“But can’t you just give me a rough summary?”

“It looks like a sudden, massive stroke, but there are a few things that don’t-”

“Oh, no you don’t!” the commissioner broke in. “Inspector Montalbano can’t investigate his own death!”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right. He’s too personally involved. Anyway, the law makes no allowance for that sort of thing. I’m sorry. The case will be assigned to the new captain of the flying squad.”

At this point Montalbano got worried and took Mimì aside.

“When is Livia coming?”

Mimì seemed uneasy.

“Well, she said…”

“She said what?”

Mimì stared at his shoes.

“She said she didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“Whether she could make it to the funeral.”

He stormed out of the room, enraged, and ran into the courtyard, which was crowded with funeral wreaths and a waiting hearse. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Hello, Livia? Salvo here.”

“Hi, how are you? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“What’s this about you not knowing if you can make it to-”

“Salvo, listen. If you had lived, I would have done everything in my power to stay with you. I might even have married you. After wasting my life chasing after you, what else could I do? But now that I’m suddenly faced with this unique opportunity, you must understand-”

He turned off the cell phone and went back inside. He noticed they’d put the lid back on the coffin and the cortège was starting to move.

“Are you coming?” Bonetti-Alderighi asked him.

“Yeah, I guess,” he replied.

But as soon as they got to the courtyard, one of the pallbearers fell, and the coffin crashed to the ground with a boom that woke him up.

After that, he’d been unable to fall back asleep, besieged by unanswered questions. One, above all, hammered away at him. What did Livia mean when she said she wanted to take advantage of the opportunity? Quite simply, it meant that his death represented a sort of liberation for her. The follow-up question could only be: How much truth was there in a dream? In this particular case, even a tiny grain of truth was too much.