“How old do you think he was?”
“About forty. And definitely not a non-European. He will, however, be hard to identify.”
“No fingerprints?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Doctor, why are you so convinced he was murdered?”
“It’s just my opinion, mind you. The body’s covered with wounds from having been dashed repeatedly against the rocks.”
“There aren’t any rocks in the water where I found him.”
“How do you know where he’s from? He’d been sailing a long time before turning himself over to you. What’s more, he’s all eaten up by crabs; he still had two of them in his throat, dead . . . As I was saying, he’s covered with asymmetrical wounds, all of them postmortem. But there are four that are symmetrical, perfectly defined, and circular.”
“Where?”
“Around his wrists and his ankles.”
“That’s what it was!” exclaimed Montalbano, jumping out of his chair.
Before falling asleep that afternoon, he’d remembered a detail he couldn’t decipher: the arm, the bathing suit wrapped tightly around the wrist . . .
“It was a cut that went all the way around the left wrist,” the inspector said slowly.
“So you noticed it, too? He had the same thing around the other wrist and the ankles as well. And that, to me, can mean only one thing . . .”
“He’d been tied up.”
“Exactly. But with what? With iron wire. Pulled so tight that it sawed into his flesh. If it had been rope or nylon, the wounds wouldn’t have been so deep as to cut almost down to the bone. And we certainly wouldn’t have found any trace of them. No, before they drowned him, they took the wire off. They wanted to make it look like a routine drowning.”
“Any chance we can get some forensic tests done on him?”
“Maybe. It all depends on Dr. Mistretta. We’d have to order the tests specially from Palermo, to see if there are any traces of metal or rust remaining inside the cuts around the wrists and ankles. But it’d take a long time. And that’s the long and the short of it. It’s getting late.”
“Thanks for everything, Doctor.”
They shook hands. The inspector got back in his car and drove off at a leisurely pace, lost in thought. A car came up behind him and flashed its high beam, reproaching him for going so slowly. When Montalbano pulled over to the right, the other car, a kind of silver torpedo, passed and came to a sudden stop in front of him. Cursing, the inspector slammed on the brakes. In the beam of his headlights, he saw a hand emerge from the torpedo’s window and give him the finger. Seething with rage, Montalbano got out of his car, ready to have it out with the driver. The torpedo’s driver also got out. Montalbano stopped dead in his tracks. It was Ingrid, arms open and smiling.
“I recognized the car,” said the Swede.
How long had it been since they’d last seen each other? Surely at least a year. They embraced long and hard. Ingrid kissed him, then lightly pushed him away, holding him at arm’s length to have a better look.
“I saw you naked on TV,” she said laughing. “You’re still a pretty nice hunk.”
“And you’re more beautiful than ever,” said the inspector in all sincerity.
Ingrid embraced him again.
“Is Livia here?”
“No.”
“Then I’d like to come sit a while on your veranda.”
“Okay.”
“Give me a second. I need to break an engagement.”
She murmured something into her cell phone, then asked.
“Got any whisky?”
“A whole bottle, still unopened. Here, Ingrid, take my house keys. You go on ahead, I can’t keep up with you.”
She laughed, took his keys, and had already vanished by the time the inspector turned on the ignition. He was pleased by this chance encounter. It would not only afford him the pleasure of spending a few hours with an old friend, but would grant him the distance necessary to think with a cool head about what Dr. Pasquano had just revealed to him.
When he pulled up in front of his house, Ingrid came up to him, embraced him and held him tight.
“I have authorization.”
“From whom?”
“From Livia. The minute I went inside, the phone started ringing, so I answered. I shouldn’t have, I know, but it was an instinctive reaction. It was her. I told her you’d be home in a few minutes, but she said she wouldn’t call back. She said you hadn’t been feeling too well and that, as your nurse, I was authorized to comfort you and take care of you. And this is the only way I know how to comfort and take care of people.”
Shit. Livia must have been seriously upset. Ingrid hadn’t understood, or had pretended not to understand, Livia’s venomous irony.
