The Salati Case

Tuesday

I woke up with a headache the next day. It was another morning of dense white fog and as I walked to my car I could just see the vague outlines of people shuffling along the pavement, their collars tight around their throats.

I drove back to Sissa. It was a short drive and I was there two hours before the funeral was due. I parked in the piazza and looked at the church. The wooden door was open so I walked up the steps and shuffled inside.

It was dark and still. The walls were so thick that the silence seemed to echo. The roof was supported by a row of wooden triangles that rested on thick walls where the old mortar had dried mid-drip between the bricks, forming cracks which spiders had tried to conceal with their white lace.

There was something about this blank hole of a building that seemed to echo emptiness. Perhaps that’s all church was about. A hollow, meaningless building where hollow meaningless people could feel they belonged. It certainly made me feel at home.

I heard the sound of someone coughing. I listened more carefully and heard muffled footsteps from inside the vestry, to the right of the altar.

The footsteps came closer. A tall man in an ill-fitting jacket and a dog collar marched down the little church’s only aisle.

He walked past me without looking. Either he hadn’t seen me or he assumed I had come in to be on my own. I looked over my shoulder and saw that he had sat down on a bench in a recess at the back of the church.

I got up and walked over. ‘Is this your church?’

‘One of them. They spread us thinly nowadays.’

I introduced myself but the priest didn’t say anything other than ‘piacere’, so I didn’t get his name.

‘Did you ever know a man called Riccardo Salati?’ I asked. It sounded abrupt in the quiet of that building, and he looked at me sideways.

‘Chi?’

‘Riccardo Salati.’

The priest sighed and put his head on one side.

‘I’ve known a lot of Riccardos,’ he said.

‘Ever a Riccardo Salati? He grew up here in the 1970s and 80s.’

‘I only arrived in 2001.’

‘So you never knew a Riccardo Salati?’

‘There’s a Salati, a Silvia Salati, here. Or there was. She died on Friday.’

‘She was Riccardo’s mother.’

‘I see.’

Priests were always like this. You started trying to get information from them, but ended up getting the feeling that they had got it from you.

I looked at him. He had an unusual face and jokey, sad eyes like a puffin. And he was younger than most. If he hadn’t been wearing the dog collar he would have seemed completely normal. He was completely normal, I reminded myself, as much as any of us ever are.

‘Do you have records?’ I asked.

‘Records?’

‘Births, marriages, deaths.’

‘We have records for everything,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All services, meetings, baptisms, first communions, marriages and funerals.’

‘Which are kept?’

‘In the church office.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘Of course.’

We stood up. The representative of Rome is always the surest way into the Italian countryside. I should have thought of it when I was here yesterday.

We went through to the vestry. Along the far wall was a low, plastic cupboard with sliding doors that didn’t move smoothly.

‘Each register covers a twelve-month period,’ the priest said. The years were written in thick pen on the spine of each binder.

I took a handful and laid them on the table. I went through them hastily, skipping past irrelevant things like collection amounts and congregation size. There were fewer baptisms or marriages as I went on. The only thing on the increase was the funerals.

An hour later I had everything I needed. Silvia had married Paolo Salati in 1958. Umberto had been baptised in 1960. He had had his first communion with six other villagers in 1969. Riccardo was baptised in 1975 but had never had a first communion. I kept going until he got to 1980 and decided Riccardo either didn’t like church, or church didn’t like him.

‘What are you looking for?’ the young priest asked.

‘Everything and nothing.’

I walked over to the plastic cupboard and pulled out two more volumes: 1994 and 1995. I leafed through everything quickly. In spring 1995 I found an entry for Paolo Salati’s funeral. I wrote it down alongside the other names and dates and put the volumes back.

The priest was sitting down in a corner with a large, leather book.

‘Isn’t it Silvia’s funeral this morning?’ I said.

The priest looked up. ‘Could be. But not here. I never saw her in church and she’s not one of those who only come feet first, if you see what I mean. She’ll probably go straight to the cemetery.’

The priest went back to his book.

‘I’ll see you around,’ I said.

He didn’t say anything but nodded with a smile.

I went back to the car and drove beyond the cemetery and turned it around so I was facing the road that the mourners would be coming up. It was still half an hour before the ceremony was due to start, so I opened La Gazzetta and pretended to be reading. I skimmed through the headlines. It was mostly reports about viabilità: how new roundabouts were replacing traffic lights and making the city move more smoothly.

It doesn’t need to move more smoothly, I thought. It already has a velveteen smoothness that is thrown like a blanket over any dust or dirt. There’s an official civility that makes the city blissfully polite and considerate. But it also means that people see no evil, or pretend they don’t.

I put the paper on the dashboard and looked down the road. The fog was lifting slightly but the colours still looked boringly uniform: wet and white. A few minutes later the first two mourners appeared.

I picked up the camera from the passenger seat and moved the lens anticlockwise to bring them into focus. It was an old couple. Soon others were coming and I zoomed in on them, letting the shutter rattle as I took repeated snaps of their slow walk to the burial site.

I recognised Umberto Salati and Lucentini, the old woman I had spoken to yesterday. Salati was with a woman and two young boys. Some other younger children were there. But in all there were only thirty or so mourners, mostly elderly.

Once they were inside the cemetery, I checked all the photos on the screen. They were all good, clear shots. Another index to add to the list of mourners from La Gazzetta.

I stared out through the windscreen. Funerals always make me think of the accident, of when my parents cart-wheeled their car on the A1. It was three days before my eighth birthday. Theirs was the first funeral I had ever been to. I can’t remember them any more, just their faces from the photographs. But I remember the funeral and what happened afterwards. I went off the rails like their car went off the road. I lost not just my parents but also the idea that life was worth living. I was passed from relative to foster parent to priest. Every few months I was checked in and chucked out. None of them could handle me. I didn’t want them to though plenty tried, quite literally. I spent the next half of my childhood in institutions. When you live like that you learn pretty fast who’s coming to hurt you or help you. You work out pretty quickly who’s telling the truth and who’s bluffing. And you realise that if you’re in any doubt it pays to fear the worst.

I shut my eyes and tried not to think about it.

