The Salati Case

Thursday

Thursday morning. I had been getting dressed when the phone went. It was Mauro. I found the news more confusing than surprising.

‘Salati’, I heard him say, ‘committed suicide.’

I thought it was him telling me his take on the Riccardo case. It sounded like a statement about what had happened to the young boy. But his voice was urgent and it was barely morning.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Umberto Salati. He’s committed suicide.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I heard it from a friend.’ Mauro told me the news. They had found Umberto outside his condominium early this morning. He had sky-dived from the top floor.

I kept hearing myself say I couldn’t believe it.

‘I heard this morning’, Mauro said, ‘when I was out buying the paper. Someone at the edicola told me.’

‘Is it public yet? Is it on the news?’

‘The radio said at six that a dead body had been found. They haven’t formally identified it.’

‘So how do you know it’s him?’

‘Because this guy seemed to know the details. He said Salati had jumped.’

‘I can’t believe it. You’re sure it’s Umberto Salati?’

‘Like I say, it hasn’t been confirmed. What are you going to do?’

‘He lives in Via Pestalozzi, doesn’t he?’

‘By the cittadella.’

‘I’ve got to go. Thanks Mauro.’

I threw the phone on the bed and finished getting dressed. It was freezing. I pulled on a jumper and went to put on the coffee.

Salati had committed suicide. Umberto Salati had jumped and I was the one who had pushed him to the edge. I had tried to break him and I had succeeded nicely. I don’t normally feel guilt because I live, if I may say so, a pretty clean life. But now I felt guilt like an ice-cube in the heart. If it was true that Umberto was dead, I knew I was to blame.

It was still early and after last night’s rain the sky was a slightly lighter grey than yesterday. I slugged the coffee and headed out towards the cittadella. The city was still asleep, just the odd bike or moped heading off to work.

As I got closer, though, there were people running towards Via Pestalozzi. It made me impatient to get there first and I started walking more quickly. There were carabinieri at either end of the street holding back people with microphones.

‘Is it true?’ I asked a man with a camera on his shoulder.

‘Don’t know.’

‘What’s the official line?’

‘They’ve found a body.’

‘Has someone tried to call him?’ I didn’t even need to mention Salati’s name.

‘No reply.’

I moved towards the carabinieri.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘There’s been a suicide.’

‘Have they identified the body?’

‘No.’

The carabinieri didn’t like privates muscling in, but I had to try. I showed them my licence but it didn’t make any difference. I got the usual, dead-pan brush-off.

There was nothing to do. I went and sat in the bar at the corner of Via Solferino. Other journalists started turning up. Someone from La Gazzetta, one of the staff reporters from the local radio station, the local Rai guy.

Carabinieri kept coming and going. The first reliable confirmation we got was when one of the neighbours emerged from the condominium.

He was immediately besieged by the journalists and he seemed to enjoy the attention.

‘Is it true it’s Umberto Salati?’ one of the journalists asked.

‘It’s unbelievable. Poor man. I had no idea he was, no idea he might…’

‘Could you identify who it was?’

‘Umberto,’ he said, hearing the question for the first time. ‘He was on his back, but his head was, it was horrible.’

I looked beyond the crowd. I had to get to the site, but it was still cordoned off. I had already shown my badge to the blank carabiniere this end of the street, so I did three sides of a rectangle, walking along Solferino to the Stradone, along that to Passo Buole so that I came at the street from the other end. An officer held up his hand as I approached.

‘Forbidden,’ he said.

‘I live here.’

‘What number?’

‘Seventeen.’ I pointed at a building and the carabiniere fell into step with me, expecting to accompany me to my door just to make sure. He kept looking back every few steps to check that no one else had ducked under the thin plastic ribbon.

I walked slowly knowing I would be allowed to pass only once. After they had realised I didn’t live here, I would be hounded away with a choice insult. I slowed down even more as I came to the middle of the street. There was an ambulance, two carabinieri Alfa Romeos, and an unmarked car that was so badly parked it could only be the plainclothes.

Outside the block at number eight were men in white overalls taking measurements in the courtyard. I crouched down, pretending to be doing up my shoe-laces and saw between the various ankles a man’s face.

The chin was unnaturally far from the shoulder. The yellowing moustache was red. I tilted my head and saw the con torted features of Umberto Salati: the thick hair, the round cheeks. It looked like he was asleep.

I had an involuntary intake of breath. Seeing it like that didn’t leave much doubt about life and death.

