Voice of the Violin

New York

This edition first published in Great Britain 2005 by Picador

First published in paperback 2006 by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London ni 9r.r Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world www.pamnacmjllan.com

ISBN-IJ: 978-0-330-49199-7

ISBN-IO: 0-330-49299-3

Copyright O Seilerio editore 1997 Translation copyright (c) Stephen Sartarelli 2003

The right of Andrea Camillcri to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

135798642

A QP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by Madcays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Praise for the Montalbano series

‘The novels of Andrea Camilleri breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humour, and the sense of despair that fills the air of Sicily. To read him is to be taken to that glorious, tortured island’ Donna Leon

‘Both farcical and endearing, Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, with the added culinary idiosyncrasies of an Italian Maigret… The smells, colours and landscapes of Sicily come to life’ Guardian

‘Sly and witty … Montalbano must pick his way through a labyrinth of corruption, false clues, vendettas — and delicious meals. The result is funny and intriguing with a fluent translation by New York poet Stephen Sartarelli’ Observer

‘Delightful … funny and ebulliently atmospheric’ The Times

‘This savagely funny police procedural proves that sardonic laughter is a sound that translates ever so smoothly into English’ New York Times Book Review

‘Camilleri is as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator’ Washington Post

‘Wit and delicacy and the fast-cut timing of farce play across the surface … the persistent, often sexually bemused Montalbano, moving with ease along zigzags created for him, teasing out threads of discrepancy that unravel the whole’ Houston Chronicle

‘Montalbano’s deadpan drollery and sharp observations refresh as much for their honesty as their wit. All he wants is a quiet corner and an uninterrupted afternoon; what reader feels otherwise?’ Kirkus Reviews

‘Camilleri writes with such vigour and wit that he deserves a place alongside Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon, with the additional advantage of conveying an insider’s sense of authenticity’ Sunday Times

‘Stephen Sartarelli’s translation from the idiosyncratic Sicilian dialect savours the earthy idiom and pungent characterizations that Camilleri uses to cushion the impact of his story’ New York Times

‘Quirky characters, crisp dialogue, bright storytelling — and Salvo Montalbano, one of the most engaging protagonists in detective fiction’ USA Today

‘The charm lies in the vivid portrayal of the small Sicilian town in which Montalbano works and lives and in the endearing personality of the detective’ Sunday Telegraph

_ONE

Inspector Salvo Montalbano could immediately tell that it was not going to be his day the moment he opened the shutters of his bedroom window. It was still night, at least an hour before sunrise, but the darkness was already lifting, enough to reveal a sky covered by heavy rain clouds and, beyond the light strip of beach, a sea that looked like a Pekingese dog. Ever since a tiny dog of that breed, all decked out in ribbons, had bitten painfully into his calf after a furious fit of hacking that passed for barking, Montalbano saw the sea this way whenever it was whipped up by crisp, cold gusts into thousands of little waves capped by ridiculous plumes of froth. His mood darkened, especially considering that an unpleasant obligation awaited him that morning. He had to attend a funeral.

The previous evening, finding some fresh anchovies cooked by Adelina, his houskeeper, in the fridge, he’d dressed them in a great deal of lemon juice, olive oil and freshly ground black pepper, and wolfed them down. And he’d relished them, until it was all spoiled by a telephone call.

filo, Chief? Izzatchoo onna line?’

‘It’s really me, Cat. You can go ahead and talk.’

At the station they’d given Catarella the job of answering the phone, mistakenly thinking he could do less damage there than anywhere else. After getting mightily pissed off a few times, Montalbano had come to realize that the only way to talk to him within tolerable limits of nonsense was to use the same language as he.

‘Beckin’ pardon, Chief, for the ‘sturbance.’

Uh-oh. He was begging pardon for the disturbance. Montalbano pricked up his ears. Whenever Catarella’s speech became ceremonious, it meant there was no small matter at hand.

‘Get to the point, Cat.’

‘Tree days ago somebody aks for you, Chief, wanted a talk t’ you in poisson, but you wasn’t ‘ere an’ I forgotta reference it to you.’

‘Where were they calling from?’

‘From Florida, Chief

Montalbano was literally overcome with terror. In a flash he saw himself in a sweatsuit jogging alongside fearless, athletic American narcotics agents working with him on a complicated investigation into drug trafficking.

