The Scent of the Night (14 page)

'So what'd you see?'
Mimì
asked again, sheepishly.

There's a corpse inside the car. I can't tell whose it is, he's in too bad a shape. The doors probably opened on impact, so there may be another body in the area. The boot was also open. And you know what was in there? A motorbike. And there you have it
’
‘
What do we do now?
’

It's not our case. So we'll inform the people in charge.'

The two men who stepped out of the dinghy were undoubtedly Inspector Salvo Montalbano and Assistant Inspector Domenico '
Mimì
' Augello, two well-known guardians of the law. But all those who saw them were rather taken aback. Arm in arm, the two policemen staggered as they walked, softly singing to themselves 'La donna e mobile'.

'
Huddo? Id Guannodda dare
?
’
asked the inspector, speaking as if he had a very bad cold.

Inspector Guarnotta, you mean?'

'Yed
’

‘
Who's calling?' 'General Jaruselski
’

‘I’ll
put him on at once
’
said the operator, impressed. 'Hello? This is Guarnotta. I didn't quite get who this

is
’

'Listen, Inpector, listen clos
ely and don't athk eddy quedshons.'

It was a long and tortuous conversation, but in the end Inspector Guarnotta of Montelusa Central Police understood that he'd received some very important information from an unknown Pole.

It was seven in the evening, and at the station no one had seen hide or hair of Fazio. Montalbano rang up his newsman friend Nicolo Zito at the Free Channel studios.

'You ever going to pick up the video Annalisa made for you?' said Zito.

'What video?'

'The one with the pieces on Gargano.'

He'd completely forgotten about it, but pretended that that was the reason he'd called.

If I drop by in half an hour, will you be there?'

When he got to the Free Channel, Zito's office door was open. The newsman was waiting for him inside, videocassette in hand.

'Come on, I'm in a hurry. I have to prepare the evening report.'

'Thanks, Nicolo. I've got something t
o tell you,
from this moment on, keep an eye on Guarnotta. Then, if you can, fill me in.'

Nicolo
's haste suddenly vanished. The reporter pricked up his ears, knowing that one word from Montalbano was worth more than a three-hour lecture.

‘
Why, is something up?'

‘
Yes.'

'About Gargano?' I’
d
say
so.'

At the Trattoria San Calogero, the inspector had such an appetite that even the owner, who was used to seeing him eat, was astonished.

'What happened, Inspector, did the bottom drop out of your belly?'

He went home to Marinella, basking in genuine happiness. Not because he'd found the car. At the moment he didn't give a damn about that. But because he felt proud to know he could still engage in such demanding feats as diving without equipment.

‘I’
d like to see how many young guys can do what I just did?

Old, right! How could such a gloomy thought have ever
entered his head? It was too earl
y for that!

As he was trying to insert the videocassette into the VCR, it fell to the floor. Bending down to retrieve it, he froze, unable to move, seized by a lacerating back spasm.

Old age had reared its ignoble head again.

TWELVE

It was the telephone he was hearing, not the violin of Maestro Cataldo Barbera, who'd just told him in a dream: 'Listen to this concertino.'

Opening his eyes, he looked at the clock. Five to eight in the morning.

Very rarely did he wake up so late. Getting out of bed, he was pleased to note that the back pains were gone.

'Hello?'

'Hi, it's Nicolo
. I'm doing a live, on-site broadcast on the eight o'clock news. Watch it,'

He turned on the TV and tuned in to the Free Channel. After the opening credits, Nicolo's face appeared. In a few words he said that he was at Punta Pizzillo, thanks to a telephone tip that Montelusa.Police had received from a Polish admiral concerning a car that had fallen into the sea. Inspector Guarnotta had had the brilliant intuition that it might be the Alfa
166
of the missing financier Emanuele Gargano. He therefore wasted no time arranging to have
the vehicle dredged from the water, an operation that had not yet been completed. Here there was a cut. The camera, zooming vertiginously down from above, showed a small stretch of sea at the bottom of the cliff.

The car, explained Zito, off camera, was down there, some thirty feet beneath the surface, literally trapped between the wall of marl and a large rock. The cameraman then panned back and a huge pontoon with a crane, along with about a dozen motorboats, dinghies, and trawlers, appeared on the screen. The operation would take all day, Zito added, but the divers meanwhile had managed to free a corpse from the wreck and bring it to the surface. Cut. A body lying on the deck of a fishing boat, a man crouching beside
it
This was Dr Pasquano.

A reporter's voice: 'Excuse me, Doctor, in your opinion, did the man
di
e
in the fall or was he murdered beforehand?'

Pasquano (barely looking up): 'Get the
[bleep]
out of my face—'

The usual grace and charm.

‘
Now let's hear what the men in charge of the investigation have to say,' said Nicolo.