I pretended that I had forgotten my keys and slinked away from my escort. I still couldn’t believe it.

I tried to think straight. I had been in the game long enough to know that something was suspicious. This had something to do with Riccardo. Whatever had started a couple days ago had caused Umberto Salati to jump. Or had persuaded someone to push him. Because it was always like this. A case was never just a case. It became many, each one knocking into the next. What I had assumed was a cold case had become suddenly hot. A bit of gentle sport had become dangerous.

I felt under threat myself, as if I were somehow responsible for what had happened. I was often tense on a case, but I never felt, like now, that I was somehow at the centre of it. It might even have been my aggressive openness the night before that had unhinged Salati.

I hated not being at the scene of the crime. If this really was a murder, every minute was precious. You needed to stop people moving. You couldn’t let them into or out of the building. You had to do everything quickly: take statements, swabs, photographs, measurements, record number plates, request phone records, dust every handle and button in the building. I didn’t trust the officials to be anything like thorough enough.

‘What are you doing?’ The voice made me jump and I stood up quickly. ‘Castagnetti?’ The voice sounded surprised.

It was Dall’Aglio. He had the same uniform as the young boy who had been escorting me, but he looked much older. ‘You shouldn’t be here. I’m going to have to move you on.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said wearily.

‘What are you doing here anyway? I know you’re quick, but this isn’t even public knowledge yet.’

‘Tip-off.’

‘Always a tip-off, eh?’

I looked at him, trying to work out if he was malleable. ‘Was it really suicide?’

‘I can’t answer that, you know the rules.’

‘What time did it happen?’

‘There will be an official announcement later today.’

‘What floor was he on?’

Dall’Aglio didn’t say anything, but subtly put his index finger vertically upwards.

‘Top?’

He nodded.

I looked at Dall’Aglio. We had been out for a drink together a couple of times but now he was in uniform and this was different. It was pointless to throw more questions his way.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK. See you around.’

I walked a little further on and took out my binoculars. There was a row of trees shielding the building from the street. I moved further on to see the building better. It was a six-storey block. It looked elegant and large. Through the brass and glass doors you could see the dark banisters. The lighting was low. It looked typical for this chic part of town: large awnings overhanging balconies laden with leafy plants.

The top floor was surrounded by a terrace which formed a continuous balcony on all four sides. It had no plants. I could see an open door leading on to the balcony above where the body lay.

I moved my gaze downwards, past the trees to the gravel path where Salati had fallen. Closer towards me was a sloping concrete drive leading down to what was presumably the underground car park.

I put the binoculars back and ducked under the cordon the other side of the street. I pulled out my mobile and called Crespi.

‘Umberto Salati is dead,’ I said bluntly.

‘Who is this?’

‘Castagnetti. You hired me a few days ago, remember? Umberto Salati is dead. There’s no official confirmation but I’ve been to the scene. It’s him.’

For once he was speechless.

‘We need to talk,’ I said. I didn’t want to go back to Crespi’s office. The man seemed impregnable there. ‘Let’s meet in the square at eleven.’

I snapped the phone shut. I looked back one last time at the palazzo. There were armed guards at the front and back entrance. By the cordon I could see an old-fashioned Italian circus. I could see the carabinieri taking statements in the car park, and the reporters were then taking statements from the carabinieri. Both were then reporting those statements to their superiors who would publicise them when it suited.

The people coming out of the cittadella paused to look at the disorder and ask questions.

‘What’s going on?’ people kept asking me. I shrugged so many times I got backache.

On the Stradone it was business as usual. Women in slack fur coats bustled along the pavements. They looked like hairy eggs. I saw a man carrying a dog in a Burberry handbag. A young girl was wearing a silver-grey Belstaff jacket, only it was imitation because the label said Belfast. Perhaps it was deliberate, a subversive logo. But it looked the same as the real thing. That was the important thing in this city: to look the part, to give off the signals if you only knew how.

I walked slowly towards the Circolo. I called Mauro and told him to meet me there. I wanted to do what the rest of the city would be doing: watch the story on TV.

Mauro was there before me, already nursing a glass of malvasia. The TV was on full volume. There were live feeds from Salati’s house. Only hours after his death there were camera crews outside his palazzo, some conducting interviews with his neighbours via the intercom, others filming the roof terrace from below. Funny how police always let in their favourite journalists.

‘What happened to you?’ Mauro asked cheerfully. ‘Looks like old Salati landed on you.’

