The Shape of Water

13

Neither of the two felt like talking, and fifteen minutes passed in silence. But once again the inspector surrendered to the cop in him. In fact, once they had reached the bridge that spanned the Canneto, he pulled up to the side, put on the brakes, and got out of the car, telling Ingrid to do the same. From the summit of the bridge Montalbano showed the woman the river’s dry bed, which one could make out in the moonlight.

“See,” he said, “the riverbed leads straight to the beach. It’s on a steep incline and full of big rocks and stones. Think you could drive a car down there?”

“I don’t know. It’d be different if it was daylight.

But I could try, if you want me to.”

She stared at the inspector and smiled, her eyes half shut.

“You found out about me, eh? So what should I do?”

“Do it.”

“All right. You wait here.”

She got in the car and drove off. It took only a few seconds for the headlights to disappear from view.

“Well, that’s that. She took me for a sucker,” said Montalbano, resigning himself.

As he was getting ready for the long walk back to Vigàta, he heard her return, motor roaring.

“I think I can do it. Do you have a flashlight?”

“In the glove compartment.”

The woman knelt down, illuminated the car’s underside, then stood back up.

“Got a handkerchief ?”

Montalbano gave her one, and Ingrid used it to wrap her sore ankle tightly.

“Get in.”

Driving in reverse, she reached a dirt road that led from the provincial road to the area under the bridge.

“I’m going to give it a try, Inspector. Bear in mind that one of my feet isn’t working. Fasten your seat belt. Should I drive fast?”

“Yes, but it’s important that we get to the beach in one piece.”

Ingrid put the car in gear and took off like a shot.

It was ten minutes of continuous, ferocious jolts. At one point Montalbano felt as if his head were dying to detach itself from the rest of his body and fly out the window. Ingrid, however, was calm, determined, driving with her tongue sticking out between her lips.

The inspector wanted to tell her not to do that—she might inadvertently bite it off.

When they had reached the beach, Ingrid asked,

“Did I pass the test?”

Her eyes glistened in the darkness. She was excited and pleased.

“Yes.”

“Let’s do it again, going uphill this time.”

“You’re insane! That’s quite enough.”

She was right to call it a test. Except that it was a test that didn’t solve anything. Ingrid was able to drive down that road easily, which was a point against her; on the other hand, when the inspector had asked her to do so, she had not seemed nervous, only surprised, and this was a point in her favor. But the fact that she hadn’t broken anything on the car, how was he to interpret that? Negatively or positively?

“So, shall we do it again? Come on, this was the only time this evening I’ve had any fun.”

“No, I already said no.”

“All right, then you drive. I’m in too much pain.”

The inspector drove along the shore, confirming in his mind that the car was in working order. Nothing broken.

“You’re really good, you know.”

“Well,” said Ingrid, assuming a serious, professional tone, “anyone could drive down that stretch.

The skill is in bringing the car through it in the same condition it started out in. Because afterward you might find yourself on a paved road, not a beach like this, and you have to speed up to recover lost time. I don’t know if that’s clear.”

“Perfectly clear. Somebody who, for example, after driving down there, comes to the beach with broken suspension is somebody who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

They arrived at the Pasture. Montalbano turned right.

“See that large bush? That’s where Luparello was found.”

Ingrid said nothing and didn’t even seem very curious. They drove down the path; not much was happening that evening. When they were beside the wall of the old factory, Montalbano said:

“This is where the woman who was with Luparello lost her necklace and threw the leather purse over the wall.”

“My purse?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Ingrid murmured, “and I swear I don’t understand a damned thing about any of this.”

~

When they got to Montalbano’s house, Ingrid was unable to step out of the car, so the inspector had to wrap one arm around her waist while she leaned her weight against his shoulder. Once inside, the young woman dropped into the first chair that came within reach.

“Christ! Now it really hurts.”

“Go into the other room and take off your jeans so I can wrap it up for you.”

Ingrid stood up with a whimper and limped along, steadying herself against the furniture and walls.

Montalbano called headquarters. Fazio informed him that the gas-station attendant had remembered everything and precisely identified the man at the wheel, the one the assailants had tried to kill: Turi Gambardella, of the Cuffaro gang. QED.

“So Galluzzo went to Gambardella’s house,”

Fazio went on, “but his wife said she hadn’t seen him for two days.”