‘Tell me something. What language did you speak with them?’

‘What langwitch was I asposta speak? We spoke ‘Talian, Chief’

‘Did they tell you what they wanted?’

‘Sure, they tol’ me everyting about one ting. They said as how Vice Commissioner Tamburrano’s wife was dead.’

Montalbano breathed a sigh of relief, he couldn’t help it. They’d called not from Florida, but from police headquarters in the town of Floridia near Siracusa. Caterina Tamburrano had been gravely ill for some time, and the news was not a complete surprise to him.

‘Chief, izzat still you there?’

‘Still me, Cat, I haven’t changed.’

‘They also said the obsequious was gonna be on Tursday morning at nine o’clock.’

‘Thursday? You mean tomorrow morning?’

‘Yeah, Chief.’

He was too good a friend of Michele Tamburrano not to go to the funeral That way he could make up for not having even phoned to express his condolences. Floridia was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Vigata.

‘Listen, Cat, my car’s in the garage. I need a squad car at my place, in Marinella, at five o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. Tell Inspector Augello I’ll be out of the office until early afternoon. Got that?’

He emerged from the shower, skin red as a lobster. To counteract the chill he felt at the sight of the sea, he’d made the water too hot. As he started shaving, he heard the squad car arrive. Indeed, who, within a ten-kilometre radius, hadn’t heard it? It rocketed into the drive at supersonic speed, braked with a scream, firing bursts of gravel in every direction, then followed this display with a roar of the racing engine, a harrowing shift of gears, a shrill screech of skidding tyres, and another explosion of gravel. The driver had executed an evasive manoeuvre, turning the car completely round.

When Montalbano stepped out of the house ready to leave, he saw Gallo, the station’s official driver, rejoicing.

‘Look at that’ Chief! Look at them tracks.’ What a -manoeuvre! A perfect one-eighty!’

‘Congratulations,’

Montalbano said gloomily.

‘Should I put on the siren?’ Gallo asked as they were about to set out.

‘Put it in your arse,’ said a surly Montalbano, closing his eyes. He didn’t feel like talking.

Gallo, who suffered from the Indianapolis Complex, stepped on the accelerator as soon as he saw his superior’s eyes shut, reaching a speed he thought better suited to his driving ability. They’d been on the road barely fifteen minutes when the crash occurred. At the scream of the brakes, Montalbano opened his eyes but saw nothing, head lurching violently forward before being jerked back by the safety belt. Next came a deafening clang of metal against metal, then silence again, a fairy-tale silence, with birds singing and dogs barking.

‘You hurt?’ the inspector asked Gallo, seeing him rub his chest

‘No.You?’

‘Nothing. What happened?’

‘A chicken ran in front of me.’

‘I’ve never seen a chicken run in front of a car before. Let’s look at the damage.’

They got out. There wasn’t a soul about. The long skid marks were etched into the tarmac Right at the spot where they began, you could see a small, dark stain. Gallo went up to it, then turned triumphantly around.

‘What did I tell you?’ he said to the inspector. It was a chicken!’

A clear case of suicide.

The car they had slammed into, smashing up its entire rear end, must have been legally parked at the side of the road, though now it was sticking out slightly. It was a bottle-green Renault Twingo, positioned so as to block a unpaved drive leading to a two-storey house with shuttered windows and doors some thirty metres away. The squad car, for its part, had a shattered headlight and a crumpled right bumper.

‘So now what do we do?’

Gallo asked dejectedly.

‘We’re going to go on. Will the car run, in your opinion?’

‘I’ll give it a try.’

Reversing with a great clatter of metal, the squad car dislodged itself from the other vehicle. Nobody came to the windows of the house. They must have been fast asleep, dead to the world. The Twingo had to belong to someone in there, since there were no other homes in the immediate area. As Gallo was trying with his bare hands to bend out the bumper, which was scraping against the tyre, Montalbano wrote down the phone number of the Vigata police headquarters on a piece of paper and slipped this under the Twingo’s windscreen wiper.

When it’s not your day, it’s not your day. After they’d been back on the road for half an hour or so, Gallo started rubbing his chest again, and from time to time he twisted his face in a grimace of pain.

‘I’ll drive’ said the inspector. Gallo didn’t protest.