On the TV, twenty police cadets were shown combing the gardens and shrubs below. Tall trees were being searched, prodded and pulled by policeman standing in the rectangular fist at the end of a crane’s yellow arm.

Then there was an interview with the slippery mayor. He chose his words very carefully, as if he were trying to save himself from something: ‘He was a dedicated man who represented the best of this city – enterprise, imagination, generosity. We are all in mourning. Our thoughts’, the mayor was now looking into the camera, ‘are with his family.’

As usual the institutional expressions of regret disguised any discord. I knew the official civility by now. It meant no one had a bad word to say against anyone who was dead. Death always made everyone wonderful.

‘Are you personally convinced’, the bald journalist asked the mayor, ‘that Umberto Salati voluntarily took his own life?’ It didn’t look right and the little journalist obviously knew it. No one dared to ask such a question on live TV to such a powerful politician unless the piazza was with you.

The mayor drew breath slowly and nodded. ‘From early indications it seems so. Although it does appear that Umberto Salati died by his own hand, I hope we remember him for the way he lived his life, not for the way in which he ended it.’ Mauro threw a shiny napkin at the set. ‘Balle’, he said. ‘You know that “suicidarsi” isn’t just a reflexive verb? Sometimes there’s a subject and an object involved. It’s something that someone does to someone else.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. I had heard it all before: people were always being ‘suicided’.

‘You’ve got a crazy situation’, said Mauro, ‘where you might suspect Umberto of murdering Riccardo back in 1995, but at the same time you now suspect Riccardo of murdering Umberto over fourteen years later. And until you find Riccardo, walking or rotting, you won’t know which one it is.’

‘Maybe neither,’ I said with resigned frustration. It was like trying to thread a needle with cooked spaghetti.

It was surely too much to think that Salati’s death was Ricky’s doing. Things like that just didn’t happen. People didn’t turn up out of the blue to commit a fatal push and disappear again. The only connection I could find between the brothers was some meaningless word like ‘cursed’ or ‘jinxed’. Silvia Salati’s sons were gone. And for the time being not even death connected them, at least not until I found Ricky’s skeleton somewhere.

Even if Riccardo was alive, why would he bump off his brother? If it was greed, he surely would have done something before their mother died. That way her estate would all be his. As it was, Umberto’s share of the estate would now pass to his ex-wife or their children. There didn’t seem to be a motive.

Maybe it really was suicide. Maybe Umberto was distraught at the death of his mother, distraught at the fact that he might never have truly known who she was. He might have been filled with remorse for what had happened, or what he had done, to his brother. Maybe he thought I was closing in on him and had preferred to face death than face the music. There were certainly enough motives for suicide.

But it just didn’t add up. Umberto didn’t seem like a broken man. He seemed like the sort to get angry, to get even, rather than let life run him over.

Mauro switched to the other local channel. An anchorman announced an interview with Salati’s grieving ex-wife from Traversetolo, Roberta. She was filmed stepping on to her doorstep to say she was saddened to hear of the death of her former husband, and that for the sake of their children the family would ask to be allowed to mourn in private.

‘Auguri,’ I said sarcastically.

I knew that the television would pollute everything about this case. It would be the source of all information. We always complain about the lack of justice in Italy, about the fact that most iconic crimes in the country’s history go unpunished. But that’s largely because everyone expects clarity to come from the television. Its studio experts speculate on these misteri, they combine excited guesses with stoked indignation. Every new scoop pretends to offer clarity, but actually spreads confusion to keep the story going. That way the spectacle will never finish and it can be rewritten through bar-room gossip. And then the grande pubblico will be able to show, through paranoia and fantasy, that you really can’t believe in anything. In the end, everyone will have their own, breathtaking explanation for what happened in this or that tragedy.

I watched for another hour, hearing the same bulletins repeated every few minutes.

I wondered how much the carabinieri knew about Riccardo Salati, Umberto’s missing brother. Dall’Aglio would be contacting me, that was for sure. I would almost be their first lead. That was something I didn’t need: being leaned on by resentful uniforms who had nothing else to go on. The only advantage was that the information would have to go two ways. I would spill the little I knew about what had happened in 1995, and Dall’Aglio would let slip some forensic detail or anomalous alibi they had turned up.

I slugged the dregs of my wine and said goodbye to Mauro.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked, hurt.

I didn’t say anything. I just slapped his shoulders and left the hardened drinkers of the Circolo to their favourite poisons.

