The Scent of the Night (13 page)

'Take me to the place where you saw Gargano's car,' said Montalbano.

He'd found a precious witness. He was sure of it.

ELEVEN

That brief moment spent inside the house had been enough for the weather to change. A bitter, cold wind had risen, with gusts like tremendous swipes of the paw of some ferocious beast. Fat, pregnant clouds were rolling in from the sea. Following Mr Tommasino's directions as he drove, Montalbano tried, in the meantime, to get him to explain things better.

'Are you sure it was the night of August the thirty-first?'

‘I’
d bet my life on it.' 'How can you be so certain?'

'Because I remember that I was thinking that the next day, the first of September, Gargano was supposed to pay me my interest, when all of a sudden I saw his car. And I was astonished.'

'Excuse me, sir, but were you, too, a victim of Gargano's?'

'Yes, I was stupid enough to have believed him. Thirty
million lire, he snatched from me. But at that moment, when I saw his car, I was surprised, yes, but I was also pleased. I thought it meant he would keep his word. Whereas the next morning I was told he never showed up.'

"Why were you surprised to see his car?
’

Tor many reasons. First of all, the place. You'll be surprised too when we get there. It's called Punta Pizzulo. Then, the hour. It was surely past midnight.'

‘
Did you check?
’

'No, I don't wear a watch. During the day I go by the sun,
’
at night, I go by the scent of the night. I have my own sort of natural timekeeper, built into my body.'

'Did you say the scent of the night?'

'Yes. The night changes scents, depending on the hour.'

Montalbano didn't press him on it. He said:
‘
Maybe Gargano was with someone; maybe they wanted to be alone.'

Inspector Montalbano, this place is too isolated to be safe. Don't you remember that a young couple were assaulted here two years ago? And I wondered: with all the money he's got, the standing, the need to keep up appearances, what need does Gargano have to be screwing in his car like a common thing?
’

"May I ask you — you're perfectly free not to answer — what you were doing in a place you tell me is so isolated, at that time of the night?'

‘I
go walking at night.'

Montalbano refrained from asking any more questions. Some five minutes later, after a spell of silence, the schoolteacher said:

'Here we are. This is Punta Pizzillo.'

And he got out first, followed by the inspector. They were on a small plateau, a kind of ship's bow, utterly deserted and devoid of trees, with only a few clumps of sorghum and caper here and there. The edge of the plateau was about ten yards away; beyond it must have been a sheer drop down to the sea.

Montalbano took a few steps but was stopped by Tommasino's voice.

'Careful There are landslides here. The ground's soft. Gargano's car was parked where yours is now, and in the same position, with the boot facing the sea.'

'And what direction were you coming from?'

‘F
rom Vigata.'

'That's far.'

'Not as far as it seems. From here to Vigata on foot, it takes forty-five minutes, an hour at the most. So, coming from that direction, I had no choice but to pass in front of the car's nose, about five or six paces away. Unless I were to make a long detour inward to avoid it. But what reason would I have to do that? And so I recognized the car. There was sufficient moonlight.'

'Did you manage to get a look at the licence plate?'

'Are you kidding? I would have had to stick my nose right up to it to read it.'

'But if you couldn't see the licence plate, how could you—'

‘I
recognized the model
.
It was an Alfa
166.
The same car he was driving when he came to my house to steal my money.'

'What kind of car do you drive?
’
the inspector thought to ask hun.

‘
Me? I don't even have a driver's licence.'

Nottata persa e figlia femmina,
Montalbano thought to himself, disappointed. This Tommasino was a madman who saw things that weren't there; but even when he saw things that were there, he adjusted them to his liking. The wind turned colder, the sky had clouded over. What was the inspector doing wasting his time in this godforsaken place? The schoolteacher must have somehow noticed his disappointment.

'Listen, Inspector, I have an obsession.'

Oh, God, another one? Montalbano got worried. What if the guy went bonkers right then and there and started yelling that he was seeing Lucifer in person? How should he act? Pretend it's nothing? Get in his car and hightail it out of there?

‘I’m
obsessed with cars,' Tommasino continued.
‘I
subscribe to quite a number of Italian and foreign magazines specializing in the subject. I could probably go on a TV game show. If the theme was cars, I'm sure I'd win.'

‘
Was there anyone inside the car?' asked the inspector, by now resigned to Tommasino's utter unpredictability.

