IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009) Read Online Free Page B

closed when he got there because it was Monday. And since it was Monday, this meant that the girl had been killed Saturday, kept in the same place for all of Sunday, and then taken to the dump during the night between Sunday and Monday. Or, more likely, very early Monday morning, when there were no more cars of whores or johns in the clearing above the dump.
    What did it mean?
    It meant, he told himself proudly, that the place where the girl was killed must be a location that was closed on Saturday afternoons and all of Sunday, but reopened to the public on Monday morning.
    His sudden enthusiasm over the conclusion he’d arrived at quickly waned when he realized just how many establishments were closed Saturday afternoons and Sundays: schools, government offices, private offices, doctors’ offices, factories, notaries’ offices, workshops, wholesale and retail stores, dentists’ offices, warehouses, stores, tobacco shops . . . Which amounted to slightly less than all of Vigàta. Actually, if he really thought about it, it was even worse than that. Because the murder could have been committed in any private home whatsoever, by a husband who had sent his wife and children off to the country for the weekend. In short, an hour of reflection for nothing.

    When he returned to the station, he found an envelope from Forensics with the photos, two copies of each. The inspector didn’t like Arquà; the very sight of him sent his cojones into a spin, but he honestly had to admit that the man did his job well.
    Together with the photos was a memo. With no “dear” or greeting of any sort. But he himself would have done the same.
    Montalbano,
    The girl was definitely killed by a high-caliber firearm. Whether it was a revolver or a pistol is, for the moment, utterly irrelevant. The shot was fired from relatively close range, fifteen to twenty feet, and thus had devastating results. The bullet entered through the left jawbone and exited just below the right temple, following an upward trajectory, rendering the victim’s facial features completely unrecognizable. I think the conclusions Dr. Pasquano draws from this will be very useful to you.
    Arquà
    When alive, the girl must have been a real beauty. One didn’t have to be a connoisseur like Mimì Augello to realize this.
    At a glance, she looked to be about five-foot-eleven. Blond. In her fall, her long hair, which must certainly have been gathered on her head in some kind of bun when she was killed, had come partly undone and covered the face that was no longer there. She had endless legs, like a dancer or athlete.
    Montalbano took another look at the full-figure shots, then paused to dwell on those highlighting the tattoo. It was a decent enlargement of the image of the butterfly.
    He put one of these in his jacket pocket, along with another one of the girl’s back in which the tattooed shoulder blade was clearly visible.
    “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he said to Catarella as he passed in front of him before going out.

    He parked his car in front of the Free Channel’s television studios, but before going in, he fired up a cigarette. Smoking was not allowed inside. And he always conformed—perhaps with a curse—whenever he saw a “No Smoking” sign.
    On the other hand, where on earth was a poor bastard allowed to smoke these days? Not even in the toilets. The person who came in after you would smell the smoke and give you a dirty look. Because, in the twinkling of an eye, whole legions of fanatical smoke-haters had formed. Once, when he happened to be passing through a park with a cigarette in his mouth, he had intervened to separate two distinguished-looking eighty-year-old men who, for no apparent reason, had taken to clubbing each other on the head. Unable to break up the fight, so enraged were they, he had identified himself as a police inspector. And so the two elderly gentlemen immediately allied themselves against him.
    “You ought to be ashamed of