I wandered aimlessly and listened to people’s conversations. There’s a saying that the city is so quiet that people whisper. That’s what it seemed like this morning. There were small groups gathered together in the corner of bars, leaning close together so that no one else could hear. I could guess what they were saying. I had heard all the old men at the Circolo. I had heard people in the bus-stops. They were all asking about the Salati suicide and saying it sounded wrong. It was a mess which had been served up too neatly.

There was too much I didn’t know. And even when I knew the facts, there might only be one pointer hidden amongst them all. Like the time Umberto Salati had returned home. Where had he been? Who he had spoken to? Who was in the block of flats? What had they heard?

My phone was ringing. I slid it open and before I even got it to my ear I heard a man’s voice: ‘Castagnetti?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Mazzuli from La Gazzetta. We met the other day. We’re running a story tomorrow about Umberto Salati’s death.’

He hadn’t said suicide and I felt on edge.

The journalist kept talking. ‘Is it true you were investigating the disappearance of Riccardo, Umberto Salati’s younger brother?’

I paused. I could hear the hack tapping his keyboard impatiently.

‘What are you writing?’

‘Just taking notes.’

‘I haven’t even said anything yet.’ I couldn’t be sure what he already knew. La Gazzetta was the official mouthpiece of the city’s wealthy industrialists, and it didn’t go out on a limb for a story like this without being very sure of its facts. If this man was being given space to write about the Salati death they must have had some information.

‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Is it true there’s evidence Riccardo Salati is alive?’

So much for them knowing their facts. ‘Absolutely none at all.’

‘Didn’t he publish a mourning notice in our newspaper on the occasion of his mother’s death?’

‘That was someone else,’ I said disdainfully.

‘Have you got any proof of that?’

‘You know the answer to that.’ I remembered the Visa slip that this same journalist had passed me only two days ago.

‘You’ve traced the payment?’

‘Sure,’ I lied.

‘Who made the payment?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘I thought we had a deal?’

‘That doesn’t include passing information to a journalist before it’s passed to the appropriate authorities.’ When I lie I become more self-righteous than an altar boy.

‘Is it true Riccardo Salati is a suspect in his older brother’s murder?’

I laughed. ‘You’re talking to the wrong man. I don’t know who’s a suspect any more than you or your chickens.’

‘Do you believe the suicide story?’

Mazzuli was waiting for a reply. I didn’t say anything and eventually I heard him fingertipping a keyboard.

‘This is all off the record,’ I said. ‘You put my name in print and I’ll never speak to you again. You with me?’

‘Fair enough,’ he said like he hadn’t heard. ‘So?’

‘Put it this way: I would be amazed if it were suicide.’

‘Let me ask you another question. Is it true Umberto was investigating Riccardo’s death?’

‘That’s a more intelligent question.’ I scratched a sideburn. It sounded loud inside my head.

‘And?’

‘He was probably doing something similar to yourself. Asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Listen, you want a scoop on the Salati story, I’ll give it to you the minute I find it, believe me. I’ll call you. We had a deal and I’m a man of my word. But for now I know nothing about it other than what I’ve heard on TV.’

‘Had you already interviewed Salati about his brother’s disappearance?’

‘No comment.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘You can take that as goodbye.’ I hung up and stared at the phone. So much for trying to swap favours with a journalist. This was exactly what I had dreaded from the start. I was at the centre of a media storm.

Crespi was already waiting under the hooves of Garibaldi’s horse when I arrived.

‘You will obviously’, the notary said first up, ‘have to make a statement to the police about your own investigations.’

That angered me. Crespi was condescendingly telling me my own moral duty as if I didn’t know what it was. I already knew that my poking around would have to be made public and I didn’t need Crespi reminding me of it.

‘My commission’, I said slowly, ‘was merely to verify the legal status of the subject Salati, Riccardo.’

‘And had you already contacted the now deceased older brother?’

‘Of course I had contacted him,’ I spat. ‘I interviewed him briefly in his shop, nothing more.’

My words sounded aggressive, and it shocked me how quickly I was brushing myself clean of a man who had only just died.

‘Dear Castagnetti, they were brothers. You surely realise that their fates were in all probability linked? What happened to one is almost certainly related to what happened to the other.’

I didn’t know what to say. It was undeniable. Crespi knew it. Riccardo might have been killed by Umberto, or – if you were imaginative – the other way round. Somewhere there was the crime of fratricide, that was likely. My problem was that if one of the brothers had murdered the other, that still left one dead body unaccounted for.