When they were outside the town of Fela, Montalbano, instead of continuing along the main road, turned onto the road that led to the centre of town. Gallo paid no attention, eyes closed and head resting against the window.

‘Where are we?’ he asked, as soon as he felt the car come to a halt.

We’re at Fela Hospital Get out.’ ‘But it’s nothing, Inspector!’ ‘Get out. I want them to have a look at you.’ ‘Well, just leave me here and keep going. You can pick . me up on the way back.’

‘Cut the shit. Let’s go.’

Between auscultations, three blood pressure exams, X-rays, and everything else in the book, it took them over three hours to have a look at Gallo. In the end they ruled that he hadn’t broken anything; the pain he felt was from having bumped hard into the steering wheel, and the weakness was a natural reaction to the fright he’d had.

‘So now what do we do?’

Gallo asked again, more dejected than ever.

‘What do you think? We keep going. But I’ll drive.’

The inspector had been to Floridia three or four times before. He even remembered where Tamburrano lived, and so he headed towards the Church of the Madonna delle Grazie, which was practically next door to his colleague’s house. When they reached the square, he saw the church hung with black and a throng of people hurrying inside. The service must have started late. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to have things go wrong.

‘I’ll take the car to the police garage in town and have them look at it,’ said Gallo. I’ll come and pick you up afterwards.’

Montalbano entered the crowded church. The service had just begun. He looked around and recognized no one. Tamburrano must have been in the first row, near the coffin in front of the main altar. The inspector decided to remain where he was, near the entrance. He would shake

Tamburrano’s hand when the coffin was being carried out of the church. When the priest finally opened his mouth after the Mass had been going on for some time; Montalbano gave a start.

He’d heard right, he was sure of it.

The priest had begun with the words, ‘Our dearly beloved Nicola has left this vale of tears

Mustering up the courage, he tapped a little old lady on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me, signora, whose funeral is this?’

‘The dear departed Ragioniere Pecoraro. Why?’

‘I thought it was for the Signora Tamburrano.’

‘Ah, no, that one was at the Church of Sant’ Anna.’

It took him almost fifteen minutes to get to the church of Sant’ Anna, practically running the whole way.

Panting and sweaty, he found the priest in the deserted nave.

‘I beg your pardon. Where’s the funeral of Signora Tamburrano?’

‘That ended almost two hours ago,’ said the priest, looking him over sternly.

‘Do you know if she’s being buried here?’ Montalbano asked, avoiding the priest’s gaze..

‘Most certainly not. When the service was over, she was taken in the hearse to Vibo Valentia, where she’ll be entombed in the family vault. Her bereaved husband followed behind in his car.’

So it had all been for naught. He had noticed, in the Piazza della Madonna delle Grazie, a cafe with tables outside. When Gallo returned, with the car repaired as well as could be expected, it was almost two o’clock. Montalbano told him what happened.

‘So now what do we do?’

Gallo asked for the third time, lost in an abyss of dejection.

‘You’re going to eat a brioche with a granita di caffe, which they make very well here, and then we’ll head home. With the Good Lord’s help and the Blessed Virgin’s company, we should be back in Vigata by evening.’

Their prayer was answered, the drive home smooth as silk.

‘The car’s still there’

said Gallo when Vigata was already visible in the distance.

The Twingo was exactly the way they’d left it that morning, sticking slightly out from the top of the unpaved drive.

‘They’ve probably already called headquarters,’ said Montalbano.

He was bullshitting: the look of the car and the house with its shuttered windows made him uneasy. .

‘Turn back’ he suddenly ordered Gallo.

Gallo made a reckless U-turn that triggered a chorus of horn blasts. When they reached the Twingo, he executed another, even more reckless, then pulled up behind the damaged car.

Montalbano stepped out in a hurry. What he thought he’d just seen in the rear-view mirror, when passing by, turned out to be true: the scrap of paper with the telephone number was still under the windscreen wiper. Nobody’d touched it.

‘I don’t like it,’ the inspector said to Gallo, who was now standing next to him. He started walking down the drive. The house must have been recently built; the grass in front was still burned from the lime. There was also a stack of new tiles in a corner of the yard. Montalbano carefully examined the shuttered windows. No light was filtering out.

