Andrea Camilleri - The Dance of the Seagull

Passing by Catarella, he greeted him and repeated the same fib he’d told Augello.

“I’m going to eat, but I’ll bring along my cell phone, so you can call me at any time.”

He went out, took three steps, then returned.

“Did Fazio’s wife bring back my gun?”

Catarella balked.

“Your gun? Signura Fazio? She’s gotta license?”

“I don’t think so.”

“An’ she walks aroun’ witta gun in her poisse?”

“C’mon, Cat, no need to drag things out, I got it, she hasn’t brought it in yet. But she will, and when she does, I want you to take it and give it to me when I return.”

What had made him think about the gun? Where he was going, it was 99 percent certain he wouldn’t need it. And yet . . .

He got into his car and headed for Via Bixio.

Another question: Why hadn’t he told Mimì Augello he’d found out the address of Manzella’s last place of residence and had even gone there?

It wasn’t something he needed to keep hidden so as not to compromise Angela. The girl had nothing to do with it. Fazio had told him the address as soon as it had come back to him. And so?

The reason was so simple that he found it right away.

If he’d told Mimì he’d been to Manzella’s place, Mimì would have asked him what he’d found there, and he would have had to say, yes, he’d gone inside but immediately run away.

He could imagine the look of astonishment on Mimì’s face.

“You ran away?! Why’d you do that?”

And he would have to tell him he got scared.

“You? Scared? Of what?”

“Nothing concrete, Mimì. Let’s just say I was metaphysically disconcerted.”

“Metaphysically what? What are you talking about?”

No, Augello would have thought he was going crazy.

Nor could he lie again and tell him he’d found out from Fazio where Manzella’s last place of residence was but hadn’t gone there yet because he wanted Mimì to go there with him. Augello knew him too well not to realize that the inspector would never have been able to resist the curiosity and would have rushed there at once, not giving a flying fuck about telling him or not.

So how was he going to get out of this?

Here’s how: he would tell Mimì that Fazio had rung him from the cell phone with the address as he was leaving the hospital or along the road to Palermo, because it hadn’t come back to him until then, and the inspector couldn’t tell Augello because he was part of Fazio’s escort.

Meanwhile he’d arrived in front of Manzella’s place.

16

He stopped and got out. The road seemed even more deserted than before, if that was possible. No one would notice him. And even if, in passing by, somebody saw some movement, they would have no reason to become suspicious, since the local television stations hadn’t announced that the corpse found in the well had been identified as Manzella.

The inspector didn’t immediately go through the gate, but stopped outside the house, establishing the exact location of the windows and memorizing the path he would have to take to reach them from the living room.

Then he made up his mind. He went down the little lane, opened the door with his false key, went in, closed it behind him, and without turning on the lights, without breathing, he proceeded, hand in front of him in the pitch darkness, straight to the first window and threw open the shutters. He stuck his head out and breathed deeply and long. The air was humid, the sky overcast. He was panting hard, as if after a long swim. Then he closed his eyes, turned around, and again holding his breath, went and opened the second window. Sticking his head out, he caught his breath again.

A light wind had started blowing, and the weather had suddenly changed, though it had been in a variable mood since morning. At any rate the wind helped. It would help the air flow between the two windows and get rid of the smell of blood. Still at the window, he fired up a cigarette and smoked it calmly to the end. When he’d finished, he put the butt in his pocket. One never knew. The gentlemen of Forensics might find it, and might even have it tested for DNA. And Arquà would have to reach the logical and inevitable conclusion that the person who’d killed Manzella was none other than him, in a fit of jealousy over a transvestite.

At last he felt ready to turn around and look into the living room.

But since he immediately saw, on the right, a staircase leading to the second floor, he decided to go and check out the rooms upstairs.

He went up and reached a tiny landing with three rooms with their doors wide open. He turned on the light on the landing. It was enough to allow him to see, without moving, but only turning his head, that the first door, the one right in front of him, gave onto a master bedroom, the second to a bathroom, and the third to another, smaller bedroom with a single bed, clearly for guests.

He started with the latter, going in and turning the light on. There was only a mattress and pillow on the bed, no sheets or blankets. A nightstand with lamp, two chairs, a small wardrobe. He opened it. There were sheets, a pillowcase, and two woollen blankets, all folded up, and nothing else. On the night he was murdered, Manzella must not have had any guests sleeping in that room.

The bathroom, on the other hand, was a shambles. Four bloodstained towels thrown helter-skelter on the floor, traces of blood on the sink, and even a bloody handprint on the wall of the shower stall. It was clear: Carmona and Sorrentino, to work Manzella over with the blades and tips of their knives, had taken their clothes off and then, after getting all covered with blood, had taken a shower and put their clothes back on. To cleanse themselves for human society as humans and not as the beasts they were.

He moved on to the master bedroom. And it became immediately clear to the inspector that Pasquano had been right when he said that the poor man had been surprised by the two killers while sleeping naked in bed. In fact, on a chair were a pair of trousers, folded up, a jacket, a shirt, and even a tie. Under the chair were a pair of shoes with the socks rolled up inside.

Manzella did not, however, spend the last night of his life alone, or at least not all of it. The pillows were both still indented from where the heads had lain, and the top sheet was dangling, half on the floor, all twisted up, while the bottom sheet had come partly off, exposing the mattress. Poor old Manzella was a man of fiery passion, as the porter’s wife had said.

There was no sign of the clothes of the person who had slept with him, and there was no blanket, either. It must have been the one they’d used to roll up the body and throw it into the well.

Montalbano approached the chair with the clothes on it and took a wallet out of the inside pocket of the jacket. Five hundred euros in bills of fifty, ID card, debit card issued by the Banca dell’Isola, credit card from the same bank, which must have been the one where Manzella kept his money. And nothing else. The inspector opened the drawer in the bedside table: empty. There wasn’t a single sheet of paper in that bedroom. The killers had taken everything, just to be safe.

But what had actually happened in there?

Montalbano didn’t have any trouble imagining it.

So, after writing the letter that Manzella never received because he’d moved out, G managed in one way or another to meet with him again and renew the relationship that Manzella had tried to break off.

G had to do this, because, having confessed that he’d spoken to his lover about the smuggling, and that the latter intended to inform the police, the smugglers let him live, on the condition that he assist them in the murder of Manzella. If he wouldn’t or couldn’t lead them to him, they would kill him.