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“Well, just for curiosity’s sake, would you tell me what your second demand is?”

“Certainly. The commissioner of Vigàta has put in a request for my promotion to vice-commissioner—”

“We shall have no problem whatsoever having it accepted,” said the colonel, relieved.

“What about having it rejected?”

Montalbano could distinctly hear Lohengrin Pera’s world crumble and fall to pieces on top of him, and he saw the colonel hunch over as if trying to shield himself from a sudden explosion.

“You are totally insane,” said the colonel, sincerely terrified.

“You’ve just noticed?”

“Listen, you can do whatever you like, but I cannot give in to your demand to turn up the body. Absolutely not.”

“Shall we see how the tape came out?” Montalbano asked politely.

“What tape?” said Lohengrin Pera, confused.

Montalbano went over to the bookcase, stood up on tiptoe, took out the videocamera, and showed it to the colonel.

“Jesus!” said the colonel, collapsing in a chair. He was sweating.

“Montalbano, for your own good, I implore you . . .” But the man was a snake, and he behaved like a snake. As he appeared to be begging the inspector not to do anything stupid, his hand had moved ever so slightly and was now within reach of the cell phone. Fully aware that he would never make it out of there alone, he wanted to call for rein-forcements. Montalbano let him get another centimeter closer to the phone, then sprang. With one hand he sent the cell phone flying from the table, with the other he struck the colonel hard in the face. Lohengrin Pera flew all the way across the room, eyeglasses falling, then slammed against the far wall back first, and slid to the ground. Montalbano slowly drew near and, as he’d seen done in a movie about Nazis, crushed the colonel’s little glasses with his heel.

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And while he was at it, he went for broke, pounding the cell phone violently into the ground with his heel until he’d half-pulverized it.

He finished the job with a hammer he kept in his tool drawer. Then he approached the colonel, who was still on the floor, groaning feebly. As soon as he saw the inspector in front of him, Lohengrin Pera shielded his face with his forearms, as children do.

“Enough, for pity’s sake,” he implored.

What kind of man was he? A punch in the face and a trickle of blood from his split lip, and he’s reduced to this?

Montalbano grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, lifted him up, and sat him down. With a trembling hand, Lohengrin Pera wiped away the blood with his embroidered postage stamp, closed his eyes, and appeared to faint.

“It’s just that . . . blood . . . I can’t stand the sight of it,” he muttered.

“Yours or other people’s?” Montalbano inquired.

He went into the kitchen, grabbed a half-full bottle of whisky and a glass, and set these in front of the colonel.

“I’m a teetotaler.”

Montalbano felt a little calmer now, having let off some steam.

If the colonel, he thought, wanted to phone for help, then the people who were supposed to come to his rescue must certainly be in the neighborhood, just a few minutes’

drive from the house. That was the real danger. He heard the doorbell ring.

“Chief ? It’s me, Fazio.”

He opened the door halfway.

“Listen, Fazio, I have to finish talking to that person I mentioned. Wait in the car. I’ll call you when I need you.

But be carefuclass="underline" there may be some people in the area who are up to no good. Stop anyone you see approaching the house.” He shut the door and sat back down in front of Lohengrin Pera, who seemed lost in dejection.

“Now try to understand me, because soon you won’t be able to understand anything anymore.”

“What do you intend to do to me?” asked the colonel, turning pale.

“No blood, don’t worry. I’ve got you in the palm of my hand, I hope you realize that. You were foolish enough to blab the whole story in front of a videocamera. If I have the tape aired on TV, it’s going to kick up such a fucking row on the international scene that you’ll be selling chickpea sandwiches on a street corner before it’s all over. If, on the other hand, you let Karima’s body be found and block my promotion—and make no mistake, the two things go hand in hand—I give you my word of honor that I’ll destroy the tape.

You have no choice but to trust me. Have I made myself clear?”

Lohengrin Pera nodded his little head “yes,” and at that moment the inspector realized that the knife had disappeared from the table. The colonel must have seized it when he was talking to Fazio.

“Tell me something,” said Montalbano. “Are there such things, that you know of, as poisonous worms?” Pera gave him a questioning look.

“For your own good, put down the knife you’re holding inside your jacket.”

Without a word, the colonel obeyed and set the knife down on the table. Montalbano opened the whisky bottle, filled the glass to the brim, and held it out to Lohengrin Pera, who recoiled with a grimace of disgust.

“I’ve already told you I’m a teetotaler.”

“Drink.”

“I can’t, believe me.”

Squeezing the colonel’s cheeks with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Montalbano forced him to open his mouth.

o o o

Fazio heard the inspector call for him after waiting some forty-five minutes in the car, as he was starting to drift off into a leaden sleep. Upon entering the house, he immediately saw a drunken midget, who had vomited all over himself to boot. Unable to stand on his feet, the midget, leaning first against a chair and then against the wall, was trying to sing “Celeste Aida.” On the floor, Fazio noticed a pair of glasses and a cell phone, both smashed to pieces. On the table were an empty bottle of whisky, a glass, also empty, and three or four sheets of paper and identity cards.

“Listen closely, Fazio,” said the inspector. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened here, in case anybody questions you. I was returning home this evening, around midnight, when I saw, at the top of the lane that leads to my house, this man’s car, a BMW, blocking my path. He was completely drunk. I brought him home with me because he was in no condition to drive. He had no identification in his pockets, nothing. After several attempts to sober him up, I called you for help.” “Got it,” said Fazio.

“Now, here’s the plan. You’re going to pick him up—he doesn’t weigh much, in any case—put him in his BMW, get behind the wheel, and put him in a holding cell. I’ll follow behind you in the squad car.” “And how are you going to get back home afterwards?”

“You’ll have to drive me back. Sorry. Tomorrow morning, as soon as you see he’s recovered his senses, you’re to set him free.”

o o o

Back at home, he removed the pistol from the glove com-partment of his car where he always kept it, and stuck it in his belt. Then he took a broom and swept up all the frag-ments of Lohengrin Pera’s cell phone and glasses, and wrapped them in a sheet of newspaper. He took the little shovel that Mimì had given François and dug two deep holes almost directly below the veranda. In one he put the bundle and covered it up, in the other he dumped the papers and documents, now shredded into little pieces. These he sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. When they had turned to ash, he covered up this hole as well. The sky was beginning to lighten. He went into the kitchen, brewed a pot of strong coffee, and drank it. Then he shaved and took a shower. He wanted to be completely relaxed when he sat down to enjoy the videotape.

He put the little cassette inside the bigger one, as Nicolò had instructed him to do, then turned on the TV and the VCR. After a few seconds with the screen still blank, he got up and checked the appliances, certain he’d made some wrong connection. He was utterly hopeless with this sort of thing, to say nothing of computers, which terrified him.