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to tell us.”

    Once home, Montalbano was greeted by the telephone, which started ringing as he was trying to unlock the door, fumbling with the keys.
    â€œ Ciao, darling, how are you?”
    It was Livia, sounding cheerful.
    â€œI’ve had a pretty rough morning. How about you?”
    â€œI’ve been great, for my part. I didn’t go to the office today.”
    â€œOh, really? Why not?”
    â€œI didn’t feel like it. It was such a beautiful morning. It seemed like a terrible shame to go to work. You should have seen the sun, Salvo. It looked like yours.”
    â€œSo what did you do?”
    â€œI went out and had fun.”
    â€œWell, you can allow yourself such luxuries.”
    It had slipped out, and Livia didn’t let it slide.

    A little while later, still in a bad mood, he settled in to watch some television. On a chair beside his armchair he had set two dishes, one full of green and black olives and salted sardines, the other with cheese, tumazzo and caciocavallo di Ragusa. He poured himself a glass of wine but kept the bottle within reach, just in case. Then he turned on the TV. The first thing that came on was a film set in some Asian country during the monsoon. What? It’s deluging outside and now he has to watch a fake deluge on TV? He changed the channel. Another movie. A woman lay naked on a bed, batting her eyelashes at a young guy undressing and seen from behind. When the kid took off his underpants, the woman’s eyes opened wide and she brought a hand to her mouth, surprised and amazed by what she saw. He changed the channel. The prime minister was explaining why the country’s economy was going to the dogs: the first reason was the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers; the second was the tsunami in the South Seas; the third was the euro; the fourth the Communist opposition that refused to cooperate, and . . . He changed the channel. There was a cardinal talking about the sacred institution of the family. In the first row of the audience were an array of politicians, two of whom had been divorced, another who was living with a minor after leaving his wife and three children, a fourth who maintained an official family and two unofficial families, and a fifth who had never married because, as was well known, he didn’t like women. All nodded gravely in agreement with the cardinal’s words. He changed the channel. The screen filled with the chicken-ass face of Pippo Ragonese, the top honcho newsman of TeleVigàta.
    â€œ. . . and so the discovery of the corpse of a man brutally murdered, cut into small pieces, and put into a garbage bag disturbs us for several reasons. But the principal reason is that the investigation has been assigned to Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano of the Vigàta Police, on whom we have, unfortunately, had occasion to focus our attention in the past. Our criticisms were directed not so much at the fact that he has political ideas—indeed every word he says is steeped in Communist beliefs—but at the fact that he has no ideas at all during his investigations. Or else, when he does, they are always absurd, outlandish, and utterly groundless. So we would like to give him some advice. But will he listen? The advice is the following. Only two weeks ago, in the area around the place called ’u critaru , where the corpse was found, a hunter ran across two plastic bags containing the remains of two suckling calves. Might there not be a connection between these two occurrences? Might it not involve some satanic rite that—”
    He turned off the TV. Satanic rite my ass! Aside from the fact that the two bags had been found two and a half miles away from ’u critaru , it was discovered that they’d been dumped following an operation by the carabinieri to stop unauthorized animal slaughter.
    He went to bed feeling fed up with all of creation. But before lying down he took an aspirin, cursing the saints all the