He remained in bed, watching the endlessly varying play of light and shadow that the sun’s rays, passing through the slats in the blind, projected onto the ceiling.A man walking on the beach became a Giacometti-like figure, looking as if he were made of interwoven strands of yarn.

He remembered how, as a little boy, he could keep his eye glued for a whole hour to a kaleidoscope his uncle had bought for him, spellbound by the continually changing forms and colors. His uncle had also bought him a tin revolver, whose bullets were caps, dark red strips with little black dots that passed under the hammer and went pop! pop! when struck.

This memory called to mind the shoot-out between Galluzzo and the two men who tried to burn down his house.

It occurred to him how strange it was that those people, who wanted something from him but didn’t say what, had let twenty-four hours pass without giving another sign of themselves. And to think they were in such a hurry! How could they suddenly let go of the reins around his neck?

Upon asking himself this question, he started laughing, because never before would he have thought of such a thing in terms relating to horses.

Was this due to the case he was investigating, or was it because, deep down, the evening he’d spent with Rachele was still on his mind?

No doubt about it, Rachele was a woman who—

The phone rang.

Montalbano leapt out of bed, more to escape the thought of Rachele at once than out of any anxiousness to answer the phone.

It was six-thirty.

“Ahh Chief, Chief! Iss Catarella!”

The inspector felt like screwing around.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he said, altering his voice.

“Iss Catarella, Chief !”

“This is Fire Station Number 2373. If you want to speak with the fire chief, you’ll have to call the fire department, during regular hours, of course.”

“O matre santa! I mussa gotta wrong number. Beckin’ y’ pardon, sir.”

He called right back.

“Hallo! Izz ’iss Fire Station 3723?”

“No, Cat. It’s Montalbano. Wait just a second, I’ll look up the fire station’s number for you.”

“No no no, Chief, I don’t want no fire station!”

“So why are you trying to phone them?”

“I donno. Sorry, Chief, I’m confused. Wanna hang up so’s I can start all over again?”

“All right.”

He rang a third time.

“Zzatt you, Chief ?”

“It’s me.”

“Wha’, was you asleep?”

“No, I was dancing the jitterbug.”

“Rilly? You know how to do that?”

“Cat, just tell me what’s up.”

“They found a corpus.”

How could you go wrong? If Catarella called at the crack of dawn, it always meant death in the morning.

“Male or female?”

“Iss o’ the male persuasion.”

“Where’d they find it?”

“In Spinoccia districk.”

“Where’s that?”

“Dunno, Chief. But Gallo’s on ’is way.”

“Where? To go look at the corpse?”

“No, Chief, sir, ’e’s comin’ a get you, poissonally in poisson. ’E’s gotta car an’s gonna betake you onna primisses, which’d be in Spinoccia districk.”

“But couldn’t Augello go instead?”

“Nossir, in as far as atta moment when that I made ’im the tiliphone call, ’is wife said as how he was outta the house.”

“But doesn’t he have a cell phone?”

“Yessir, ’e does. But iss ixtinguished.”

Like Mimì’s going to be out of the house at six in the morning! Obviously he was sleeping like a baby. And he’d told Beba to lie.

“And where’s Fazio?”

“’E’s already gone wit’ Galluzzo to the beforesaid allocation.”

“Come on in. I’ll be ready in five minutes. Where the hell is this Spinoccia, anyway?”

“In heaven, Chief. Out in the country, about six miles before Giardina.”

“Got any idea who was killed?”

“None, Chief. Fazio just phoned me and told me to come pick you up, so I came.”

“But do you know how to get there?”

“In theory, yes. I had a look at a map.”

“I know, Chief.That’s why I’m going slow.”

Five minutes later:

“Gallo, I told you not to speed!”

“I’m going extremely slow, Chief !”

To Gallo, going extremely slowly, on a stinking dirt road full of potholes, crags, trenches, craters that looked like they’d been made by bombs, and dust galore, meant maintaining a speed of about fifty mph.

They were passing through desolate country, parched and yellow, with a few rare, scraggly trees. It was a landscape Montalbano was quite fond of.They had already left the last little white cube of a house behind them, about a mile back. All they had run across were a little pushcart climbing up towards Giardina from Vigàta, and a peasant with his mule, coming down in the opposite direction.

Rounding a bend, they saw the squad car in the distance and a donkey beside it. The ass, who was well aware that there was nothing to eat for miles around and just stood there, discouraged, looked at them with scant interest.

Gallo then launched the car off the dirt road with a swerve so sudden that the inspector lurched totally sideways, despite the seat belt, and felt his head come detached from the rest of his body. He started cursing.

“Couldn’t you stop the car a little further ahead?!”

“I’m stopping here to leave room for the other cars when they get here.”

