He sat there a long time meditating on what he had just read. The idea that the jug, the bowl with coins, and the dog might be part of some burial rite had never even crossed his mind. And perhaps he'd been wrong not to think of this; in fact, the investigation should probably have started from this very premise. He suddenly felt uncontrollably pressed. He went inside, unplugged the phone, then picked up the whole apparatus.
"What are you doing?" asked Anna, who was watching the gangster movie.
"I'm going into the bedroom to make some phone calls. I don't want to disturb you out here."
He dialed the Free Channels number and asked for his friend Nicolto.
"Quick, Montalbano, I go on the air in a few seconds."
"Do you know someone by the name of Maraventano who wrote"
"Alcide? Sure, I know him. What do you want from him?"
"I'd like to talk to him. Do you have his phone number?"
"He hasn't got a phone. Are you at home? I'll track him down myself and let you know."
"I need to talk to him by tomorrow."
"I'll call you back in an hour at the latest and tell you what to do."
He turned off the bedside lamp. In the dark it was easier to think about the idea that had just come to him. He tried to imagine the Crasticeddrus cave the way it had looked when he first entered. If you removed the two bodies from the picture, that left the rug, a bowl, a jug, and a terra-cotta dog. If you drew lines between the three objects, they formed a perfect triangle, though upside down with respect to the caves entrance. At the center of the triangle lay the two corpses. Did it mean anything? Maybe he needed to study the triangles orientation?
Between thinking, musing, and fantasizing, he ended up dozing off. After a spell of indeterminate length, he was awakened by the ring of the telephone. He answered in a thick voice.
"Did you fall asleep?"
"Yeah, nodded off."
"And here I am putting myself out for you. So: Alcide is expecting you tomorrow afternoon at five-thirty. He lives in Gallotta."
Gallotta was a village a few miles outside of Montelusa, a handful of peasant houses once famous for being inaccessible in winter, when the rains were heavy.
"Give me the address."
"What address? If you're coming from Montelusa, it's the first house on the left, a big tumbledown villa that would delight any horror-film director. You cant miss it."
He fell back asleep as soon as he put down the receiver. Then he woke with a start, feeling something moving on his chest. It was Anna, whom he'd completely forgotten about, lying down beside him on the bed and unbuttoning his shirt. On every piece of skin she uncovered, she planted her lips and held them there a long time. When she reached his navel, the girl raised her head, slipped one hand under his shirt to caress his nipple, then plastered her mouth against Montalbano's. Since he made no sign of reacting to her passionate kiss, Anna let her hand slide farther down his body. She caressed him there as well.
Montalbano decided to speak.
"See, Anna? It's hopeless. Nothing happens."
In a single bound Anna sprang out of bed and locked herself in the bathroom. Montalbano didn't move, not even when he heard her sobbing a childish wail, like that of a little girl denied a toy or some sweets. Against the light of the bathroom, whose door she left open on her way out, Montalbano saw her fully dressed.
"A wild animal has more feelings than you," she said, leaving.
Sleep then abandoned Montalbano. At four in the morning, he was still up, trying to finish even one a game of solitaire, though it was clear he would never succeed.
...
He arrived at work grumpy and troubled, the encounter with Anna weighing on his mind. He felt remorseful for treating her the way he did. On top of this, that morning he'd started wondering: had it been Ingrid instead of Anna, would he have behaved the same way?
"I urgently need to speak to you," said Mim Augello, standing in his doorway looking agitated.
"What do you want?"
"To bring you up to date on the investigation."
"What investigation?"
"Okay, I get the message. I'll come by later."
"No, you stay right here and tell me what fucking investigation you're talking about."
"What do you mean? The one into the weapons traffic!"
"And I, in your opinion, put you in charge?"
"In my opinion? We talked about it! Remember? It seemed implicit to me."
"Mim, the only implicit thing around here is that you're a goddamned son of a bitch, no offense to your mother, of course."
"Let's do this: I'll tell you what I've done, and you can decide if I should continue."
"All right, let's hear what you've done."
"First of all, I thought Ingrassia should be kept on a leash, so I assigned two of our men to tail him day and night. He can't even take a piss without me knowing about it."
"Two of our men? You put two of ours on his tail? Don't you know that that guy knows everything about our men down to the hairs on their ass?"
"I'm not stupid. They're not actually ours, not from the Vig force, I mean. They're two officers from Rag that the commissioner transferred to my service after I spoke to him."
Montalbano looked at him in admiration.
"Ah, so you spoke to the commissioner. Well done, Mim, you really do know how to get around!"
Augello did not respond in kind, preferring to continue his exposition.
"We also listened in on a phone conversation that might mean something. I've got the transcript in my room, I'll go get it."
"Do you know it by heart?"
"Yes, but if you hear it, you might be able to discover"
"Mim, at this point I think you've discovered everything there was to discover. Don't make me waste time. Now tell me what they said."
"Well, from his supermarket, Ingrassia phones the Brancato company in Catania. He asks for Brancato himself, who comes to the phone. Ingrassia complains about the snags that occurred during the last delivery, he says you cant send the truck so far ahead of schedule, that this caused him a lot of problems. He wants them to meet so they can study different, safer means of delivery. Here Brancato's answer is shocking, to say the least. He raises his voice in anger and asks Ingrassia, How dare you call me here? Ingrassia, now stammering, asks for an explanation. Which Brancato provides, saying that Ingrassia is insolvent, and that the banks have advised him to cease doing business with him."
"And how did Ingrassia react?"
"He didn't. He didn't even make a peep. He just hung up."
"Do you realize what that phone call means?"
"Of course. Ingrassia was asking for help, and they cut him loose."
"Stay on top of Ingrassia."
"I already am, as I told you."
There was a pause.
"What should I do?" continued Mim, "Continue the investigation?"
Montalbano wouldn't answer.
"You're such a fucking jerk!" commented Augello.
...
"Salvo? Are you alone in your office? Can I speak openly?"
"Yes. Where are you calling from?"
"From home. I'm in bed with a bit of fever."
"I'm sorry."
"Well, you shouldn't be. It's one of those growing fevers."
"I don't understand. What do you mean?"
"It's one of those fevers little children get. They last two or three days, around one hundred one or one hundred two degrees, no cause for alarm. It's natural, it's a growing fever. When it passes, the child has grown an inch or so. And I'm sure that when my fever is over, I too will have grown. In my head, not my body. What I mean is, never, as a woman, have I been so offended as with you."
"Anna"
"Let me finish. You really did offend me. You're mean, Salvo, wicked. I didn't deserve that kind of treatment."
"Be reasonable, Anna. What happened last night was for your own good"
Anna hung up. Even though he had made her understand a hundred different ways that what she wanted was out of the question, Montalbano, realizing that the girl at that moment was suffering terribly, felt like considerably less than a pig, since pork, at least, can be eaten.