When they came out half an hour later, they were walking differently. Umberto and his ex-wife, the woman I assumed was his ex, were holding each other’s arms. Lucentini seemed stiffer. The children had stopped running and were holding on to their parents. It must have been the effect of that first fistful of earth, that thud of mud on wood. They had buried Silvia Salati.

I started the car and drove back to the city. I pulled up in Viale Mentana and looked at the familiar logo of the masthead written in slanting, metre-high letters. It was illuminated for the passing traffic: LA GAZZETTA.

There was a girl at the front desk reading something hidden on her knees.

‘Where’s the necrologi department?’ I asked.

‘Fourth,’ said the girl, not looking up.

I took the lift up. On the fourth floor it opened on to another front desk.

‘Necrologi?’

‘Yes.’ The girl said it quietly as if she was offering condolences. I figured she must be doing that all day.

‘My name’s Castagnetti, I’m an investigator.’ It came out formally, and the girl looked up at me. I flashed my badge. ‘Who is the editor of the pages of the dead? It’s in connection with a murder.’

The girl stared at me like I had blood on my face. She didn’t say anything but walked briskly around the open-ended wall towards the office behind. I heard phones ringing and the rattle of computer keys. Dictations to the departed, I thought. I noticed I was already talking about the disappearance as a murder. Partly because it made people sit up and listen, but mainly because that was what I felt sure it was.

A man came round and introduced himself. I didn’t catch his name, but clocked his face: he looked in his thirties but his head was shaved completely, the sort of skinhead that baldies go for. There was something about him that made him look slick. Maybe it was just his shiny tie and his polished shoes, but I figured he liked a fast buck and fast women.

‘Somewhere quiet we can go to talk?’ I asked.

‘The canteen is about as quiet as it gets.’

‘Show me.’

We went down a long, narrow corridor into a small room. We sat down by a window overlooking the main road.

‘How can I help?’ He looked eager and curious at once.

‘Say I place a notice of mourning with you, how am I charged?’

‘Per word.’

‘And so if I know how many lines there are in a mourning notice, you know how much I pay, right?’

‘Exactly. A word costs two euros fifteen, plus VAT. A photo is forty-two fifty extra, and a cross will cost you fourteen.’

‘All plus VAT?’

‘Everything plus VAT.’

‘Even the cross?’

He nodded.

I pulled out the photocopy of the mourning notice from Riccardo. Or rather, from the person pretending to be Riccardo. I threw it across to him and he pulled out his mobile phone and thumbed in a few numbers.

‘Then I reckon you paid thirty-six euros, twelve cents.’

‘Exactly?’

‘I’ll have to check.’

‘Would there be any record that I paid that amount?’

The man stared at me. It looked as if he were readying his defence against any accusation of evasion. ‘Of course there is. In our accounts we enter every transaction.’

‘I’m checking up on a confidence trickster.’

The man nodded. ‘I heard it was a murder.’

‘Might be both.’

The man shrugged.

‘This necrologio was published in Monday’s edition. I’m looking for any payment for thirty-six euros and twelve cents made on Sunday. Is there any chance you could find a payment of that quantity in the transactions from the weekend?’

The man raised both his palms to me. ‘There are confidentiality issues here. We don’t give out those sort of details.’

I hear it every day. Everyone always says that, until I can offer them something more interesting than confidentiality.

‘I didn’t catch your name,’ I said.

‘Marco. Marco Mazzuli.’

‘All right, Marco. This is what I do for a living. I look into your favourite stuff: black chronicles as you call them. You would be surprised the stuff I see. I’ve never really had a contact here at La Gazzetta …’

‘And?’ He was negotiating already.

‘I’m just saying that if you help me I could help you. All I need is to see that transaction. They would never know my source. As your readers would never know yours, if you’re with me.’ I looked at him. Mazzuli was already imagining the scoops he could get from me, his man on the street.

‘What was your name?’ Mazzuli asked in a whisper.

I passed him a card.

The man was already nodding. He could see an easy bargain. He stood up. ‘Stay here. This will take a while. We run hundreds every day and thirty-six euros and twelve cents isn’t that uncommon.’

‘So I’ve seen.’

The man got up to leave and I looked around the canteen. It was clean and cold. An elderly woman was shouting something out back. From the window where I was sitting I could see the traffic outside. It was almost lunchtime already and the cars were static and noisy as they crawled home. The canteen began to fill up with one or two customers.

The man came back with a thick roll of narrow paper. ‘This is the cashier roll for the Saturday and Sunday.’

He gave one end of the paper ribbon to me but kept hold of the centre of the roll with his thumb and forefinger. It unwound as he took a step back.

I looked at all the numbers. Every few centimetres there were transactions: the amount, method of payment, the date and the time. I scanned about a metre of the paper and saw only one transaction of thirty-six euros and twelve cents.

‘How many people worked the register that day?’

‘Just Suzi.’

‘The girl who’s on there now?’

‘Right.’

‘And is there any way of knowing how these were paid?’

‘It says here,’ the man whispered. ‘Debit card.’ He passed me another slip of paper. ‘This is our Visa record.’

I looked at it. The slip reproduced the date, time and amount of the transaction. The card details were hidden by asterisks bar the last six numbers. There were two numbers, then a space, then another four. I wrote down all the digits.

‘And do people have to come in to make a payment or can they do it over the phone?’

‘They don’t have to come in, just as long as the money does,’ Mazzuli smiled sweetly.

‘All right, thanks.’ I got up to go, but Mazzuli stood up and blocked my way.

‘Hey, hey. We had a deal. I pass you information, you pass me. What is this you’re working on? I haven’t heard of any murder.’

‘Me neither. But the minute I do, you have my word, you’ll be the first person I call.’

‘So what’s this all about?’

‘The opposite of a murder, I expect. Someone’s impersonating a poor guy who’s died.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Neither do I.’

Mazzuli seemed satisfied with my confusion and smiled. As I walked out I saw Suzi passing a chip-and-pin machine to a mourner.

For some reason I decided not to go on the motorway to Rimini, but to drive the Via Emilia. It’s a strange road, so straight you could drive it with your knees. All along it are rectangular warehouses, depots and shops: furniture outlets, wholesale food suppliers, regional offices of some important acronym. They look like they’re all made of thin metal. Very few of them seem to have windows but they have huge forecourts for cars. It looks strangely soulless, all cuboid compared to the stone and marble extravagance of the centro storico.

