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circumstances warrant, have a word with the two men named by the informer, La Rosa and Pizzuco.
    It was already midday. He ordered his car and hurried downstairs, feeling like singing from mounting excitement, and actually humming as he made his way to the canteen. There he ate a couple of sandwiches and drank a hot coffee, a coffee made specially for him by the carabiniere-barman, with the right amount of coffee and all the skill of a Neapolitan trying to get on the right side of his superior.
    The day was cold and bright, the country limpid: trees, fields and rocks gave an impression of gelid fragility as though a gust of wind or an impact would shatter them with a tinkle of breaking glass. The air, too, vibrated like glass to the engine of the little Fiat 600. Overhead large black crows flew around as if in a glass maze, suddenly wheeling, dropping or circling up vertically as though between invisible walls. The road was deserted. In the back seat Sergeant D'Antona held out of the window the muzzle of his sten-gun, his finger on the trigger. Only a month before on this road the bus from S. to C. had been held up and all the passengers robbed. The bandits, all minors, were already in San Francesco Prison.
    The sergeant, watching the road uneasily, thought of his income and his expenses, of pay and wife, pay and television set, pay and sick children. The carabiniere-driver thought about a film, Europe by Night, which he had seen the evening before, and of his surprise at Cocinelle being a man, a man indeed! Behind this thought, which was more vision than thought, lay a worry, deep down and hidden lest the captain guess it, at not having eaten in barracks and if they would be in time to get anything with the Carabinieri of S. But that captain -what a man! - did guess and told the two of them, sergeant and driver, that they would have to scrounge something for themselves at S. and that he was sorry for not having thought of it before leaving. The driver blushed and thought, not for the first time: 'He's a kind man, but he reads my mind.' The sergeant said that he was not hungry and could go without eating till next day.
    At S. the sergeantmajor, who had not been warned, came out with his mouth full, his face red with surprise and mortification. He'd had to leave a plate of roast mutton; cold, it would be disgusting; heated up, worse; mutton must be eaten hot, swimming in fat and savoury with pepper. Oh, well, it's a penance; let's hear the news.
    News there was. The sergeantmajor nodded his approval; though, to tell the truth, not altogether convinced of a link between the shooting of Colasberna and Nicolosi's disappearance. He sent for the widow, a couple of Nicolosi's friends and the man's brother-in-law. 'Widow' was the word he used as he sent the carabiniere to fetch her, for he had no doubt the man was dead. A quiet-living man like Nicolosi only vanishes for so long for that one simple reason. Meanwhile, he invited the captain for a bite; the captain declined, saying that he had already eaten.
    'So you've eaten, have you!' thought the sergeantmajor, his resentment chill as the fat on his mutton chops by now.
    She was pretty, the widow; with dark brown hair and jet black eyes, fine features, and a serene expression, but a vaguely mischievous smile on her lips. She was not shy. Her dialect was comprehensible so the captain did not need the sergeantmajor to act as interpreter; he himself asked the woman the meaning of certain words and sometimes she found the right Italian equivalent or explained by a phrase in dialect. The captain had known many Sicilians, during his partisan period and, later, among the carabinieri. He had also read Giovanni Meli with Francesco Lanza's notes and Ignazio Buttitta with the facing translation by Quasimodo.
    That day her husband had been up just before six. She had heard him get up, in the dark, not wanting to wake her. He had been a very considerate man - 'had been', just like that - for