He went up to the front door and rang the doorbell He waited a short while, then rang again. ‘Do you know whose house this is?’ ‘No, Chief.’

What should he do? Night was falling and he could feel the beginnings of fatigue. Their pointless, exhausting day was starting to weigh on him.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. Then he added, in a vain attempt at convincing himself, I’m sure they called.’

Gallo gave him a doubtful look, but didn’t open his mouth.

Gallo wasn’t even invited into headquarters. The inspector had sent him immediately home to rest. His second-in-command, Mimi Augello, wasn’t in; he’d been summoned to report to the new commissioner of Montelusa, Luca Bonetti-Alderighi, a young and testy native of Bergamo who in the course of one month had succeeded in creating knife-blade antipathies all around him.

‘The commissioner was upset you weren’t in Vigata,’ said Fazio, the sergeant he was closest to. ‘So Inspector Augello had to go in your place.’

‘Had to go?’ the inspector retorted. ‘He probably just saw it as a chance to show off !’

He told Fazio about their accident that morning and asked him if he knew who owned the house. Fazio didn’t, but promised his superior that he’d go to the town hall the following morning and find out.

‘By the way, your car’s in our garage.’

Before going home, the inspector interrogated Catarella.

‘Try hard to remember. Did anyone happen to call about a car we ran into?’ No calls.

‘Let me try and understand a minute,’ Livia said angrily by phone from Boccadasse, Genoa.

‘What’s to understand, Livia? As I said, and now repeat, Francois’s adoption papers aren’t ready yet.

Some unexpected problems have come up, and I no longer have the old commissioner behind me always smoothing everything out. We have to be patient.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the adoption,’ Livia said icily.

‘You weren’t? Then what were you talking about?’

‘Getting married,, that’s what. We can certainly get married while the problems of the adoption are being worked out. The one thing does not depend on the other.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Montalbano, who was beginning to feel harried and cornered.

‘Now I want a straight answer to the following question’ Livia went on, implacably. ‘Supposing the adoption isn’t possible: what will we do? Will we get married anyway, in your opinion, or won’t we?’

A sudden, loud thunderclap gave him a way out.

‘What was that?’

‘Thunder. There’s a terrible stor—’ He hung up and pulled out the plug.

He couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, snarling himself up in the sheets. Around two in the morning, he realized it was useless. He got up, got dressed, grabbed a leather bag given to him some time ago by a house burglar who’d become his friend, got in his car and drove off. The storm was raging worse than ever; lightning bolts illuminated the sky. When he reached the Twingo, he slipped his car in under some trees and turned off the headlights. From the glove compartment he extracted a gun, a pair of gloves and a torch. After waiting for the rain to let up, he crossed the road in one bound, went up the drive and flattened himself against the front door. He rang and rang the doorbell but got no answer. He then put on the gloves and pulled a large key ring with a dozen or so variously shaped picklocks out of the leather bag. The door opened on the third try. It was locked with only the latch and hadn’t been dead-bolted. He entered, closing the door behind him. In the dark, he bent over, untied his wet shoes and removed them, keeping his socks on. He turned on the torch, keeping it pointed at the ground. He found himself in a large dining room that opened onto a living room. The furniture smelled of varnish. Everything was new, clean and orderly. A door led into a kitchen that sparkled like something one might see in an advertisement; another door gave onto a bathroom so shiny it looked as if no one had ever used it before. He slowly climbed the stairs to the upper floor. There he found three closed doors. The first one he opened revealed a neat little guest room; the second led into a bigger bathroom than the one downstairs, but unlike it, this one was decidedly messy. A pink towelling bathrobe lay rumpled on the floor, as though the person wearing it had taken it off in a hurry. The third door was to the master bedroom. And the naked, half-kneeling female body, belly resting against the edge of the bed, arms spread, face buried in the sheet that the young, blonde woman had torn to shreds with her fingernails in the final throes of her death by suffocation, must have belonged to the owner of the house.

Montalbano went up to the corpse and, removing a glove, touched it lightly: it was cold and stiff. She must have been very beautiful. The inspector went back downstairs, put his shoes back on, wiped up the wet spot they had made on the floor, went out of the house, closed the door, crossed, the road, got in his car and left. His thoughts were racing as he drove back to Marinella. How to have the crime discovered? He certainly couldn’t go and tell the judge what he’d been up to.