‘What you tell the police is your business,’ Crespi carried on. ‘All I ask is that you provide me with a report regarding the legal status of my client’s younger son, Riccardo.’ He spoke as if he were dictating a letter.

‘Coglione,’ I said to myself as I walked away.

I walked back to my place in Borgo delle Colonne. I picked up the phone and dialled the number of the di Pietro woman in Rimini.

‘You’ve heard then?’ I said when she came to the phone.

‘I heard.’

‘Do you believe it?’

‘What?’

‘The suicide.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where were you last night?’

She laughed. I repeated the sentence a little more slowly.

‘I was here, with the family.’

‘Giovanni and the children?’

‘Right.’

‘And they can confirm that can they?’

‘Come and ask them. Where else would I be?’

I nodded to myself. It was far-fetched to see her wrestling Salati out of a window, but I had to ask. It was another fact that would need checking.

‘You need to get a guard on Elisabetta,’ I said.

‘She’s very safe here,’ Anna said. ‘What she needs is rest, not all this anxiety around her.’

‘There’s no point looking after her well-being if she’s dead, you with me? Her uncle has been murdered, and her father has been missing for more than a dozen years. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s next.’

The woman didn’t say anything but was breathing heavily. I could hear little coughs like she was trying to get a fishbone out of her throat. It’s strange listening to someone you don’t know crying on the phone. Almost like listening to them have a shower through a bathroom door.

‘I want to hire you,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘If she really is in danger, I need someone to look after her.’

‘I’m already hired,’ I said sadly. Working freelance is like waiting for a bus. Nothing turns up for ages, then everything comes at once.

‘Couldn’t you do both?’

‘Conflict of interests, sweetness.’

‘But you just said, she’s in danger.’

‘She might be. Call the police, let them know. Or call a private. There are enough in Rimini from what I remember. You could always call in the heavies from the Hotel Palace. Another thing, you’re going to get a herd of hacks coming your way. They’re probably on the Via Emilia as we speak.’

She didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to labour the point, but I had seen clients of mine in the past who had been in the blizzard of publicity and it was a cold and frightening place. It felt like the world was staring at you, sneering and pointing. ‘Your number’s in the book, isn’t it? You might want to take the phone off the hook.’

By the time I got back to my office there was a small gathering of the city’s worst journalists. I recognised Mazzuli there as well.

There was no point trying to blank them. We would have to come to some sort of deal.

They recognised me long before I even got to my front door. About half a dozen thrust microphones under my chin and asked me questions simultaneously so that I couldn’t understand any of them.

‘I’m only talking if that camera is switched off.’

The cameraman pointed it at the pavement and opened a grey plastic gate on the side of the machine to shut it down.

All journalists were like predators, but the TV crowd were the worst.

‘Right, I’m not making any comment until I’ve spoken to the relevant authorities.’ There was a groan of disappointment from the journalists. ‘I will happily talk to you as soon as I have arranged to share with my uniformed colleagues any information I might have regarding this case.’

They stared at me in silence, and then all started throwing questions. I walked inside and shut the door on them. I dropped the tapparelle, allowing the cord to run through my fingers just fast enough to warm them.

I sat down and dialled Dall’Aglio. As soon as I gave my name I was put through.

‘Castagnetti,’ said Dall’Aglio, ‘just the man.’

‘Did you give my name to the press?’

‘Of course I didn’t. If it’s any consolation, we’ve probably got more journalists out here than Palazzo Chigi. There have been fifteen of them on my tail all morning.’

‘Understandable. It is a murder.’ I said it pointedly, trying to trip Dall’Aglio into an indiscretion.

‘Listen, it’s far too early to know what it is. My instinct says you’re probably right, but I’m not going to go public until I’m very sure of the facts.’

‘Which are?’

‘You tell me.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Had you spoken to Salati about your investigations?’

‘Sure.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. In his shop. His assistant was there. I’ve been in regular contact with him ever since Monday.’

‘No sign he had something like this in mind?’

‘None at all. He was a man in mourning, he looked tired, but he wasn’t broken. There’s no way this was suicide. I feel, somehow, like I caused his death…’ I let the sentence hang there, hoping Dall’Aglio would agree to cooperate.

‘Meaning?’

‘You’ll reciprocate?’

‘Don’t I always? Go on, tell me…’

‘It turns out Riccardo, the younger brother, wasn’t quite what he seemed. He was the son of Massimo Tonin, the lawyer. Tonin had an affair with the Salati woman back in the 1970s. I told Salati as much yesterday and he was round there in a shot.’

