Very common. He had hoped for some rare brand smoked by no more than five people in Vigàta.

“You take all this,” Montalbano said to Fazio,“and take good care of it. The stuff may turn out to be useful to us later on.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Fazio, not very convinced.

At that moment a high-powered bomb seemed to explode behind the door, which flew open and crashed against the wall, revealing Catarella sprawled out on the floor with two envelopes in his hand.

“I’s bringin’ the mail,” said Catarella, “but I slipped.”

The three men in the office tried to collect themselves after the scare.They looked at one another and immediately understood.They had only two options before them. Either go ahead with a summary execution of Catarella, or make like it was nothing.

They chose the second and said nothing.

“Sorry to repeat myself, but I don’t think it’s gonna be so easy to identify the horse’s owner,” said Fazio.

“We should have at least taken some photographs of it,” said Galluzzo.

“Isn’t there some sort of registry for horses, like there is for cars?” asked Montalbano.

“I don’t know,” replied Fazio. “Anyway, we don’t even know what kind of horse it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t know if it was a draft horse, a stud horse, a show horse, a racehorse . . .”

“Horses are banded,” said Catarella, under his breath, still outside the door, envelopes in hand, since the inspector had never told him to come in.

Montalbano, Fazio, and Galluzzo looked at him, stupefied.

“What did you say?” asked Montalbano.

“Me? I din’t say nothin’!” said Catarella, frightened for having made the mistake of opening his mouth.

“Yes you did! You said something just now! What did you say horses were?”

“I said they was banded, Chief.”