He took a long shower, drank three coffees in succession, then got in his car. When he arrived in Rabàto, the oldest quarter of Montelusa, destroyed thirty years earlier by a landslide and now consisting mostly of ruins refurbished higgledy-piggledy and damaged, ramshackle hovels inhabited by illegal aliens from Tunisia and Morocco, he headed through narrow, tortuous alleyways toward Piazza Santa Croce. The church stood whole amid the ruins. He took from his pocket the sheet of paper Gegè had given him: Carmen, known in the real world as Fatma Ben Gallud, Tunisian, lived at number 48. It was a miserable catojo, a small ground-floor room with a little window in the wooden door to allow the air to circulate. He knocked: no answer. He knocked harder, and this time a sleepy voice asked: “Who that?” “Police,” Montalbano fired back. He had decided to play rough, catching her still drowsy from the sudden awakening. Certainly Fatma, because of her work at the Pasture, must have slept even less than he.
