“If you’re worried about the consequences,” Valente added, “we can vouch for your absolute good faith.” Rahman shook his head. He explained that it wasn’t fear he was feeling, but horror. Horror at the fact that his own life, however briefly, had intersected with that of a cold-blooded killer of innocent children.
They comforted him as best they could, and as they were leaving they warned him not to repeat a word of their conversation to anyone, not even to his colleague and friend El Madani. They would call him if they needed him for anything else.
“Even at night, you call, no disturb,” said the schoolteacher, who suddenly had difficulty speaking Italian.
o o o
Before discussing everything they’d just learned, they ordered some coffee and drank it slowly, in silence.
“Obviously the guy didn’t sign on to learn how to fish,” Valente began.
“Or to get killed.”
“We’ll have to see how the captain of the fishing boat tells the story.”
“You want to summon him here?”
“Why not?”
“He’ll end up repeating what he already told Augello. It might be better first to try and find out what people down on the docks think. A word here, a word there, and we might end up learning a lot more.” “I’ll put Tomasino on it.”
Montalbano grimaced. He really couldn’t stand Valente’s second-in-command, but this wasn’t a very good reason, and it especially wasn’t something he could say.
“You don’t like that idea?”
“Me? It’s you who have to like the idea. Your men are yours. You know them better than I do.”
“C’mon, Montalbano, don’t be a shit.”
“Okay, I don’t think he’s right for the job. The guy acts like a tax collector, and nobody’s going to feel like confiding in him when he comes knocking.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll put Tripodi on it. He’s a smart kid, fearless. And his father’s a fisherman.”
“The important thing is to find out exactly what happened on the night the trawler crossed paths with the motor patrol. There’s something about the whole story that doesn’t add up, no matter which way you look at it.” “And what would that be?”
“Let’s forget, for the moment, how he managed to sign on with the boat. Ahmed set out with specific intentions, which are unknown to us. Here I ask myself: Did he reveal these intentions to the captain and the crew? And did he reveal them before they put out or when they were already at sea? In my opinion, he did state his intentions—though I don’t know exactly when—and everyone agreed to go along with him. Otherwise they would have turned around and put him ashore.” “He could have forced them at gunpoint.”
“But in that case, once they put in at Vigàta or Mazàra, the captain and crew would have said what happened. They had nothing to lose.”
“Right.”
“To continue. Unless Ahmed’s intention was to get killed off the shores of his native land, I can come up with only two hypotheses. The first is that he wanted to be put ashore at night, at an isolated spot along the coast, so he could steal back into his country undercover. The second is that he’d arranged some sort of meeting at sea, some secret conversation, which he absolutely had to attend in person.” “The second seems more convincing to me.”
“Me too. And then something unexpected happened.”
“They were intercepted.”
“Right. But here that hypothesis becomes more of a stretch. Let’s assume the Tunisian motor patrol doesn’t know that Ahmed’s aboard the fishing boat. They intercept a vessel fishing in their territorial waters, they order it to stop, the fishing vessel takes off, a machine gun is fired from the patrol boat, and purely by accident it happens to kill Ahmed Moussa. This, in any case, is the story we were told.” This time it was Valente who grimaced.
“Unconvinced?”
“It reminds me of the Warren Commission’s reconstruction of the Kennedy assassination.”
“Here’s another version. In the place of the man he’s supposed to meet, Ahmed finds someone else, who then shoots him.”
“Or else it is in fact the man he’s supposed to meet, but they have a difference of opinion, an altercation, and it ends badly, with the guy shooting him.”
“With the ship’s machine gun?”
He immediately realized what he’d just said. Without even asking Valente’s permission, and cursing under his breath, he grabbed the phone and asked for Jacomuzzi in Montelusa. While waiting for the connection, he asked Valente: “In the reports you were sent, did they specify the caliber of the bullets?”
“They spoke generically of firearms.”
“Hello? Who’s this?” asked Jacomuzzi at the other end of the line.
“Listen, Baudo—”
“Baudo? This is Jacomuzzi.”
“But you wish you were Pippo Baudo. Would you tell me what the fuck they used to kill that Tunisian on the fishing boat?”
“Firearms.”
“How odd! I thought he’d been suffocated with a pillow!”
“Your jokes make me puke.”
“Tell me exactly what kind of firearm.”
“A submachine gun, probably a Skorpion. Didn’t I write that in the report?”
“No. Are you sure it wasn’t the ship’s machine gun?”
“Of course I’m sure. Those patrol boats, you know, are equipped with weapons that can shoot down an airplane.”
“Really? Your scientific precision simply amazes me, Jacomù.”
“How do you expect me to talk to an ignoramus like you?”
o o o
After Montalbano related the contents of the phone call, they sat awhile in silence. When Valente finally spoke, he said exactly what the inspector was thinking.
“Are we sure the patrol boat was Tunisian?”
o o o
Since it was getting late,Valente invited the inspector to his house for lunch. But as Montalbano already had firsthand experience of the vice-commissioner’s wife’s ghastly cooking, he declined, saying he had to leave for Vigàta at once.
He got in his car and, after a few miles, saw a trattoria right on the shore. He stopped, got out, and sat down at a table. He did not regret it.
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12
It had been hours since he last spoke with Livia. He felt guilty for this; she was probably worried about him. While waiting for them to bring him a digestivo of anisette (the double serving of bass was beginning to weigh on his stomach), he decided to call her.
“Everything okay there?”
“Your phone call woke us up.”
So much for being worried about him.
“You were asleep?”
“Yes. We had a very long swim. The water was warm.” They were living it up, without him.
“Have you eaten?” asked Livia, purely out of politeness.
“I had a sandwich. I’m on the road. I’ll be back in Vigàta in an hour at the most.”
“Are you coming home?”
“No, I have to go to the office. I’ll see you this evening.” It was surely his imagination, but he thought he heard something like a sigh of relief at the other end.
o o o
But it took him more than an hour to get back to Vigàta. Just outside of town, five minutes away from the office, the car suddenly decided to go on strike. There was no way to get it started again. Montalbano got out, opened the hood, looked at the motor. It was a purely symbolic gesture, a sort of rite of exorcism, since he didn’t know a thing about cars. If someone had told him the motor consisted of a string or a twisted rubber band as on certain toy vehicles, he might well have believed it. A carabinieri squad car with two men inside passed by, then stopped and backed up. They’d had second thoughts. One was a corporal, the other a ranking officer at the wheel. The inspector had never seen them before, and they didn’t know Montalbano.
“Anything we can do?” the corporal asked politely.
“Thanks. I don’t understand why the engine suddenly died.”
They pulled up to the edge of the road and got out. The afternoon Vigàta-Fiacca bus stopped a short distance away, and an elderly couple got on.