When they got out of the car, they noticed that, beyond the squad car, on the left-hand side of the dirt road, near a clump of sorghum, Fazio, Galluzzo, and a peasant were sitting on the ground, eating. The peasant had taken a loaf of wheat bread and a round of tumazzo cheese from his haversack and divided them up.

They made an idyllic, bucolic foursome, a sort of Sicilian déjeuner sur l’herbe.

Since the sun was already beating down hard, they were all in shirtsleeves.

As soon as Fazio and Galluzzo saw the inspector approaching, they stood up and put their jackets on.The peasant remained seated. But he brought a hand to his cap, giving a sort of military salute. He must have been at least eighty years old.

The dead man, wearing only a pair of underpants, was lying facedown, parallel to the road. Clearly visible just under the left shoulder blade was one gunshot wound, with a little bit of blood around it. A chunk of flesh was missing from the right arm, the result of an animal bite. A hundred or so flies swarmed around the two wounds.

The inspector bent down to look at the bitten arm.

“’Zwas dogs,” said the peasant, swallowing his last mouthful of bread and tumazzo.Then he extracted a bottle of wine from the haversack, pulled out the cork, sucked on it once, and put everything back.

“Did you find the body yourself ?”

“Yessir. This mornin’ when I’s passin’ by with my donkey,” said the peasant, standing up.

“What’s your name?”

“Giuseppe Contrera, ’n’ my papers ’re spotless.”

He was keen to tell the cop that he had a clean record. But how had he been able to alert the police station from that desert? Via carrier pigeon?

“Was it you who phoned us?”

“Nossir, my son.”

“And where’s your son?”

“At home, in Giardina.”

“But was he with you when you discovered—”

“Nossir, he warn’t. He was at his home. He was still asleep, the little gent. He’s ’n accountant, you see.”

“But if he wasn’t with you—”

“May I, Chief ?” asked Fazio, interrupting. “Our friend here, Contrera, called his son as soon as he discovered the body, and—”

“Yes, but how did he call him?”

“With this,” said the peasant, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket.

Montalbano balked.The peasant was dressed like an old-time peasant: fustian trousers, hobnail boots, collarless shirt, and vest. The gadget seemed out of place in hands so callused they looked like a relief map of the Alps.

“So why didn’t you call us directly yourself ?”

“First of all,” replied the peasant,“alls I know how to call with this thing is my son; an’ seccunly, how’s I sposta know your phone number?”

“The cell phone,” Fazio again explained, “was a gift from Signor Contrera’s son, who’s afraid that his father, given his age—”

“My boy Cosimo’s a nitwit. ’N accountant an’ a nitwit. He oughta worry ’bout his own hide an’ not mine,” the peasant declared.

“Did you get this man’s name, address, and phone number?” Montalbano asked Fazio.

“Yeah, Chief.”

“Then you can go now,” Montalbano said to Contrera.

The peasant gave a military salute and mounted his donkey.

“Have you informed everyone?”

“Already done, Chief.”

“Let’s hope they arrive soon.”

“Chief, it’s gonna take another half hour at least, even if all goes well.”

Montalbano made a snap decision.

“Gallo!”

“Orders, Chief.”

“How far are we from Giardina here?”

“By this road, I’d say fifteen minutes.”

“Let’s go have a cup of coffee. You guys want me to bring you some?”

“No thanks,” Fazio and Galluzzo replied in unison, with the flavor of the bread and tumazzo still in their mouths.

“So who’s speeding?”

And, indeed, after some ten minutes of bouncing along at fifty miles an hour, the car, just like that, ended up nose-first in a ditch as wide as the road itself, with the rear wheels practically spinning in air.

The maneuvers to get unstuck—between heaving and hoeing, cursing and shouting, with Gallo at the wheel one minute, Montalbano the next, shirts drenched with sweat—took a good half hour. On top of this, the left fender had bent and was rubbing against the tire. Gallo was finally forced to drive slowly.

In short, between one thing and another, by the time they got back to Spinoccia, over an hour had passed.

“Any news of Tommaseo?” Montalbano asked Fazio.

“Tommaseo’s already gone!”

What, had he become Fangio on the Carrera Panamericana?

“Luckily he hitched a ride with Dr. Pasquano,” Fazio continued. “He gave the go-ahead for the body to be removed, and got a lift back to Montelusa from Galluzzo.”

When Forensics had finished shooting their first series of photos, Pasquano had the body turned over. The victim must have been about fifty, maybe slightly less.There was no exit wound on his chest from the bullet that had killed him.

“You know him?” the inspector asked Fazio.

“No.”

Dr. Pasquano finished examining the body, cursing the flies buzzing back and forth between the corpse and his face.