The city has such a bizarre contrast between its historical centre and its modern suburbs. It goes from the sublime to the functional, from narrow to wide, from cobbles to asphalt, in the space of a couple of traffic lights. I suppose every old city is like that. It’s just that not many have as much history as this one, or seem so impatient to get away from it.

Fed up of traffic lights and pedestrians, I pulled on to the motorway after twenty miles. It was just as straight and boring. It ran between the Via Emilia and the new, high-speed train line between Paris and Rome. East and west, the road was the same: flat fields and crumbling villas, the occasional yard selling cranes or pallets. As the motorway cut through the outskirts of cities, I could see the tents and chickens of the gypsies and drop-outs.

I was thinking about the Anna di Pietro woman. If Riccardo was dead, she was his common-law widow. She must have given up on him long ago. She had married, Franchini had said. Their girl would be a teenager by now.

I came into Rimini on the ring road. It’s a place of wasted beauty in the low season. Long beaches to yourself and the litter. It used to be the place where the stars hung out in the 1950s, but they had left as soon as it had become popular in the 60s and 70s.

By now it looks like any other seaside town that has tried to make money as quickly as possible. It looks like Miami with less beach and more concrete. The grand old hotels have been turned into seedy nightclubs or knocked down to make way for car parks.

I found her road, Via dei Caduti, and parked outside the building. I found her surname and rang the buzzer.

‘Who is it?’ a female voice said.

‘I’m a private investigator…’ I trailed off. It always unnerves people and I let it sink in. ‘I’m looking into Riccardo Salati’s disappearance.’

‘Why?’

‘No one told you?’

‘Told me what?’

The surprise sounded genuine.

‘I would rather talk face to face.’

The line went dead and I took a step back from the citofono. Judging by the plush block it looked like Anna had gone up in the world. It was a long way from the caravan I had heard about. I wasn’t sure she would want to think about Riccardo, let alone talk about him to a stranger.

A minute later a petite woman came out of the front door. She looked overdone: the eyelashes had thick mascara and her lacquered hair looked like it could survive a gale. I guessed there must have been a fair amount of inner turmoil for her to want such solid hair, as if it could offer a bit of stability in a fickle world. As she walked towards the gate, she glanced left and right, at the balconies of the villas next door.

‘We can’t talk here,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk.’

‘What’s wrong with here?’

She looked irritated and lit a cigarette.

‘So no one told you?’ I asked.

‘Told me what?’ She was walking me away from her house.

‘Silvia Salati died on Friday.’

She stopped walking and looked straight at me. ‘I heard. Umberto called on Saturday morning. And I’m sorry,’ she said formally, as if she had to prove it. ‘I’m sorry to hear of anyone’s death. But she never liked me, and I didn’t exactly take a shine to her. She was a severe woman. Is that why you’re here, because she died?’

‘I’m here to find out what happened to Riccardo.’

‘Who hired you?’

‘She did.’

‘Posthumously?’

‘Right. I’ve got to satisfy the conditions of her will and ascertain,’ I paused, realising I was already sounding like Crespi, ‘what happened to Riccardo.’

‘You want to find out about Ricky?’ She gave a snort of derision. ‘I’ve heard that before. Ever since he went missing I’ve had the police, the press, the privates. None of it has made any difference.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, like it was a condolence. That’s what it was because I didn’t believe Riccardo was alive. I’ve seen enough of these cases to know that Riccardo had died within hours or days of his disappearance. The body might be lying around, but the soul was long gone.

‘Listen,’ I said, giving her the ‘tu’, ‘I doubt we’ll find Riccardo. And if we do, I doubt he’ll be living. But there’s an inheritance involved. I need to satisfy myself of certain facts before making recommendations to the executors of Silvia Salati’s will. You with me?’

She was looking at me now as she dropped her cigarette on to the pavement and scuffed it with her shoe. ‘So that’s why you’re here?’

‘I need to ascertain his legal status,’ I said.

‘It’s “missing”. Been that way for years.’

‘And why didn’t you ever apply for it to be changed? An absence that long is more than justification to initiate a “presumed dead” application.’

‘Makes no difference to me. Either way he’s not here, is he?’ She was looking at me, defying me to contradict her. ‘We weren’t married so it’s not as if I had something to gain from him being presumed dead, or presumed alive, or presumed anything.’

‘It makes a difference now,’ I said, holding her stare. ‘There’s money at stake and Elisabetta is Silvia’s granddaughter.’

She was shaking her head. ‘We don’t need her money.’ It didn’t seem like the years had chilled her anger.

‘Why didn’t you ever marry Riccardo?’ I asked, wanting to know the gripe between her and the old Salati woman.

She pulled out another cigarette and lit up. ‘You don’t waste time, do you?’

‘I’m coming to the party fourteen years late, I’m in a rush.’

She inhaled deeply and turned her face to blow away the smoke.

‘What is it exactly that you’re after?’ she asked. ‘Because I doubt you’ll ask me anything I haven’t already been asked, and I doubt I’ll be able to tell you anything more than what I told everyone else every time they came round here.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Every time this story comes up, it throws my whole family into embarrassment. My husband, my daughter, myself. Ricky’s dead. If you can prove that I’ll thank you for it, I really will. Not because I didn’t love him, but because you’ll allow me to mourn him, and allow me to start a new life at last. Because Giovanni and I feel…’

‘He’s your new man?’

‘Sure.’ She took another drag on the cigarette. ‘Our lives are put on pause every time Ricky is mentioned. If he were dead and buried, it would be different. I’m sorry if that sounds callous, but that’s how it is.’

‘I understand.’

‘Maybe you do,’ she said, ‘maybe you don’t. Maybe you just know the jargon. Closure, they call it.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why didn’t you marry Riccardo?’

She stared at me, looking like she was weighing me up. ‘Why didn’t I marry Ricky?’ She laughed. ‘Because his mother was opposed to it. She didn’t want him to waste himself on a girl who lived in a caravan by the beach.’

‘Silvia Salati was against it?’

‘Sure.’

‘You were both adults.’