‘Where?’

‘The Tonin estate.’

‘You tailed him?’

‘Sure.’

‘And you saw him come back?’

‘I saw him get back in his car, the black jeep, and leave the Tonin place. That was the last I saw of him until this morning.’

‘What time did he leave their place?’

I looked at my notebook. ‘Seven thirty-nine. If he went straight home, he would have been there by eight.’

Dall’Aglio was silent. It was probably the best lead they had and I thought I might as well pass on everything. ‘There’s something else. I’ve got a Visa slip for a payment that interests me.’ I read the six numbers out of my notebook. ‘Six Two Two Zero Four Nine. Put a trace on that and let me know.’

‘What is it?’

‘Someone appears to have been impersonating the younger brother. Published a notice of mourning in Monday’s Gazzetta.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

I didn’t reply because there wasn’t any certainty about anything.

‘You’re sure it’s not Riccardo himself?’

‘I would be very surprised. But yeah, it’s just about possible. Trace it.’

‘OK. What else?’

‘That’s it so far.’

Dall’Aglio sighed.

‘You?’ I asked expectantly.

‘Not much yet. The autopsy is due back this afternoon. That’ll tell us more.’

‘Who’s doing it?’

‘I don’t know. One of the regulars. There’s just one thing that worries me at the moment. We haven’t found his keys.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We haven’t got Umberto Salati’s keys. It’s a minor detail and I’m sure they’ll turn up, but for the moment we haven’t found any. Not on his person, and not in his flat.’

I frowned. That was something and Dall’Aglio knew it. He was pretending it was a minor irritant, but they would already have been through the flat with a toothcomb and if they hadn’t found the keys it meant they weren’t there.

‘The keys weren’t on him?’

‘Nothing in his pockets except cigarettes and a lighter.’

I suddenly had something to go on and felt restless. As always, it wasn’t something so much as the absence of something. It didn’t make sense that no keys had been found. It made the whole official narrative of the suicide seem implausible. If Salati had let himself into his flat, where were the keys? If they were in his pocket when he jumped, why weren’t they on him when he was found? If Salati didn’t have his keys, how had he let himself into the flat?

‘It’s definitely murder isn’t it?’

Dall’Aglio gave a non-committal grunt. ‘If so, we have another problem. There was no murder weapon.’

‘Gravity,’ I said. ‘That and the ground.’

‘And the push,’ Dall’Aglio said, as if he was fantasising, imagining people behind Salati, pushing him off the balcony. ‘I can imagine lots of people at his shoulders, itching to give him a nudge. He had enough enemies from what I can work out.’

‘Friends too,’ I said, ‘they’re the real danger.’

‘Bad friends are like beans,’ Dall’Aglio said. ‘They make noise behind your back.’

I laughed. ‘He had more than noise behind him, by the look of it. You’ll let me know about the autopsy and that Visa slip?’

‘Yes, yes.’

I needed to get hold of Salati’s shop assistant. I phoned a friend who had a small clothing boutique the other side of the piazza, on Via Nazario Sauro.

‘It’s Casta,’ I said. ‘You heard about Umberto Salati?’

‘I heard just now. Is it one of your cases?’

‘Not really. I’m investigating something else, but now this has come up. Listen, I wanted to know about Salati’s assistant, Laura. You don’t know her surname by any chance?’

‘Laura? I know her. Cute chick.’

‘A name?’

‘Laura’s all I ever heard her called.’

‘Did they have something going on?’

‘Umberto didn’t employ girls unless something was going

on, if you know what I mean. He liked a high staff turn-over, liked to keep everything fresh.’

‘And you don’t remember her name?’

‘No idea. But I could ask the girl who works here on a Saturday, she would probably know. I’ll call you back.’

The line went dead. I stared out of the window. There were two men playing cards on the steps by the statue of Padre Pio.

The phone started ringing again. ‘Laura Montanari, that’s the name.’

I thanked him and reached for the phone book. There were hundreds of Montanaris. I could have found out which one it was from Dall’Aglio, but I wanted to work on my own. I phoned them one by one until a man came on the phone and started shouting about how the press should leave his daughter alone. That was a decent giveaway.

I wrote down the address and was there within a few minutes.

Her father answered the door.

‘I’ve told you, she’s not making any statement…’ He stopped as he looked at my badge.

‘Who are you?’

