We’re at Fela Hospital Get out.’ ‘But it’s nothing, Inspector!’ ‘Get out. I want them to have a look at you.’ ‘Well, just leave me here and keep going. You can pick . me up on the way back.’
‘Cut the shit. Let’s go.’
Between auscultations, three blood pressure exams, X-rays, and everything else in the book, it took them over three hours to have a look at Gallo. In the end they ruled that he hadn’t broken anything; the pain he felt was from having bumped hard into the steering wheel, and the weakness was a natural reaction to the fright he’d had.
‘So now what do we do?’
Gallo asked again, more dejected than ever.
‘What do you think? We keep going. But I’ll drive.’
The inspector had been to Floridia three or four times before. He even remembered where Tamburrano lived, and so he headed towards the Church of the Madonna delle Grazie, which was practically next door to his colleague’s house. When they reached the square, he saw the church hung with black and a throng of people hurrying inside. The service must have started late. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to have things go wrong.
‘I’ll take the car to the police garage in town and have them look at it,’ said Gallo. I’ll come and pick you up afterwards.’
Montalbano entered the crowded church. The service had just begun. He looked around and recognized no one. Tamburrano must have been in the first row, near the coffin in front of the main altar. The inspector decided to remain where he was, near the entrance. He would shake
Tamburrano’s hand when the coffin was being carried out of the church. When the priest finally opened his mouth after the Mass had been going on for some time; Montalbano gave a start.
He’d heard right, he was sure of it.
The priest had begun with the words, ‘Our dearly beloved Nicola has left this vale of tears
Mustering up the courage, he tapped a little old lady on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me, signora, whose funeral is this?’
‘The dear departed Ragioniere Pecoraro. Why?’
‘I thought it was for the Signora Tamburrano.’
‘Ah, no, that one was at the Church of Sant’ Anna.’
It took him almost fifteen minutes to get to the church of Sant’ Anna, practically running the whole way.
Panting and sweaty, he found the priest in the deserted nave.
‘I beg your pardon. Where’s the funeral of Signora Tamburrano?’
‘That ended almost two hours ago,’ said the priest, looking him over sternly.
‘Do you know if she’s being buried here?’ Montalbano asked, avoiding the priest’s gaze..
‘Most certainly not. When the service was over, she was taken in the hearse to Vibo Valentia, where she’ll be entombed in the family vault. Her bereaved husband followed behind in his car.’
So it had all been for naught. He had noticed, in the Piazza della Madonna delle Grazie, a cafe with tables outside. When Gallo returned, with the car repaired as well as could be expected, it was almost two o’clock. Montalbano told him what happened.
‘So now what do we do?’
Gallo asked for the third time, lost in an abyss of dejection.
‘You’re going to eat a brioche with a granita di caffe, which they make very well here, and then we’ll head home. With the Good Lord’s help and the Blessed Virgin’s company, we should be back in Vigata by evening.’
Their prayer was answered, the drive home smooth as silk.
‘The car’s still there’
said Gallo when Vigata was already visible in the distance.
The Twingo was exactly the way they’d left it that morning, sticking slightly out from the top of the unpaved drive.
‘They’ve probably already called headquarters,’ said Montalbano.
He was bullshitting: the look of the car and the house with its shuttered windows made him uneasy. .
‘Turn back’ he suddenly ordered Gallo.
Gallo made a reckless U-turn that triggered a chorus of horn blasts. When they reached the Twingo, he executed another, even more reckless, then pulled up behind the damaged car.
Montalbano stepped out in a hurry. What he thought he’d just seen in the rear-view mirror, when passing by, turned out to be true: the scrap of paper with the telephone number was still under the windscreen wiper. Nobody’d touched it.
‘I don’t like it,’ the inspector said to Gallo, who was now standing next to him. He started walking down the drive. The house must have been recently built; the grass in front was still burned from the lime. There was also a stack of new tiles in a corner of the yard. Montalbano carefully examined the shuttered windows. No light was filtering out.
He went up to the front door and rang the doorbell He waited a short while, then rang again. ‘Do you know whose house this is?’ ‘No, Chief.’
What should he do? Night was falling and he could feel the beginnings of fatigue. Their pointless, exhausting day was starting to weigh on him.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. Then he added, in a vain attempt at convincing himself, I’m sure they called.’
Gallo gave him a doubtful look, but didn’t open his mouth.
Gallo wasn’t even invited into headquarters. The inspector had sent him immediately home to rest. His second-in-command, Mimi Augello, wasn’t in; he’d been summoned to report to the new commissioner of Montelusa, Luca Bonetti-Alderighi, a young and testy native of Bergamo who in the course of one month had succeeded in creating knife-blade antipathies all around him.
‘The commissioner was upset you weren’t in Vigata,’ said Fazio, the sergeant he was closest to. ‘So Inspector Augello had to go in your place.’
‘Had to go?’ the inspector retorted. ‘He probably just saw it as a chance to show off !’
He told Fazio about their accident that morning and asked him if he knew who owned the house. Fazio didn’t, but promised his superior that he’d go to the town hall the following morning and find out.
‘By the way, your car’s in our garage.’
Before going home, the inspector interrogated Catarella.
‘Try hard to remember. Did anyone happen to call about a car we ran into?’ No calls.
‘Let me try and understand a minute,’ Livia said angrily by phone from Boccadasse, Genoa.
‘What’s to understand, Livia? As I said, and now repeat, Francois’s adoption papers aren’t ready yet.
Some unexpected problems have come up, and I no longer have the old commissioner behind me always smoothing everything out. We have to be patient.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the adoption,’ Livia said icily.
‘You weren’t? Then what were you talking about?’
‘Getting married,, that’s what. We can certainly get married while the problems of the adoption are being worked out. The one thing does not depend on the other.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Montalbano, who was beginning to feel harried and cornered.
‘Now I want a straight answer to the following question’ Livia went on, implacably. ‘Supposing the adoption isn’t possible: what will we do? Will we get married anyway, in your opinion, or won’t we?’
A sudden, loud thunderclap gave him a way out.
‘What was that?’
‘Thunder. There’s a terrible stor—’ He hung up and pulled out the plug.