Somebody coming down the trail blocked his path, hand held out.
“Ciao, Montalbano.”
It was a colleague of his, chief inspector at Comisini.
“Ciao, Miccichè. What are you doing in these parts?”
“Actually, I should be the one asking you that question.”
“Why?”
“This is my territory. The firemen didn’t know whether the Fava district was part of Vigàta or Comisini, so, just to be sure, they notified both police stations. The murder victims should have been my responsibility.”
“Should have?”
“Well, yes. Augello and I called up the commissioner, and I suggested we divvy them up, one corpse each.”
He laughed. He was expecting a chuckle from Montalbano in turn, but the inspector seemed not even to have heard him.
“But the commissioner ordered us to leave both of them to you, since you’re handling the case. Best of luck, see you around.”
He went away whistling, obviously pleased to be rid of the hassle. Montalbano continued walking under a sky that turned darker and darker with each step. He started to wheeze and was having some difficulty breathing. He began to feel troubled, nervous, but couldn’t say why. A light breath of wind had risen, and the ash flew up in the air for a moment before falling back down impalpably. More than nervous, he realized he was irrationally scared. He picked up his pace, but then his quickened breath brought heavy, seemingly contaminated air into his lungs. Unable to go any farther alone, he stopped and called out:
“Augello! Mimi!”
Out of the blackened, tumbledown cottage came Augello, running towards the inspector and waving a white rag. When he was in front of him, he handed it to him: it was a little antismog mask.
“The firemen gave them to us. Better than nothing.”
Mimì’s hair had turned all gray with ash, his eyebrows as well. He looked twenty years older.
As he was about to enter the farmhouse, leaning on his assistant’s arm, Montalbano smelled a strong odor of burnt flesh depite the mask. He backpedaled, and Mimi cast him a questioning glance.
“Is that them?” he asked.
“No,” Augello reassured him. “There was a dog chained up behind the house. We can’t figure out who he belonged to. He was burned alive. A horrible way to die.”
Why, was the way the Griffos died any better? Montalbano asked himself the moment he saw the two bodies.
The floor, once made of beaten earth, had now become a kind of bog from all the water the firemen had poured onto it. The two bodies were practically floating.
They lay facedown, killed each by a single shot to the nape of the neck after being ordered to kneel down in a windowless little room, perhaps once a larder, that, as the house fell into ruin, had turned into a shithole that gave off an unbearable stench. The spot was fairly well shielded from the view of anyone who might look into the big, single room that had once made up the whole house.
“Can a car make it up here?”
“No. It can get up to a certain point, then you have to go the last thirty yards on foot.”
The inspector imagined the old couple walking in the night, in the darkness, ahead of somebody holding them at gunpoint. They must have stumbled over the rocks, fallen, and hurt themselves, but they had to get back up and keep moving, maybe even with the help of a few kicks from their executioner. And, of course, they hadn’t rebelled, had not cried out, had not begged for mercy, but remained silent, frozen in the awareness that they were about to die. An interminable agony, a real Via Crucis, those last thirty yards.
Was this ruthless execution the line that Balduccio Sinagra had said must not be crossed? The cruel, cold-blooded murder of two trembling, defenseless old people? No, come on. That couldn’t have been the limit; this double homicide wasn’t what Balduccio Sinagra was bailing out of. He and his ilk had done far worse, goat-tying and torturing old and young alike. They’d even strangled, then dissolved in acid, a ten-year-old boy, guilty only of being born in the wrong family. Therefore what he was looking at was still within their limits. The horror, invisible for now, lay another shade beyond. He felt slightly dizzy for a moment, and leaned on Mimi’s arm.
“You all right, Salvo?”
“It’s this mask, it’s sort of oppressive.”
No, the weight on his chest, the shortness of breath, the aftertaste of infinite sadness, the feeling of oppression, in short, was not caused by the mask. He bent forward to have a better look at the corpses. And that was when he noticed something that finally bowled him over.
Under the mud one could see the shapes of the woman’s right arm and the man’s left arm. The two arms were extended and touching each other. He leaned even further forward to look more closely, all the while clinging to Mimi’s arm. And he saw the victims’ hands: the fingers of the woman’s right hand were interlaced with those of the man’s left hand. They had died holding hands. In the night, in their terror, with only the darker darkness of death before them, they had sought each other out, found each other, comforted each other as they had surely done so many other times over the course of their lives. The grief, the pity, assailed the inspector, two sudden blows to the chest. He staggered, and Mimi was quick to support him.
“Get out of here, you’re not leveling with me,” said Augello.
Montalbano turned his back and left. He looked around. He couldn’t remember who, but somebody from the Church had once said that Hell does indeed exist, though we don’t know where it is. Why didn’t he try visiting these parts? Maybe he’d get an idea as to its possible location.
Mimi rejoined him, looking him over carefully.
“How do you feel, Salvo?”
“Fine, fine. Where’s Gallo and Galluzzo?”
“I sent them off to lend the firemen a hand. They didn’t have anything to do around here anyway. And you too, why don’t you go? I’ll stay behind.”
“Did you inform the prosecutor? And the crime lab?”
“Everybody. They’ll get here sooner or later. Go.”
Montalbano didn’t budge. He just stood there, staring at the ground.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
“What?” said Augello, puzzled. “A mistake?”
“Yes. I took this business of the old couple too lightly, from the start.”
“Salvo,” Mimi reacted, “didn’t you just see them? The poor wretches were murdered Sunday night, on their way home from the excursion. What could we possibly have done? We didn’t even know they existed!”
“I’m talking about afterward, after the son came and told us they’d disappeared.”
“But we did everything we could!”
“That’s true. But I, for my part, did it without conviction. Mimi, I can’t stand it here anymore. I’m going home. I’ll see you back at the office around five.”
“All right,” said Mimi.
He kept watching the inspector, concerned, until he saw him disappear behind a bend.
Back home in Marinella he didn’t even open the refrigerator to see what was inside. He didn’t feel like eating; his stomach was in knots. He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. The ash, aside from turning his hair and mustache gray, had highlighted his wrinkles, turning them a pale, sickly white. He washed only his face, stripped down naked, letting his suit and underwear fall to the floor, put on his bathing suit, and ran down to the beach.
Kneeling down in the sand, he dug a wide hole with his hands, stopping only when the water began to well up from the bottom. He grabbed a handful of seaweed still green and threw it into the hole. Then he lay facedown and stuck his head inside. He inhaled deeply, once, twice, thrice, and with each new breath of air, the smell of the brine and algae cleansed his lungs of the ash that had entered them. Then he stood up and dived into the sea. With a few vigorous strokes he propelled himself far from shore. Filling his mouth with seawater, he gargled a long time, rinsing palate and throat. After this, he let himself float for half an hour, not thinking of anything.