“Did you take off his clothes or was he…?”
“They told me that’s how they found him in the dinghy. Naked,” said Garrufo.
“And on the back, are there any-?”
“No wounds on the back, either.”
A sickly-sweet smell festered in the room. The corpse wasn’t fresh. As the inspector was about to ask another question, a woman appeared through a door, dressed in greasy overalls and wiping her hands with an equally greasy rag.
“How much longer you guys going to keep that thing here?” she asked gruffly.
She opened the door to one of the two cabins giving onto the mess room, went inside, and closed the door behind her.
At once a man of about fifty with a goatee came in, skinny as a rail and sunburnt, wearing spotless, wrinkleless white trousers, a blue blazer with silver buttons, and a military sort of cap on his head.
“Hello. I’m Captain Sperlì,” he said, introducing himself to Montalbano.
Apparently he’d already met the other two. Based on his accent, he had to be from Genoa.
“Is your engineer a woman?” the inspector asked.
The captain chuckled.
“No, she’s the owner. Since the auxiliary engine wasn’t doing too well, which is what’s been holding us up for so long, the lady wanted to check it out for herself.”
“And she’s competent?” Montalbano asked again.
“She certainly is,” said the captain. Then, in a lower voice: “She’s better than the engineer himself.”
At that moment they heard someone calling from the deck.
“Anybody there?”
“I’ll take care of this,” said the captain.
A few moments later, two men in white tunics came down, lifted the oilcloth together with the corpse, and carried it away.
“In your opinion, Doctor,” Montalbano said, “how long-”
He was interrupted by the reappearance of the captain. Behind him was a sailor in a black wool sweater with the name Vanna written across the chest. In his hands he had a bottle of mineral spirits and a rag. He cleaned off the surface of the tabletop and then spread over it a white tablecloth he had taken from a small closet.
“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said the captain. “Will you have a drink?”
Nobody declined.
“In your opinion, Doctor,” Montalbano began again after a sip of a whisky he’d never had before which tasted like the best he’d ever drunk, “how long-”
The cabin door opened again, and the woman from before reappeared. She had changed her clothes and was now wearing jeans and a blouse. She had no trace of jewelry on her. She was tall, dark, attractive, and elegant. She must have been close to fifty but had the body of a forty-year-old. She went to the closet, took a glass, and held it out, without a word, in front of the captain. He filled it almost to the brim with whisky. Still standing, she brought it to her lips and drank half of it in a single gulp. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said to the captain:
“Sperlì, tomorrow morning we’re getting out of here, so I want you to-”
“Just a minute,” Montalbano cut in.
The woman looked at him as if noticing only then that he was there. And instead of speaking to him directly, she addressed the captain.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s Inspector Montalbano.”
“Inspector of what?”
“Police,” replied the captain, a bit embarrassed.
Only then, after looking him up and down, did the woman deign to ask him directly:
“What were you going to say?”
“There’s no way you can leave the port tomorrow.”
“And why not?”
“Because we have to investigate the circumstances of that man’s death. The judge is going to want to question you and-”
“What did I say, Sperlì?” the woman asked severely.
“All right, all right, just drop it,” the captain said.
“Signora, tell me, too, what you said to the captain,” Montalbano butted in.
“I’d simply advised him to forget about the dinghy and not bring the body aboard because it was bound to create a host of problems for us. But he-”
“I am a man of the sea,” said the captain, to justify his actions.
“You see, signora-” Lieutenant Garrufo began.
“No, I don’t see, I’ve seen enough,” the woman cut him off, upset. Then, setting her now empty glass down on the table, she added: “And how long, Inspector, do you think we’ll be kept here?”
“In the best of cases, no more than a week, signora.”
She stuck her hands in her hair.
“But I’ll go crazy! What the hell am I going to do in a hole like this?”
Despite her obnoxious words and manner, the woman was unable to make Montalbano dislike her.
“You can go visit the Greek temples of Montelusa,” he suggested, half seriously and half mockingly.
“And then what?”
“Then there’s the museum.”
“And then what?”
“I dunno, you could visit some of the neighboring towns. At Fiacca, for example, they make a kind of pizza called tabisca, which has-”
“I’ll need a car.”
“Can’t you use your niece’s?”
She looked at him in amazement.
“What niece?”
3
Maybe she has more than one niece, the inspector thought.
“Vanna.”
The woman looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues.
“Vanna?!”
“Yes, looks about thirty, with glasses and black hair, lives in Palermo, and her surname is… wait… ah, Digiulio.”
“Ah, yes. She’s already left,” the woman replied abruptly.
Montalbano noticed that, before replying, she had exchanged a quick glance with the captain. But he realized that this wasn’t the time to press the matter.
“Perhaps you could rent a car, with or without a driver,” Dr. Raccuglia suggested.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She withdrew into her cabin.
“Nice little disposition,” said the lieutenant.
Captain Sperlì rolled his eyes heavenward, as if to evoke all the things he had to put up with, then threw his hands up.
“I think you wanted to ask me something,” the doctor said to the inspector.
“It’s no longer important,” Montalbano replied.
He had other things to think about.
When they went back out on deck, the inspector noticed that there was now a huge motorboat moored alongside the yacht, so big he’d only seen its equal in some 007 movies. And, lo and behold, it was flying a Panamanian flag.
“Did that just come in?” he asked the lieutenant.
“No, that cruiser’s been in the harbor for the past five days. It’s here for an engine check. They realized it wasn’t running properly and summoned a technician from Amsterdam.”
Back on the wharf, Montalbano read the cruiser’s name: Ace of Hearts. Dr. Raccuglia said goodbye to the two men and headed for his car.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” the lieutenant said to Montalbano.
“Go ahead.”
“Why were you so interested in the Vanna even before they told us they’d found the dinghy with the corpse in it?”
Smart question, worthy of a cop, and it put the inspector in a bit of a quandary. He decided to sing only half the Mass to the lieutenant.
“That niece I mentioned, the one the lady said had just left, had turned to the police-”
“I see,” said Garrufo.
“I think you’ll be hearing from me again very soon,” Montalbano said to him.
“I’m at your service.”
They shook hands.
He followed the lieutenant’s car for a short distance, waited for him to park, get out, and go into the Harbor Office, then waited five more minutes and did the same himself.