followed by Coroner Pasquano’s car.
‘Go and see if forensics have finished with the bedroom.’ Montalbano said to Galluzzo.
‘Thanks’ said Dr Pasquano.
His motto was: It’s either me or them’, ‘them’ being the forensics team.
Jacomuzzi and his scruffy crew had been bad enough; how he put up with Dr Arqua and his visibly efficient staff, one could only imagine.
‘A lot of work on your hands?’ the inspector enquired.
‘Not much. Five corpses this week. When have we ever seen that? Must be low season.’
Galluzzo returned to say that forensics had moved into the bathroom and guest room. The coast was clear.
‘Accompany the doctor upstairs and come back down,’ Montalbano said to Gallo. Pasquano shot him a glance of appreciation; he really liked to work alone.
After a good half hour, the judge’s battered car appeared and didn’t stop until it had bumped into one of the crime lab’s squad cars.
Nicolo Tommaseo got out, red in the face, his gallows-bird neck looking like a turkey cock’s.
‘What a dreadful road, I had two accidents!’ he declared to one and all.
It was well known that he drove like a dog on drugs.
Montalbano found an excuse to prevent him from going upstairs at once and rattling Pasquano.
‘Your Honour, let me tell you an extraordinary story.’
He told him part of what had happened to him the previous day. He pointed to the damage the Twingo had sustained from the impact, showed him the remnants of the scrap of paper he’d written on and slipped under the windscreen wiper, and explained how he’d begun to suspect something wasn’t right. The anonymous phone call to the commissioner’s office was the icing on the cake.
‘What a curious coincidence!’ Judge Tommaseo exclaimed, conceding no more than this.
As soon as the judge saw the victim’s nude body, he froze. Even the inspector stopped dead in his tracks.
Dr Pasquano had somehow managed to turn the woman’s head, and now one could actually see her face, which had previously been buried in the bedclothes. The eyes were bulging to the point where they looked unreal, and they expressed unbearable pain and horror. A stream of blood trickled from her mouth. She must have bitten her tongue during the spasms of suffocation.
Dr Pasquano anticipated the question he hated so much.
‘She definitely died sometime between late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. I’ll be able to say more precisely after the autopsy.’
‘And how did she die?’
asked Tommaseo.
‘Can’t you see? The killer pushed her face into the mattress and held her down until she was dead.’
‘He must have been exceptionally strong.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Can you tell if they had relations before or after?’
I can’t say.
Something in the judge’s tone of voice led the inspector to look up at him. He was covered in sweat
‘He might have even sodomized her,’ the judge went on, his eyes glistening.
It was a revelation.. Apparently Justice Tommaseo secretly dipped into such subjects. Montalbano remembered having read somewhere a line by Manzoni about that more famous Nicolo Tommaseo; ‘This Tommaseo with one foot in the sacristy and the other in the whorehouse.’
It must be a family vice.
‘I’ll let you know. Good day,’ said Dr Pasquano, hastily taking leave to avoid any further questions.
‘To my mind, it’s the crime of a maniac who surprised the lady as she was going to bed,’ Judge Tommaseo said firmly, without taking his eyes off the corpse.
‘Look, Your Honour, there were no signs of a break-in. And it’s rather unusual for a naked woman to open her front door to a maniac and take him up to her bedroom.’
‘What kind of reasoning is that! She might not have noticed he was a maniac until … You know what I mean?’
‘I myself would lean towards a crime of passion,’ said Montalbano, who was beginning to amuse himself.
Indeed, why not? Why not?’
said Tommaseo, jumping at the suggestion and scratching his beard. ‘We must bear in. mind that it was a woman who made the phone call. The betrayed wife.
Speaking of which, do you know how to reach the victim’s husband?’
‘Yes, Sergeant Fazio has his telephone number,’ the inspector replied, feeling his heart sink. He hated giving bad news.
‘Let me have it. I’ll take care of everything,’ the judge said.
He had every kink in the book, this Nicolo Tommaseo. He was a raven to boot.
‘Can we take her away now?’
asked the ambulance crew, entering the room.
Another hour passed before the forensics team had finished fussing about and left.
‘So now what do we do?’
asked Gallo, who seemed to have become fixated on this question.
‘Close the door, we re going back to Vigata. I’m so hungry I can’t see’ said the inspector.
Montalbano’s housekeeper.
Adelina, had left him a real delicacy in the fridge: ‘coral’ sauce, made of langoustine roe and sea-urchin pulp, to be used on spaghetti. He put the water on the stove and, while waiting, phoned his friend Nicolo Zito, newsman for the Free Channel, one of the two private television stations based in Montelusa.
The other, TeleVigata whose news programming was anchored by Galluzzo’s brother-in-law, tended to take a pro-government stance, regardless of who was running the country. Thus, given the government in power at that moment, and the fact that the Free Channel always leaned to the left, the two local stations might well be boringly similar if not for the lucid, ironic intelligence of the red-haired, red-sympathizing Nicolo Zito.
‘Nicolo? Montalbano here.
There’s been a murder, but—’
‘I’m not supposed to say it was you who told me about it’
‘An anonymous phone call. A female voice phoned the Montelusa commissioner’s office this morning, saying a murder had been committed at a house in the Tre Fontane district. And it was true. A young woman, beautiful, naked—’
‘Fuck’
‘Her name was Michela Licalzi.’ ‘Have you got a photo of her?’
‘No, the murderer made off with her handbag and clothes.’
‘Why did he do that?’ ‘I don’t know’
‘So how do you know her name was Michela Licalzi? Has somebody identified her?’
‘No. We’re trying to contact her husband, who lives in Bologna.’
Nicolo asked him for a few more details, which he gave.
The water was boiling, so he put in the pasta. The telephone rang. He had a moment of hesitation, unsure whether to answer or not. He was afraid the call might last too long: it might not be so easy to cut it short, and that would jeopardize the proper al dente texture of the spaghetti. It would be a disaster to waste the coral sauce on a dish of overcooked pasta. He decided not to answer. In fact, to prevent the ringing from troubling the serenity of spirit indispensable to savouring the sauce in full, he pulled out the plug.
Ah hour later, pleased with himself and ready to meet the world head-on, he reconnected the telephone. He was forced to answer it at once.
‘Hello.’
‘Hullo, Chief? Izzatchoo y’self in poisson?’ In poisson, Cat. What’s up?’ ‘What’s up is Judge Tolomeo called.’ ‘Tommaseo, Cat, but I get the picture. What did he want?’