'You see, coming from over there, as I said, I was able to observe the car in profile, so to speak, for a short
spell.
Then I drew near enough to see whether or not there were any silhouettes of people inside. I didn't notice any. It's possible that, seeing a shadow approach, whoever was in the car ducked down. I walked past without turning around.'

'Did you hear the sound of the car being started up at any point?
’

‘
No. But I think — and it's only an impression, mind you — that the boot was open.'

'And was there anyone near the
boot?' ‘N
o.'

Montalbano then got an idea that was so simple it was almost embarrassing.

'Mr Tommasino, could you please take about thirty steps and then walk back towards my car, taking the same path you took that night?
’

'Certainly,
’
said Tommasino,
‘I
like to walk.'

As the schoolteacher was walking away from him, Montalbano opened the boot and crouched down behind the car, poking his head up just enough to allow him to look through the rear-door windows and see Tommasino take the last of his thirty paces and turn around. At that point he lowered his head, making himself completely invisible. When he figured Tommasino was in front of the car, he scrambled over behind the boot, crouching all the while. Then he moved again to the other side of the
car when he realized the schoolteacher had passed, an unnecessary precaution, since Tommasino said he hadn't turned around. At this point he stood up.

'That's enough, Mr Tommasino, thank you.'

Tommasino gave him a puzzled look.

'Where were you hiding? I saw the open boot, but the car was empty and you were nowhere to be seen.'

‘
You were corning from over there, and Gargano, seeing your shadow—'

He broke off. The sky had suddenly opened an eye. A small hole, a rent, had appeared in the uniformly black fabric of clouds, and through the breach a bright ray of sunlight shone down, almost entirely circumscribed, on the spot where they were standing. Montalbano felt like laughing. They looked like two characters in a naive votive painting, illuminated by divine light. And at that moment he noticed something that only that particular angle of light, like a floodlight in a theatre, could have brought to his attention. He felt a chill run down his spine, and a familiar bell began to ring in his head.

'Let me drive you home,' he said to Tommasino, who was looking at him questioningly, waiting for him to continue his explanation.

After dropping off the former schoolteacher — having barely restrained himself from embracing the man' — he raced back to the place they'd just been. Meanwhile no other cars had shown up to give him any trouble. He pulled up, got out, and began to walk very slowly, step by careful step, looking down at the ground all the while, as far as the edge of the cliff. The ray of sunlight was no longer there to help him like the beam of a torch in the night. But now he knew what he needed to look for.

Then he cautiously leaned forward to see what was under his feet The plateau was made up of a layer of earth atop a base of marl Below, a smooth white wall of marl plunged straight into the sea, which must have been at the very least thirty feet deep in that spot The water was dark grey, like the sky. He didn't want to waste any more time. He looked around once, twice, thrice, to establish a few fixed reference points, then got back in his car and sped off to the station.

Fazio wasn't there. Unexpectedly, however,
Mimì
was.

'Beba's father's doing better. We've
decide
d
to postpone the wedding for a month. Any new developments?'

'Yes,
Mimì
Many.' He told him everything. When he'd finished,
Mimì
sat there dumbfounded.

'What are you going to do now?' he finally said.

'I want you to find me a dinghy with a good motor. It should take me about an hour to get to the spot, even if the weather's not the greatest'

'Look, Salvo, you're liable to get a heart attack. Put it off for a little while. The water must be ice cold today. And, sorry to say, you're not a kid anymore.'

'Find me a dinghy and don't break my balls.'

'Have you at least got a wet suit? An oxygen tank?'

‘I
should have a wet suit somewhere in the house. I've never used oxygen tanks. I can dive without them, just holding my breath.'

'Salvo, you
used to
dive without them, just holding your breath. Meanwhile you've kept right on smoking all these years. You don't know what condition your lungs are in. How long do you really think you can stay underwater? Shall we say twenty seconds, just to be generous?'

'That's bullshit.'

‘
You call smoking bullshit?'

'Gimme a break with the smoking! Of course smoking is harmful, to those who smoke. But for you, smog doesn't count, high-tension wires don't count, depleted uranium is good for the health, smokestacks are fine, Chernobyl has boosted farming production, fish filled with uranium — or whatever the hell it is — are better for you, dioxin is a pick-me-up, and mad cow, foot-and-mouth disease, genetically modified food, and globalization will make you live like a king. The only thing that harms and kills millions of people is secondhand smoke. You know what the new slogan's going to be in the coming years?
Keep the air clean. Do a
line of coke.'