They appeared all huddled together as in a family photo taken outside: Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi, Public Prosecutor Tom
maseo, Chief of Forensics Arqua
and the head of the investigation, Inspector Guarnotta. All smiling as if at a picnic, all perilously close to the fragile edge of the cliff. Montalbano banished the wicked thought that had come into his head. All the same, seeing the
commissioner of Montelusa Police vanish live on camera would certainly have made an unusual spectacle, to say the least

The commissioner thanked everyone, from God in Heaven to the bailiff, for the efficiency and dispatch they d demonstrated in carrying out... etc Prosecutor Tommaseo asserted that all possibility of there being any sexual motive for the crime must be ruled out and therefore he couldn't care less about the whole affair. Actually, he didn't really say the last part of that sentence, but he clearly implied it in his facial expression. Vanni Arqua, chief of forensics, let it be known that at a glance, the car must have been in the water for over a month. The one who spoke most was Guarnotta, but this was only because Zito, like a good reporter, realized that the broadcast was going to the dogs and that it was up to him to ask the right questions to make the best of a bad situation.

Inspector Guarnotta, has the body discovered inside the car been identified with any certainty?'

'No official identification has been made yet but I think we can say that in all probability, the body belongs to Giacomo Pellegrino.'

‘
Was he alone in the car?
’

It's impossible to say. There was only the one body inside, but we can't rule out that there might have been another person who was thrown out of the car upon the vehicle's impact with the water. Our divers are actively searching the whole area.'

'And might this second person have been Emanuele Gargano?'
‘
Possibly.'

‘
Was Giacomo Pellegrino still alive when the car fell into the sea, or was he murdered beforehand?
’

'That's what the post mortem will tell us. But, you see, it's not absolutely certain that we're dealing with a crime here. It might have just been an unfortunate accident The land around here, you see, is very—'

He wasn't able to finish his sentence. The cameraman, who'd already panned out managed to capture the scene. Behind the group, a broad strip of land collapsed and fell into the sea. As in a well-choreographed ballet everyone shouted and leapt forward in unison. Montalbano half jumped from his armchair, as he often did when watching adventure films like
Raiders of the Lost Ark
When they were all on safer ground, Zito resumed the interview.

'Did you find anything else inside the car?'

‘
We haven't had a chance yet to search the whole inside of the car. But very near the car we recovered a motorbike.'

Montalbano pricked up his ears. But that was the end of the broadcast

What could that last statement mean?
Very near the car.
He'd seen the motorbike in the boot with his own two eyes. No mistake there. And so? There could only be two explanations: either a diver had removed it from where it was, maybe even without any particular reason for doing so; or Guarnotta was deliberately saying something he
knew to be false. But, if the latter, for what purpose? Did Guarnotta have his own idea of things and was he trying to make each detail conform to his overall conception?

The phone rang. It was Zito again.

'Did you like the broadcast?'

"Yes, Nicolo
.'

"Thanks for letting me screw the competition.' 'Did you manage to get any sense of what Guamotta's thinking?'

'That was no problem, because Guarnotta doesn't hide what he's thinking. He speaks clearly. But only off the record. He thinks it's too early to make any public statements. In his opinion, Gargano stepped on some toes in the Mafia. Either directly — that is, by pocketing some mafioso's cash — or indirectly — by taking over some turf he should never have sowed or ploughed.'

‘
But where does that poor kid Pellegrino come in?'

'Pellegrino had the bad luck to be with Gargano at the wrong moment This is still Guarnotta's theory, mind you. And so they killed them both, stuck 'em back in the car, and plunked them into the sea. Afterwards — or even before, it makes no difference — they threw the motorbike into the water as well. It's only a matter of hours, supposedly, before we find Gargano's body around the car, unless the currents have dragged it further away.'

‘
You buy that story?
’

'No.'

Why?
’

'Can you tell me what Pell
egrino and Gargano were doing in that godforsaken place at that time of the night? People only go there to fuck. And a
s far as I know, Gargano and Pell
egrino were not—-'

'Well, as far as you know isn't far enough.'

Nicolo
made a kind of sucking sound, his breath cut short.

'Do you mean to tell me—
‘

'For further details, please come to the Vigata Police Station at eleven
a
m
,' said Montalbano, faking the voice of a department-store PA system.

As he was hanging up, something came to mind that forced him to get dressed and go out before he'd had a chance to wash and shave. He got to Vigata in just a few minutes, and when in front of the office of King Midas, he finally felt a little calmer, as it was still dosed. He parked the car and waited. Then, in his rear-view mirror, he saw a yellow Fiat
500,
a collector's item, come up behind him. The car found a parking spot a short distance ahead of him. Out of it demurely stepped Miss Mariastella Cosentino, who went and opened the front d
oor of King Midas Associates. Th
e inspector let a few minutes pass, then went in. Mariastella was already at her post; motionless, a statue, right hand on the telephone, awaiting a call, the one call that would never come. She was unwilling to give up. As she had no television, and possibly no friends, either, it
was likely she still didn't know that Pellegrino's body and Gargano's car had been found.

'Good morning, signorina, how are you today?

‘I’m
all right, thank you.'

From her tone of voice the inspector could tell she was still in the dark as to recent developments. Now he had to play the card in his hand very carefully, shrewdly, otherwise Mariastella might withdraw even more than usual.

'Have you heard the news? he began.

What? You resolve to broach the subject carefully and shrewdly, and then come out with an opening statement more brutal, direct, and banal than even Catarella could ever think up? At this rate, might as well go at it guns blazing and get it over with all at once. The only sign Mariastella gave of having heard him was to focus her gaze on the inspector. But she didn't open her mouth, didn't ask anything.

'They found Giacomo Pellegrino's body.'