The Fourth Secret by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online Page B

longer, he might have started to shed tears. He went to the bathroom, drank a sip of water, and washed his face. On his way back, he stopped by Fazio’s office.
    “How’s the research coming?”
    “I’m on it,” Fazio answered rudely, still wearing his long face.
    He couldn’t swallow that plastic bag thing.
    And you don’t even know what’s yet to come, the inspector thought, amused. He sat at his desk. Verruso, since he first walked in, had sat in the same position, his shoes one next to the other, perfectly aligned.
    “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? A coffee, something to drink?” Montalbano asked, trying to shake him from his immobility.
    “No, thanks.”
    At least this time the thank-you had come right after the no. Montalbano got straight to the point: “What kind of hand were you dealt?”
    “Not much. Pashko Puka lived in Montelusa in a four-story building that is miraculously still standing. A rathole. Albanians, Kurds, Arabs, Kosovars. At least four to a room.”
    “Are they squatting?”
    “Not even close! The house is owned by a local official, Quarantino, Francesco, who is on the right and opposes immigration. But since he’s a generous man, as he keeps saying every chance he gets, he gave that house to those poor devils, until they get kicked out. Three hundred thousand liras a month per bed. Puka, however, paid one and half million for his room, which he didn’t share with anyone and also had his own bathroom, with a sort of rudimentary shower. And that’s very odd, he would indulge in luxuries that his salary wouldn’t permit.”
    “Well, that’s not the only luxury. A regular pedicure would be another example.”
    The marshal was absorbed in thought.
    “Right. I was able to see the corpse. Very clean. The part of the body that wasn’t exposed to the sun was very white, and so were the areas of the chest and shoulders, covered by his shirt. I had a strange impression.”
    He seemed confused and didn’t continue.
    “You can tell me.”
    “You see, Inspector, I don’t trust impressions.”
    I do, Montalbano thought.
    “You can tell me,” he repeated.
    “I don’t know, I thought the corpse looked like it was made of pieces belonging to two different men.”
    “Well, maybe there were two different men.”
    The marshal understood immediately what he meant.
    “You think that Puka wasn’t the person he seemed to be.”
    “Exactly. What do his papers say?”
    “We didn’t find any. Nothing in his room, nor in the clothes he was wearing the day he was killed.”
    “Which means someone took them. They didn’t want us to identify him.”
    “But we did!”
    “Half of him. The construction worker. Speaking of which, are you sure that was really his name?”
    “The only sure thing is death.”
    He couldn’t help himself. He smiled, mostly to himself. A smile with no lips, a crack across the face. He continued.
    “The owner of the construction company he worked for, who by the way has no priors and has the reputation for being a good man, noted down the information on his visa and work permit. He remembers the day Puka first came to work: he showed him his passport.”
    “How many immigrants come to this country with a passport? There must be only a few of them.”
    “Right. Puka was one of the few.”
    “Did you question anyone who knew him?”
    “I questioned and questioned, but no one seems to have talked to him apart from the simple hello and good-bye. He was a private man. It’s not like he was rude or arrogant, quite the opposite. That’s the way he was. But there was something in his room that didn’t square with me. Or rather, something that wasn’t there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “There weren’t any letters from his country. There wasn’t a single picture. Could it be that he didn’t have anyone in Albania?”
    “Did he have a woman here?”
    “Nobody’s ever seen him with a woman in his room, neither during the day nor at night.”
    “Maybe