‘In age we were, though you wouldn’t have known it. He was her little boy. She was protective in ways that confused him. She manipulated him. Going against her will had consequences. She was helping him out financially. There were all sorts of threats about what she would do if he tied himself to me.’

‘She was lending him money?’

‘Lend was an elastic term to Ricky. She was giving him money, sure. I didn’t even want to get married, but she had made it pretty clear I was to exclude the idea anyway. I stopped going up there altogether. I hadn’t seen her for two years when Ricky went missing.’

‘You seem to have moved up in the world since then,’ I said, casting an eye around her salubrious suburb.

‘It’s called middle age,’ she said.

We had walked towards a small park where a grey-haired woman was pushing a young child on a swing.

‘And what was he like?’ I said softly when she seemed calmed.

She laughed with a wheeze.

‘Ricky? He was all show, just like Umberto. Only he didn’t have his luck. He was a real charmer. He could talk and talk, and make you laugh. But when he went out the room you couldn’t remember a word he had said.’

‘When did you meet him?’

‘When I was a barmaid at the Hotel Palace.’

‘The one on the waterfront?’

She nodded.

‘Doing what?’

‘He was working there for the summer as a lifeguard and poolside assistant. By the end of the second week Ricky was asking if he could fix drinks for the guests. Sometimes he came in wearing only flip-flops and a beach gown, like he owned the place. The manager hated him, but the guests thought he was a hoot. I think it was because he was seventeen and full of dreams. People loved his infectious confidence. We ended up visiting each other’s rooms off duty and you can imagine. By the end of the summer I was pregnant. We were only together properly for a couple of years. At the Palace in the summers, at my caravan in the winters.’

‘How was he earning his dough?’

‘Same as before: working poolside, opening deck-chairs, fixing drinks, making friends.’

‘And in winter?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose you would call him a hustler. Only he got blown around because people had more bluster than him. He was never successful in business because they always pulled something on him.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go on.’

‘Oh, everything.’ She sighed heavily. ‘He tried to make fitness videos.’

‘And?’

‘He spent millions of lire hiring the equipment and the girls and never made a single video. I can’t remember why. He invested in a company that built swimming pools that couldn’t hold water. He imported sandals from an Austrian he had met in a bar. He paid two million up front and received seven of them. It wasn’t even an even number. He got three pairs and an odd one.’ She laughed bitterly.

‘Did he have debts?’

‘He didn’t, the rest of us did.’

‘Who?’

‘Me, his mother, Umberto. He called himself a professional gambler, as if it were something to be proud of. He borrowed from his mother constantly. That was why he had gone round there that weekend, to ask for money. He borrowed from me. Usually he would tell me about some sure project that would make us wonderfully rich, if only we could get in there first and invest before anyone else. And each time he got burnt it only made him more keen to keep trying, to prove them all wrong.’

‘And he borrowed from you?’

‘Sure. Only he knew I was drying up. I didn’t have anything left to give him, not if I wanted our child to eat. So he went after anyone who would listen to him.’

‘Umberto?’

‘Sure. It was the same with all of us.’

‘Where did he go to lose it?’

‘The same place he earned it. The Palace. He would spend more money there in a night than he could earn in a month.’

‘Cards?’

She nodded.

‘Scopa? Blackjack?’

‘Anything. He would play anything as long as there was money involved.’

‘And he ran up big losses?’

‘Like I said, we did. Not him.’

‘You always paid his debts?’

‘I had no choice. What would you have done?’

‘Doesn’t seem to have made much difference. How much?’

‘A few million lire.’

‘How often?’

She moved the top of her head from side to side as if to say that it was a regular occurrence.

We watched the grandmother lifting the child out of the swing. Ricky sounded like the usual, unreliable rover. He had settled down with a woman only long enough to get her to open her purse. He ran around Romagna trying to spin cash out of get-rich-quick schemes. He had bad debts and worse friends. The most likely scenario was that an angry, impatient creditor had caught up with him and made him pay in the highest currency there is. It might have been his brother. It might have been this woman. It might have been another gamer from the Palace.

I looked at Anna again. There was something cold and calculating about her. I had noticed it when I had mentioned inheritance.

‘Those months before Ricky went missing, anything happen?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Any unusual behaviour? New friendships?’

‘Unusual behaviour was all there was in Ricky’s life.’

‘You make him sound pretty shallow.’

‘No,’ she fixed me. ‘No, he wasn’t. He was unpredictable. He did unexpected things. If he won a lot of money he couldn’t sit on it. He would have to invite everyone around, have a big party, show he wasn’t a loser.’

‘And that summer he went missing. 1995. Anyone new in his life?’

She looked at me with tired eyes. ‘I don’t suppose he was any more faithful than other men. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. I would see him getting all dressed up to go out and put two and two together. But there was nothing new about that. He had been doing that ever since I was pregnant.’

‘Was he asking for money at the time?’

She closed her eyes, as if this were the first question she had thought about. ‘No, no he wasn’t.’

‘Wasn’t that unusual?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was. I didn’t think much about it because he was always saying that he was turning the corner, that this time it was for real. That he had everything sorted out. I didn’t listen to him because I had heard it all before. I recognised that excitement in his voice. It was all self-deception. We always had more money in the summer anyway. It was the only season we had regular work at the hotel. And he was a master at soliciting tips. He didn’t have time to gamble. He had even given me back some of the stuff I had lent him.’

‘How did he manage to do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How much?’

‘Small change. A few million lire.’

‘And that day he went back to the city for San Giovanni. Where were you?’

‘I was in the caravan. He left early morning, before I was even awake. I was here all weekend.’

‘On your own?’

‘With Elisabetta.’

‘Your girl?’

‘Sure.’

‘Who was how old?’

‘Two.’

‘Not much of a witness.’

She looked at me with a sour look. ‘I’ve been through all this before. He got on a train that Saturday morning and I never saw him again.’

‘He never came back?’

‘When he wasn’t home that night, I assumed he had stayed with his mother. It happened often enough.’

‘He didn’t call?’

‘No. And I wasn’t going to call her house.’

‘And when did you report him missing?’

‘On the Monday night. He missed a shift at the hotel. He didn’t always come home, but he never missed a shift at the Palace. He was due to do the Monday night, and he didn’t show. They called me and-’

‘What did you do?’

