Treasure Hunt (9 page)

When Catarella informed him that the kid was waiting for him, he’d already been bored stiff for a good two hours. But the dead calm had created a miracle: on his desk there were no longer several tons of papers to be signed, but barely a kilo. And he’d left that kilo there on purpose; the idea of sitting in his office with absolutely nothing to do terrified him.

Arturo Pennisi looked exactly like a twenty-year-old Harry Potter.

He even wore the same kind of glasses. He didn’t seem the least bit awkward. In fact it was he who spoke first, and he got straight to the point.

“I asked Ingrid to introduce us because I’m very interested in your methods of investigation.”

“Do you want to become a policeman?”

“No.”

“Are you studying criminology?”

“No.”

Montalbano gave him a questioning look, and the youth felt obliged to add:

“I’m in my second year at the university, in philosophy. I want to become an epistemologist.”

He seemed to have a clear idea of what he wanted, but he expressed it without the enthusiasm of the kids his age who’d already charted their course and wanted to follow it to the end.

But, if he remembered correctly, wasn’t epistemology the philosophy of knowledge? What the hell did the philosophy of knowledge have to do with homicide?

“But why are you so interested in my methods of investigation, as you call them?”

“I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. I’m interested in the way your brain functions when you’re conducting an investigation.”

“Two plus two equals four.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“That’s a summary of how my brain functions.”

For the first time, Harry Potter smiled.

“Would you be offended if I said I don’t believe you?”

“Listen, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I assure you—”

“I hope you don’t mind if I insist. May I cite an example that directly concerns you?”

“Go ahead.”

“Ingrid told me how the two of you met.”

“And so?”

“For you, Ingrid should have represented the number four—that is, the sum of two plus two.”

“I don’t follow.”

“She told me that she had been set up to appear like the prime suspect of a crime, or something like that, but that you, a police inspector, refused to lend credence to the evidence pointing to her guilt. Therefore in that case, you didn’t believe that two plus two equaled four.”

Smart kid, no doubt about that.

“Well, you see, in that case . . .”

“In that case, if I may, you realized at a certain point in the investigation that blindly following a rule of arithmetic would lead you astray. So you took another path. And that’s what interests me. When and how this sort of deviation occurs in your mind. In short, how did your brain find the courage to abandon the solid ground of evidence and venture into the quicksands of hypothesis?”

“Sometimes I can’t even explain it myself. But what, exactly, do you want from me?”

“I would like for you to allow me to follow you from up close. I promise you I won’t be a bother. I wouldn’t interfere in any way, believe me. I would only observe you in silence.”

“I don’t doubt that, but this is not a good time for it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because at the moment, I haven’t a single investigation ongoing. Tell you what: leave me a telephone number, and if anything interesting comes up, I’ll let you know.”

The look of childish disappointment that came over Arturo’s face made the inspector feel sorry for him. He looked like a little boy who’d been denied some chocolate. The truth was that Montalbano really liked him. And it had been a while that he’d been feeling the need to talk to an intelligent person. So he wanted to give him a sort of consolation prize.

“Listen, it’s true that something strange has been going on lately. But I should tell you straight off that it doesn’t involve a crime or anything.”

The kid looked like a starving dog who spots a bone with meat still attached to it.

“Anything’s fine with me.”

Montalbano pulled out of his pocket the three small sheets of paper with the poems about the treasure hunt, but not the other pages with his solutions. He told him what had happened so far, concluding:

“All right, these are the originals, which I want you to return to me. Solve one of the riddles on your own and then we can talk about it.”

Arturo very nearly kissed his hands.

The next day at the station it seemed as if absolutely nothing was going to happen, as had been the case for over a month. From eight o’clock in the morning until one—that is, over a five-hour period—Catarella received only one phone call, but even that was from someone who wanted to know what he had to do to enter the police force.

At this point Montalbano, who’d been feeling very hungry since noon, realized he had a problem.

Doing nothing the whole blessed day, lolling about, sitting in the office reading a whole year’s worth of Sunday supplements of the Milanese
Corriere della Sera
from 1920 that he’d bought from a street vendor, or staring fixedly at the wall in front of him in a state somewhere between yogic meditation and catatonia, plunged him into a sort of depressive melancholy. And so, as a way of warding off depression, his body instinctively began to feel a wolflike hunger that he was powerless to resist.

That very morning he’d had to loosen the belt on his trousers by a notch, a sign that his waist had grown disturbingly in circumference. The immediate upshot was that he’d quickly taken all his clothes off again, removed his plastic collar, slipped on a bathing suit and gone for an hour-long swim despite the fact that the water was so gelid he’d nearly had a heart attack.