“Excuse me just a minute,” said Montalbano, breaking free of her embrace.
He dialed Livia’s number in Boccadasse, but it was busy. She’d taken the phone off the hook, no doubt about it. He tried again. Meanwhile Ingrid roamed about the house, digging up the whisky bottle, getting some ice cubes from the freezer, going out on the veranda and sitting down. The line remained busy. The inspector gave up, went outside, and sat down next to Ingrid on the bench. It was an exquisite night. There were a few light, wispy clouds in the sky, and the surf washed ashore with a caressing hush. A thought—a question, really—came into the inspector’s head and made him smile. Would the night have seemed so idyllic if Ingrid hadn’t been there beside him, head resting on his shoulder after having poured him a generous dose of whisky?
Then Ingrid started talking about herself and didn’t finish until three and a half hours later, when only four fingers of whisky remained in the bottle before it could be officially declared dead. She said her husband was acting like the asshole he was and that they lived separate lives under one same roof; she said she’d gone to Sweden because she’d felt a longing for her family (“You Sicilians gave me the bug”); and she admitted she’d had two affairs. The first was with a member of Parliament, a strict Catholic who went by the name of Frisella or Grisella—the inspector couldn’t quite hear which—and who before getting into bed with her would kneel on the floor and beg God’s forgiveness for the sin he was about to commit. The second was with the captain of an oil tanker who’d taken an early retirement after coming into a generous inheritance, and it could have become a serious involvement if she hadn’t decided to call things off. This man, who went by the name of D’Iunio or D’Ionio—the inspector couldn’t quite hear which—troubled her and made her feel uncomfortable. Ingrid had an extraordinary ability to grasp at once the comical or grotesque aspects of her men, and this amused Montalbano. It was a relaxing evening, better than a massage.
Next morning, despite an eternal shower and four cups of coffee, gulped down one after the other, when he got into his car his head was still numb from the whisky of the night before. As for everything else, he felt entirely back on track.
“J’you get over your illment, Chief?” asked Catarella as the inspector walked into headquarters.
“My illment’s a lot better, thanks.”
“Hey, I saw you on TV, Chief. Jesus, what an embodiment you got!”
The inspector went into his office and called Fazio, who arrived in a flash. The sergeant was dying to know what Dr. Pasquano had told him, but didn’t dare ask. He didn’t open his mouth at all, in fact, because he was keenly aware that these were dark days for the inspector, and the slightest peep might set him off. Montalbano waited for him to sit down, pretending to look at some papers out of sheer meanness, since he could clearly see Fazio’s question etched in the curve of his lips. He wanted to let him stew a little. Then, all at once, without looking up from his papers, he said:
“Homicide.”
Taken by surprise, Fazio jumped out of his chair.
“Shot?”
“Nuh-unh.”
“Stabbed?”
“Nuh-unh. Drowned.”
“But how did Dr. Pasquano—”
“Pasquano merely took a look at the body and formed an opinion. But Pasquano’s almost never wrong.”
“And what’s he base his opinion on?”
The inspector told him everything. And he added:
“The fact that Mistretta doesn’t agree with Pasquano actually helps us. In his report, under the heading ‘Cause of Death,’ Mistretta will surely write: ‘Drowning,’ using the proper forensic terminology, of course. And that’ll be our cover. We can work in peace without any interference from the commissioner’s office, the flying squad, or anyone else.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“First of all, you should request an identification profile for the victim: height, hair color, age, things like that.”
“And a photo, too.”
“Fazio, didn’t you see the state he was in? Did that look like a face to you?”
Fazio looked crestfallen.
“If it’ll make you feel any better,” the inspector continued, “I can tell you that he probably limped. He’d been shot in the leg some time ago.”
“It’s still going to be tough to identify him.”
“Try anyway. Have a look at the disappearance reports, too. Pasquano says the body’d been cruising the seas for at least a month.”
“I’ll try,” said Fazio, unconvinced.
“I’m going out. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”