“Oh and, listen, dear boy, don’t forget to keep me posted on the Lacapra case.”
o o o
When he got to Marinella, neither Livia nor François were there. They were down by the water, Livia in her bathing suit and the boy in his underpants. They’d built an enormous sand castle and were laughing and talking. In French, of course, which Livia spoke as well as Italian. Along with English. Not to mention German, truth be told. The house ignoramus was he, who barely knew three or four words of French he’d learned in school.
He set the table, then looked in the fridge and found the pasta ’ncasciata and veal roulade from the day before.
He put them in the oven at low heat, then quickly got undressed, put on his swimsuit, and joined the other two.
The first things he noticed were a little bucket, a shovel, a sand-sifter, and some molds in the shapes of fish and stars.
He, of course, didn’t have such things about the house, and Livia certainly hadn’t bought them, since it was Sunday.
And there wasn’t a soul on the beach aside from the three of them.
“What are those?”
“What are what?”
“The shovel, the bucket—”
“Augello brought them this morning. He’s so sweet!
They belong to his little nephew, who last year . . .” He didn’t want to hear any more. He dived into the sea, infuriated.
When they returned to the house, Livia noticed the cardboard tray full of pastries.
“Why did you buy those? Don’t you know that sweets are bad for children?”
“Yes I do, it’s your friend Augello who doesn’t know it.
He bought them. And now you’re going to eat them, you and François.”
“While we’re at it, your friend Ingrid called, the Swedish woman.”
Thrust, parry, counterthrust. And what was the meaning of that “while we’re at it”?
Those two liked each other, that was clear. It had started the previous year, when Mimì had driven Livia around in his car for an entire day. And now they were picking up where they’d left off. What did they do when he wasn’t there? Trade cute little glances, smiles, compliments?
They began eating, with Livia and François murmuring to each other from time to time, enclosed inside an invisible bubble of complicity from which Montalbano was utterly excluded. The delicious meal, however, prevented him from getting as angry as he would have liked.
“Excellent, this brusciuluni,” he said.
“What did you call it?”
“Brusciuluni. The roulade.”
“You nearly frightened me. Some of your Sicilian words . . .”
“You Ligurians don’t kid around either. Speaking of which, what time does your flight leave? I think I can drive you to Palermo.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I canceled my reservation and called Adriana, a colleague of mine, and asked her to fill in for me. I’m going to stay a few more days. It suddenly dawned on me that if I’m not here, who are you going to leave François with?” The dark premonition he’d had that morning, when he saw them sleeping in each other’s arms, was beginning to take shape. Who would ever pry those two apart?
“You seem displeased . . . I don’t know . . . irritated.”
“Me? Come on, Livia!”
o o o
As soon as they’d finished eating, the little boy’s eyelids started to droop; he was sleepy and must still have been quite worn out. Livia took him into the bedroom, undressed him, and put him to bed.
“He told me something,” she said, leaving the door ajar.
“Tell me.”
“When we were building the sand castle, at a certain point he asked me if I thought his mother would ever return.
I told him I didn’t know anything about what had happened, but I was sure that one day his mother would come back for him. He twisted up his face, and I didn’t say any more. A little while later, he brought it up again and said he didn’t think she was coming back. Then he dropped the subject. That child is darkly aware of something terrible. Then all of a sudden he started talking again. He told me that that morning, his mother had come home in a rush and seemed frightened.
She told him they had to go away. They ran to the center of Villaseta; his mother told him they had to catch a bus.”
“A bus for where?”
“He doesn’t know. While they were waiting, a car drove up. He knew it well; it belonged to a bad man who would sometimes beat his mother. Fahrid.”
“What’s the name?”
“Fahrid.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. He even told me that, when you write it, there’s an h between the a and the r.” So Mr. Lapècora’s dear young nephew, the owner of the metallic gray BMW, had an Arab name.
“Go on.”
“This Fahrid then got out of the car, grabbed Karima’s arm, and tried to force her to get in. She resisted and shouted to François to run away. The boy fled; Fahrid was too busy with Karima and had to choose. François found a hiding place and was too terrified to come out. He didn’t dare go back to a woman he called his grandma.” “Aisha.”
“He got so hungry he had to rob other children of their schooltime snacks to survive. At night he would go up to the house, but he found it all dark and was afraid that Fahrid was lying in wait for him there. He slept outside. He felt hunted like an animal. The other night he couldn’t stand it any longer; he had to go back home at all costs. That’s why he came so close to the house.” Montalbano remained silent.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked.
“I think we’ve got an orphan on our hands.” Livia blanched; her voice began to tremble.
“Why do you think that?”
“Let me explain the opinion I’ve formed of the whole affair thus far, also based on what you’ve just told me. Five years ago, more or less, this attractive, beautiful Tunisian woman comes to our country with her baby boy. She looks for work as a house cleaner and has no trouble finding it, because, among other things, she grants favors, upon request, to older men. That’s how she meets Lapècora. But at a certain point this Fahrid enters her life. He’s probably a pimp or something similar. Fahrid then comes up with a scheme to force Lapècora to reopen his old import-export business as a front for some sort of shady dealings, probably drugs or prostitution. Lapècora, who’s basically an honest man, senses that something’s not right and gets scared. He tries to wiggle out of a nasty situation by rather ingenuous means. Just imagine, he writes anonymous letters to his wife denouncing himself.
Things go on this way for a while, but at a certain point, and I don’t know why, Fahrid is forced to clear out. At this point, however, he has to eliminate Lapècora. He arranges for Karima to spend a night at Lapècora’s house, hiding in his study. Lapècora’s wife has to go to Fiacca the following day, to visit her sister who’s sick. Karima had probably filled Lapècora’s brain with visions of wild sex in the marriage bed when the wife was away. Who knows. Early the next morning, after Mrs. Lapècora has left, Karima opens the front door and lets in Fahrid, who then kills the old man. Lapècora may have attempted to escape; perhaps that was why he was found in the elevator. Except that, based on what you just told me, Karima must not have known that Fahrid intended to kill him. When she sees that her accomplice has stabbed Lapècora, she flees. But she doesn’t get very far; Fahrid tracks her down and kidnaps her. In all probability, he later kills her, to keep her from talking. And the proof of this is that he went back to Karima’s place to remove all the photos of her. He didn’t want her to be identified.” Silently, Livia started crying.
o o o
He was alone. Livia had gone to lie down next to François.
Montalbano, not knowing what to do, went and sat on the veranda. In the sky, two seagulls were engaged in some sort of duel; on the beach, a young couple was strolling, exchang-ing a kiss from time to time, but wearily, as if following a script. He went back inside, picked up the last novel written by the late Gesualdo Bufalino, the one about a blind photographer, and went back out on the veranda. He glanced at the cover, the jacket flaps, then closed it. He was unable to con-centrate. He could feel an acute malaise slowly growing inside him. And suddenly he understood the reason.