The judge who’d replaced Lo Bianco — on a leave of absence to pursue his endless historical research into the lives of a pair of unlikely ancestors -was a Venetian by the name of Nicolo Tommaseo who was always talking about his ‘irrevocable-prerogatives’. He had a little baby face that he hid under a Belfiore martyr’s moustache and beard. As Montalbano was opening the door to his house, the solution to the problem finally came to him in a flash. And thus he was able to enjoy a brief but god-like sleep.

_TWO

He arrived at the office at eight thirty the next morning, looking rested and crisp.

‘Did you know our new commissioner is noble?’ was the first thing Mirni Augello said when he saw him.

Is that a moral judgement or a heraldic fact?’ ‘ ‘Heraldic’

‘I’d already worked out as much from the little dash between his last names. And what did you do, Mimi?

Did you call him count, baron or marquis? Did you butter him up nicely?’

‘Come on, Salvo, you’re obsessed!’

‘Me? Fazio told me you were wagging your tail the whole time you were talking on the phone to the commissioner, and that afterwards you shot out of here like a rocket to go and see him.’

‘Listen, the commissioner said, and I quote: “If Inspector Montalbano is not available, come here at once yourself.” What was I supposed to do? Tell him I couldn’t because my superior would get pissed off?’ ‘What did he want?’

‘He wasn’t alone. Half the province was there. He informed us he intended to modernize, to renovate. He said anyone unable to come up to speed with him should just hang it up. Those were his exact words: hang it up. It was clear to everyone he meant you and Sandro Turri of Calascibetta.’

‘Explain to me how you knew this.’

‘Because when he said “hang it up” he looked right at Turri and then at me.’

‘Couldn’t that mean he was actually referring to you?’

‘Come on, Salvo, everybody knows he doesn’t have a high opinion of you.’

‘And what did his lordship want?’

‘To tell us that in a few days, some absolutely up-to-date computers will be arriving. Every headquarters in the province will be equipped with them. He wanted each of us to give him the name of an officer we thought had a special knack for computer science.

Which I did.’

‘Are you insane? Nobody here knows a damn thing about that stuff. Whose name did you give him?’

‘Catarella,’ said an utterly serious Mimi Augello. The act of a born saboteur.

Montalbano stood: up abruptly, ran over to his second-in-command and embraced him.

‘I know all about the house you were interested in,’ said Fazio, sitting down in the chair in front of the inspector’s desk. ‘I spoke to the town clerk, who knows everything about everyone in Vigata.’ ‘Let’s have it.’

‘Well, the land the house was built on used to belong to a Dr Rosario Licalzi’ ‘What kind of doctor?’

‘A real one, a medical doctor.

He died about fifteen years ago, leaving the plot to his eldest son, Emanuele, also a doctor.’

‘Does he live in Vigata?’

‘No. He lives and works in Bologna. Two years ago, this Emanuele Licalzi married a girl from those parts.

They came to Sicily on their honeymoon. The minute the lady saw the land she got it into her head that she would build a little house on it. And there you have it.’

‘Any idea where the Licalzis are right now?’

‘The husband’s in Bologna.

The lady was last seen in Vigata three days ago, running around town trying to furnish the house. She drives a bottle-green Renault Twingo.’

‘The one Gallo crashed into.’

‘Right. The clerk told me she’s not the kind of woman to go unnoticed. Apparently she’s very beautiful.’

‘I don’t understand why she hasn’t called yet.’ said Montalbano, who, when he put his mind to it, could be a tremendous actor.

‘I’ve formed my own theory about that,’ said Fazio. ‘The clerk said the lady’s, well, really friendly — I mean, she’s got a lot of friends.’

‘Girlfriends?’

‘And boyfriends,’ Fazio said emphatically. ‘It’s possible she’s staying with a family somewhere. Maybe they came and picked her up with their own car and she won’t notice the damage till she gets back.’

‘Sounds plausible,’

concluded Montalbano, continuing his performance.

As soon as Fazio left, the inspector called up Clementina Vasile Cozzo

‘My dear lady, how are you?’

‘Inspector! What a lovely surprise! I’m getting along all right, by the grace of God.’

‘Mind if I drop in to say hello?’

‘You are welcome to come whenever you like.’

