The Track of Sand (22 page)

“I told you not to speed!”

“So who’s speeding?”

And, indeed, after some ten minutes of bouncing along at fifty miles an hour, the car, just like that, ended up nose-first in a ditch as wide as the road itself, with the rear wheels practically spinning in air.

The maneuvers to get unstuck—between heaving and hoeing, cursing and shouting, with Gallo at the wheel one minute, Montalbano the next, shirts drenched with sweat—took a good half hour. On top of this, the left fender had bent and was rubbing against the tire. Gallo was finally forced to drive slowly.

In short, between one thing and another, by the time they got back to Spinoccia, over an hour had passed.

They were all there, except for Prosecutor Tommaseo. His absence worried Montalbano. It was anybody’s guess when the guy might show up, and he was liable to waste the inspector’s whole morning. He drove worse than a blind man, crashing into every other tree he saw.

“Any news of Tommaseo?” Montalbano asked Fazio.

“Tommaseo’s already gone!”

What, had he become Fangio on the Carrera Panamericana?

“Luckily he hitched a ride with Dr. Pasquano,” Fazio continued. “He gave the go-ahead for the body to be removed, and got a lift back to Montelusa from Galluzzo.”

When Forensics had finished shooting their first series of photos, Pasquano had the body turned over. The victim must have been about fifty, maybe slightly less.There was no exit wound on his chest from the bullet that had killed him.

“You know him?” the inspector asked Fazio.

“No.”

Dr. Pasquano finished examining the body, cursing the flies buzzing back and forth between the corpse and his face.

“What can you tell me, Doctor?”

Pasquano pretended not to have heard him. Montalbano repeated the question, pretending in turn that the doctor hadn’t heard him. Pasquano gave Montalbano a dirty look, removing his gloves. He was all sweaty and red in the face.

“What can I tell you? It’s a beautiful day.”

“Gorgeous, isn’t it? What can you tell me about the dead man?”

“You’re a bigger pain in the ass than these flies, you know that? What the hell do you want me to tell you?”

He must have lost at poker the night before, at the club. Montalbano summoned his patience and dug in.

“Tell you what, Doctor. While you’re talking, I’ll wipe away your sweat, chase away the flies, and every so often kiss your forehead.”

Pasquano started laughing. Then, in a single breath, he said:

“He was killed by a single shot to the shoulder.And you didn’t need me to tell you that.The bullet did not exit the body. And you didn’t need me to tell you that, either. He wasn’t shot at this location because—and you can figure this out all by yourself, too—a man doesn’t go walking outside in his underpants, not even on a shitty dirt road like this one. He’s probably been dead—and this, too, you have enough experience to figure out for yourself—for at least twenty-four hours. As for the bite on his arm, any idiot can see that it was a dog.To conclude, there was no need for you to force me to speak, making me waste my breath and busting my balls to hell and back. Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“And a good day to one and all.”

He turned his back, got in his car, and drove away.

Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics, kept having his men waste roll after roll of film for no reason. Of the thousands of shots taken, only two or three would prove important. Fed up, the inspector decided to go back to town. After all, what was he doing there?

“I’m leaving,” he said to Fazio.“I’ll see you at the station. Gallo, come on, can we go?”

He said nothing to Arquà, who, for his part, hadn’t greeted him upon arriving.You certainly couldn’t say they were fond of each other.

In the effort he had made to pull the car out of the ditch, the dust had not only soiled his clothes, it had filtered through his shirt, and the sweat made it stick to his skin.

He didn’t feel like spending the day at the station in that condition. It was, moreover, almost noon.

“Take me to Marinella,” he said to Gallo.

Opening the front door, he realized at once that Adelina had finished her work and gone.

He went straight into the bathroom, got undressed, took a shower, tossed the dirty clothes into the hamper, then went into the bedroom and opened the armoire to pick a clean suit. He noticed that one of the pairs of trousers was still in the plastic dry-cleaners’ bag; apparently Adelina had picked them up that same morning. He decided to wear them with a jacket he liked, and to break in one of the shirts he had just bought.

Then he got back into the car and drove to Enzo’s trattoria.

Since it was still early, there was only one customer in the room aside from him.The television was reporting that the dead body of an unknown man had been found by a fisherman in a canebrake in the district of Spinoccia. Police had ruled his death a crime, as clear signs of strangulation had been detected around the man’s neck. It also appeared, though had not yet been confirmed, that the killer had ferociously bitten the corpse all over. The case was being investigated by Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano. More details on the next newscast.