At Enzo’s trattoria, though he’d resolved to keep within reasonable limits of gluttony, he cut loose with a dish of swordfish
involtini
and ordered a second helping, even though he’d already scarfed down a broad variety of seafood antipasti and a heaping plate of
spaghetti alle vongole
.

A walk along the jetty therefore become a dire necessity, along with a little rest on the usual flat rock, accompanied by the requisite cigarette.

Around six o’clock the phone rang. It was Catarella.

“Chief, ’at’t be ’at kid ’at came yisterday, the one sint by Signura Sciosciostrommi.”

“Put him on.”

“Chief, I can’t put’im on ’cuz the subject in quession is onna premisses.”

“Then show him in.”

That way, he could chat with Arturo until it was time to go home.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” said Montalbano.

“Since I was in the area, I thought I’d try. Sorry I didn’t call before coming.”

“But do you live in Montelusa or—”

“No, I live in Vigàta. My parents live in Montelusa. I live alone in an apartment here in Vigàta. I like the sea.”

Another point in the kid’s favor.

“Have you had a chance to look at—”

“Yes, I’ve solved the riddles. Pretty basic stuff.”

He took the pages out of his jacket pocket, laid them down on the desk, and continued.

“I didn’t go to the Marinella Bar, which I assumed to be pointless, but to make up for it I did find the wooden shack up on the hill, at the end of Via dei Mille, and I even went inside.”

“Did you notice the unusual wallpaper?”

Harry Potter smiled.

“Your challenger certainly seems to be creating a cult of personality around you.”

“Are all the photos still up?”

“Yes, all of them. Why?”

“I dunno, just wondering. Got any ideas?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Well, it’s clear that your challenger wants things to appear a certain way. How shall I put it? He wants them to seem more innocent than they really are. In my opinion, the simplicity of the poetry, which you could even call stupidity, is intentional.”

“You think so?”

“I’m quite convinced. There’s a striking contrast between the disarming childishness of the little poems and the complex technological effort required to make those photos in the shack.”

“Maybe there are two of them, one who writes the letters and the other—”

“I would rule that out.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks in every way like a duel between two people, you and the other guy.”

The kid reasoned well.

“And what kind of person do you think he is?”

“Well, so far we haven’t got enough material to paint a complete portrait. All we can say is that he’s a person who hides behind appearances—the rather harmless appearance of someone interested only in playing innocuous games.”

“But in your opinion, that’s not really the case.”

“I really don’t think so. There’s something about all this that seems weird to me.”

“So we’re dealing, in short, with a cunning individual.”

“More than just cunning: quite intelligent.”

“Then all we can do is wait for the next letter,” Montalbano concluded, standing up and holding out his hand.

“Will you keep me informed?”

“Of course. But tell me something. How did you manage to find Via dei Mille?”

“I got a map from city hall.”

That evening, after waging a harsh battle with the four servings of
cuddriruni
he’d bought (he’d planned to eat only two, but lost the fight and ate them all), he phoned Livia. He decided not to tell her anything about the plastic collar.

“I’ve gained weight,” he said dejectedly.

“That was all you needed.”

Jesus, was Livia ever cranky sometimes! What did she mean by that? That he already had all the worst physical defects a man can have? Better pretend he didn’t hear.

“I’m unable to control myself while eating—it must be because I’ve had nothing to do for the past month. I’m sure a clerk at the land registry office leads a more exciting life than I do.”

“Are you telling me you’ve been twiddling your thumbs for the last month?”

Twiddling your thumbs! What an obnoxious expression! And when did anyone ever really twiddle their thumbs?

“Well, sort of.”

“And you couldn’t even find two days to come and see me?”

“No, you see, I thought about it, but then, maybe because I was hoping something would happen—”

“You were
hoping
? Hoping that something would go wrong to prevent you from coming? Nobody’s forcing you, you know. You can sit there and do nothing for as long as you want for all I care! But don’t start hoping I’m going to come down there!”

“Jesus, why don’t you make a big deal out of it for a change! I used the wrong verb, okay? I meant to say
I was afraid
something would happen.”

“I guess we
are
a bit verbally challenged, hm?”

“Well,
you
certainly aren’t! Your command of the language is utterly flawless! You even use such elegant expressions as ‘twiddling your thumbs’! Ha ha ha!”

The flare-up didn’t last more than five minutes, after which the pitch began to descend, and soon they were both apologizing, and in the end Montalbano promised that the following day he would be on the six
P.M
. flight for Genoa.