‘Private investigator. I need to talk to your daughter. She knows me. I was a friend of Umberto Salati.’

Montanari looked at me with suspicion but opened the door. I walked inside and saw the young girl lying on a sofa. By the high standards of a shop assistant she was dressed down. It looked like she had been crying.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. Her father had left the room. ‘When did you hear?’

‘This morning. When he hadn’t opened up I went round there.’

‘To his?’

‘Sure.’

‘You reported it?’

She nodded. It looked like her eyes were going to overflow again, so I waited.

‘You’ve got keys to his place?’

She looked up to see if her father was in earshot. ‘Sure,’ she said softly.

‘I want to know about his keys. Were they all on one ring?’

‘Big bunch, sure.’

‘Could you describe Umberto’s key-ring to me?’

‘It was one of the free ones from the shop we give to our customers.’

‘Have you got any here?’

‘No. But I could show you…’

‘What’s written on them?’

‘Just the name of the shop, Salati Fashions.’

‘Did he ever forget them?’

‘All the time.’

‘How many times in the last month?’

‘Three or four. He would normally call me just as I was going to bed. He would phone to ask me to let him into his flat. I was never sure whether he really had lost them, or whether it was a ruse to get me round there. That was part of the reason my father didn’t like him. He would call me late at night, and I would have to go round there to let him in, and then usually I would go up and you know…’ Tears fell off her cheeks on to her lap.

‘You said your father didn’t like him…’

‘It’s a turn of phrase. He wouldn’t,’ she looked at me incredulous. ‘That’s impossible.’

The thing about the keys still worried me. I knew what I was looking for now, a key-ring with the Salati Fashions logo. I would have to find how many had been handed out as freebies to customers and suppliers. I figured that the fact that Salati was absent-minded meant those keys couldn’t have given access to any secret part of Salati’s empire. No reputation or fortune depended upon them. There would be no confession locked away in some safe. If Salati mislaid his keys all the time, it didn’t seem likely that they led anywhere. Another dead end, I thought.

‘And had he forgotten his keys last night?’ I asked her. ‘Did you let him in last night?’

She shook her head.

‘What was he doing last night?’

‘Nothing. He said he was going home to sleep. He had been shattered since his mother’s illness. He hadn’t stopped for months. He just needed to sleep. That’s what he said.’

‘Who else had keys to his flat?’

She shrugged.

‘Did he have other women?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Were there other women in his life?’

She looked up at me as if I had insulted her. ‘There was his wife, his mother, if that’s what you mean. They both had the keys to his flat.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because they used to let themselves in to do his laundry, make his bed, that sort of stuff. Less so recently, but when I first got to know him they were always around.’ I shook my head. It always amazed me that grown men couldn’t pull a sheet over a mattress.

It was a short drive to Traversetolo where Umberto’s estranged wife Roberta lived. I found her place easily enough and rang the bell on the outside gate. There was no reply so I called the number.

‘Pronto.’

‘Signora, my name’s Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator hired by your late mother-in-law to find her son, Riccardo. Could we talk? I’m outside.’

‘Was it you who rang the bell just now?’

‘Yeah.’

She didn’t say anything. I looked at the condominium. It had long brass letterboxes at the entrance and it looked spacious and calm: there were a couple of armchairs by the porter’s glass lodge with ashtrays on their arms.

‘Ground floor,’ she said.

The door clicked open and I walked in towards the main door. I stopped and looked at the block. It was the standard thing. They’re all the same: six or so stories, a flat on each corner. I once saw an old painting of these kinds of places from way back. Then they had courtyards, communal areas on the inside. The flats were like lines of a square, and in the middle was a well with some chickens or some pigs. It had been beautiful, a perfect design for a sunny country.

But now, in these palazzi, the tiny communal part was on the outside: little patches of scrawny grass between the outer and inner gates, rickety bike racks and bins and curls of dog shit. That was it. You had no shared view. No one ever looked over the centre of the place, only at the fringes, at the cars speeding past.

She came out of a flat to the left as I was going through the inner door. She was a slim, blonde woman. She had a beautiful face with bright eyes. But there was a sadness about her. It looked like it had been with her long before Umberto died.

‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said as she showed me in.

‘He was an ex,’ she said, bowing her head slightly as if to acknowledge the condolences. ‘You knew him?’

‘I met him on Monday, as soon as I was hired. When did you last speak to him?’

‘At the funeral on Tuesday.’

‘And you had a cordial relationship?’

