“Angelo lives on the top floor and there’s no elevator.”
The staircase was broad and comfortable. The building seemed uninhabited. No voices, no sound of televisions. And yet it was the time of day when people were normally preparing their evening meal.
On the top-floor landing, there were two doors. Michela went up to the one on the left. Before opening it, she showed the inspector a small window with a grate over it, beside the steel-plated door. The little window’s shutters were locked.
“I called to him from here. He would surely have heard me.”
She unlocked first one lock, then another, turning the key four times, but did not go in. She stepped aside. “Could you go in first?”
Montalbano pushed the door, felt around for the light switch, turned it on, and entered. He sniffed at the air like a dog. He was immediately convinced there was no human presence, dead or alive, in the apartment.
“Follow me,” he said to Michela.
The entrance led into a broad corridor. On the left-hand side, a master bedroom, a bathroom, and another bedroom. On the right, a study, a kitchen, a small bathroom, and a smallish living room. All in perfect order and sparkling clean.
“Does your brother have a cleaning lady?”
“Yes.”
“When did she last come?” “I couldn’t say.”
“Listen, signorina, do you come visit your brother here often?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question flustered Michela.
“What do you mean, ‘why’? He’s…my brother!”
“Granted, but you said Angelo comes to your and your mother’s place practically every other day. So, I suppose you come to see him here on the off days? Is that right?”
“Well…yes. But not so regularly.”
“Okay. But why do you need to see each other when your mother’s not around?”
“Good God, Inspector, when you put it that way … It’s just something we’ve been in the habit of doing since we were children. There’s always been, between Angelo and me, a sort of …”
“Complicity?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
She let out a giggle. Montalbano decided to change the subject.
“Shall we go see if a suitcase is missing? If all his clothes are here?”
She followed him into the master bedroom. Michela opened the armoire and looked at the clothing, one article at a time. Montalbano noticed that it was all very fine, tailored stuff.
“It’s all here. Even the gray suit he was wearing the last time he came to see us, three days ago. The only thing missing, I think, is a pair of jeans.”
On top of the armoire, wrapped in cellophane, were two elegant leather suitcases, one large and the other a bit smaller.
“The suitcases are both here.”
“Does he have an overnight bag?”
“Yes, he usually keeps it in the study.”
They went into the study. The small bag lay beside the desk. One wall of the study was covered by shelves of the sort one sees in pharmacies, enclosed in sliding glass panels. And in fact the shelves were stocked with a great many medicinal containers: boxes, flasks, bottles.
“Didn’t you say your brother was an informer?”
“Yes. An informer for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Montalbano understood. Angelo was what used to be called a pharmaceutical representative. But this profession, like garbagemen turned “ecological agents” or cleaning ladies promoted to the rank of “domestic collaborators,” had been ennobled with a new name more appropriate to our elegant epoch. The substance, however, remained the same.
“He used to be … still is, actually, a doctor, but he didn’t practice for very long,” Michela felt obliged to add.
“Fine. As you can see, signorina, your brother’s not here. If you want, we can go.”
“Let’s go.”
She said it reluctantly, looked all around as if she thought she might, at the last moment, find her brother hiding inside a bottle of pills for liver disease.
Montalbano went ahead this time, waiting for her to turn off the lights and lock the double-locked door with due diligence. They descended the stairs, silent amid the great silence of the building. Was it empty, or were they all dead? Once outside, Montalbano, seeing how disconsolate she looked, suddenly felt terribly sorry for her.
“You’ll hear from your brother soon, you’ll see,” he said to her in a soft voice, holding out his hand.
But she didn’t grasp it, only shaking her head still more disconsolately.
“Listen…your brother…Is he seeing any…doesn’t he have a relationship with anyone?” “Not that I know of.”
She eyed him. And as she was eyeing him, Montalbano swam desperately to avoid drowning. All at once the waters of the lake turned very dark, as though night had fallen.
“What’s wrong?” asked the inspector.
Without answering, she opened her eyes wide, and the lake turned into the open sea.Swim, Salvo, swim.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated between strokes.
Again she didn’t answer. Turning her back to him, she unlocked the door, climbed the stairs, reached the top floor but didn’t stop there. The inspector then noticed a recess in the wall with a spiral staircase leading up to a glass door. Michela climbed this and slipped a key in the door, but was unable to open it.
“Let me try,” he said.
He opened the door and found himself on a terrace as big as the villa itself. Pushing him aside, Michela ran toward a one-room structure, a sort of box standing practically in the middle of the terrace. It had a door and, to one side, a window. But these were locked.
“I haven’t got the key,” said Michela. “I never have.”
“But why do you want…?”
“This used to be the washroom. Angelo rented it along with the terrace and then transformed it. He comes here sometimes to read or to sun himself.”
“Okay, but if you haven’t got the key—”
“For heaven’s sake, please break down the door.”
“Listen, signorina, I cannot, under any circumstances …”
She looked at him. That was enough. With a single shoulder thrust, Montalbano sent the plywood door flying. He went inside, but before even feeling around for the light switch, he yelled: “Don’t come in!”
He’d detected the smell of death in the room at once.
Michela, however, even in the dark, must have noticed something, because Montalbano heard first a sort of stifled sob, then heard her fall to the floor, unconscious.
“What do I do now?” he asked himself, cursing.
He bent down, picked Michela up bodily, and carried her as far as the glass door. Carrying her this way, however— the way the groom carries the bride in movies—he would never make it down the spiral staircase. It was too narrow. So he set the woman down upright, embraced her around the waist, wrapping his hands around her back, and lifted her off the ground. This way, with care, he could manage it. At moments he was forced to squeeze her tighter and managed to notice that under her big, floppy dress Michela hid a firm, girlish body. At last he arrived in front of the door to the other top-floor apartment and rang the doorbell, hoping that there was someone alive in there, or that the bell would at least wake somebody from the grave.
“Who is it?” asked an angry male voice behind the door.
“It’s Inspector Montalbano. Could you open the door, please?”
The door opened, and King Victor Emmanuel III appeared. An exact replica, that is: the same mustache, the same midgetlike stature. Except that he was dressed in civvies. Seeing Montalbano with his arms around Michela, he got the entirely wrong idea and turned bright red.
“Please let me in,” said the inspector.
“What?! You want me to let you inside?! You’re insane! You have the gall to ask me if you can have sex in my home?” “No, look, Your Majesty, I—” “Shame on you! I’m going to call the police!” And he slammed the door.