What now? Count from one to a billion? Try to recite from memory every poem he knew? Think of all the possible ways to cook mullet? Start imagining all the reasons he would give to the commissioner and the public prosecutor for having worked on this case on the sly, without “the authorization of his superiors”? All of a sudden he felt a sneeze coming on, tried to suppress it, did not succeed, but blocked the burst by plugging his nose with his hand. He felt like he had a pint of water in each boot. All he needed now was a goddamn cold! On top of everything, he was beginning to feel chilled. He got up and started walking very close to the wall. Too bad if he had a backache tomorrow. After a hundred or so paces, he turned around. When he was back at the moat, he turned round again and retraced his steps. He went back and forth some ten times. Cold? Now he was hot and sweaty. He decided to take a brief rest and sat down on the ground. Then he lay down completely. Half an hour later, a troubling somnolence began to take hold of him. He closed his eyes, then reopened them after a brief spell, he couldn’t tell how long, bothered by the buzzing of a large fly.
Fly? That was the dinghy returning! He quickly rolled towards the moat, slid into it standing up but hunched over. The buzzing became a rumble, and the rumble became a roar as the dinghy drew near. Then the roar stopped all at once. The dinghy was certainly now coasting on its momentum as it made its way through the canal and entered the grotto. Montalbano climbed up the rock without any difficulty, drawing strength and lucidity from the assurance that he would soon have the satisfaction he so desired. Once his head was at the level of the wire fence, he saw a great beam of light projecting out the entrance of the grotto. He also heard two men shouting angrily, and some children crying and whimpering, which wrenched his heart and turned his stomach. Hands sweaty and trembling, not from tension but from rage, he waited for the grotto to fall silent again. When he was about to cut the first of the fence’s two remaining wires, the light also went out. A good sign. It meant that the grotto was now empty. He cut the wires without precaution, one after the other, then let the large square of mesh that remained in his hand slide down the rock before dropping it into the moat.
He made his way past the two metal poles, then jumped down onto the sand, in the dark, from the top of the rock. A jump of over ten feet, and the Good Lord let him pull it off. In those last few minutes he felt a good ten years younger. He pulled out his pistol, cocked it, and went into the grotto. Total darkness and silence. He walked along the narrow quay until his hand felt the iron door, which was half-open. He went inside the hangar and quickly—as if he could see—reached the archway, passed under it, stepped onto the first stair, and stopped there. How come everything was so quiet? Why hadn’t his men started doing what they were supposed to do? A thought crossed his mind, and he began to sweat: what if they’d hit a snag and hadn’t arrived yet? And there he was, in the dark, gun in hand, looking like some dickhead dressed up as a sea dog! Why didn’t they get moving? Jesus Christ! Was this some kind of joke? Were Mr. Zarzis and his pals going to slip away, just like that? By God, no, even if he had to go up to the villa and raise the roof all by himself.
At that very moment he heard, almost all at once, though muffled in the distance, a burst of pistol shots, machine-gun fire, and angry shouts whose words remained incomprehensible. What to do? Wait there or run up to the house and provide support for his men? The shootout continued overhead, fierce and sounding as if it was coming closer. Suddenly a very bright light came on at once in the stairway, hangar, and grotto. Someone was getting ready to escape. He distinctly heard some hurried steps coming down the staircase. In a flash the inspector ran back through the arch and ducked behind it, back to the wall. A second later, a man came huffing past, popping out with a kind of hop, exactly the way a rat comes out of a sewer.
“Stop! Police!” Montalbano yelled, stepping forward.
The man did not stop but merely turned slightly around, raising his left hand, which held a large pistol, and shot behind himself almost blindly. The inspector felt a fierce blow strike his left shoulder with such force that it turned his whole upper body around to the left. His feet and legs, however, remained in place, rooted to the ground. When the man had reached the door to the garage, Montalbano’s first and only shot struck him square between the shoulder blades. The man stopped, threw out his arms, dropped the pistol, and fell face-forward to the ground. The inspector approached slowly, unable to walk any faster, and with the tip of his boot turned the body over.
Jamil Zarzis seemed to smile at him with his toothless mouth.
Somebody had once asked him if he’d ever felt happy about killing another man. He’d said no. He didn’t feel happy this time, either. Gratified, yes. That was exactly the word: gratified.
He knelt down slowly. His legs felt weak, and he had an overwhelming desire to sleep. Blood was pouring out of the wound in his shoulder and soaking his sweater. The shot must have made a big hole.
“Inspector! Oh my god, Inspector! I’ll call an ambulance!”
Montalbano’s eyes remained closed, but he recognized Fazio’s voice.
“No ambulances. Why did you guys take so long to get started?”
“We were waiting while they put the kids in a room, figuring we could move more easily that way.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Seven. It looked like a kindergarten. They’re all okay. We killed one of the men, and another surrendered. You shot the third guy. That pretty much covers it. Now can I call someone to give me a hand?”
When the inspector regained consciousness, he was inside a car with Gallo at the wheel. Fazio was behind him with his arms around him, as the car bounced high along a road full of holes. They had removed his sweater and improvised a temporary bandage over the wound. He felt no pain from it; perhaps that would come later. He tried to speak, but on first try nothing came out, because his lips were too dry.
“. . . Livia . . .’s flying in . . . this morning . . . Punta Raisi.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Fazio. “One of us will go pick her up, you can count on it.”
“Where are you . . . taking me?”
“To Montechiaro hospital. It’s the closest.”
Then something happened that Fazio found frightening. He realized that the noise coming from Montalbano was not a cough or him clearing his throat. The inspector was laughing. What was there to laugh about in this situation?
“What’s so funny, Chief?” he asked, concerned.
“I wanted to screw . . . my guardian angel . . . by not going to the doctor . . . But he . . . screwed me . . . by sending me to the hospital.”
Hearing this answer, Fazio got really scared. The inspector was apparently delirious. More terrifying still was the injured Montalbano’s sudden yell.
“Stop the car!”
Gallo slammed on the brakes; the car skidded.
“Up there . . . is that . . . the fork in the road?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Take the road to Tricase.”
“But, Chief . . .” Fazio cut in.
“I said take the road to Tricase.”
Gallo started out slowly, turned right, and then almost at once Montalbano ordered him to stop.
“Put on your brights.”
Gallo obeyed, and the inspector leaned out the car window. The mound of gravel was no longer there. It had been used to level the road.
“It’s better this way.”