A Voice in the Night (8 page)

Fazio came running and pulled him out from under a mountain of detergent tubs.

Perhaps owing to the powdered detergent, the inspector started sneezing so hard that his eyes began to water. And so the little he’d been able to see was no more. He took two steps with
his arms extended before him like a blind man, then gave up.

‘Help me.’

Fazio took him by the arm and led him all the way to the office.

There, he let him go and went and carefully closed all the rolling shutters, so that no light would filter outside. Then he turned on just the table lamp that was on the desk.

Now they could work with their minds at ease.

But as soon as he looked up at the inspector he couldn’t keep from laughing.

Montalbano frowned.

‘I’m sorry, Chief, but you look just like a fish covered in flour, ready for frying.’

Montalbano looked at his suit and shoes. They were all white. Apparently a few tubs of detergent had popped open in the crash.

He went into the office’s small toilet and saw himself in the mirror. He looked like a clown. He washed his face and then went back and sat in the manager’s chair.

He looked all around the room.

Just as he’d remembered, the jacket and tie were hanging from a hook on the wall beside the door.

‘Search through the jacket pockets and give me everything you find.’

Borsellino apparently never used to keep anything on the desktop – no paper, no pens, none of the kinds of things that one might normally find on a desk.

Montalbano opened the middle drawer, the one that had been forced. The first time he’d looked in it he hadn’t noticed, but this time he realized that in that drawer Borsellino kept
everything he needed for writing: paper, pens, pencils, stamps, and so on. The telephone, on the other hand, sat on a small, separate table. Fazio, meanwhile, had put on the desk a wallet, five
sheets of paper folded in four, and a small, empty book of matches of the sort that, in the days when you could smoke freely, without risk of fines or prison sentences, they used to give out at
hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants. Inside were the words:
Chat Noir
.

‘That’s all I found, Chief.’

The wallet contained five hundred and fifty-five euros, a cash card and a national health service card, a credit card and ID card, a photo of a woman who must have been his deceased wife, and a
receipt for a pair of glasses he was having repaired.

The sheets of paper were the accounts for incoming and outgoing merchandise.

Speaking of which, the inspector wondered, where did Borsellino keep his computer?

Montalbano opened the right-hand drawer and found the computer in it. Just under the edge of the desktop were some electrical sockets and a phone jack.

‘Do you know what the Chat Noir is?’ he asked Fazio.

‘Yeah, it’s a kind of “gentlemen’s club” in Montelusa.’

‘Frankly, Borsellino didn’t seem the least bit like the kind of person who would frequent a place like that.’

‘I agree.’

‘So why do you think he had that book of matches in his pocket?’

‘Well, there could be many explanations. Maybe somebody gave it to him.’

‘But he didn’t even smoke! What was he going to do with the matches?’

‘Maybe he just put them in his pocket without thinking,’ Fazio continued.

A second later, Montalbano smiled at him.

‘Would you do me a favour? Look under the desk and see if you see an ashtray with a cigarette butt in it.’

Fazio lay face-down on the floor, because there was barely three inches of clearance between the bottom of the desk and the floor.

‘Here it is,’ he said, standing back up and putting the ashtray and butt on the desk. ‘But how did you know . . .’

‘I just imagined the scene.’

‘Well, tell me how you did that.’

‘OK: the killer enters the room with an accomplice, sits down, takes a cigarette out of the pack, and at the same time Borsellino takes an ashtray from the middle drawer and puts it down
for him. The killer lights the cigarette with the last match and tosses the book onto the desk. Borsellino, who can’t stand to see anything on his desk, grabs it automatically, just like you
said, and puts it in his pocket. Then, in the struggle leading up to the hanging, the ashtray ends up under the desk. Make sense to you?’

‘Makes sense.’

‘Listen, put the butt and the empty book of matches in a plastic bag. They might turn out to be important.’

As Fazio was doing this, Montalbano suddenly thought of something else. ‘So where’d the mobile end up?’

‘What mobile?’

‘Borsellino’s.’