Clementina Vasile Cozzo was an elderly paraplegic, a former elementary school teacher blessed with intelligence and endowed with a natural, quiet dignity. The inspector had met her during the course of a complex investigation some three months back and remained as attached to her as a son. Though Montalbano didn’t openly admit it to himself, she was the sort of woman he wished he could have as a mother, having lost his own when he was too young to retain much memory of her beyond a kind of golden luminescence.

‘Was Mama blonde?’ he’d once asked his father in an attempt to explain to himself why his only image of her consisted of a luminous nuance.

‘Like wheat in sunlight,’

was his father’s laconic reply.

Montalbano had got in the habit of calling on Signora Clementina at least once a week. He would tell her about whatever investigation he happened to be involved in, and the woman, grateful for the visit, which broke the monotony of her daily routine, would invite him to stay for dinner. Pina, the signora’s housekeeper, was a surly type and, to make matters worse, she didn’t like Montalbano. She did, however, know how to cook some exquisite, disarmingly simple dishes.

Signora Clementina, dressed rather smartly with an Indian silk shawl around her shoulders, showed him into the living room.

‘There’s a concert today,’

she whispered, ‘but it’s almost over.’

Four years ago, Signora Clementina had learned from her maid. Pina — who for her part had heard it from Yolanda, the violinist’s housekeeper — that the illustrious Maestro Cataldo Barbera, who lived in the flat directly above hers, was in serious trouble with his taxes. So she’d discussed the matter with her son, who worked at the Montelusa Revenue Office, and the problem, which had essentially arisen from a mistake, was resolved. Some ten days later, the housekeeper Yolanda had brought her a note that said:

‘Dear Signora. To repay you, though only in part, I will play for you every Friday morning from nine thirty to ten thirty. Yours very sincerely, Cataldo Barbera.’

And so every Friday morning, she would get all dressed up to pay homage to the Maestro in turn, and she would go and sit in a small sort of parlour where one could best hear the music At exacdy half past nine, on the floor above, the Maestro would strike up the first notes.

Everyone in Vigata knew about Maestro Cataldo Barbera, but very few had ever seen him in person. Son of a railwayman, the future Maestro had drawn his first breath sixty-five years earlier in Vigata, but left town before the age of ten when his father was transferred to Catania. The Vigatese had had to learn of his career from the newspapers. After studying violin, Cataldo Barbera had very quickly become an internationally renowned concert, performer. Inexplicably, however, at the height of his fame, he had retired to Vigata, where he bought an apartment and now lived in voluntary seclusion.

‘What’s he playing?’

Montalbano asked.

Signora Clementina handed him a sheet of squared paper. On the day before the performance, the Maestro would customarily send her the programme, written out in pencil. The pieces to be played that day were Pablo de Sarasate’s ‘Spanish Dance’, and the ‘Scherzo-Tarantella’, op. 16, of Henryk Wieniawski. When the performance was over, Signora Clementina plugged in the telephone, dialled a number, set the receiver down on a shelf and started clapping. Montalbano joined in with gusto.

He knew nothing about music, but he was certain of one thing: Cataldo Barbera was a great artist.

‘Signora,’ the inspector began, ‘I must confess that this is a self-interested visit on my part. I need you to do me a favour.’

He went on to tell her everything that had happened to him the previous day: the accident, going to the wrong funeral, his secret, night-time visit to the house, his discovery of the corpse. When he had finished, the inspector hesitated. He didn’t quite know how to phrase his request.

Signora Clementina, who had felt by turns amused and disturbed by his account, urged him on.

‘Go on, Inspector, don’t be shy. What is it you want from me?’

‘I’d like you to make an anonymous telephone call’ Montalbano said in a single breath.

He’d been back in the office about ten minutes when Catarella passed him a call from Dr Lattes, the commissioner’s cabinet chief.

‘Hello, Montalbano, old friend, how’s it going? Eh, how’s it going?’

‘Fine’ Montalbano said curtly.

‘I’m so happy to hear it’

the chief of the cabinet said snappily, true to the nickname of Caffe-Lattes that someone had hung on him for the dangerously cloying warmth of his manner.

‘At your service’

Montalbano egged him on.

‘Well, not fifteen minutes ago a woman called the switchboard asking to speak personally to the commissioner.