“I would have won the bet,” said the inspector.

“Why? You think I would have been stupid enough to make it?”

He heard the water running in the bath. Ingrid apparently belonged to that category of women who cannot resist the sight of a bathtub. He dialed Gegè’s number, the one to his cell phone.

“Are you alone? Can you talk?”

“As for being alone, I’m alone. As for talking, that depends.”

“I just need a name from you. There’s no risk to you in giving me this information, I promise. But I want a precise answer.”

“Whose name?”

Montalbano explained, and Gegè had no trouble giving him the name, and for good measure he even threw in a nickname.

~

Ingrid had lain down on the bed, wearing a large towel that covered very little of her.

“Sorry, but I can’t stand up.”

Montalbano took a small tube of salve and a roll of gauze from a shelf in the bathroom.

“Give me your leg.”

When she moved, her minuscule panties peeped out and so did one breast, which looked as if it had been painted by a painter who understood women.

The nipple seemed to be looking around, curious about the unfamiliar surroundings. Once again Montalbano understood that Ingrid had no seductive intentions, and he was grateful to her for it.

“You’ll see, in a little while it’ll feel better,” he said after spreading the salve around her ankle, which he then wrapped tightly in gauze. The whole time Ingrid did not take her eyes off him.

“You got any whiskey? Let me have half a glass, no ice.”

It was as though they had known each other all their lives. After bringing her the whiskey, Montalbano pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

“You know something, Inspector?” said Ingrid, looking at him with green, sparkling eyes. “You’re the first real man I’ve met in five years around here.”

“Better than Luparello?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. Now listen to my questions.”

“Fire away.”

As Montalbano was about to open his mouth, the doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting anyone and went to answer the door in confusion. There in the doorway was Anna, in civilian clothing, smiling at him.

“Surprise!”

She walked around him and into the house.

“Thanks for the enthusiasm,” she said. “Where’ve you been all evening? At headquarters they said you were here, so I came, but it was all dark. I phoned five more times, to no avail. Then I finally saw the lights on.”

She eyed Montalbano, who hadn’t opened his mouth.

“What’s with you? Have you lost your voice?

Okay, listen—”

She fell silent. Past the bedroom door, which had been left open, she had caught a glimpse of Ingrid, half naked, glass in hand. First she turned pale, then blushed violently.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, rushing out of the house.

“Run after her!” Ingrid shouted to him. “Explain everything! I’m going home.”

In a rage, Montalbano kicked the front door shut, making the wall shake as he heard Anna’s car leave, burning rubber as furiously as he had just slammed the door.

“I don’t have to explain a goddamn thing to her!”

“Should I go?” Ingrid had half gotten up from the bed, her breasts now triumphantly outside the towel.

“No. But cover yourself.”

“Sorry.”

Montalbano took off his jacket and shirt, stuck his head in the sink, and ran cold water over it for a while.

Then he returned to his chair beside the bed.

“I want to know the real story of the necklace.”

“Well, last Monday, Giacomo, my husband, was woken up by a phone call I didn’t catch much of—I was too sleepy. He got dressed in a hurry and went out. He came back two hours later and asked me where the necklace was, since he hadn’t seen it around the house for some time. I couldn’t very well tell him it was inside the purse at Silvio’s house. If he had asked me to see it, I wouldn’t have known what to answer. So I told him I’d lost it at least a year before and that I hadn’t told him sooner because I was afraid he’d get angry. The necklace was worth a lot of money; it was a present he gave me in Sweden. Then Giacomo had me sign my name at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper. He said he needed it for the insurance.”

“So where did this story about the Pasture come from?”

“That happened later, when he came home for lunch. He explained to me that Rizzo, his lawyer, had told him the insurance company needed a more convincing story about how I lost the necklace and had suggested the story about the Pastor to him.”

“Pasture,” Montalbano patiently corrected her.

The mispronunciation bothered him.

“Pasture, Pasture,” Ingrid repeated. “Frankly, I didn’t find that story very convincing either. It seemed screwy, made up. That’s when Giacomo told me that everyone saw me as a whore, and so it would seem believable that I might get an idea like the one about having him take me to the Pasture.”

“I understand.”

“Well, I don’t!”

“They were trying to frame you.”

“Frame me? What does that mean?”