“What can you tell me, Doctor?”

Pasquano pretended not to have heard him. Montalbano repeated the question, pretending in turn that the doctor hadn’t heard him. Pasquano gave Montalbano a dirty look, removing his gloves. He was all sweaty and red in the face.

“What can I tell you? It’s a beautiful day.”

“Gorgeous, isn’t it? What can you tell me about the dead man?”

“You’re a bigger pain in the ass than these flies, you know that? What the hell do you want me to tell you?”

He must have lost at poker the night before, at the club. Montalbano summoned his patience and dug in.

“Tell you what, Doctor. While you’re talking, I’ll wipe away your sweat, chase away the flies, and every so often kiss your forehead.”

Pasquano started laughing. Then, in a single breath, he said:

“He was killed by a single shot to the shoulder.And you didn’t need me to tell you that.The bullet did not exit the body. And you didn’t need me to tell you that, either. He wasn’t shot at this location because—and you can figure this out all by yourself, too—a man doesn’t go walking outside in his underpants, not even on a shitty dirt road like this one. He’s probably been dead—and this, too, you have enough experience to figure out for yourself—for at least twenty-four hours. As for the bite on his arm, any idiot can see that it was a dog.To conclude, there was no need for you to force me to speak, making me waste my breath and busting my balls to hell and back. Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“And a good day to one and all.”

He turned his back, got in his car, and drove away.

Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics, kept having his men waste roll after roll of film for no reason. Of the thousands of shots taken, only two or three would prove important. Fed up, the inspector decided to go back to town. After all, what was he doing there?

“I’m leaving,” he said to Fazio.“I’ll see you at the station. Gallo, come on, can we go?”

He said nothing to Arquà, who, for his part, hadn’t greeted him upon arriving.You certainly couldn’t say they were fond of each other.

He didn’t feel like spending the day at the station in that condition. It was, moreover, almost noon.

“Take me to Marinella,” he said to Gallo.

Opening the front door, he realized at once that Adelina had finished her work and gone.

He went straight into the bathroom, got undressed, took a shower, tossed the dirty clothes into the hamper, then went into the bedroom and opened the armoire to pick a clean suit. He noticed that one of the pairs of trousers was still in the plastic dry-cleaners’ bag; apparently Adelina had picked them up that same morning. He decided to wear them with a jacket he liked, and to break in one of the shirts he had just bought.

Then he got back into the car and drove to Enzo’s trattoria.

Since it was still early, there was only one customer in the room aside from him.The television was reporting that the dead body of an unknown man had been found by a fisherman in a canebrake in the district of Spinoccia. Police had ruled his death a crime, as clear signs of strangulation had been detected around the man’s neck. It also appeared, though had not yet been confirmed, that the killer had ferociously bitten the corpse all over. The case was being investigated by Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano. More details on the next newscast.

And so, this time, too, the television had done his job for him, which was to convey information dressed up in details and circumstances that were either completely wrong, utterly false, or pure fantasy.And yet the public swallowed it all. Why did the TV people do it? To make an already horrifying crime as hair-raising as possible? It was no longer enough to report a death; they had to provoke horror. After all, hadn’t the United States unleashed a war based on lies, stupidities, and mystifications that the most important figures in the country swore to by all that was holy in front of the whole world’s television cameras? After which, those same television cameras, and the people behind them, on their own, put the icing on the cake.And by the way, that anthrax case, what ever became of that? How was it that, from one day to the next, everybody stopped talking about it?

“Excuse me, but, if the other customer doesn’t mind, could you please turn off the television?”

Enzo went over to the other client, who, turning towards the inspector, declared:

“Yeah, you can turn it off. I don’t give a shit about that stuff.”

Fat and about fifty, the man was eating a triple serving of spaghetti with clam sauce.

The inspector ate the same thing. Followed by the usual mullets.

When he came out of the trattoria, he decided there was no need for a stroll along the jetty, and so returned to the office, where he had a mountain of papers to sign.

“Ahh Chief, Chief! That’d be the lady Esther Man. Do I put ’er true?”

“Yes . . . Ciao, Rachele. How are you doing?”

“Great. And you?”

“Me too.Where are you?”

“In Montelusa. But I’m about to leave.”

“You’re going back to Rome? But you said—”

“No, Salvo, I’m just going to Fiacca.”

The sudden pang of jealousy he felt was unwarranted. Worse than that, it was totally unjustified. There was no reason in the world for him to feel that way.

“I’m going with Ingrid, to attend to some business.”

“Do you have business interests in Fiacca?”

“No. I meant sentimental business.”

And this could mean only one thing: that she was going there to give Guido his walking papers.

“But we’ll be back this evening. Shall we get together tomorrow?”

“Let’s try.”