‘I called his mother.’

‘I thought you didn’t do that kind of thing.’

She stared at me through her thick eyelashes.

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

‘That she had dropped him at the station on the Saturday night.’

Her eyes had filled up and were about to overflow. As she blinked tears fell on to her cheeks, bringing with them burnt matchsticks of mascara. ‘That’s when it all started. She made all manner of accusations.’

‘Meaning?’

‘She thought I had failed to look after him. Umberto was coming round here every other night. So was Tonin.’

‘Who?’

‘Some old guy. Massimo Tonin.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Same as all the others. Wanted to know where Ricky was.’

‘Who was he?’

She laughed. ‘Ricky used to call any new friends investors. He was probably in on some project or other. He was from one of those tiny villages near the Po. He came round here demanding to know where Ricky was.’

‘When?’

‘The first week after he disappeared. Made the same sort of accusations that everyone else has made, said I must have seen him, must know something.’

‘Why?’

‘I assume he thought I was to blame.’

‘When was this?’

‘Towards the end of that week. Once it had been made public that Ricky was missing. He seemed desperate to get hold of him.’

‘And where will I find this Massimo Tonin?’

‘He lived somewhere near the city. La Bassa I think. They had only met a few months before.’

‘Come here,’ I said, taking hold of her upper arm. She tried to shrug off my grip, but I tightened it and she stamped her heels. I walked her towards the car. I opened the door and pushed her into the passenger seat. ‘Don’t move,’ I said, walking round to the boot. I pulled out the camera, switched it on and sat behind the wheel. I held the thing towards her. She looked at the images: mourners in black walking towards the cemetery.

I flicked through the photographs and she started naming them. ‘There’s Umberto and Roberta. The boys. I haven’t seen them for years.’ She took the camera in both hands and looked at the boys’ faces.

‘You didn’t want to go to the funeral?’

‘Whatever else I am, I’m not a hypocrite,’ she said.

‘And what about Elisabetta? Doesn’t she have a right to go to her own grandmother’s funeral?’

The woman looked at me and, for the first time, looked guilty. It was clear she hadn’t even told her daughter yet.

I took the camera back and sped through the photographs. ‘Tell me if you see Tonin.’

‘Go slower.’

My thumb kept clicking the shift. People got larger on the screen as they got closer.

‘That’s him.’

It wasn’t what I had expected. He was a tall, thin man with white hair. He had an overcoat with large shoulders, which only made his legs look thinner. The photograph showed him walking on his own. His face was a long way off, but it looked set against the world. A hard, marble face with a long, thin nose.

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Family?’

‘Don’t know.’

I nodded. I had to talk to Tonin. I could make an educated guess about what had been going on, but it was no more than a guess. Silvia Salati’s husband had died in 1995 and suddenly another man was getting close to young Riccardo. Someone was setting him straight financially.

‘How old is Elisabetta now?’

She shot a defensive stare at me, as if she wanted her daughter kept out of it. ‘Fifteen.’

‘And you’ve got other children?’

‘A boy. I married a few years ago.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said, sounding insincere. ‘When exactly?’

‘A year or two after all that.’ She shrugged.

‘I heard it was just a year.’ It might have come out more mean than I intended, because she pointed a finger at me and sneered.

‘There was no overlap.’

I leaned across her to open the door. ‘I’ll be in touch. If you think of anything, call me.’ I held out one of my cards. She took the card but didn’t move. She sat there for a few seconds, thinking. She looked at me as if sizing me up. ‘If you’re going to drag us through all this again I implore you, for the sake of my family, do it quickly.’

I nodded and started up the engine.

The Hotel Palace was dead in winter. In the foyer two boys were playing football with a screwed-up piece of paper. Their uniforms were unbuttoned and they looked like schoolchildren in a playground. They stopped when they saw me and one of them went behind the front desk.

‘Any grown-ups around?’ I asked.

The boy pointed through a doorway. It led through to a windowless box of a room. A man was pulling glasses out of a cardboard box and lining them up behind the bar.

‘Can I get a drink?’

The man grunted. ‘What do you want?’ The accent was Calabrese.

‘Give me a malvasia.’

The barman grunted again as he bent down to the fridge and pulled out a bottle. As he uncorked it, he spilt some on to his knuckles. He wiped his fingers on his oily apron, then picked up the bottle again and poured the yellow fizz into a flute.

‘Three euros.’

I passed him a twenty. ‘Keep the change.’

The man looked at me with tired eyes. ‘What are you after, Mister?’

‘Call it research. I’m trying to track down a character who used to live in Rimini in the early 1990s.’ I pulled out the photo. ‘He used to work here. Name’s Riccardo Salati. Had a woman from around here called Anna. Anna di Pietro.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Castagnetti. I’m an investigator.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to the manager. Or preferably someone who worked here in the early 1990s.’

‘The manager’s not around.’

‘What’s his name?’

The barman made a tutting sound with his tongue as if even this much was confidential. I looked over his shoulder and read the licence granting the bar permission to sell alcohol. The name said Lo Bue.

‘Is the manager Lo Bue by any chance?’

‘Rings a bell.’

‘How long has he been here?’

‘Longer than me.’

‘Far back as ’95?’

‘How would I know?’

‘And where is he?’

‘He’s not around. He doesn’t show much during winter.’

‘And if you’ve got to phone him, where do you call?’

‘He doesn’t like to be disturbed.’

‘Say someone tells you to call him,’ I pulled out my pistol and placed it gently on the bar. ‘What number do you dial?’

The man opened his palms and put his hands upwards. He was staring at me with scorn. I kept one hand on the gun and pulled out my phone with the other. As the man said the numbers, I punched them in. I listened to the silence of connecting satellites.

‘Sì.’ A voice came on.

‘Lo Bue?’

‘Who is this?’ He was even thicker Calabrese than his heavy.

‘Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you about Riccardo Salati.’

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and then: ‘Who gave you my number?’

‘Father Christmas. So how about it? I hear he used to work for you back in the early 90s? Him and his woman, Anna di Pietro.’

‘I remember him. He was the lad that went missing.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Come to the hotel tomorrow. Come for lunch.’

