Read Online The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri - Free Book Online

finished. They exchanged sheets.
    “Perfect,” said the inspector, looking over the detailed drawing.
    “Here, however, the date is wrong,” Saro noticed. “The ninth was last Monday. Today is the eleventh.”
    “No, nothing wrong there. You brought that necklace into my office the same day you found it. You had it in your pocket when you came to police headquarters to tell me you’d found Luparello dead, but you didn’t give it to me till later because you didn’t want your fellow worker to see. Is that clear?”
    “If you say so, sir.”
    “Take good care of this statement.”
    “What are you going to do now? Arrest him?” asked the woman.
    “Why? What’s he done?” asked Montalbano, standing up.

7
    Montalbano was well respected at the San Calogero trattoria, not so much because he was police inspector as because he was a good customer with discerning tastes. Today they fed him some very fresh striped mullet, fried to a delicate crisp and drained on absorbent paper. After coffee and a long stroll on the eastern jetty, he went back to the office. Fazio got up from his desk as soon as he saw him.
    “There’s someone waiting for you, chief.”
    “Who is it?”
    “Pino Catalano, remember him? One of the two garbage collectors who found Luparello’s body.”
    “Send him right in.”
    He immediately noticed that the youth was tense, nervous.
    “Have a seat.”
    Pino sat with his buttocks on the edge of the chair.
    “Could you tell me why you came to my house to put on the act that you did? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
    “I did it simply to avoid frightening your mother. If I told her I was a police inspector, she might’ve had a heart attack.”
    “Well, in that case, thanks.”
    “How did you figure out it was me who was looking for you?”
    “I phoned my mother to see how she was feeling—when I left her she had a headache—and she told me a man had come to give me an envelope but forgot to bring it with him. She said he’d gone out to get it but never came back. I became curious and asked her to describe the guy. When you’re trying to pretend you’re somebody else, you should cover up that mole you’ve got under your left eye. What do you want from me?”
    “I have a question. Did anyone come to the Pasture to ask if you’d found a necklace?”
    “Yes, someone you know, in fact: Filippo di Cosmo.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I told him I hadn’t found it, which was the truth.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “He said if I found it, so much the better for me, he’d give me fifty thousand lire, but if I found it and I didn’t turn it over to him, so much the worse. He said the same thing to Saro. But Saro didn’t find it either.”
    “Did you go home before coming here?”
    “No, sir, I came here directly.”
    “Do you write for the theater?”
    “No, but I like to act now and then.”
    “Then what’s this?”
    Montalbano handed him the page he’d taken from the little table. Pino looked at it, unimpressed, and smiled.
    “No, that’s not a theater scene, that’s . . .”
    He fell silent, at a loss. It occurred to him that if those weren’t lines of dramatic dialogue, he would have to explain what they were, and it wouldn’t be easy.
    “I’ll help you out,” said Montalbano. “This is a transcript of a phone call one of you made to Rizzo, the lawyer, right after you found Luparello’s body, before you came here to headquarters to report your discovery. Am I right?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Who made the phone call?”
    “I did. But Saro was right beside me, listening.”
    “Why’d you do it?”
    “Because Luparello was an important person, a big cheese. So we immediately thought we should inform Rizzo. Actually, no, the first person we thought of calling was Deputy Cusumano.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “Because Cusumano, with Luparello dead, was like somebody who, when an earthquake hits, loses not only his house but also the money he was keeping under the