The Scent of the Night by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online

Montalbano. 'And who's in the kitchen?'
    'My wife,' said the man with the moustache, going to the door to greet three new customers.
    Punctuating his forkfuls with gulps of wine and alternating groans of extreme agony and unbearable pleasure (Is there such a thing as extreme cuisine, like extreme sex? he wondered at one point), Montalbano even had the courage to soak up the sauce left in the bottom of the bowl with his bread, periodically wiping away the beads of sweat that were forming on his brow.
    'And what would you like for a second course, sir?'
    The inspector understood that with that 'sir', the owner was paying him military honours.
    'Nothing.'
    ‘ Youre right. The problem with burning pirciati is that you don t get your ta ste buds back till the next day’
    Mon talbano asked for the bill, pai d a pittance, got up, headed towards the door and, in accordance with local custom, did not say goodbye. Right beside the exit he noticed a large photograph, and under it the following words:
     
    MILLION LIRE REWARD TO ANYONE WITH INFORMATION ON THIS MAN.
     
    'Who is he?' he asked, turning to the man with the moustache.
    ‘ You don t know him? That's that damn son of a bitch of a broker, Ernanuele Gargano, the man who—' 'Why do you want information on him?' 'So I can catch him and cut his throat.' 'What did he do to you?'
    'To me, nothing. But he stole thirty million lire from my wife.'
    'Tell the lady she shall have her revenge,' the inspector said solemnly, putting his hand over his heart He realized he was totally drunk.
     
    The moon in the sky was frightening, so much did it seem like daylight outside. Montalbano drove down the road giddily, thinking he could handle it, screeching around the curves, taking his speed alternately down to six and up to sixty miles an hour. Halfway between Montelusa and Vigita he saw the billboard behind which lay hidden the little road that led to the dilapidated cottage with the great Saracen olive tree beside it. Since over his last couple of miles he'd barely avoided crashing head-on into two different cars coming in the opposite direction, he decided to turn down this road and sit out his drunkenness under the branches of that tree, which he hadn't been to visit for almost a year.
    As he bore right to turn onto the little road, he immediately had the impression he'd made a mistake, since in the place of the narrow country road there was now a broad band of asphalt. Maybe he'd confused one billboard with another. He put the car in reverse and ended up backing into one of the supports of the billboard, which began to teeter dangerously, ferraguto furniture — montelusa , it read. No doubt about it, that was the right sign. He drove back out onto the road and after going about a hundred yards he found himself in front of the gate to a small villa that had just been built. The little rustic cottage was gone, the Saracen olive tree too. He felt disoriented. He recognized nothing in a landscape that had once been so familiar to him.
    Was it possible that one litre of wine, no matter how strong, could reduce him to such a state? He got out of the car and, as he was pissing, kept turning his head to look around. The moonlight afforded good visibility, but what he saw looked alien to him. He took a torch out of the glove compartment and proceeded to circle round the enclosure. The house was finished but clearly not inhabited; the windowpanes still had protective Xs of masking tape over them. The garden inside the enclosure was fairly large. They were building some sort of gazebo there; he could see a pile of tools nearby. Shovels, pickaxes, cement troughs. When he got to the area behind the house, he stumbled into what at first seemed to him a bush of buckthorn. He pointed the torch, got a better look, and cried out He'd seen death. Or, rather, the threshold of death. The great Saracen olive tree lay before him, moribund, having been felled and uprooted. It was dying. They had cut the