The Salati Case

Wednesday

The sound of my phone invaded a dream. It was ringing and rattling the wood of the table beside my bed. I looked at the number but didn’t recognise it.

As soon as I answered, a slurred, female voice was screeching: ‘Why did you have to tell her?’

‘What?’ The lime-green numbers on my alarm clock said 5:53. ‘Who is this?’

‘I don’t know why you had to tell her.’

I walked into the kitchen and listened to her voice. It must have been the woman from Rimini. ‘Tell her what? That her grandmother had died?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Business is all it is to me.’

‘You make money out of grief, that it?’

‘Didn’t look like you were doing much grieving. And she phoned me. She found my number somewhere and started asking questions. All I did was answer them. Maybe you should try doing the same.’

‘And telling her that her grandmother was dead wasn’t enough. You went and told her that her father might be alive.’

I rubbed my forehead. ‘No, no I didn’t. I said I had no evidence he was dead.’

‘Same thing. You come here out of nowhere and start whispering, bringing back…’

‘What?’

‘Everything.’

‘I’ve brought back nothing so far.’ I wanted to go back to bed but the woman sounded drunk and exhausted and I wanted to hear what she would spill. I untwisted the angular hour-glass of the coffee machine and filled the bottom half with water. I spooned the brown powder into its tray and twisted the two halves back together.

‘You’ve brought back pain and misery is what you’ve done. She’s been up most of the night, screaming at me for being an unnatural mother.’

‘There’s no such thing.’ I listened to the woman stammering. ‘Let me guess, she’s finally asleep and you’re in the kitchen swimming in self-pity and any kind of grappa you can lay your hands on, right?’

‘ ’Fanculo.’ She said it like she couldn’t even summon up the necessary anger.

‘Listen, I’m sorry if I’ve caused you trouble. Like I said, I answered the phone and answered her questions, that’s all.’

She sighed.

‘You don’t get on with your daughter, do you?’

‘No mother gets on with a fifteen-year-old daughter. Especially when people like you come along and start stirring things up.’ There was silence down the line and I said nothing. ‘I love her,’ she started saying, ‘and I get nothing in return. I look after her every minute of my waking life and she acts like I’ve wronged her somehow. Said her father would never have left if I had treated him properly. She wants to prove her independence from me by throwing every insult she knows, but the moment there’s a whisper her father might not be dead, she’s desperate to be a little child again, to be caught up in his arms and thrown in the air.’

I heard the machine roaring the arrival of the coffee. I held the black plastic bud and lifted up the metallic lid. The last of the coffee was spitting up into the upper chamber. I switched off the gas, poured the coffee into a small cup and took it over to the window.

‘You see,’ she was going on, ‘I can give up on Ricky. Truth told, I gave up on him years ago. I gave up on him even before he went missing. I knew he would never be around long enough to be a father and a husband. But she can’t let it go. How can a little girl give up on her father?’

‘There are going to be more surprises for her before this is over.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means there’s not a lot your little girl can take for granted.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I need to check a couple of things, but I think she might have something to gain as well as to lose. Listen, I’m in Rimini today, I’ll come round.’

‘I don’t want you going near her.’

‘That hurts.’ I laughed. ‘I’ll see you later.’ I snapped the phone shut.

I pulled up the shutters. Outside the darkness was just beginning to give way to daylight. Through the fog I could just see the street lamps clicking off one by one. There were no cars on the roads and the only noise was the incessant chirping and trilling of birds.

The steam from my coffee created tiny bubbles on the window. I began drawing a stick man. Drips colluded and ran down the pane.

I went to find some clothes. I only get dressed for two reasons: modesty and warmth. I shave my head more often than I shave my chin. I never wear a suit or a tie. I am, by the standards of this chic city, a lost cause, a visual embarrassment to myself. Here if you don’t dress up every day you’re a nobody. If there’s not a certain sheen to your appearance which points you out as a person of importance, people forget you’re there. They assume that either you’ve got no eye or, even worse, no wallet. So they don’t notice you, or, if they do, they underestimate you, which is exactly the way I want it.

I dressed quietly and went out into the cold. I walked aimlessly. I passed a newsagent just opening up. The man was putting out the board with the day’s headlines. TALKS STALLED, it said under the logo of a national newspaper. The latest round of national pay negotiations had hit the buffers and the newspaper would be full of comment about how the country was descending into crisis.

The real news was that nothing was happening. Which was what normally happened in winter. Here, everything is as regular as clockwork: the schoolchildren, the buses, the meetings, the meals. It feels like the most punctual city in Italy. There’s something about the way people walk: they all know where they have to be next. If dinner isn’t served at the expected hour grown men think the end of the world is nigh.

I saw a couple jogging towards the Parco Ducale. Every now and then I heard the judder of a shop’s metallic shutters being raised.

It was almost eight and I headed towards Tonin’s office on one of the side streets off Via Farini. I was half hoping that the girl from last night would be there, but when I rang, the same male voice from yesterday spoke.

‘We’re on the ground floor on the left.’

The door clicked open. I wandered across the cold stone. There, on the left, stood an old man. He looked distinguished. He had a tie and a walking stick and smelt of expensive aftershave.

‘Good morning,’ he said formally. ‘You must be Castagnetti.’

I nodded. ‘You’re Tonin?’

The man held the door open for me. The office was similar to Crespi’s: furnished to feel luxurious. Entire walls were covered with legal reference books. He motioned for me to sit down.

‘You found us all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m here aren’t I?’