‘Sure.’ I snapped the phone shut and looked at the barman.

‘What time’s lunch in your part of the world?’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind.’ I put the ironmongery back in its holster. ‘Sorry about that. I get impatient sometimes.’

The drive back was dull and I started thinking about my bees. A few months ago I had had to burn three of my hives. They were all infested with varroa. Dirty little parasitic mites. It took a couple of minutes to burn years of hard work. Theirs, not mine.

I like them because there’s never any risk of me getting attached to one in particular. There are no names and no emotions. I said as much to Mauro a while back, and he laughed, and said that was why I had problems with women. But I like the bees because they are so different to humans. They believe in hard work and hierarchy, for one.

I had got into bees way back. When I was a boy and my parents had died, I went to live for a while with my uncle somewhere in the mountains outside Turin. He had a farm. One summer there was a swarm, a nasty blob of noisy bees like a furry tear-drop just able to cling to the branch. It was throbbing like a hairy heart.

A few hours later an old man arrived and dropped the swarm into a basket. There was something about the way he did it that impressed me. Maybe it was because he was French and the exoticism of the foreigner excited me. But I wanted to have that skill, to show a child that something terrifying could actually be beautiful and productive.

I forgot all about it until I found another swarm a few years back in a hollow tree up near Fornovo. I built a hive out of some old planks Mauro had and mail-ordered the rest. I had beginner’s luck for a while. The first year I got twenty-eight kilos of wonderful honey. I almost doubled it the next. I was hooked. I didn’t mind getting stung. No worse than a few nettles on a country walk. It cost next to nothing. You didn’t need more than half a dozen tools and a box of matches.

There was something peaceful to it. Maybe because they could so punitively defend themselves, there was a pact of gentility. If they had to sting, they died. If they stung, you were sore. So you were careful and respectful. You took their honey, but you fed them in winter, you kept them free of diseases. Or I did, until last summer.

The mites were everywhere. I tried being soft and hard. I used sucrocide and then chemicals, but nothing worked. In the end, I dug a hole in the ground, chucked the lot in there, and threw a match on top.

My phone started dancing on the dashboard. I put it to my ear and heard a young girl’s voice. ‘This the detective?’ The voice sounded soft and uncertain.

‘Sure, who’s this?’

‘My name’s Elisabetta di Pietro. You were with my mother this afternoon.’

I couldn’t work out how she had my number and then remembered. ‘And you found my card in her handbag?’

‘Her coat pocket actually.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Why is my mother hiring a private detective?’

‘She’s not.’

‘So who are you?’

‘I’m looking into your,’ I wasn’t sure how to say it tactfully, ‘into your father’s disappearance.’

‘You going to find my father?’

I made a non-committal noise.

‘I almost hope you don’t find him alive.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because the thought that he’s still out there and, I don’t know, never wanted to see me…’

It made sense. If Riccardo was alive, he clearly didn’t care about her. When children are treated that way, they learn to reciprocate.

‘There’s no evidence that he’s dead,’ I said.

‘You mean you think he’s still alive?’

‘I doubt that very much. I think it’s very unlikely your father is still alive. But it is possible.’

‘And is my mother a suspect?’

‘Everyone’s a suspect.’

‘Except me.’ It sounded like she was smiling and I tried to imagine what she looked like.

‘You were two, right?’

‘Two and a bit.’ She laughed at herself. ‘I still say it like I’m proud of that extra bit.’

‘And when did your mother meet Giovanni?’

‘I don’t know. They’ve been together as long as I can remember. 1997 I think.’

‘And your uncle, Umberto. Do you see him much?’

‘Hardly at all. He calls occasionally. If he’s in the area he’ll drop in.’

‘He and your mother don’t see eye to eye?’

‘Umberto doesn’t see eye to eye with anyone.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He only sees his own reflection.’

‘Says who?’

‘I do. He’s so vain he looks in the shop windows to check himself out. I’ve seen him do it.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help myself being sharp with people. I’m, it’s like, I don’t know whether my father’s alive, whether my mother or my uncle were…’

‘What?’

‘Responsible.’ There was silence down the line.

‘You don’t know about your grandmother, do you?’

‘What?’

I waited, wondering whether the truth was a kindness or cruelty. ‘She died.’

‘Is that what all this is about? Nonna Silvia died? Is that it?’ She sounded as if she were losing control.

‘I’m sorry it’s me having to tell you this. She was buried this morning.’

There was a gasp and then the line went quiet. It sounded as if the girl was beginning to cry.

‘Listen, I’m driving. I shouldn’t even be talking on the phone. I’m going to do what I can to find out about your father. Just let me ask you one question. Have you ever been contacted by someone out of the blue?’

‘How do you mean?’ I could hear her sniffing.

‘Have you ever had any phone calls from a man wanting to talk to you out of the blue? Anyone ever hang around outside your school or write you letters? That sort of thing?’

‘No.’

‘All right, never mind.’

Back in my office I took out the white phone book. There was only one Massimo Tonin. The address was in a village on the banks of the Po.

When I got there, the villa looked grand. It was set back from the road by an avenue of poplars. There was a black iron gate and an intercom in a booth off to the right.

I peered through the iron railings to the side. There was a small lodge behind the main house. I guessed that was where they kept the domestics. It was getting dark and I could just make out a man clearing leaves from a ditch.

‘Hey,’ I shouted at the gardener.

The man looked up.

‘I’m looking for Massimo Tonin.’

He walked towards me, leaning his rake on the fence. He had a good-looking, weathered face with deep-blue eyes. He must have been in his fifties, but his bare arms looked strong and muscular. He had the rugged appearance of someone who spent most of his life outdoors.

‘Who are you, Mister?’

‘Castagnetti.’

‘What do you want?’

‘A chat with Massimo Tonin.’

The gardener came back a few minutes later.

‘Ring the buzzer, Mister,’ he said, ‘Mr Tonin will speak to you there.’ He pointed at the glass cage.

I stepped back and held the buzzer for long enough to appear rude. Eventually there was a click as someone picked up the phone from inside.

‘Who is it?’ said a lazy, disinterested voice.

‘Castagnetti, private investigator. You Massimo Tonin?’

‘I am. What do you want?’

‘A chat with you.’

