajena, threatening to bring them all down like bowling pins.

“Listen, Ajena,” Montalbano said irritably, “are you sure this is the right place?”

“Inspector, this land is all mine and I come here every day, rain or shine.”

“Can we talk?”

“If you wanna talk, sir, let’s talk,” said Ajena, lighting his pipe.

“So, according to you, the body was here?”

“Wha’, you deaf, sir? An’ whattya mean, ‘according to me’? It was right here, I tell you,” said Ajena, gesturing with his pipe at the spot where the slabs of clay began, a short distance from his feet.

“So it was out in the open.”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Explain.”

“Mr. Inspector, it’s all clay around here. In fact, this place has always been called ’u critaru, ’n’ that’s—”

“Why have a place like this?”

“I sell the clay to people who make vases, jugs, pots, that kind of thing . . .”

“All right, go on.”

“Well, when it’s not raining, an’ it don’t rain much around here, today’s an exception, but when it don’t rain, the clay’s all covered up by the dirt that slides down the hillside. So you gotta dig down at least a foot to get at it. You follow?”

“Yes.”

“But when it rains, and rains hard, the water washes away the dirt on top, an’ so the clay comes out. An’ that’s wha’ happened this morning: The rain carried the soil further down an’ uncovered the dead body.”

“So you’re telling me the body was buried under the earth, and the rain unearthed it?”

“Yessir, that’s azackly what I’m saying. I was passing by here on my way up to the cave an’ that’s when I saw the bag.”

“What bag?”

“A great big plastic bag, black, the kind you use for garbage.”

“How did you manage to see what was inside? Did you open it?”

“Nah, I didn’t need to. The bag had a small hole an’ a foot was sticking out, except that all its toes was cut off an’ so I couldn’t really tell at first if it was a foot.”

“Cut off, you say?”

“Cut off, or maybe et off by some dog.”

“I see. What did you do then?”

“I kept on walking up to the cave.”

“And how did you call the police station?” asked Fazio.

“Wit’ my cell phone, which I keep in my pocket.”

“What time was it when you spotted the bag?” Augello cut in.

“Maybe six in the morning.”

“And it took you over an hour to get from here to the cave and call us?” Augello pressed him.

“And what’s it to you, may I ask, how long it took me to call?”

“I’ll show you what it is to me!” said Mimì, enraged.

“We got your call at seven-twenty,” Fazio said to the man, trying to explain. “One hour and twenty minutes after you discovered the bag with the body.”

“What did you do? Make sure to tell someone to come and pick up the body?” Augello asked, suddenly seeming like a dastardly detective in an American movie.

Worried, Montalbano realized Mimì wasn’t pretending.

“Who ever said that? What are you thinking? I didn’t tell nobody!”

“Then tell us what you did for that hour and twenty minutes.”

Mimì had fastened on to him like a rabid dog and wouldn’t let go.

“I was thinking things over.”

“And it took you almost an hour and a half to think things over?”

“Yessirree.”

“To think what over?”

“Whether it was best to phone or not.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause anytime anybody’s got to deal with you cops, they end up wishin’ they hadn’t.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Mimì, turning red in the face and raising his hand to deliver a punch.

“Cool it, Mimì!” said Montalbano.

“Listen,” Augello continued, looking for an excuse to have it out with the man, “there are two ways to reach the cave, one from above, the other from below. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you take us on the downhill path? So we could break our necks?”

“Because you guys woulda never made it uphill. With all this rain the path’s slippery as hell.”

They heard a dull rumble, and all looked up at the sky. The break in the clouds, instead of opening, was beginning to close. They all were thinking the same thing: If they didn’t find that body soon, they were going to get even more soaked.

“How do you explain the fact that the body is gone?” Montalbano intervened.

“Well,” said Ajena, “either the body got flushed down to the bottom by the water and soil, or somebody came and took it.”

“Go on!” said Mimì. “If somebody came and took the bag, they would’ve left a trail in the mud! Whereas there’s nothing!”

“Whattya mean, sir?” Ajena retorted. “Do you really think after all this rain you’re still gonna see tracks?”

At this point in the discussion, for who knows what reason, Catarella took a step forward, and so began his second slide of the morning. He had only to set one foot half down on the clay to execute a figure-skating sort of split, one foot on the path, the other on the edge of a clay slab. Fazio, who was standing beside him, tried to grab him on the fly, to no avail. In fact, in so doing he only managed to give Catarella a strong if involuntary push. Thus in a split second Catarella spread his arms, then spun around, turning his back as his legs flew out from under him.

“I loss my balaaaa . . .” he announced loudly to one and all as he fell hard on his can and, in that position, as though sitting on an invisible sled, began to gain momentum (reminding Montalbano of a law of physics he had learned at school: Motus in fine velocior), whereupon he fell head backwards, shoulders to the mud, and careered downwards with the speed of a bobsledder. His race ended some twenty yards below, at the bottom of the slope, in a large bush that Catarella’s body entered like a bullet and then disappeared.

None of the spectators uttered a word; none made any move. They just stood there, spellbound.

“Get that man some help,” Montalbano ordered after a moment.

His balls were so severely busted by this whole affair that he didn’t even feel like laughing.

“How do we get down there to pull him out?” Augello asked Ajena.

“If we go down this same footpath we’ll come to a spot not far from where the p’liceman ended up.”

“Then let’s get moving.”

But at that moment Catarella emerged from the bush. He’d lost his trousers and underpants in the slide and was prudishly holding his hands over his private parts.

“Did you hurt yourself ?” Fazio shouted.

“Nah. But I found the body bag. Iss here.”

“Should we go down there?” Mimì Augello asked Montalbano.

“No. Now we know where it is. Fazio, you go down and get Catarella. You, Mimì, go and wait for them in the cave.”

“And what about you?” asked Augello.

“I’m going to get in the Jeep and go home. I’ve had enough of this.”

“I beg your pardon? What about the investigation?”

“What investigation, Mimì? If the body was fresh, then our presence here might serve some purpose. But who knows when and where this person was murdered? You need to call the prosecutor, coroner, and the Forensics lab. Do it now, Mimì.”

“But to get here from Montelusa, it’ll take those guys a good two hours at the very least!”

“In two hours it’ll be raining hard again,” Ajena chimed in.

“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—”

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.