‘Could I offer you a coffee?’ There was steel inside his politeness, as if his politeness was nothing more than a warning that he expected deference in return. By being so overtly accommodating, he made it clear that he demanded esteem and subtlety. It was a charade that many powerful men played, a sort of conversation in code.

‘I assume this is about the will?’ he said, as if he were asking after my mother.

It was a strange question to ask. But that’s what lawyers did. They went to the documents and the money.

‘You’re wanting to prove Ricky’s dead?’ Tonin asked again.

I nodded. I would let the man ask his questions, but I didn’t like it.

‘Silvia’s other son,’ the man went on, placing a spoon back on the saucer, ‘what’s he called? Umberto is it? He’ll be wanting to prove Riccardo is dead. It makes sense.’

I looked at him. It wouldn’t be difficult to make the man come clean, but he would need a bit of flushing.

‘Listen,’ I interrupted, ‘I think you’re in trouble either way. You withheld information.’

‘Is that so?’ Tonin said, amused.

‘That would be the charge. A young man goes missing and you forgot to tell the police that he was your son.’

Tonin stared at me with a stony face. ‘How did you find out?’

‘You show up the year Silvia Salati’s husband died in 1995. Ricky’s flush with cash for once and no one knows how. You go round there after he goes missing. You huff and puff the way an anxious father would.’

Tonin had lost his balance. He was trying to regain it by putting his fingertips on the edge of the table but I could see his fingers shaking. He was staring into the drying brown stains on his cup.

‘It’s not something I’ve ever been ashamed of,’ he said quietly. ‘I kept it secret only because Silvia wanted it that way.’

‘For decorum?’

‘No, for kindness. She didn’t want to hurt her husband. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem to have the same scruples.’

‘Meaning?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘He never found out?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And as soon as he died, you decided you wanted to play the father after all?’

He looked at me with wry amusement. ‘I met Riccardo. It was completely by chance, but I met him and we got talking, and we got on.’

‘You told him you were his father.’

He nodded.

‘Never gave him any money?’

He looked up at me and nodded slowly.

‘He told me he was in danger. He had borrowed money from the wrong sort of people.’

‘And?’

‘I offered to help out.’

‘In what way?’

Tonin shrugged. ‘I lent him some money.’

‘How much?’

The pause was long enough to know that his next line was a lie. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘How much?’

He was shaking his head. ‘Eighty-five.’

I sucked in through my teeth. ‘Million lire?’

Tonin nodded.

I looked at him. That was enough to kill for. More than enough. It might even be enough to kill your child for. I’ve seen one killed for less, much less.

‘How did you give it to him?’

‘Cash.’

‘When?’

There was another pause. ‘I can’t remember.’

I put an elbow on the mantelpiece and deliberately knocked over a vase of flowers. The water and glass formed an icy lake on the floor.

‘When?’ I asked. The man said nothing and I nudged a framed photograph off the mantelpiece. The glass shattered on the floor.

‘Stop it.’ Tonin had his knuckles on his forehead and was trying to extend his fingertips upwards. ‘It was the weekend he went missing.’

‘Ninety-five?’

He nodded. ‘It was San Giovanni.’

Tonin must have known this was relevant. Eighty-five million. The amount and the timing said it all.

I looked at the little lawyer. He seemed broken.

‘Why have you never said all this before?’

Tonin was staring into space.

I couldn’t understand it. In most cases people withheld to protect themselves, but Tonin had kept quiet about giving money to his own son.

I bent down and picked up the photograph that was nude now, deprived of the frame and glass that made the two subjects look romantic. ‘Who are these monkeys?’ I asked, throwing him the photo.

‘Teresa and Sandro.’

‘Who are they?’

‘My family.’

‘Which family is this?’

He didn’t smile, but looked at me with resignation.

I suddenly felt myself losing control. I don’t often lose my cool, but sometimes people like Tonin really get to me: those kind of innocent idiots that don’t do anything bad, they just keep quiet so that bad people don’t get into trouble.

‘I should hand you over to the carabinieri right now,’ I spat. ‘How could you think that this had nothing to do with his disappearance? A boy that unreliable, that irregular, and you give him eighty-five million? And then he’s not around any more? You sat on this like you sat on the secret of your thing with the old Salati woman.’

The lawyer had turned white.

‘You make out you’re as pure as your cashmere but you’re like all the others. It wouldn’t surprise me if you suddenly wanted your money back and leaned on him a little too hard.’

I had gone too far, and Tonin was wagging a finger. ‘The only thing I ever did wrong’, he hissed, ‘was to make a bad marriage. That’s my only fault in all this.’

‘You really do think you’re innocent of everything? You withhold vital evidence in a missing person investigation, and you still make out like you’re a victim.’

Tonin looked up quickly at that. ‘The only victim in all this is that poor boy.’ He looked at me with pleading eyes. ‘What are you accusing me of?’ he said.

‘I want to know why were you still looking for Riccardo after he disappeared. I heard you went round to his woman’s house regularly afterwards.’

‘Sure. It’s true.’

‘Why?’

Tonin looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘Because I wanted to find him. Check he was all right.’

‘Why?’

‘He was my son,’ he shouted furiously, banging his fist on the table top.

‘It wasn’t a clever way of saying to the world that you had nothing to do with his disappearance? You kept going back there to prove that it wasn’t you that had buried him? Or were you going round there to look for your money?’

‘I’m not responsible for Ricky’s disappearance.’ Tonin was speaking through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve been suspected for fourteen years of a crime I would have laid down my life to avoid.’