'OK, OK. Calm
d
own
’
said
Mimì
‘I’ll
find you a dinghy. But on one condition.'
‘
What condition?
’
'That you bring me along
’
'To do what?
’

'Nothing. I just don't want to let you go alone. I wouldn't feel right'

'OK, then. Two o'clock, at the port I've got to keep my stomach empty, in any case. Don't tell anyone where we're going. I mean it
.
If I should turn out to be wrong, the whole police department'll be teasing me
’

Montalbano learned how hard it was to put on a wet suit while in a dinghy speeding over a sea that wasn't
exactl
y calm.
Mimì
, at the helm, looked tense and worried.

'Getting seasick?' the inspector asked him at one point

‘
No. Just sick of myself
’

‘
Why?'

'Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas.'

This was their only exchange. They didn't resume speaking until.they'd finally arrived, after many aborted attempts, in the waters in front of Punta Pizzillo, facing the headland where Montalbano had been that morning. The white rock face rose straight up out of the sea without a single spur or cavity.
Mimì
looked at him darkly.

‘
We risk crashing into that, you know
’
he said 'Well, make sure we don't
’
was all the comfort the inspector had to offer as he began to lower himself into the water, scraping his belly against the edge of the dinghy.
‘
You don't look so confident yourself
’
said
Mimì.
Montalbano glared at him, unable to bring himself to plunge into the sea. He was torn. The desire to go underwater and check to see if he'd seen right was very strong; but equally strong was the sudden impulse to drop everything. The weather, of course, didn't help: the sky was so dark that it seemed almost night, and the wind had turned very cold. At last he made up his mind, mostly because he could never allow himself to lose face in front of Augello by giving up. He released his grip.

Straightaway he found himself in darkness so total, so impenetrable, that he couldn't tell which way his body was positioned in the water. Was he vertical or horizontal? He remembered the time he'd woken up in the middle of the night, in bed, unable to make out where he was, no longer knowing where to look for the usual markers: the window, the door, the ceiling. He backed into something solid, then moved aside. He touched a viscous mass with his hand. He felt it envelop him. He struggled, and broke free. He then tried frantically to do two things: resist the absurd fear that was coming over him and grab the torch he had in his belt. At last he managed to turn it on. To his horror, he saw no beam of light. The thing didn't work. A strong current began to pull him downward

Why am I always trying to pull these kinds of stun
ts?
he asked himself in despair.

Fear turned into panic Unable to master it, he rocketed up to the surface, crashing his head into Augello's face, as his assistant was leaning far out over the edge of the dinghy.

'You nearly broke my nose!' said
Mimì
, rubbing his proboscis.

'So get out of the way
’
retorted the inspector, grabbing hold of the dinghy. He still couldn't see a thing. Could it possibly be night already? He could only hear his own panting.

‘
Why are your eyes cl
osed?' Augello asked with concern.

Only then did the inspector realize that the whole time he'd been underwater he'd kept his eyes shut, stubbornly refusing to accept what he was doing. He opened his eyes. To double-check, he turned on the torch, which worked line. He just sat there a few minutes, cursing himself, and when he felt that his heartbeat had returned to normal, he lowered himself into the water again. He felt calm now. The fright he'd had must have been due to the shock of first contact with the water. A natural reaction.

He was fifteen feet under. He aimed the light still farther down and gave a start, not believing what he saw. He turned off the torch, counted slowly to three, then turned it back on.

Another ten or twelve feet down, tightly wedged between the wall of marl and a white rock, was the wreck
of a car. A surge of emotion made him expel the air in his lungs. He hurriedly swam to the surface.

‘
Find anything? Groupers? Mackerels?'
Mimì
asked sarcastically, holding a wet handkerchief to his nose.

‘I
hit the damn jackpot,
Mimì
. The car is down there. It either crashed or was pushed off that cliff. I was right, this morning, when I thought I saw tyre tracks leading all the way to the edge. I need to go back down to check something, then we'll go home.'

Mimì
'd had the foresight to bring along a plastic bag with towels and an unopened bottle of whisky inside. Before asking any questions, he waited for the inspector to take off the wet suit, dry off, and get dressed. He waited still longer for his boss to attack the bottle, then attacked it himself. Finally, he asked:

'So, what'd you see twenty thousand leagues under the sea?
’

'
Mimì
, you're being a wise guy because you don't want to admit that I've left your arse in th
e dust. You took this case lightl
y, you told me yourself, and now I've screwed you. Pass the bottle.'

He took a long swig and handed the bottle to Augello, who did the same. But it was obvious that after what Montalbano had said, he didn't enjoy it quite as much.