And so, this time, too, the television had done his job for him, which was to convey information dressed up in details and circumstances that were either completely wrong, utterly false, or pure fantasy.And yet the public swallowed it all. Why did the TV people do it? To make an already horrifying crime as hair-raising as possible? It was no longer enough to report a death; they had to provoke horror. After all, hadn’t the United States unleashed a war based on lies, stupidities, and mystifications that the most important figures in the country swore to by all that was holy in front of the whole world’s television cameras? After which, those same television cameras, and the people behind them, on their own, put the icing on the cake.And by the way, that anthrax case, what ever became of that? How was it that, from one day to the next, everybody stopped talking about it?

“Excuse me, but, if the other customer doesn’t mind, could you please turn off the television?”

Enzo went over to the other client, who, turning towards the inspector, declared:

“Yeah, you can turn it off. I don’t give a shit about that stuff.”

Fat and about fifty, the man was eating a triple serving of spaghetti with clam sauce.

The inspector ate the same thing. Followed by the usual mullets.

When he came out of the trattoria, he decided there was no need for a stroll along the jetty, and so returned to the office, where he had a mountain of papers to sign.

By the time he had finished most of his bureaucratic chores, it was already well past five o’clock. He decided to do the rest the following day. As he was setting down his ballpoint, the telephone rang. Montalbano looked at it with suspicion. For some time now, he was becoming more and more convinced that all telephones were endowed with an autonomous, thinking brain. There was no other way to explain the fact that telephones were ringing with increasing frequency at either the most opportune or the most inopportune moments, and never at moments when you weren’t doing anything.

“Ahh Chief, Chief! That’d be the lady Esther Man. Do I put ’er true?”

“Yes . . . Ciao, Rachele. How are you doing?”

“Great. And you?”

“Me too.Where are you?”

“In Montelusa. But I’m about to leave.”

“You’re going back to Rome? But you said—”

“No, Salvo, I’m just going to Fiacca.”

The sudden pang of jealousy he felt was unwarranted. Worse than that, it was totally unjustified. There was no reason in the world for him to feel that way.

“I’m going with Ingrid, to attend to some business.”

“Do you have business interests in Fiacca?”

“No. I meant sentimental business.”

And this could mean only one thing: that she was going there to give Guido his walking papers.

“But we’ll be back this evening. Shall we get together tomorrow?”

“Let’s try.”

Barely five minutes later, the telephone rang again.

“Ahh, Chief! ’At’d be Dr. Pisquano.”

“On the line?”

“Yissir.”

“Put ’im on.”

“How is it you haven’t busted my balls yet today?” Pasquano began, with the courtesy for which he was famous.

“Why should I have done that?”

“To find out the results of the autopsy.”

“Whose?”

“Montalbano, this is a clear sign of old age. A sign that your brain cells are disintegrating with increasing speed. The first symptom is memory loss. Did you know that? For example, does it sometimes happen that you’ll do something one minute, and the next minute you’ll forget that you did it?”

“No. But aren’t you, Doctor, five years older than me?”

“Yes, but the actual age doesn’t mean anything. There are people who are already old at twenty. In any case, I think it’s clear to all concerned that you’re the more doddering of the two of us.”

“Thanks.You want to tell me what autopsy you’re talking about?”

“This morning’s corpse.”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Doctor! The last thing I might imagine was that you would perform that autopsy so soon! What, were you good friends with the dead man or something? Normally you let days and days go by before—”

“This time I happened to have two free hours before lunchtime, and so I got him out of my hair. It turns out there are two minor new developments, with respect to what I told you this morning. The first is that I’ve recovered the bullet and sent it at once to Forensics, who, naturally, won’t have any news on it until after the next presidential election.”

“But the last one was barely three months ago!”

“Precisely.”

It was true. He recalled that he’d sent them the iron clubs used to kill the horse for fingerprints, but still hadn’t heard back from them.

“And what’s the second development?”

“I found some traces of cotton wool inside the wound.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the one who shot him is not the same person as the one who dumped him by the roadside.”

“Care to elaborate on that a little?”

“Gladly, especially considering the age of the person involved.”

“Whose age?”

“Yours, of course. That’s another product of aging: increasingly slow to comprehend.”

“Doctor, why don’t you go get—”

“I wish! It might improve my luck at poker! Anyway, I was explaining that, in my opinion, someone shot the soon-to-be dead man, gravely injuring him. Then a friend, or an accomplice, or somebody, took him home and tried in one way or another to stanch the blood flowing out of the wound. But the victim must have died shortly thereafter. So the helper waited until dark and then loaded the body into his car and dumped it in the open countryside, as far as possible from his house.”