‘We’re talking aren’t we?’

‘This isn’t how I talk,’ I said, staring at the eyeball behind the glass.

‘Why don’t you tell me what you want to talk about.’ The voice sounded distant.

‘I’m investigating the disappearance of Riccardo Salati’, I said, ‘and I have a funny notion he was your son.’

The man didn’t say anything.

‘I spoke to your granddaughter this afternoon.’

Tonin again didn’t say anything. I wanted to see his face, to see what his reactions were at the mention of Riccardo’s daughter. He hadn’t denied anything yet, which was a start.

Eventually he spoke very softly. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘this isn’t the way to talk about this. This is a delicate matter. Can I suggest we meet in my office at eight tomorrow morning? It’s in Via Farini.’

I grunted my assent and the line went dead. ‘Delicate’ was good. I assumed he was talking about the sex, not the disappearance.

I stared at the grill pondering whether to push the buzzer again. I watched the gardener who had gone back to his ditch. I wandered over towards him, as close as I could get, and shouted through the railings.

‘What’s Mr Tonin’s job?’

‘What’s that?’ the gardener said.

‘What does the big man do?’

‘He’s a lawyer. Retired now. Says he’s retired, but still goes in most days from what I can see.’

‘And you’ve worked with him long?’

‘Thirty years.’

‘Shouldn’t you be retiring soon?’

‘You saying I look old?’ The man smiled with a boyish glint in his eye. He dropped the smile suddenly and looked at me closely. ‘What’s this about?’

‘I’m investigating the disappearance of a boy from way back. You ever heard of Riccardo Salati?’

‘Means nothing to me. Was he one of Tonin’s clients?’

‘You could say that.’

It was dark now and the fog was like the inside of a damp duvet. I walked back to the car and flicked on the lights. They only made everything murkier. I could barely see the ditches either side of the road and drove slowly, only glimpsing the bends by the sudden disappearance of the roads.

Back in the office I phoned Dall’Aglio to get a bit of background on Lo Bue.

‘Lo Bue?’ Dall’Aglio said when I gave him the name.

‘Yeah, he owns a hotel out in Rimini. You ever heard of him?’

‘No. But I can run some checks.’

‘Do it.’ I said. ‘He owns a hotel called Hotel Palace. No guests for most of the year, so what he does with the space is anyone’s guess.’

‘Could be anything,’ Dall’Aglio said wearily. ‘Brothel, immigrant dive. Have you been there?’

‘Went round this afternoon. No one about but a bruiser and his boys.’

‘And Lo Bue’s the owner?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll find out.’ Dall’Aglio hung up.

I looked at the phone and wondered why Dall’Aglio was being so helpful. He usually lent a hand if he could, but he pleaded busy nine times out of ten.

I got up and looked out of the window of my office. I could see the entrance to the deli. Even in this cold, the door was open and coloured plastic ribbons acted as a threshold. I guess it saved on their refrigeration costs. I could see all the tortelli and cappelletti displayed on cardboard trays in the window.

Food is the fuel of this city. It’s not just the cheeses and hams, it’s all the sophisticated engineering that goes with them: the bottling machines, the slicing machines, the percolating machines – all are beautifully designed in those drab buildings along the Via Emilia.

Something had been bothering me all day and I couldn’t work out what it was. It’s worse not knowing why, because then I start going through all the things that might be bothering me and I’m there all afternoon: staring out of the window, unable to get out of my seat because there’s so much to do. I get like that sometimes. I speed around like a maniac for a few days, and then one comes along and I can’t even swing my feet out of bed.

I was still worried about that mourning notice. Assuming it wasn’t genuine, it meant someone was wanting to impersonate Riccardo. That seemed a pretty strange thing to do. At best it was tasteless. It sounded to me like someone wanting to muddy the waters. But it wasn’t only that that bothered me. It was the fact that the notice had gone into the paper on Monday, so it must have been paid for on the Sunday, a day before the case was reopened. If someone was trying to muddy the waters, they must have known there were waters to muddy.

Whoever placed the mourning notice must have known the case was about to be reopened before I was even hired.

I managed to haul myself out of my chair and went over to Crespi’s office.

‘Tell me something,’ I said to him when I was finally ushered into his regal presence. ‘Did Umberto bring you his mother’s will last weekend, when his mother was still warm?’

‘No. I’ve had it in the company safe for a year or so. Silvia gave it to me when her last illness was getting serious. She brought it into this office and said it was to be opened as soon as she died.’

‘And when did you open it?’

‘On Saturday morning. I was informed of her death and followed instructions. I took her letter out of the safe and read it.’

‘And did she name me personally or ask you to hire the first name out of the phone book?’

‘She wanted you.’

‘And who did you tell about this?’

Crespi frowned. He realised he was under polite interrogation and he didn’t like it.

‘Who?’ I asked again, so there could be no mistake.

‘I must have… I mentioned it to my secretary. I keep her informed of all the cases I’m dealing with.’

‘She’s the statue in the front office?’

‘Giovanna Monti,’ he said gravely, as if my description was a slur on her honour.

‘You told her on Saturday the case was going to be reopened.’

He shrugged and nodded in one movement. ‘She would never divulge anything that goes on in this office.’

‘So who else did you mention it to?’

The man paused long enough to show that he was running a memory check. He wasn’t as discreet as he made out.

‘No one. Absolutely no one,’ he said with certainty.

‘All right, call her in.’

He looked at me with disdain and pressed an intercom on his desk. ‘Signora Monti, would you mind coming in here one minute?’

He looked at me again now with defiance. The woman came in. I stood up out of politeness, but she still towered over me. She nodded in my direction, and I took it as a chance to sit down again.

‘Please,’ Crespi pointed at another armchair on the other side of his office. She sat on the arm, her spine as straight as a sword.

‘As you know, Signora,’ Crespi intoned, ‘Castagnetti here is helping us to honour the last wishes of the late Salati, Silvia, in order to establish the legal status of her son, Salati, Riccardo.’

She nodded briefly.

‘He believes knowledge of his ensuing investigation preceded his commission. He is curious to know whether you, or I’, he said hastily, ‘might have informed anyone else of the investigation during the course of last weekend.’

She looked at me, but turned back to Crespi and answered to him.