‘Friendly enough. We had fewer arguments after separation than we did before, that’s for sure.’

‘Why did you separate?’

‘I don’t think that matters now, do you?’

There was something mechanical about her, as if she was getting by out of habit. I had seen it before, the pride and defiance of a middle-aged woman bringing up children on her own. It was as if she were proving a point all the time, trying to show that she could still be attractive, but in doing so only showed that she had mislaid her spontaneity.

‘He was a good man and a good father,’ she said. ‘He just couldn’t stick to one woman. But he was always generous and warm. That’s what all those girls saw in him, I suppose. He lavished presents on them, the same as he had with me when we met.’

I looked at her. It sounded like a wife trying to show her late husband’s best side, trying to justify his behaviour.

‘He told me that the night his brother went missing, in June 1995, he was with you.’ I looked at her. ‘Can you confirm that?’

‘To be completely honest, I have no memory of where I was that night, but I remember telling police years ago that we were together that evening, and if I said that then, it must have been that way.’

‘But you don’t remember?’

‘Do you remember where you were on a given night fourteen years ago?’

I shrugged. ‘I probably would if it was the night my brother-in-law was murdered.’

She looked at me with disdain.

‘Was there any rancour between the two of them, between Ricky and Umberto?’

‘They didn’t exactly get on. They were competitive.’

‘And what happened between them the year Ricky went missing? In 1995?’

She drew a deep breath.

‘I knew that Umberto had lent him a lot of money. I knew because it meant we couldn’t move house that year. Umberto had found out that he was borrowing money from all and sundry and they had quite an argument.’ She looked at me as if she didn’t want me to get the wrong impression. ‘But he was incapable of… there’s no way he would have ever…’

‘Did his disappearance have an effect on Umberto?’

‘To be honest, he didn’t seem unduly worried at the time. It had happened before. And then, when it became clear Ricky wasn’t coming back, I think Umberto was more concerned about the effect on his mother.’

‘And recently?’

‘I think he changed when he saw Silvia dying. I think he longed to be able to bring news of Ricky to her dying bedside, even if it was only confirmation of what they all feared.’

‘What made you think that?’

‘I inferred it from the way he was speaking to the boys recently.’

‘Your children?’

‘Sure. He was always talking to them about the importance of the family, of looking after your own, of loyalty.’

‘Did he think Ricky was still alive?’

She paused. ‘I don’t think so. I think he knew he was never going to find him. But he was looking for him, trying to work out what had happened.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘What?’

‘That he was investigating Ricky’s disappearance?’

‘Sure. He told me about it at the funeral.’

‘On Tuesday?’

She nodded. ‘We were standing beside each other at the burial and he whispered to me about his desire to sort everything out once and for all. Umberto liked the idea of playing the hero. He felt like he had to avenge those who had insulted his family. He got very worked up when talking about it.’

I listened to her as she spoke. She talked with precision and speed and I imagined she was a strict mother.

‘Have you thought,’ I said slowly, ‘that the reason Umberto was keen to find Ricky was merely this: he wanted his mother’s money and wanted to confirm his brother’s death. He didn’t want to share the jackpot with anyone else.’

She looked at me closely with her eyes almost shut. ‘I thought exactly the same thing. I can’t pretend I didn’t.’

‘And now that Umberto’s dead, it makes a big difference to your family.’

‘Finding Ricky?’ She laughed, amused at the optimism.

‘But it does, doesn’t it?’

She stopped laughing and looked at me seriously.

‘It makes a difference financially doesn’t it?’ I said again. ‘Your mother-in-law died and left an estate. Now your husband is dead and your boys might be millionaires.’

‘Sure. Sure it does. It makes a difference to my boys.’

‘If Ricky can be proved to have died prior to Silvia Salati,’ I wanted to make sure she knew the situation, ‘then Umberto inherits the whole of his mother’s estate. And now he’s dead, your children might be very wealthy. If it was the other way round, half of what Umberto was expecting goes up in smoke.’ I paused.

‘Of course it does, I’ve just said it does. Is there anything else you want?’

Her warmth had gone and she was preparing to usher me out.

‘Do you think the two are linked?’ I said, standing my ground.

She was shaking her head nervously, like a horse being badly handled. It was as if she didn’t want to think about the implications.

‘And last night,’ I said, ‘where were you?’

‘I was here, with the children.’

‘Are they in?’

She put a hand on my chest. ‘Keep them out of this. They’re mourning their father.’

I left her there and apologised for the disturbance.