‘But did he have one?’

‘Of course he did. I distinctly remember that the first time I came here, he had it in his hand.’

‘Search the drawers carefully.’

Montalbano reopened the middle one and stuck his hand all the way to the back. Pens, pencils, envelopes, letterhead paper, stamps, boxes of paper clips, rubber bands.

He opened the right-hand drawer. Just the computer.

He opened the left-hand drawer. Receipts, shipping forms, account books.

No mobile.

‘Maybe the killers took it,’ said Fazio.

‘Or maybe he left it at home when he went back to eat and change his shirt.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Fazio.

‘And do you know what this means?’

‘That we have to go to Borsellino’s house,’ sighed Fazio, resigned.

‘Right on the money, Fazio. Put everything back in the jacket pockets and let’s go.’

As Fazio was putting the wallet back, he gave a little cry.

‘What is it?’ the inspector asked.

‘Maybe the mobile’s here in the inside pocket. I forgot to look before.’

Fazio stuck two fingers in the specially made pocket and pulled out something that wasn’t a mobile. It was an object shorter and fatter than a thermometer, but it wasn’t a
thermometer, because it was made of metal.

‘What is it?’ the inspector asked.

‘Come on, Chief, you’ve seen hundreds of these things at press conferences! The journalists use them!’

‘But what are they for?’

‘They’re digital recorders that you hook up to your computer. They’re very sensitive and have large memories. But I don’t know what they’re called.’

‘Let me see it.’

Fazio handed it to him, and Montalbano slipped it into his pocket.

‘You know what I say? All things considered, let’s take the computer too.’

Fazio rifled through the open drawer and after a few moments said:

‘I’m ready.’

They went out of the office and straight into total darkness.

‘Chief,’ said Fazio, ‘walk behind me with your hands on my shoulders. That way we won’t do a repeat of before.’

Nobody saw them come out of the supermarket.

And they didn’t run into anyone on their way to the car.

*

As they drew near to Borsellino’s place, Fazio again parked in a nearby street, but not too close. By now, however, it was the middle of the night, and the only souls
about were a couple of dogs and three cats squabbling near a rubbish bin. Before getting out of the car, Fazio took two torches and gave one to the inspector.

‘Borsellino lived on the fifth floor,’ he said as they headed off.

‘Is there a lift?’ Montalbano asked, worried.

‘Yes there is. What should we do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Should we go up to the sixth floor and come down one, or to the fourth and go up one?’

‘I like the first one better,’ said the inspector.

Fazio opened the building’s main door as if he’d always lived there himself. But at the door to the apartment, he had some trouble.

‘What’s the matter?’

The key refused to go into the lock.

He tried again.

‘What is this?’ he said under his breath. ‘Just a few hours ago it opened just fine!’

At last he succeeded, and they went in and shut the door behind them. They turned on their torches.

The apartment consisted of a small entranceway, four rooms off a central corridor, two bathrooms, and a kitchen. Apparently Borsellino, since his wife’s death, had not had any other women
living with him. The place was in perfect order.

The mobile was neither in the bedroom nor in the dining or living room. Nor in the kitchen or bathroom.

The last room was a sort of study.

There was a desk identical to the one in the supermarket, with an armchair and pair of metal filing cabinets full of binders. No mobile anywhere to be seen.

Montalbano opened the desk’s three drawers one after the other and was immediately convinced they contained no mobile.

But there was something that didn’t add up. And all of a sudden he realized what it was.

Just under the edge of the desktop, above the right-hand drawer, were the electrical sockets and phone jack necessary for using a computer. But there was no computer on the desk.

Fazio, who’d been following the inspector’s movements attentively, immediately understood.

‘It’s possible he didn’t have a computer at home. These desks are ready-made for computers, so it doesn’t mean . . .’

Montalbano moved a few papers that were on the desk, and from underneath them appeared a mouse and a keyboard. He showed them to Fazio without saying anything.

Fazio suddenly slapped himself on the forehead and ran to the entranceway. The inspector followed him.