‘And yet you’ve been keeping secrets all that time. Why didn’t you let people know you were the boy’s father?’

‘Silvia forbade it. Said it was out of the question. That was a condition of having him at all. And because,’ he paused, ‘that would only have hurt my wife, and Silvia’s family. I didn’t think I needed to publicise my relationship to Riccardo to prove my innocence. I still don’t.’

‘Your wife didn’t know?’

‘She found out.’

‘When?’

‘After Riccardo had disappeared. I told her. I think she must have known anyway.’

‘How come?’

‘Women know.’

I wondered. If that was true, maybe his wife had known long before.

‘There’s something phoney here,’ I said. ‘A man who loves his son, and gives him money, doesn’t keep it hushed up for so long.’ I looked at the lawyer. ‘And a man who has a granddaughter doesn’t ignore her.’

He looked up eagerly at that.

‘You’ve met her?’

‘I’ve spoken to her, sure.’

Tonin shut his eyes as if trying to picture her.

‘Listen,’ I said, trying to reach him, ‘it doesn’t seem to me like you’re the kind of man who would kill his son. Only thing is, you don’t seem like the kind of man to have a son, if you don’t mind my saying. Until you drop the respectable, suited lawyer act and start talking to me like a man, I can’t do anything for you.’

I got up and made for the door. Tonin just pushed himself up on his walking stick and nodded at me as I turned the handle.

I still couldn’t understand what Tonin was keeping to himself. He seemed impassioned when accused of hurting the boy, but was shifty when I had tried to press him for an explanation of his conduct. Maybe he was simply from the old school where discretion and appearances were paramount. He had kept a secret, he said, out of kindness. It sounded phoney to me, but kindness and love always sound phoney to me. Love is normally only the afterburn of remorse.

I walked to the station. It was crowded with the usual suspects: salesmen and students going to Milan, groups of North Africans in sandy jackets; rounder, darker Africans with more colourful clothes and tall, elderly tourists looking at maps.

The boards announcing the reconstruction work in this square were decorated with all the most important symbols of the city: a bank’s crest, the seal of the town council, the arms of a construction firm.

I looked around. There was a bar opposite where I could have a drink whilst watching the anxious commuters. I ordered a pompari: a twist of pompelmo with a shot of campari.

I took my drink to the fruit machine and put in a coin. I pressed some buttons idly and looked around. The station square was being revamped, the whole area to the north was being given a face-lift. The workers gathered in this bar to eat large sandwiches and drink pints of icy water. The usual customers, the Romanian and Moroccan plasterers, were talking about the worst foremen in the city.

Bicycles and pedestrians and pushchairs were going in all directions. This was rush hour. The cars were backed up as far as I could see. I recognised many of the people. That was the thing about this city. No matter how often I hear it, it still amazes me how small it is.

I found the stationmaster in his office on the second floor. He was an elderly man, short and sprightly. He was wearing the green and purple outfit with the FS logo of Ferrovie dello Stato on his chest. He had a baseball cap on his head which, given his age and the weather, seemed incongruous.

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said, holding out my badge.

The man took it from my hands and looked at it closely. Officially stamped documents have an alchemic quality in Italy, and the stationmaster bowed slightly, a gesture which meant he would be happy to help.

‘Taxes?’ He asked.

‘Murder.’

He shrugged and smiled. ‘I haven’t killed anything other than rabbits.’

‘You know the timetables from 1995?’

The man looked at me smugly and smiled. ‘Test me.’

‘A train to Rimini, San Giovanni, 1995. A Saturday night.’

The man looked at the ceiling.

‘1995? They had already started cutting out the trundlers. Those ones that stopped at all the villages. There would have been, let me see, the 18.32, the 20.32 and the 22.32.’

‘And through the night?’

The man looked at me seriously, like he didn’t like being pushed. ‘Well now. There would have been something around two, and another around five.’

I looked at the old man. ‘Your memory seems all right.’ I was trying to wean out the man’s jovial side. ‘How come you remember all these timetables?’

‘It was my work,’ he said, pleased I had finally asked the question he wanted; ‘it’s what I’ve done every day of my working life for forty-two years. People like you coming up to me, asking me impatient questions about this or that train to this or that town. My whole life has been remembering hours and minutes and connections.’

‘Snap,’ I said. ‘And the waiting room hasn’t always been where it is now, right?’

The man laughed. ‘It’s moved more times than I can remember. They move it every year. In 1995 it would have still been next to the bar, on platform one.’

I was looking into the distance. ‘Say someone missed a train, or the train was late, where would a young man go and wait?’

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Depends what kind of young man.’

‘This one was unpredictable from what I hear. Probably prey to the usual vices.’

It was the first time the man had paused and let a question sink in. ‘Some men would wait around in the parks outside. There were always a lot of people to pass the time of day with, if you see what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t see.’

The man looked uncomfortable. ‘There were women. And boys.’

‘And where would they go?’

‘Parco Ducale, Via Palermo. One or two had flats nearby.’

‘And there are always people selling shit in the shadows I assume?’

‘Never used to be. When I started back in the 60s, we didn’t know what drugs were. Nowadays,’ the man was getting worked up, ‘you see them hanging out there all day and all night, constantly selling stuff to young kids. There are half a dozen people within fifty metres of this office who are here selling drugs every day and the police never pick them up. Why is that? I’ve never understood it. They’re allowed to sell poison to our children in the broad daylight. Just don’t understand it.’