She was very insistent. The commissioner, however, was busy and asked me to take the call.

The woman was in hysterics, screaming that a crime had been comnutted at a house in the Tre Fontane district Then she hung up. The commissioner would like you to go there, just to make sure, and then report back to him. The lady also said that the house is easy to spot because there’s a bottle-green Twingo parked in front’

‘Oh my God!’ said Montalbano, launching into the second act of his role, now that Signora Clementina had recited her part so perfectly.

‘What is it?’ Dr Lattes asked, his curiosity aroused. ‘An amazing coincidence!’ said Montalbano, his voice full of wonder. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘Hello? Inspector Montalbano here. Am I speaking to Judge Tommaseo?’

‘Yes, good day. What can I do for you?’

‘Your Honour, the chief of the commissioner’s cabinet just informed me that they have received an anonymous phone call reporting a crime in a small house on the outskirts of Vigata.

He ordered me to go and have a look. And I’m going.’

‘Might it not be some kind of tasteless practical joke?’

‘Anything is possible. I simply wanted to let you know, out of respect for your prerogatives.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Judge Tommaseo, pleased.

‘Do I have your authorization to proceed?’

‘Of course. And if a crime was indeed committed, I want you to notify me at once and wait for me to get there.’

Montalbano called Fazio, Gallo and Galluzzo and told them to come with him to the Tre Fontane district to see if a murder had been committed.

‘At the same house you asked me for information about?’ asked Fazio, dumbfounded.

‘The same one where we crashed into the Twingo?’ Gallo chimed in, eyeing his superior in amazement.

‘Yes,’ the inspector answered both, trying to look humble.

‘What a nose, Chief.”

Fazio cried out in admiration.

They had barely set out when Montalbano already felt fed up. Fed up with the farce he would have to act out, pretending to be surprised when they found the corpse, fed up with the time he would have to waste on the judge, the coroner and the forensics team, who were capable of taking hours before arriving at the crime scene. He decided to speed things up.

‘Pass me the mobile phone,’

he said to Galluzzo, who was sitting in front of him. Gallo, naturally, was at the wheel.

He punched in Judge Tommaseo’s number.

‘Montalbano here. Listen, Judge, that was no joke, that phone call Sorry to say, we found a dead body in the house. A woman.’

There were different reactions among those present in the car. Gallo swerved into the oncoming lane, brushed against a truck loaded with iron rods, cursed, then regained control.

Galluzzo gave a start, opened his eyes wide, twisted around and looked at his boss with his mouth agape. Fazio visibly stiffened and stared straight ahead, expressionless.

‘I’ll be right there,’ said Judge Tommaseo. Tell me exactly where the house is.’

Increasingly fed up, Montalbano passed the mobile phone to Gallo.

‘Explain to him where we’re going. Then call Pasquano and the crime lab.’

Fazio didn’t open his mouth until the car came to a stop behind the bottle-green Twingo.

‘Did you put gloves on before you went in?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Montalbano.

‘Anyway, now that we’re going in, touch everything as much as you want, just, to be safe. Leave as many fingerprints as you can.’

‘I’d already thought of that,’ said the inspector.

After the storm of the previous night, there was very little left of the scrap of paper tucked under the windscreen wiper. The water had washed away the telephone number.

Montalbano didn’t bother to remove it

‘You two have a look around down here’ the inspector said to Gallo and Galluzzo.

Then, followed by Fazio, he went upstairs. With the light on, the dead woman’s body upset him less than the night before, when he’d seen it only by the beam of the torch. It seemed less real, though certainly not fake. Livid, white and stiff, the corpse resembled those plaster casts of the victims of Pompeii. Face down as she was, it was impossible to see what she looked like, but her struggle against death must have been fierce. Clumps of blonde hair lay scattered over the torn sheet, and purplish bruises stood out across her shoulders and just below the nape of her neck. The killer must have had to use every bit of his strength to force her face so far down into the mattress that not a wisp of air could get through.

Gallo and Galluzzo came upstairs.

‘Everything seems in order downstairs’ said Gallo.

True, she looked like a plaster cast, but she was still a young woman, murdered, naked, and in a position that suddenly seemed unbearably obscene to him, her most intimate privacy violated, thrown open by the eight eyes of the policemen in the room.

