thrilled by the inside and regretted not having brought a camera. Then a low, continuous sound distracted his attention, a kind of sonic vibration that seemed to be coming, in fact, from inside the factory.
What machinery could be running in here? he asked himself, suspicious.
He thought it best to exit, return to his car, and get his pistol from the glove compartment. He hardly ever carried a weapon; the weight bothered him, and the gun rumpled his trousers and jackets. Going back inside the factory, where the noise continued, he began to walk carefully toward the side farthest from where he had entered. The drawing Saro had made was extremely precise and served as his guide. The noise was like the humming that certain high-tension wires sometimes make in very humid conditions, except that here the sound was more varied and musical and broke off from time to time, only to resume almost at once with a different modulation. He advanced, tense, taking care not to trip over the rocks and debris that constituted the floor in the narrow corridor between the two walls, when out of the corner of his eye, through an opening, he saw a man moving parallel to him inside the factory. He drew back, sure the other had already seen him. There was no time to lose; the man must have accomplices.
Montalbano leapt forward, weapon in hand, and shouted:
“Stop! Police!”
He realized in a fraction of a second that the other had anticipated this move and was already half bent forward, pistol in hand. Diving down, Montalbano pulled the trigger, and before he hit the ground, he managed to fire another two shots. But instead of hearing what he expected—a return shot, a cry, a shuffling of fleeing steps—he heard a deafening explosion and then a tinkling of glass breaking to pieces. When in an instant he realized what had happened, he was overcome by laughter so violent that he couldn’t stand up. He had shot at himself, at the image that a large surviving pane of glass, tarnished and dirty, had cast back at him.
I can’t tell anyone about this, he said to himself. They would ride me out of the force on a rail.
The gun he was holding in his hand suddenly looked ridiculous to him, and he stuck it inside his belt. The shots, their long echo, the crash, and the shattering of the glass had completely covered up the sound, which presently resumed, more varied than before. Now he understood: it was the wind, which every day, even in summer, lashed that stretch of beach, then abated in the evening, as if not wanting to disturb Gegè’s business. Threading through the trestles’ metal cables—some broken, some taut—and through smokestacks pocked with holes like giant fifes, the wind played its plaintive melody inside the dead factory, and the inspector paused, entranced, to listen.
It took him almost half an hour to reach the spot that Saro had indicated, having had, at various points, to climb over piles of debris. At last he figured he was exactly parallel to the spot where Saro had found the necklace on the other side of the wall, and he started looking calmly around. Magazines and scraps of paper yellowed by sun, weeds, Coca-Cola bottles (the cans being too light to be thrown over the high wall), wine bottles, a bottomless metal wheelbarrow, a few tires, some iron scraps, an unidentifiable object, a rotten wooden beam. And beside the beam a leather handbag with strap, stylish, brand-new, stamped with a designer name. It clashed visibly with the surrounding ruin. Montalbano opened it. Inside were two rather large stones, apparently inserted as ballast to allow the purse to achieve the proper trajectory from outside the wall to inside, and nothing else. He took a closer look at the purse. The owner’s metal initials had been torn off, but the leather still bore their impressions, an I and an S : Ingrid Sjostrom.
They’re serving it up to me on a silver platter, thought Montalbano.
10
The thought of accepting the platter so kindly
What machinery could be running in here? he asked himself, suspicious.
He thought it best to exit, return to his car, and get his pistol from the glove compartment. He hardly ever carried a weapon; the weight bothered him, and the gun rumpled his trousers and jackets. Going back inside the factory, where the noise continued, he began to walk carefully toward the side farthest from where he had entered. The drawing Saro had made was extremely precise and served as his guide. The noise was like the humming that certain high-tension wires sometimes make in very humid conditions, except that here the sound was more varied and musical and broke off from time to time, only to resume almost at once with a different modulation. He advanced, tense, taking care not to trip over the rocks and debris that constituted the floor in the narrow corridor between the two walls, when out of the corner of his eye, through an opening, he saw a man moving parallel to him inside the factory. He drew back, sure the other had already seen him. There was no time to lose; the man must have accomplices.
Montalbano leapt forward, weapon in hand, and shouted:
“Stop! Police!”
He realized in a fraction of a second that the other had anticipated this move and was already half bent forward, pistol in hand. Diving down, Montalbano pulled the trigger, and before he hit the ground, he managed to fire another two shots. But instead of hearing what he expected—a return shot, a cry, a shuffling of fleeing steps—he heard a deafening explosion and then a tinkling of glass breaking to pieces. When in an instant he realized what had happened, he was overcome by laughter so violent that he couldn’t stand up. He had shot at himself, at the image that a large surviving pane of glass, tarnished and dirty, had cast back at him.
I can’t tell anyone about this, he said to himself. They would ride me out of the force on a rail.
The gun he was holding in his hand suddenly looked ridiculous to him, and he stuck it inside his belt. The shots, their long echo, the crash, and the shattering of the glass had completely covered up the sound, which presently resumed, more varied than before. Now he understood: it was the wind, which every day, even in summer, lashed that stretch of beach, then abated in the evening, as if not wanting to disturb Gegè’s business. Threading through the trestles’ metal cables—some broken, some taut—and through smokestacks pocked with holes like giant fifes, the wind played its plaintive melody inside the dead factory, and the inspector paused, entranced, to listen.
It took him almost half an hour to reach the spot that Saro had indicated, having had, at various points, to climb over piles of debris. At last he figured he was exactly parallel to the spot where Saro had found the necklace on the other side of the wall, and he started looking calmly around. Magazines and scraps of paper yellowed by sun, weeds, Coca-Cola bottles (the cans being too light to be thrown over the high wall), wine bottles, a bottomless metal wheelbarrow, a few tires, some iron scraps, an unidentifiable object, a rotten wooden beam. And beside the beam a leather handbag with strap, stylish, brand-new, stamped with a designer name. It clashed visibly with the surrounding ruin. Montalbano opened it. Inside were two rather large stones, apparently inserted as ballast to allow the purse to achieve the proper trajectory from outside the wall to inside, and nothing else. He took a closer look at the purse. The owner’s metal initials had been torn off, but the leather still bore their impressions, an I and an S : Ingrid Sjostrom.
They’re serving it up to me on a silver platter, thought Montalbano.
10
The thought of accepting the platter so kindly
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