‘Me neither.’ I shook my head with what I hoped was enough indignation to persuade the man I was on his side. ‘And if someone just waited in the station? Where would someone go to kill time?’

‘There’s the bar.’

‘Which one?’

‘There’s the station bar. Or that other one outside the station, the other side of the bus-stops.’

I nodded. It was going nowhere. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you must have seen a lot in forty-two years. A lot of people coming and going. Did you ever see anything that you had to take to the police?’

He smiled whilst blinking slowly. ‘All the time. Every week I see couples screaming at each other. There are knife fights and the Ultras and political extremists. You see them all when you work here.’

‘But you never saw anything, back in the summer of ’95?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘This man.’ I pulled the mug-shot from my pocket. ‘He disappeared from this station in 1995.’

The man took the photo from my hand and held it up to the light. ‘I know the face, I’m sure.’

‘That’s because it was in the papers back then.’

‘That’s right.’ He squinted at the photograph again. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing him around the station, but there was some policeman who came and asked me all about it. The times of the trains and so on, just as you are.’

‘Colonello Franchini?’

‘I don’t remember his name. We went for a drink after work-’

‘That was Franchini.’

‘He asked me about the trains, showed me some photographs.’

‘Photographs of who?’

‘He didn’t say anything except they were suspects and had I seen them one particular Saturday night.’

I pulled out the photograph I had knocked off Tonin’s mantelpiece.

‘He show you either of these two?’

He looked very briefly, but looked at me with tiredness. ‘This was many, many years ago. I see thousands of faces every day. I see millions in a year…’

It was useless. I would have to ask Franchini if he had ever got this far, whether he had ever got as far as the Tonin link.

I decided to take the train back to Rimini. I had a box of photocopies of Riccardo and walked up and down the train distributing them.

The carriages had corridors down one side with little rooms of six seats off to the other. My arm was soon tired from having to yank the doors open, leaning away from the handle to pull with my chest as well as my arm.

In each I handed out the photocopies. People either looked at young Riccardo’s face in silence or else started asking too many questions. There was no middle ground. I answered them all patiently, telling them what little I knew.

‘I remember reading about this. I can’t believe it was fourteen years ago, it feels like three.’

‘That so?’ I said and let another door suck itself shut.

I had walked up and down the train before it even pulled into Modena. I changed at Bologna, but the connecting train was late. I sat on the platform wondering what percentage of trains were late. When I finally got into Rimini it was already past midday. As soon as I stepped out of the station the air smelt of seaweed and salt. There were fat gulls swooping on to the pavements to take any spare crumbs that the pedestrians left in their wake.

I walked over to Via dei Caduti. The di Pietro woman clicked the gate open after a little protest about wanting to be left alone. I walked up the short path towards the front door of her block of flats. She was on the third floor, a door half-ajar at her back.

‘What is it now?’

‘I wanted to ask you a couple more questions. Has anyone ever tried to contact Elisabetta, someone claiming to be a relative?’

She shook her head.

‘No one? No calls or letters out of the blue…?’

‘You think Ricky has tried to contact her?’

‘No, not Ricky. I fear the only person he’s talking to now is his maker. I was thinking about someone from a different generation. Her paternal grandfather.’

‘Ricky’s father?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But he died in 1995.’

‘Massimo Tonin was Ricky’s father.’

She looked at me as if it were a wind-up. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Never sure about anything. But he didn’t deny it this morning.’

She stared blankly over my shoulder and considered the implications. I guessed that her first thought would be dismay that there might exist yet another man to destabilise her daughter. But when she spoke she seemed only piqued by the hypocrisy of the Salati woman. Her lips were pursed.

‘So all that time she was criticising the way we were living, she was lying to all and sundry. She must have known this might have something to do with Ricky’s disappearance, and yet she never…’ She looked into the distance and then stared at me. ‘You’re sure about this?’

I nodded.

‘Nothing surprises me any more,’ she said dreamily. ‘All the stability we construct around ourselves collapses sooner or later. I’ve had so much collapse that I don’t bother trying to construct anything any more.’

Except your hair, I thought to myself. ‘You said Tonin came round here looking for Ricky that week after he disappeared…’

She nodded.

‘What happened exactly? He came round to your caravan?’

‘Sure.’

‘And did he go inside?’

She shut her eyes. ‘I can’t possibly remember.’

‘Think about it. It’s important.’

She shook her head and looked at me. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’ Witnesses were unreliable at the best of times, but fourteen years later they’re as good as useless.

‘Did you ever get the impression he was looking for anything other than Riccardo?’

She shook her head and frowned, not sure what I was implying.

‘Is Elisabetta in?’ I asked.

‘I’m not going to allow you to slip a hand grenade like this into her life. She’s unstable enough as it is right now. She’s barely recovered from what happened yesterday.’ She tried to stare at me with anger, but it was all burned out now. ‘I think she’s mourning her grandmother and her father and her childhood all at once, and this would only confuse her further. Let her sleep.’

The phone started ringing inside and she held up a finger and went in to answer it. I followed her into her flat and whilst she was still talking on the phone I started opening the doors. I found the girl in a small bedroom with the blinds down. She was propped up on pillows and was staring at the ceiling.

‘Elisabetta?’ I said quietly. ‘It’s Castagnetti. We spoke on the phone yesterday.’

She moved her eyes rather than her head to look at me.

‘Your mother seems to think I’m to blame for upsetting you yesterday.’