‘I…’ She didn’t say anything more than that.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘I might have mentioned it to a friend.’

‘Who?’

‘Serena.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Works in a law firm off Via Farini.’

‘The Tonin firm?’

She nodded.

‘Who is this Serena? One of the lawyers?’

‘Receptionist.’ The woman looked across at Crespi as if to apologise. I nodded at them both as if I had won a small victory. That was one of the satisfactions of this job: showing conceited people that they weren’t as perfect as they thought they were.

I was walking towards the Tonin office when the phone started ringing.

‘Sì.’

‘Your friend Lo Bue’s a nice piece of work,’ Dall’Aglio said.

‘Meaning?’

‘He opened up his wife with a carving knife when she said she was leaving him. He did four months for battery.’

‘Four months?’ I sighed. The court case usually lasts longer than the sentence in Italy.

‘He’s done time before that for the usual: fencing stolen goods, importing Albania’s finest tobacco, that sort of thing. He’s certainly been through the university of life.’

‘Only problem with that university is the graduation.’

Dall’Aglio laughed.

‘Who’s he with?’ I said, serious again.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Has he got a big family?’

Dall’Aglio caught the inference. ‘He’s from Calabria, but that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Means enough,’ I said, and hung up. I’m not one of those people who pretend they’re not prejudiced. I think everyone is

prejudiced, I reckon it’s impossible not to be. All our wisdom is received rather than invented. I’m willing to be proved wrong, but when a tough nut and his crew are from Calabria, I assume he’s only a phone call away from the ’Ndrangheta.

When I got to the law offices, there was a girl on the front desk. She was so beautiful that I looked for longer than I needed to. She had round cheeks, big eyes and thick hair in loose curls. She wasn’t wearing any jewellery or make-up, and it didn’t look like she needed to.

‘Can I help?’ she asked as I walked up to the desk.

‘Already have.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Never mind. Tonin not in?’

‘No.’

‘You Serena?’

She nodded.

‘How long have you worked here?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Castagnetti. I’m an investigator. I had a little chat with old Tonin this afternoon. He said it would be OK if I asked you a couple of things.’

She looked around at the shut doors of the adjoining offices.

‘The name Riccardo Salati mean anything to you?’

She looked at me and shook her head.

‘How about Giovanna Monti, know her?’

‘Sure, she’s a friend.’

‘You talk to her on Saturday?’

‘I expect so, I don’t remember.’ She was smiling like she was more amused than worried.

‘She tell you they were reopening a case from way back?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Yes, I remember. She might have said something.’

‘And did you tell anyone else in this office?’

‘I don’t talk to anyone in this office about anything other than work.’

‘You don’t like them?’

‘It’s not that. It’s just that our relationship is professional.’

I wondered just how professional she was. She looked it all right, her blouse all buttoned up like an ice-cool receptionist. But she might have let something slip, or someone might have overheard her conversation. Either way, the arrows were pointing towards Tonin.

‘What’s old Tonin like?’ I asked.

She looked at me like I was asking her to be unprofessional. ‘He’s an old-fashioned gentleman.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s courteous and kind.’

‘That a professional judgement?’

‘It was my mother’s judgement if you really want to know. She worked here for thirty years before I started. She died suddenly last year, and Massimo looked after me, offered me this job whilst I was getting myself back on my feet.’

‘What about Tonin’s family?’

She looked at me with suspicion, as if I was asking too many questions.

‘Is he married?’

‘Sure.’

‘Kids?’

She nodded. ‘Just one. Sandro. He’s,’ she paused, ‘he’s had his problems with stuff.’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘Substance abuse. He’s crossed the line from can’t get enough to had too much.’

‘It’s a short step,’ I said. ‘Where does he work?’

‘Here often. Not that I would call it work. He’s not even a qualified lawyer. He comes in to call his friends and download films and music as far as I can work out. Uses me as a secretary.’

‘I can see the attraction.’

She blushed slightly, but held my stare like she wanted to play the game.

‘How old is he?’

‘About your age. Mid-thirties.’

‘Which office does he sit in when he comes in?’ I asked.

She thumbed over her shoulder behind her. I wandered over into what looked more like a box room. There was a modern computer set up there though. I began shutting the door as I was asking her questions.

‘This Sandro got a woman?’

‘His shirts are ironed,’ she said, turning round towards me.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What I said. His folds are straight. I guess it’s his mother. I’ve heard she goes into his flat every day just to make the bed. She fills up his fridge with stuff she’s cooked.’

‘You don’t like this Sandro?’

I watched her through the half-shut door. She shrugged like she was too honest to deny it, but too kind to say it.

I shut the door of Sandro’s office and kept asking her questions. ‘And who was in the office on Saturday?’

‘Sandro was in,’ I heard her faintly now, but clearly enough. ‘He normally comes in on a Saturday.’

‘Just Sandro and you?’

‘I think so. There would have been a few clients coming through, dropping off documents or picking them up.’

‘And when this Giovanna Monti friend was telling you about this case they were reopening, who was in the room?’

‘I can’t remember. But I didn’t even know what Giovanna was talking about, I was just listening to her chat. That’s what we do on Saturday mornings because it’s always quiet. We call each other and make plans for the evening. I can’t even remember this Riccardo you were talking about.’

I came out of Sandro’s pseudo-office having heard every word. The box room wasn’t exactly soundproof. Whether it was Sandro or not, someone in the Tonin office had heard that Silvia Salati had died and that she had hired a private detective. Someone had decided to reach for some sand, as they say. Decided to throw some sand in our eyes. Sand up the joints and cogs and connections. Insabbiatura, they called it.

I walked out. I didn’t understand anything any more. Meeting that Serena girl in Tonin’s office had thrown me. I had a small breakthrough, but all I could think about were those cheeks and those dark, innocent eyes. She seemed pure, and you don’t come across a lot of purity in my line. The fact that she had lost her mother made me think we might even have something in common.

I tried to get my mind back on the job. That mourning notice. There was no way it was genuine, but it intrigued me. It might just have been someone playing a prank, but it was more likely that someone was trying to pretend Riccardo was alive and well, and the only people who usually do that know the opposite is true. It was a lead and it had led me, a second time, to Tonin.