The next morning, after he’d been in the office for about half an hour, the door opened with such a crash that Montalbano, who’d been following the progress of a fly along the edge of his desk with extreme concentration, jumped straight into the air.

“Beckin’ yer partin’, Chief, my foot slipped,” said a mortified Catarella.

He’d had to knock with his foot because his hands were busy carrying a rather large parcel.

“’Iss ’ere packitch was d’livvered juss now an’ iss asposta be brung t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

“Says who?”

“Sez right ’ere onna packitch.”

Montalbano bent down to read.

For Inspector Salvo Montalbano: Personal

“Who delivered it?”

“A li’l boy.”

“Does it say what’s in it?”

“Yessir, books.”

He hadn’t ordered any books either from the Vigàta bookstore or from any publishing house. Anyway, even if he had, they would’ve arrived through the mail, not been hand-delivered.

“Lemme see that,” he said, getting up and going over to Catarella.

He grabbed the box and felt its weight. As big as it was, it should have held a good thirty books, if not more. And thirty books would have weighed much more than that parcel did.

The whole thing didn’t add up.

“Put it on the coffee table.”

The coffee table formed part of the sitting area in one corner of the office.

“C’n I open it?”

“Not now.”

Catarella left and Montalbano went back to studying the fly, which was now exploring a sheet of paper with the letterhead of the Office of the Commissioner. But every so often his gaze fell on the parcel. He was dying of curiosity.

At a certain point he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he got up and went and sat in one of the armchairs to get a better look at it.

It was slightly rectangular, about a foot and a half high, wrapped in normal packing paper, and cross-tied with heavy string.

Why should this most common of parcels disturb him so?

Well, there was no return address, it had been hand-delivered by an unidentifiable little boy, it claimed to contain books he’d never ordered, and, finally, that specification,
Personal
, was something you normally found on letters, not on packages. All these things were rather unusual.

And there was another thing, too. . . . Ah, yes, as if it had been scripted, the previous evening he’d heard on TV that an anarchist group had sent a package of explosives to a carabinieri station.

There weren’t any anarchists in Vigàta, but there were plenty of assholes.

He’d better go about this with caution, but without asking anyone’s help.

He took the parcel in both hands and squeezed it hard. He heard a strange, muffled sound a little like a click, which made him bolt to his feet and take cover behind the desk, waiting for an explosion that never came.

What came instead was Mimì Augello. How was it possible the guy always showed up when he wasn’t supposed to?

“Which movie is it this time?” he inquired. “
The Haunted House
?
Nightmare on Elm Street
?
Montalbano Versus the Ghosts
?”

“Mimì, get out of here and stop bugging me,” said the inspector, standing up and giving him the sort of look that made him understand that it was better to do as he said without any arguments.

“All right, but it might not be a bad idea to have yourself looked at by a doctor sometime,” he said, leaving.

Montalbano went and locked the door, then got back down to work.

He sat down again in the armchair, leaned all the way forward until his head was a few millimeters from the parcel, brought his hands to either side, squeezed hard, and heard the same click.

This time, however, he didn’t run for cover. He didn’t even move, because he finally understood what it was.

There had to be a tin box wrapped up inside the package. He removed the packing paper carefully, trying to move the parcel as little as possible.

He’d guessed right.

It was an old box of Fratelli Lazzaroni biscotti.

He remembered that when he was a boy his auntie had one exactly like it, in which she kept letters and photographs. This one was even older and must have dated from before the War. In fact, on the lid, which displayed the medals and prizes won in biscotti competitions, there was also the proud inscription:
By Appointment to H.M. the King
.

The lid was held in place by several rounds of adhesive tape. The inspector grabbed the box, lifted it with both hands, brought it to his ear, and shook it lightly. He couldn’t hear anything moving around inside.

So he got up, grabbed a pair of scissors, and removed all the tape.

Now came the hard part: lifting the lid. If it was a bomb, that would certainly be the act that triggered the explosion.

But how strong would the eventual explosion be? It was possible that, aside from him, it would kill a few others and bring half the building down.

Wouldn’t it be better to call the bomb squad? But then if it turned out there really were only biscotti or some other kind of cookie inside, wouldn’t he end up looking ridiculous?

The only solution was to go it alone and take the chance.

He was sweating. Removing his jacket, he knelt down in front of the low table, took the box in his hands, and with his thumbs pressed the lid up by half a millimeter, to see if he could look inside.

Despite the tension, he started laughing and forgot everything for a moment.