‘My mother’, she said with her eyes shut, ‘will always blame anyone except herself.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘She thought I had got overexcited by the thought of… you know, the thought that you were going to find my father.’

‘I told you, I don’t think he’s still alive.’

‘Yeah,’ she said like she was high and couldn’t care less, ‘I know.’

I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t want to be accused of building up her hopes. Ricky was dead, I felt sure.

‘I don’t think he’s alive. But I’ll try to find out what happened.’ It was my standard speech. It was what the bereaved normally wanted most. If they couldn’t have their loved one back, alive and well, they wanted to know, that was all. They yearned for what they most feared. They wanted, just once, to see the kill, because it couldn’t possibly be worse than what they had imagined.

‘You need some sleep. I’ll be back again one day when you’re better and we can talk about what’s come up.’

She just nodded and followed me out with her eyes.

As I was walking down the corridor it struck me that I couldn’t understand how a man could resist contacting his granddaughter. Surely he would want to write to her, arrange to see her, try to claim her as his own whatever the consequences. It didn’t seem natural to me. Tonin appeared to be a pretty cold-blooded customer, and it was true that he had kept his distance from his son all those years. But there didn’t seem any good reason not to reach out to a granddaughter, especially since his wife knew everything anyway. It didn’t make sense to me.

I was still in the narrow corridor when the di Pietro woman came back. ‘What are you doing in here?’ She took me by my collar and dragged me to the door. She pushed me towards the stairs and waved me away. ‘Leave her alone. Can’t you understand? I’m trying to look after her.’

I waved her goodbye with over-zealous politeness and walked down the steps.

I could understand her. Protecting a girl made more sense than ignoring her, that was for sure. If it was really the girl she was protecting. My mind started going paranoid. I began to wonder why she wouldn’t want me to talk to her daughter. It hardly seemed like little Elisabetta could be a threat to anyone. A toddler can’t keep a secret. That was Tonin’s speciality.

As soon as I walked into the hotel it felt wrong. Almost all the lights were off and there was no one at the front desk. I walked through to the bar, but it was empty.

‘Lo Bue?’ I asked to the empty room. I was just reaching under my arm for the rod when I was smacked across the shoulders by a metal pole. My cheek caught the corner of a glass table as I went down.

A couple of kicks were aimed at my stomach and head. I put my hands up to protect my face and I rolled over into a ball, but the kicks kept coming against my spine.

‘Basta.’ The voice sounded mean, but it came as a relief.

I looked up through the warm blood which was dripping off my eyebrow. The fat barman from yesterday was retreating, sweating slightly after the effort of his little game of football.

The man who had called time put his face in mine. ‘Don’t ever come into my joint and wave a pistol at my staff.’ It was the Calabrian I had spoken to on the phone yesterday.

‘This the welcome you always offer your guests?’ I said, spitting out some blood.

‘The hotel is closed.’

‘I can see why.’

Fatso stepped forward wanting to go again, but the short one held out his hand and knelt down near my face. He pulled back my head by taking a fistful of hair. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Lo Bue, the manager of this shit-hole?’ I tried to sound casual.

‘Very good.’ The man smiled. His teeth appeared bright and expensive, out of keeping with the rest of his ugly face. He looked like an up-ended anvil: a thick nose on a narrow head. ‘My barman tells me you were here yesterday playing the tough guy. You were lucky he didn’t kill you.’ The man let go of my hair and my head smacked on to the floor.

‘What do you know about Ricky Salati?’ Lo Bue asked.

‘Ricky Salati?’ I repeated, trying to work out what was going on. ‘I told your heavy back there. He went missing in 1995. That’s all I know.’ I glanced up at Lo Bue. He looked more greedy than guilty.

‘Why are you interested?’ I asked him.

The man slapped me with the palm of his hand. It felt almost soft after the toe-caps I had taken already.

‘I was asking what you want. Why are you poking around now, asking questions? What’s the idea?’ The man put his face real close. I could smell whisky and mint. His skin was saggy and tired, even as he grimaced. ‘What’s it to you? What are you doing exactly?’

‘Trying to find out what happened to the boy. No one’s seen him for fourteen years. His mother’s died. There’s an estate.’ The man nodded and I took my chance: ‘You seem almost happy I came along.’

The man leaned forward and hit me with a backhand. I poked my tongue into a new hole on my lower lip and tasted the blood: it tasted like chestnuts.

‘I don’t think you know who I am,’ Lo Bue said. ‘What makes me happy is seeing debts paid and, if that’s not possible, punishing the debtors.’

I tried to look at him, but I couldn’t focus. Objects were blurring and swimming in front of me. I could feel the blood inside the bone above my ear throbbing and I couldn’t understand what the man was saying. But I felt on instinct that Lo Bue needed something. If he was holding a winning hand, he wouldn’t have invited me over for lunch.

I tried to figure out what was going on. Someone who had been involved in Ricky’s murder would hardly start playing the tough nut with an investigator. This felt more like Lo Bue wanted to find the boy, rather than bury him.

‘So Salati had debts with you?’ I slurred.

‘You’re quick,’ the man said. ‘The boy left a lot of debts around here. That’, he said with incongruous politeness, ‘is why I would like to know where he is. And if he isn’t alive, I would like to know what happened to our money. Clear?’

‘I don’t suppose any of you have any evidence of these debts?’

The man’s face seemed to sag further as he looked at me with tired disdain. ‘Don’t insult me.’

I flinched, expecting another blow, but nothing came. I tried to sit up, using my left arm to push myself up against the table.

‘What’s the figure?’

