“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 turned 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.