As if to give her back some semblance of personhood and dignity, he asked Fazio, ‘Did they tell you her name?’

‘Yes. If that’s Mrs Licalzi, her name was Michela.’

He went into the bathroom, picked the pink bathrobe up off the floor, brought it into the bedroom, and covered the body with it.

He went downstairs. Had she lived, Michela Licalzi would still have had some work to do to sort out the house.

In the living room, propped up in a corner, were two rolled-up rugs; the sofa and armchairs were still factory-wrapped in clear plastic,’ a small table lay upside down, legs up, on top of a big, unopened box. The only thing in any kind of order was a small glass display cabinet with the usual sorts of things carefully arranged inside: two antique fans, a few ceramic statuettes, a closed violin case and two very beautiful shells, collector’s items.

The forensics team were the first to arrive. To replace the old chief of the crime lab, Jacomuzzi, Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi had hand-picked the young Dr Arqua, who’d moved down from Florence. More than chief of forensics, Jacomuzzi had been an incurable exhibitionist, always the first to strike a pose for the photographers, TV cameramen and journalists. To rib him, as he often did, Montalbano used to call him ‘Pippo Baudo’. Deep down, Jacomuzzi never believed much in forensics as a useful tool in investigations; he maintained that sooner or later intuition and reason would find the solution, with or without the support of microscopes and analyses. Heresies, to Bonetti-Alderighi, who quickly got rid of him. Vanni Arqua, for his part, was a dead ringer for Harold Lloyd. Hair always dishevelled, he dressed like an absent-minded professor from a thirties movie and worshipped science. Montalbano didn’t care much for him, and Arqua repaid him in kind with cordial antipathy.

Forensics thus showed up in full force, in two cars with sirens screaming as if they were in Texas. There were eight of them, all in civvies, and the first thing they did was unload boxes and crates from the boots, looking like a film crew ready to start shooting.

When Arqua walked into the living room, Montalbano didn’t even say hello; he merely pointed his thumb upward, signalling that what concerned them was upstairs.

They hadn’t all finished climbing the stairs before Montalbano heard Arquas voice call out:

‘Excuse me, Inspector, would you come up here a minute?’

He took his time. When he entered the bedroom, he felt the crime lab chief’s eyes boring into him.

‘When you discovered the body, was it like this?’

‘No,’ said Montalbano, cool as a cucumber. ‘She was naked.’

‘And where did you get that bathrobe?’ ‘From the bathroom.’

‘Put everything back as it was, for Christ’s sake! You’ve altered the whole picture! That’s very serious!’

Without a word, Montalbano walked over to the corpse, picked up the bathrobe, and draped it over his arm.

‘Wow, nice arse!’

The comment came from one of the crime lab photographers, a homely sort of paparazzo with his shirt-tails hanging out of his trousers.

‘Go right ahead, if you want,’ the inspector said to him calmly. ‘She’s already in position.’

Fazio, who knew what dangers lurked beneath Montalbano’s controlled calm, took a step towards him.

The inspector looked Arqua in the eye, ‘Understand now why I did it, arsehole?’

And he left the room. In the bathroom he splashed a little water on his face, threw the bathrobe down on the floor more or less where he’d found it, and went back, into the bedroom.

‘I’ll have to tell the commissioner about this’ Arqua said icily. Montalbano’s voice was ten degrees icier.

‘I’m sure you’ll understand each other perfectly.’

‘Chief, me and Gallo and Galluzzo are going outside to smoke a cigarette. We’re getting in these guys’

way.’

Montalbano, absorbed in thought, didn’t answer. From the living room he went back upstairs and examined the little guest room and the bathroom.

He’d already looked carefully around downstairs and hadn’t found what he was looking for. For the sake of thoroughness, he stuck his head into the bedroom, which was being turned upside down by its invaders from the crime lab, and double-checked what he thought he’d seen earlier.

Outside the house, he lit a cigarette himself. Fazio had just finished talking on the mobile phone.

‘I got the husband’s phone number and address in Bologna’ he explained.

Inspector’ Galluzzo broke in. ‘We were just talking, the three of us. There’s something strange—’

‘The armoire in the bedroom is still wrapped in plastic’ Gallo cut in. ‘And I also looked under the bed.’

‘And I looked in all the other bedrooms. But—’