‘One hundred and twelve million lire.’ It sounded precise, as if the man had carried it around with him like a bad memory for years. ‘You want it in euros?’

I shook my head. I still count in lire. Always will probably. There was something about those zeros that made me feel better, like I was a wealthy man. Back in those days the lire had so many zeros we were all millionaires. Seems a long time ago now.

‘How did it happen?’ I slurred. My lips weren’t working properly any more.

‘What?’

‘How did he run up the debt?’

The man looked at me like he hadn’t expected to answer questions.

‘A straight game of scopa,’ he said quickly, as if he didn’t want to linger on a sore subject. ‘It happened every night. This one was the usual. The stakes were high and they were playing quick. I had nothing to do with the tables. I just served them. It was my joint. They came here to play. But I saw it all. He lost everything at one sitting.’

‘You let your staff play cards with your guests?’ I asked.

‘He was free to do what he wanted when he was off-duty. Listen,’ the man leaned close to me again, ‘don’t you worry about how I run my hotel. You just worry about finding out what happened to him, and remember that I’m interested in finding out what happened to our money.’

‘Oh that.’ I sneered. ‘I’m afraid that probably died with him.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. He was about to pay back. He had phoned me to arrange a meeting, said he was bringing round half of it that night he disappeared. He was about to settle.’ He said it again, trying to convince himself.

‘Debtors always say that.’

Lo Bue looked at me differently, with a trace of respect. ‘Yeah. But this time it was real. He said he had half of it.’

‘And why did you believe him?’

‘I knew him. He had worked here for two years. Trust me, he was on his way here to pay back. Someone got wind of it.’

‘You don’t think he found El Dorado?’

‘Ricky do a runner?’ He coughed a guffaw. ‘No. Someone got to him. Someone who knew he was flush.’

‘Like your stooge over there?’ I looked at the barman. I pulled myself to my feet, but the effort made my head throb more and I felt dizzy. It felt like we were on a ship. I didn’t want to show the pain, but closed my eyes to regain concentration.

‘You find any information’, I heard Lo Bue’s voice, ‘on what happened to him, you call me, clear?’

I nodded, and the barman stepped forward and pushed me towards the foyer so hard that I fell over.

Once I got outside the pedestrians stared at me. I caught sight of myself in a shop window and barely recognised what I saw.

I limped towards the station to get a train back to the city.

People kept looking at me all the way. One woman even asked if I wanted her to call a doctor.

When the train pulled in, I decided to head back towards Salati Fashions.

Salati’s shop was open. It was the day after the funeral, but the girl was in there serving customers.

‘Salati not around?’ I asked her.

She thumbed over her shoulder and I walked out back. Salati was sitting in a small kitchenette, staring into space.

I coughed quietly and he glanced up. ‘You again?’ He looked me over. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Perks of the job. Listen, something’s come up.’

‘What?’

‘Paternity.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Your father died in 1995, the year that Ricky went missing.’

‘I know. It meant my mother lost both husband and son in the same year.’

‘Happy marriage was it?’

Umberto looked up at me with wet eyes. ‘What?’

‘It just seems a coincidence. And in my trade coincidences don’t exist.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Just asking if you think it’s a coincidence?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ Salati was getting angry. He didn’t like hints that he couldn’t understand. He obviously thought his mother was as pure as the driven snow.

‘Let me tell you what I know. Your mother had an affair with a man called Massimo Tonin. Your younger brother, Riccardo, was their child. For as long as your father was alive, Tonin kept his distance. But in the spring of 1995, after your father had died, they started getting close.’

Salati stood up and stared at me with an icy look. Then he started laughing, but the chortles became shorter and more nervous. Then his face dropped and he looked furious. ‘You don’t believe that do you?’

‘I do. And it’s easy enough to check nowadays. A strand of your niece’s hair would prove it.’

He looked at me with indignation. ‘You didn’t know my mother.’

‘No, I didn’t. Maybe neither did you.’

Salati clenched his fist and threw it at me. It came so slow that I moved to the left and pulled my right as hard as I could into Salati’s soft middle. I heard Salati’s breath leave him and he fell to the floor.

‘Get up.’ I offered him a hand.

Salati was on one knee, trying to breathe slowly.

‘What,’ he gasped for breath, ‘did you do that for?’

‘You were about to do it to me. Now listen.’ I got a hand under his armpit and pulled him to his feet. ‘I didn’t know your mother, I didn’t know your father or your brother.

Chances are I never will. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. You don’t have to defend their honour because the dead don’t care. You with me?’

I dropped him into a chair.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had lent your brother money?’

‘Because you would immediately have thought it was a motive instead of an act of pity.’

‘Pity?’

‘He was pitiful, believe me. He came to me saying he could no longer support his own family. He told me he had borrowed money from people who wanted it back and he had nowhere else to go.’

‘I heard he went quite a few places.’

‘Yeah, that’s what we heard afterwards. He had borrowed from Anna, from me, from my mother.’

‘I heard you were angry he didn’t pay you back.’

‘Of course I was. Especially when I found out he was borrowing from Mamma as well. He was leeching money from anyone who had it. He was probably richer than any of us.’

‘You might have a point.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Never mind.’

He stared at me trying to work out what I meant. Suddenly he started nodding slowly like he got it. I had set something off and Umberto stood up and started pacing the little kitchen area as if something had clicked. There were long, narrow boxes piled high on a table and he took a swipe at the lot, sending cardboard and silk flying through the air. He was all charged up and had a fierce look in his eyes.

