Free The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri Page B

there
in the office. Hed bring his own, a portable. Anything
else?
    Hi, darling. Were you asleep? No? Are you sure? Ill be at
your place tomorrow around one in the afternoon. Dont go
out of your way for me, please. Ill just come, and if youre
not there, Ill wait. I have the keys, after all.
    7
    Apparently, in his sleep, one part of his brain had kept working
on the Lapra case. Around four oclock in the morning,
in fact, a memory came back to him, and he got up and
started searching frantically among his books. Suddenly he
remembered that hed lent the book he was looking for to
Augello, after his deputy had seen the film made from it on
television. Hed now had it for six months and still hadnt
given it back. Montalbano got upset.
    Hello, MimMontalbano here.
    Ohmygod! Whats going on? What happened?
    Do you still have that novel by Le Carrntitled Call for
the Dead? Im sure I lent it to you.
    What the fuck?! Its four in the morning!
    So what? I want it back.
    Salvo, Im telling you this as a loving brother: why dont
you have yourself committed?
    I want it back immediately.
    But I was asleep! Calm down. Ill bring it to the office
in the morning. Otherwise I would have to put on my underwear,
start looking, get dressed
    I dont give a shit.Youre going to look for it, find it, get
in your car, even in your underwear, and bring it to me.
    He dragged himself about the house for half an hour,
doing pointless things like trying to understand the phone
bill or reading the label on a bottle of mineral water. Then he
heard a car screech to a halt, a dull thud against the door, and
the car leaving. He opened the door: the book was on the
ground, the lights of Augellos car already far away. He had a
mind to make an anonymous phone call to the carabinieri.
    Hello, this is a concerned citizen. Theres some madman driving
around in his underwear...
    He let it drop. He started leafing through the novel.
    The story went exactly as hed remembered it. Page 8:
    Smiley, Maston speaking. You interviewed Samuel
Arthur Fennan at the Foreign Office on Monday, am I
right?
    Yes...yes I did.
    What was the case?
    Anonymous letter alleging Party membership at Ox
    ford...
    And there, on page 139, was the beginning of the conclusion
that Smiley would arrive at in his report:
    It was, however, possible that he had lost his heart for his
work, and that his luncheon invitation to me was a first step to
confession. With this in mind he might also have written the
    anonymous letter which could have been designed to put him
    in touch with the Department.
    Following Smileys logic, it was therefore possible that
Lapra himself had written the anonymous letters exposing
him. But if he was their author, why hadnt he sent them
to the police or carabinieri under some other pretext?
    No sooner had he formulated this question than he
smiled at himself for being so na. In the hands of the police
or carabinieri, an anonymous letter might have triggered
an investigation and have led to far graver consequences for
Lapra. By sending them to his wife, Lapra was hoping
to provoke a reaction of the more domestic variety, but one
that would nevertheless rescue him from a situation that was
becoming either too dangerous or unbearable. He wanted to
pull out, and those were cries for help. But his wife had taken
them at face value, that is, as anonymous letters denouncing a
tawdry, common liaison. Offended, she had not reacted, but
only withdrawn into a scornful silence. And so Lapra, in
despair, had written to his son, this time without hiding behind
a veil of anonymity. But the son, blinded by egotism and
the fear of losing a few lire, fled to New York.
    Thanks to Smiley, it all made sense. He went back to
sleep.
    Commendatore Baldassare Marzachdirector of the Vig
post office, was notorious for being a presumptuous imbecile.
And he didnt fail to live up to his reputation this time, either.
    I