Fazio opened the door softly and tried to put the key in the lock. It encountered resistance again.

‘It’s been forced,’ he said. ‘Somebody came in and—’

‘Made off with the computer,’ Montalbano concluded.

‘But the weird thing is that they definitely did it after I tested the key earlier,’ said Fazio. ‘When we were at the supermarket. And it’s possible
that—’

‘Right now they’re at the supermarket to get the other computer, because they don’t know that we’ve already got it,’ Montalbano concluded again. ‘It’s
like we’re taking turns.’

‘What should we do? Pay them a visit?’ Fazio suggested.

‘Let’s.’

*

They sped to the supermarket. On the way there, Fazio asked:

‘Are you armed?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘I am. There’s a wrench in the glove compartment. You should take it. It’s better than nothing.’

It wasn’t the first wrench he’d had to deal with recently, he thought as he slipped it into his jacket pocket.

‘First we’ll go past the main entrance and see if there are any cars parked outside,’ said Fazio.

There were no cars. Fazio drove carefully to the area behind the supermarket. There were no cars there, either.

When they got out, the first thing they saw were the police seals on the ground. Fazio had put them back when they’d gone out, of that he was certain.

So there was someone inside the supermarket, or else there had just been someone.

They had their confirmation that someone had been there after them when this key, too, had a lot of trouble fitting into the lock.

At last the key turned, but contrary to Montalbano’s expectations, Fazio did not open the door right away, but turned and looked at him.

‘So?’

‘Let’s make a deal first,’ said Fazio.

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I’ll go in, but you won’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re not armed.’

‘But I’ve got the wrench!’

‘You can just imagine how scared they’ll be when they see you’ve got a wrench. I’d bet the family jewels that the men in there are the same ones who’ve already
killed two people.’

‘Listen to me for a second, Fazio. There’s no way I’m waiting outside! And don’t forget that I give the orders around here!’

‘Chief, with all due respect, just think for a second. It’s so dark in there you can’t take a single step. You can’t even see an inch in front of you. And if you run into
another stack of detergent, they’ll blow us away before we can say “boo”.’

Humiliated and offended, but realizing that Fazio was right, he didn’t know what to say.

‘All right?’

‘All right,’ Montalbano promised, swallowing the bitter pill.

Fazio took out his pistol, cocked it, opened the door, and went in.

Montalbano closed the door most of the way and peered through the crack. But he couldn’t see a thing. Total blindness. And it was all surely the fault of ageing. On top of everything else,
he couldn’t hear anything either, because Fazio moved like a cat.

Barely five minutes had gone by when Fazio reappeared.

‘They were here, but they’re gone.’

‘How could you tell they were here?’

‘They left all the doors of the cupboard open, as well as the desk drawers. They were looking for the computer. Good thing we were able to get it first.’

*

When he got home he showered to wash away the powdery detergent that had entered through his shirt collar and sifted down over his shoulders and chest. It took a good while
because upon coming into contact with the water, the detergent bubbled up worse than soap.

When he got into bed he smelled like fresh laundry. But he was unable to fall asleep.

A question kept spinning insistently in his head: why did Borsellino have a recorder like that in his jacket pocket?

Of course he didn’t always keep it there. He must have been in the habit of putting it in his pocket after using it.

But what did he do with it? Record music?

No, he didn’t seem like the type who would listen to Chopin or Brahms.

He didn’t seem like the type for opera, either. Or even pop songs.

Therefore it was clear that, now and then, he must have recorded what was said in his office.

For what purpose?

He probably turned on the recorder when he had to reprimand or actually sack an employee. That way, if there was a dispute afterwards, he could always show what had actually happened.

Satisfied with the explanation he’d come up with, Montalbano fell asleep.

*

Early in the morning, he had a dream.

And he remembered it because he woke up right in the middle, and it was therefore still fresh in his memory.

In the dream he’d been watching part of an American movie he’d seen a long time before. It was called
The Invincibles
. No, he was wrong. The film was called
The
Untouchables
.