‘He always knew where to get money,’ he was muttering to himself.

‘You all right?’ I said.

He just stared at me: ‘Get out,’ he said slowly, ‘get out.’

I stood in an empty doorway and watched the shop for a few minutes. Umberto seemed alarmed by the news. If, that is, it really was news to him. It would call into question the character of his mother, just as he was mourning her. It was a hard hit to take, and Salati was the sort to hit back.

I decided to tail him. I went inside the bank opposite the shop. I punched a button for a ticket and sat down in the chairs with the other customers waiting for their number to come up. Through the window I could see Salati Fashions. Laura was in the shop folding shirts and putting them inside open boxes.

Within minutes Umberto marched out pulling on his jacket. I watched him head towards the piazza and followed him up Via Farini. He walked up as far as Solferino and turned left into Via Pestalozzi. Salati held his keys towards a black jeep and both indicators flashed.

I ran towards the cittadella and whistled for one of the taxis by the entrance. One of the white cars drove up and I jumped in.

‘You see the black jeep, follow it.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘This could be expensive.’

‘I’ve got the money. Just don’t lose the jeep.’

The taxi nestled into the traffic a couple of cars behind Salati. He pulled into Passo Buole and on to the Stradone. The four-laner was blocked by impatient, pushy traffic and we were already a few cars behind him by the time we passed the Petitot and the football stadium.

We followed him on to Via Mantova at the next big roundabout. By now the taxi was far behind, struggling to keep up as Salati’s car disappeared. This was the road to Tonin’s house, I thought to myself as my back was pressed into the cushioned seat.

The taxi got stuck behind some Austrian HGV and lost his chance to overtake. He pulled out to try and see Salati, but the on-coming traffic forced him back.

By now Salati must have been far ahead. I knew the left turn to the Tonin place was coming up in a kilometre or two, and took a gamble. I told the taxi to turn left by the bridge. We were outside the Tonin estate within a few minutes. I told him to slow down just beyond the gates and got out. I walked back to the gate and peered through the railings. I could see Salati’s black beast parked under the central cedar that formed an umbrella over the circular drive.

I moved away and waited. I assumed Salati was in there, spitting blood. It was strange he had chosen to come here rather than Tonin’s office in the middle of the city. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to see the old man, I thought. It was possible that he was here to see someone else.

I saw Salati come out five minutes later. He was shouting something as the door closed behind him. He got into his car and revved the engine aggressively as he sped off. As the gates opened, I headed back to the taxi but by the time the driver had put out his cigarette, Salati would have been on the tangenziale.

‘Forget it,’ I said to the driver. ‘We’ll stay here.’ I walked back towards the gate. I wasn’t holding many cards, but surprise was always useful. I rang the buzzer.

A woman’s voice: ‘I told you, you’re getting nothing from us.’

‘Was Umberto Salati after money?’

There was silence.

‘Who is this?’

‘Castagnetti.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m an investigator.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I wouldn’t mind coming in.’

There was silence again.

‘What do you want?’ she said again.

‘I was wondering why Umberto Salati just paid you a flying visit.’

There was a crackle and the line went dead. I buzzed again but there was no reply. I stared at the grey gate. It was simultaneously ornate and brutal. Wealth’s lack of taste always surprises me.

The air seemed solid with its freezing fog. It was thickening as the air got colder. I heard the rattle of the delivery vans back on the main road. It was an isolated, melancholy place.

I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the date and the times that Salati had arrived at and left the Tonin estate.

I was looking at the notes when I heard a car slowing down. I looked up and could see the no-nonsense rectangles of Volvo headlights.

Tonin got out. ‘What are you doing hanging around outside my house?’

‘Still looking for answers.’

The man stared at me with veiled anger.

‘I’m interested as to why Umberto Salati should be visiting your house whilst you’re away.’

The man growled, but I could tell he was surprised.

‘You got any ideas?’

‘What do you want from me? I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘Have you?’

The old man just stared at me. He was wearing a black overcoat with a fur trim on the collar. He looked tired and tense. The situation was out of his control and he seemed to know it.

‘What happened to your face?’ he asked.

I ignored him. ‘What did Salati want with your wife?’

Tonin shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I told him that you and his mother were lovers. He didn’t take it well.’

Tonin was shaking his head vigorously. ‘That wasn’t wise.’

‘Why not?’

‘Have you no mercy? Silvia was buried yesterday and already today you’re telling her son…’

He had a point, but I didn’t have time for sensitive types.

‘I just spoke to your wife.’

‘When?’

‘Just now, on the intercom. Not a talkative type is she?’

Tonin looked confused, as if he couldn’t work it out himself. He looked like he was thinking deeply himself and couldn’t find an answer.

He pointed at his car, indicating to me that I should get in. I held up a finger to my taxi driver, suggesting I would only be a minute.

Tonin opened the gate with a remote and revved angrily as it swung open. As he got to the front of the house he braked hard and I heard the gravel smacking the underneath of the car.

The woman was on the phone when we went in. The hall was all marble and terracotta and her voice echoed off all the walls. She was short and slim with hair halfway between blonde and grey. She was wearing a skirt that was shorter than you would expect from someone her age, and it made her look much younger than her husband. From her appearance I guessed she read the fashion magazines, like she still wanted to look good for someone.

She turned round on hearing us and put a palm over the phone: ‘Who’s this?’ She glanced at her husband.

‘A private detective.’

‘You’ve been hanging around outside my house all this time?’ She took her palm away from the phone. ‘I’ll call you back.’

