“So safe that Lollò was able to kill him without any problem.”
“How can you think such a thing! Maybe they cut Lollò’s throat before doing the same to Japichinu!”
“Well, Lollò’s body’s not upstairs. And it’s not down here, either.”
“Maybe it’s out there, outside the house!”
“Sure, we could look for it, but there’s no point.You forget that my men and I surrounded the house and carefully searched the whole area. And we didn’t stumble over Lollò’s body anywhere.”
Father Crucillà wrung his hands. The sweat was pouring down his face.
“But why would Don Balduccio set up a scene like this?”
“He wanted us as witnesses. What should I have done, in your opinion, as soon as I discovered the murder?”
“I don’t know ... Whatever you usually do. Call the forensics lab, the judge ...”
“And that would have allowed him to play the despairing grandfather, to scream that it was the new Mafia that killed his beloved grandson, whom he loved so much he would rather have seen him in jail and whom he actually succeeded in persuading to turn himself in to me. And you, a priest, were even there ... As I said, he took us for a ride. But only so far. Because in five minutes I’m going to leave and it’ll be exactly as if I’d never been here before. Balduccio’s going to have to come up with a new plan. But if you see him, give him some advice: tell him he’d better bury his grandson on the sly, without any fanfare.”
“But you ... How did you arrive at these conclusions?”
“Japichinu was a hunted animal. He was suspicious of everything and everyone. You think he would have turned his back on someone he didn’t know extremely well?”
“No.”
“Japichinu’s Kalashnikov is on his bed. Do you think he would have let himself piddle around here downstairs, unarmed, in the presence of someone he didn’t absolutely trust?”
“No.”
“And tell me another thing: were you told what course of action Lollò was supposed to take if Japichinu was arrested?”
“Yes. He was supposed to let himself be captured, too, without reacting.”
“And who gave him this order?”
“Don Balduccio himself.”
“That’s what Balduccio told you. Whereas he told Lollò something completely different.”
Father Crucillà’s throat was dry, and he set to the jug of water again.
“Why did Don Balduccio want his grandson to die?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe the kid screwed up, maybe he didn’t recognize his grandfather’s authority. You know, wars of succession don’t only happen among kings and captains of industry ...”
He stood up.
“I’m going to go. You want a lift in my car?”
“No, thanks,” the priest replied. “I’d like to stay a little longer and pray. I was very fond of him.”
“Suit yourself.”
At the door, the inspector turned around. “I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?” asked the priest, alarmed.
“In all the different conjectures you made as to who might have killed Japichinu, you didn’t once mention the bodyguard. You could have said it was Lollò Spadaro, who’d sold himself to the new Mafia. But you knew that never in a million years would Lollò betray Balduccio Sinagra. And your silence confirmed my hunch beyond the shadow of a doubt. Oh, one last thing. When you leave, don’t forget to turn off the light and lock the door. I wouldn’t want any stray dogs ... Understand?”
He went out. The night was completely dark. Before reaching his car, he stumbled over some rocks and holes in the ground. It reminded him of the Griffos’ calvary, with their killer kicking them from behind, cursing, rushing them to the place and the hour of their death.
“Amen,” he said, heart aching.
On his way back to Vigàta, he became convinced that Balduccio would follow the advice he was sending him through the priest. Japichinu’s corpse would end up at the bottom of some rocky cliff. No, the grandfather knew how religious his grandson was. He would have him buried anonymously in consecrated ground. In somebody else’s coffin.
Passing through the front door to headquarters, he found things unusually quiet. Could everyone have left, even though he told them to wait for him to return? No, they were there, Mimi, Fazio, and Gallo, each seated at his desk, face gloomy as after a defeat. He called them into his office.
“I want to tell you something. Fazio must have told you what went down between me and Balduccio Sinagra. Well, do you believe me?You must believe me, because I’ve never lied to you guys before, not about anything big, at least. From the very first, I realized that Don Balduccio’s request that I arrest Japichinu, because he’d be safer in jail, didn’t make sense.”
“So why did you give it any consideration?” Augello asked polemically.
“To see what he was up to. And to thwart his plan, if I could figure out what it was. Which I did, and then I made the proper countermove.”
“Which was what?” asked Fazio this time.
“Not letting our discovery of Japichinu’s body become official. That’s what Balduccio wanted: for us to be the ones to discover it, which would have provided him with an alibi.You see, he was expecting me to inform the judge that he’d intended for us to capture his grandson safe and sound.”
“After Fazio explained things to us,” Mimì resumed, “we reached the same conclusion as you, that is, that it was Balduccio who had his grandson killed. But why?”
“At the moment it’s not clear. But something’ll come out sooner or later. As far as we’re concerned, the whole business ends here.”
The door flew open, crashing against the wall with such force that the windows rattled. Everybody jumped. Naturally, it was Catarella.
“Oh Chief! Chief! Cicco de Cicco called just now! He made the development! An’ it worked! I wrote the number down on this piece a paper here. He made me repeat it to him five times!”
He set a half-sheet of squared notebook paper on the inspector’s desk and said:
“Beg your pardon ‘bout the door.”
He went out. And reclosed the door so hard that a crack in the paint near the handle widened slightly.
Montalbano read the license-plate number and looked at Fazio.
“You got Nenè Sanfilippo’s license-plate number within reach?”
“Which car? The Punto or the Duetto?”
Augello pricked up his ears.
“The Punto.”
“That one I know by heart: BA 927 GG.”
“They correspond,” said Mimi. “But what does it mean? Would you explain?”
Montalbano explained, telling them how he’d found out about the postal passbook and the money on deposit; how, following up on what Mimi himself had suggested to him, he’d studied the photos from the excursion to Tindari and discovered that a Fiat Punto had been riding on the bus’s rear bumper; and how he’d brought the photo to the Montelusa forensics lab to have them enlarge it. The whole time the inspector was speaking, Augello maintained a suspicious expression.
“You already knew,” he said.
“I already knew what?”
“That the car following behind the bus was Sanfilippo’s. You knew it before Catarella gave you that slip of paper.”
“Yes,” the inspector admitted.
“And how did you know?”
A tree, a Saracen olive tree told me. That would have been the correct answer, but Montalbano didn’t have the courage to say it.
“I had an intuition,” he said instead.
Augello let it drop.
“This means,” he said, “that the Griffo and Sanfilippo murders are closely connected.”
“We can’t say that yet,” the inspector disagreed. “The only thing we know for sure is that Sanfilippo’s car was following the bus the Griffos were in.”
“Beba even said he kept turning around to look at the road. Apparently he wanted to make sure Sanfilippo’s car was still behind them.”