The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia Page A

his facts.
    In the Palace of Justice, journalists were camping out on stairs and corridors. They were on him like a swarm of bees and the photographers' flashes exploded painfully into his arid-feeling eyeballs.
    'How's the investigation going?... Is Don Mariano Arena responsible for the murders or is there someone more important behind him? ... Have Marchica and Pizzuco confessed? ... Will their temporary arrest be extended or are there warrants out? ... D'you know anything about a tie-up between Don Mariano and Minister Mancuso? ... Is it true that the Honourable Member Livigni came to your office yesterday?'
    'No, it isn't,' he replied to the last question.
    'But politicians have intervened on behalf of Don Mariano, haven't they? Is it true that Minister Mancuso telephoned from Rome?'
    'As far as I know,' he said in a loud voice, 'there has not been - nor can there be - any political intervention. As far as any connections between one of the detainees and certain politicians are concerned, all I know is what you've written yourselves. If such connections exist - and I don't wish to cast aspersions on your professional honesty - I have not, so far, had to take them into consideration or investigate them. Should these connections, in the course of my inquiries, become such as to draw the attention of the law, you can be sure that neither the Public Prosecutor nor myself will fail to do our duty ...'
    This declaration was presented by an evening paper in a six-column headline as: 'Minister Mancuso also involved in Bellodi investigation.'
    Evening papers come out, of course, by midday; and, by what in the South is lunch-time, the telephone wires were burning with the yells of those involved; yells which burst on the eardrums, sensitive enough at the best of times, of certain persons trying to drown their sorrows in the wines of Salaparuta or Vittoria.

    *

    The problem is this: the carabinieri have three links of a chain in their hands. The first is Marchica, that they've grasped so firmly that it's like a ring for tying up mules set in a farmhouse wall.'
    'Diego's not the sort to talk. He's got the guts of the devil.'
    'Leave his guts out of this. The trouble with you is that you don't realize that a man who may be capable of killing ten, a thousand, a hundred thousand people, can also be a coward ... Diego, allow me to say so, has talked. So Pizzuco's link is now attached to his ... There are now two alternatives: if Pizzuco talks, there's the third link, Mariano's, joined to his; if he doesn't, he's still linked to Diego, but not very strongly, and a good lawyer could loosen that link without much trouble ... and in that case ... the chain comes to an end and Mariano is free.'
    'Pizzuco won't talk.'
    'I'm not so sure of that, my dear fellow. I always look on the blacker side of things, so let's suppose that Pizzuco does talk. If so, Mariano's for it. At a guess I'd say that at this moment the carabinieri are trying to weld Pizzuco's link to Mariano's. If it holds, two things can happen: either the chain ends with Mariano, or Mariano, old and ill as he is, decides to tell his beads ... In that case, my friend, the chain gets longer and longer, so long, in fact, that I and the minister and God Almighty get caught up in it... A calamity, my good fellow, a calamity ...'
    'You're talking like a skeleton at a feast... Heavens alive, don't you know what kind of man Don Mariano is? Silent as the grave.'
    'Yes, when he was young; now he's old with one foot in that grave of his. The flesh is weak, as Garibaldi said in his will, afraid that, in a moment of weakness, he might confess his sins to a priest, sins that must have been spiny as prickly pears. What I'm getting at is this: in a moment of weakness Mariano may break down and confess his sins, which, between ourselves, are not exactly few ... I had his dossier in my hands in 1927, it was thicker than that' - he pointed to one of Bentini's tomes - 'a kind of criminal encyclopedia