She looked me up and down. ‘You look like a boxer who lost every round. What do you want?’

‘Would you prefer to talk in private?’ I asked gently.

She laughed at the question and its tone.

‘I’ve been commissioned’, I said slowly, ‘by the estate of Silvia Salati to classify the legal status of her son, Riccardo.’

She shot her husband a look that he avoided.

‘I believe you knew Riccardo Salati was your husband’s son?’

She was still staring at her husband. ‘Is that right?’ There were years of resentment in her voice.

‘Why did Umberto Salati come here just now?’

She didn’t have a quick reply and both Tonin and I could see it.

‘He said he wanted to know if it was true. Said how we were to blame for what had happened to his family.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘That he knew our little secret. He kept saying it.’

‘Meaning?’ I looked at Tonin. His eyes were closed.

‘He had only just found out about,’ she paused, ‘about his brother. He seemed to blame my family for what had happened to the boy.’

She had recovered her composure and was talking fluently again. I had lost my chance to catch whatever it was that she was being evasive about. I looked at her face. She had a small, tight mouth which made her look mean.

‘Who do you think killed Riccardo?’ I asked her.

‘How should I know? All I knew about him was that he was a bad one. The kind that ran up debts and couldn’t stay still. It happens to some people. Especially those without a stable family life.’ She looked at her husband archly.

‘You didn’t like him much, did you?’

‘I didn’t dislike him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I’m sure you can understand why.’

‘Did Umberto ask you for money?’

‘He said he was owed, and he was going to get what was owing to him. That’s what he said.’

‘And what did he mean by that?’

‘That his father’s fortune shouldn’t be wasted on illegitimate ghosts. He said he needed proof that the boy was dead.’

‘And he thought he could get it from you?’

She stopped to draw breath, exhaled dismissively through her nostrils, and sneered. ‘I don’t know anything about his disappearance, let alone his death. I don’t know anything about his life. All I know about him is…’

‘How he was conceived.’ I finished her sentence for her.

‘I’ll open the gate for you on your way out.’ She said walking towards the door and holding it open.

I looked at her again. Her nails were painted a dark red, the same colour as her thin lips.

I bowed towards Tonin, feeling cowardly for leaving the poor man alone with such a woman.

As I walked back along the gravel, my footsteps sounded loud. I turned to look at the house, but the front lights had been switched off and it was in darkness. Someone must have been watching though because the gates swung open as I approached them.

As they closed behind me I stopped. I looked at the buzzer and walked towards it one last time. I pushed the button and held it. No one answered. I had wanted to know how many children they had, how many children of their own. I made a mental note to find out.

The taxi driver was impatient when I returned. We headed back to the city in silence. I was thinking about what I had heard. The woman seemed to know all about Riccardo. She had the weary, sarcastic tone of the wronged woman who didn’t want to be reminded of a past humiliation or slight. She must have been able to see what was coming. Umberto Salati had felt so indignant that he decided to confront the Tonin family, to insist that they compensate him for anything they had done wrong. I wondered what that was. What, other than dishonouring his father, did he blame them for?

I looked at the fields in the dark.

‘You been in this business long?’ I asked the driver.

‘Twenty-odd years. Since I left school.’

‘Always hanging around the station?’

‘Station, stadium, schools. You never know where you’re going to end up. That’s why I like it.’

The car was speeding back towards the tangenziale.

‘You the longest serving in that line-up?’

‘Just about. There’s a couple been there longer than me. But apart from them, I’m the veteran.’ He laughed.

Within a minute or two, we were approaching the outskirts of the city. There were static cranes and unfinished housing blocks amidst the frozen mud.

‘What’s the furthest anyone’s ever gone with you?’ I asked.

The man chuckled to himself. ‘I used to have a good number driving an Austrian girl to Vienna and back. Lovely girl, an Erasmus student.’

‘Ever take anyone to Rimini?’

‘Couple of times, sure. In the summer.’

‘In 1995?’

The driver put his brakes on gently and the car slowed down into the darkness.

‘What is this?’ he said quietly, catching my eye in his mirror. ‘If someone wants to ask me a question, I prefer they do it straight, if I explain myself.’

‘Try this: you ever heard of a boy called Riccardo Salati?’

‘Yeah, sounds familiar. Who is he?’

‘Was he. He went missing in 1995 whilst waiting for a train to Rimini.’

The man was nodding slowly like it was all coming back to him. I looked at his ID on the dashboard and memorised the number just for luck.

‘Yeah, I remember. I read about it.’

‘No one ever ask you about it?’

‘Not until now.’

‘You mind asking your colleagues if they know anything?’

The man nodded without saying anything.

‘No one’s under any suspicion. I’m just starting from scratch and trying to put the pieces together.’

The man nodded again, his suspicion and curiosity aroused.

He dropped me off at Borgo delle Colonne and asked for a small fortune. He stared at me closely as I handed over the cash. I realised that my face was bound to arouse interest for the next few days.

‘Here, take this,’ I said, slipping him a card. ‘There’s a reward for any information,’ I lied.

I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was shocked at what I saw. Only my cropped hair looked normal. My right eye had swollen mauve and my ear lobe was caked in dark red crusts. The lower lip of my mouth looked bloated. I tried to roll my shoulders, but each millimetre of movement hurt in different ways. I was surprised how the pain shot to my back or fingertips as I tried to move my arms. I swallowed some painkillers and crawled into bed. I fell asleep to the hypnotic sound of the rain lashing against the windows.