He’d remembered a game show he’d happened to watch a few times on TV, where the host would open packages using the same technique.

Wiping the sweat from his brow with his arm, he started again from the beginning. It took him a good five minutes to raise the lid, which he then set down on the floor. Inside was a bundle of oilcloth, inserted in a little bag of transparent nylon.

Taking the scissors, he cut off the whole top of the nylon bag without ever taking the bundle out of the box. At this point he could have picked up the oilcloth and unwrapped it, but he decided he would rather cut off the top with the scissors. It wasn’t an easy task, but some ten minutes later the bundle was practically open, thanks to a few cuts. All he would have to do was reach in, grip the oilcloth, and lift it. Setting the scissors down, he pinched the two ends of the cloth with his fingers and pulled it outwards.

He saw two dead eyes staring up at him. When the sickly sweet smell of blood rose to his nostrils, he leapt to his feet, gave a loud cry, went and crashed into the door, unlocked it, and found Mimì Augello standing in front of him.

“What happened?”

“There’s . . . it looks like a head inside the package.”

Meanwhile Fazio had arrived.

“I heard a yell. . . . What happened?”

“Come with me,” Augello said to him.

They went into the office. Montalbano heaved a long sigh and followed them. Augello had already entirely unwrapped the cloth.

“It’s a lamb’s head,” he said.

Sticking a hand into the parcel, he pulled out, by one corner, an envelope wrapped in bloodstained nylon, then bent his head forward to read through the transparent fabric.

“It’s addressed to you, Salvo,” he said. “It says:
Treasure Hunt
.”

As Mimì set the letter down on the desk, Montalbano, looking a little pale, went and locked the door again.

“Nobody, aside from you two, is to know anything about this, is that clear?” he said to Mimì and Fazio.

“This is a typical Mafia-style intimidation tactic that definitely should not be hushed up,” Augello retorted. “And I don’t intend—”

“Mimì, save the highfalutin speech, ’cause the Mafia doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with this.”

“So what’s it about, then?”

“It’s about a treasure hunt. Isn’t that what the envelope says?”

“Listen,” Mimì said coldly, “either you tell me straightaway what this is really about, or I’m going to walk out of this room and after that I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

“Mimì, I can’t tell you what it’s about because it’s so absurd that—”

“As you wish,” Mimì said resentfully.

He turned the key, opened the door, and left.

“Go and get two pairs of latex gloves, some plastic bags, and then come back,” Montalbano said to Fazio.

He sat down at his desk and looked at the envelope. As far as one could tell through the stained nylon, neither the envelope nor the handwriting was any different from the prior specimens.

Fazio returned.

“Lock the door.”

Fazio handed him a pair of gloves and then put on his own.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Take the head out. But put everything else in the plastic bags: the oilcloth, the box itself, and so on. We’ll try to get some fingerprints from them.”

“Can I ask a question, Chief?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“What do you want fingerprints for? Cutting off a lamb’s head isn’t the kind of thing you find listed in the penal code.”

He’d said it in Italian, as if to distance the question, make it less personal. Fazio was being as cautious as Mimì had just been rash.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I have a sort of premonition that we may need them in the future.”

The inspector put his gloves on and picked up the envelope. The sheet of nylon wrapped around it was held in place by two pieces of tape. Removing these, he unwound the sheet and freed the envelope. Then he put the sheet of nylon and two pieces of tape in one of the plastic bags Fazio had brought.

He then opened the envelope with a letter opener, pulled out the usual half-sheet of paper, and put this into his jacket pocket. Since the page was folded in two, he couldn’t see what was written on it.

“All done,” said Fazio.

Montalbano stood up and went over to him.

Fazio had set the lamb’s head down on the floor on a sheet of newspaper. The oilcloth and tin box were already in two separate plastic bags.

“What should I do with the head?”

“Go and throw it away in a garbage bin, but don’t let anyone see you.”

“All right.”

“Did you have a look at it? What do you think?”

“Well, first the lamb was killed—maybe strangled with a rope—and then whoever killed it tried to cut its head off. But since he wasn’t a butcher and had no experience at that sort of thing, it looks like he tried first with a knife and then used a power saw. You can tell by the clean cut of the bone.”

“And when was it done, would you say?”

“Last night. The meat is still fresh. Before putting the head in the oilcloth, they let it drain for a while so that there wouldn’t be too much blood in the box.”

“Is there still room in that closet in your office?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got a key for it?”

“Yes.”

“Go and put the head in your closet, then come back, take the evidence, including the bag on my desk, put it all in the closet, then lock it. And keep the key with you.”