“Look, Luparello died at the Pasture in the arms of a woman who persuaded him to go there, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, they want to make it look like you were that woman. The purse is yours, the necklace is yours, the clothes at Luparello’s house are yours, you’re capable of driving down the Canneto—I’m supposed to arrive at only one conclusion: that woman is Ingrid Sjostrom.”

“Now I understand,” she said, falling silent, eyes staring at the glass in her hand. Then she roused herself. “It’s not possible.”

“What’s not possible?”

“That Giacomo would go along with these people who want to . . . to frame me.”

“Maybe they forced him to go along with them.

Your husband’s financial situation’s not too good, you know.”

“He never talks to me about it, but I could see that. Still, I’m sure that if he did it, it wasn’t for money.”

“I’m pretty sure of that myself.”

“Then why?”

“There must be another explanation, which would be that your husband was forced to get involved to save someone who is more important to him than you. Wait.”

He went into the other room, where there was a small desk covered with papers. He picked up the fax that Nicolò Zito had sent to him.

“But to save someone else from what?” Ingrid asked as soon as he returned. “If Silvio died when he was making love, it’s not anybody’s fault. He wasn’t killed.”

“To protect someone not from the law, Ingrid, but from a scandal.”

The young woman began reading the fax first with surprise, then with growing amusement; she laughed openly at the polo club episode. But immediately afterward she darkened, let the sheet fall on the bed, and leaned her head to one side.

“Was he, your father-in-law, the man you used to take to Luparello’s pied-à-terre?”

Answering the question visibly cost Ingrid some effort.

“Yes. And I can see that people are talking about it, even though I did everything I could so they wouldn’t. It’s the worst thing that’s happened to me the whole time I’ve been in Sicily.”

“You don’t have to tell me the details.”

“But I want to explain that it wasn’t me who started it. Two years ago my father-in-law was supposed to take part in a conference in Rome, and he invited Giacomo and me to join him. At the last minute my husband couldn’t come, but he insisted on my going anyway, since I had never been to Rome. It all went well, except that the very first night my father-in-law entered my room. He seemed insane, so I went along with him just to calm him down, because he was yelling and threatening me. On the airplane, on the way back, he was crying at times, and he said it would never happen again. You know that we live in the same palazzo, right? Well, one afternoon when my husband was out and I was lying in bed, he came in again, like that night, trembling all over. And again I felt afraid; the maid was in the kitchen. . . . The next day I told Giacomo I wanted to move out. He became upset, I became insistent, we quarreled. I brought up the subject a few times after that, but he said no every time. He was right, in his opinion. Meanwhile my father-in-law kept at it—kissing me, touching me whenever he had the chance, even risking being seen by his wife or Giacomo. That was why I begged Silvio to let me use his house on occasion.”

“Does your husband have any suspicions?”

“I don’t know, I’ve wondered myself. Sometimes it seems like he does, other times I’m convinced he doesn’t.”

“One more question, Ingrid. When we got to Capo Massaria, as you were opening the door you told me I wouldn’t find anything inside. And when you saw instead that everything was still there, just as it had always been, you were very surprised. Had someone assured you that everything had been taken out of Luparello’s house?”

“Yes, Giacomo told me.”

“So your husband did know?”

“Wait, don’t confuse me. When Giacomo told me what I was supposed to say in case I was questioned by the insurance people—that is, that I had been to the Pasture with him—I became worried about something else: that with Silvio dead, sooner or later someone would discover his little house, with my clothes, my purse, and everything else inside.”

“Who would have found them, in your opinion?”

“Well, I don’t know, the police, his family . . . I told Giacomo everything, but I told him a lie. I didn’t say anything about his father; I made him think I was going there with Silvio. That evening he told me everything was all right, that a friend of his would take care of it, and that if anyone discovered the little house, they would find only whitewashed walls inside.

And I believed him. What’s wrong?”

Montalbano was taken aback by the question.

“What do you mean, what’s wrong?”

“You keep touching the back of your neck.”

“Oh. It hurts. Must have happened when we drove down the Canneto. How’s your ankle?”

“Better, thanks.”

Ingrid started laughing. She was changing moods from one moment to the next, like a child.

“What’s so funny?”

“Your neck, my ankle—we’re like two hospital patients.”

“Feel up to getting out of bed?”

“If it was up to me, I’d stay here till morning.”

“We’ve still got some things to do. Get dressed.

Can you drive?”