The Salati Case

Friday

I was sitting in the bar opposite the carabinieri barracks watching my hands move from force of habit. My thumb and forefinger took the corner of a sugar sachet and shook it before ripping it open and emptying the contents into the piping black coffee. My right hand took up the spoon and stirred it.

Every morning millions of us perform exactly the same gestures learnt from observation. Having a coffee is as ritualistic as taking communion and I couldn’t do it any differently to anyone else.

I stretched over to a next-door table and picked up the morning’s edition of La Gazzetta. Even the news was ritualistic. The way the whole Salati case was reported followed a tried and trusted path: the reporter used the same phrases that are used every time a murder is committed. This was the ‘Salati Giallo’. They never missed a chance to churn out the old giallo label. That word – meaning both ‘yellow’ and ‘thriller’ – makes dark crimes sunlit and exciting. In this charming country, even death is made sumptuous.

I read the rest of the paper. There were the usual stories: left-wing extremists scribbling threatening graffiti under the houses of union leaders and politicians; something about the motor show preparations; an article about the discovery of archaeological remains in the suburbs which would slow up the work on the metro; a visiting academic from Spain was compared to half a dozen people I had never heard of.

This is where all the carabinieri came for refreshment throughout the day. Dall’Aglio was late for our appointment and was immediately dismissive of my insistence on locating Salati’s keys.

‘Even supposing what you say is true,’ he whispered in the crowded bar, ‘why would a person keep the keys? If Salati was pushed, gravity was the only killer. If you haven’t got a murder weapon, the keys are as close as you’ll get. It’s like having a hot gun in your pocket. No one would have kept hold of them.’

‘Unless the murderer was under the impression that Salati’s keys were of importance, that they might lead to evidence which was even more incriminating.’

‘Like what?’ Dall’Aglio said impatiently.

‘Maybe Salati was investigating his younger half-brother’s disappearance when he was murdered. The murderer might have kept the keys in the hope of destroying any discoveries which Salati had committed to paper.’

‘It sounds very far-fetched to me.’

‘Everything’s far-fetched until it becomes fact,’ I said quickly. I knew I was clutching at straws, but Dall’Aglio didn’t seem concerned to clutch at anything. ‘There are other possibilities,’ I went on. ‘They took the keys, for whatever reason, and then realised what you have just said: that they were a smoking gun. So they ditched them.’

‘You want my men to find a bunch of keys which could be anywhere between here and Potenza. How do you expect us to do that?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But until they turn up, you won’t get a conviction in this case.’

‘I don’t mean to be disparaging, Castagnetti,’ Dall’Aglio said, ‘it’s just that I don’t see what, practically, I can do to test your theories. We’re talking about a case in which not only do we not have any leads to the murderer, we honestly don’t even know if there was a murder at all.’

I was impatient. When something needs doing, I like to get it done. I don’t mind Dall’Aglio, he’s a hard-working, honest official, not something there’s exactly a surplus of. But he’s a stubborn, officious official. He has to justify every action to his superiors and that makes him more cautious than a blind dog crossing the motorway.

‘When was the autopsy?’ I changed tack.

‘They did it yesterday.’

‘Who?’

‘Garrone I expect. I’ll check.’

I stood up and bowed sarcastically.

I would have to approach it from the other side. Slip something to the press to put pressure on him, or else hire some staff myself. I could have done with two dozen men to command like Dall’Aglio had. He could comb a field quicker than he could comb his hair.

I walked down the street and asked myself why I bothered. I always say it’s the money, but if that was the case, I would hire staff and we could film every infidelity this side of Reggio. That’s a racket if ever there was one. But like I said, I don’t do infidelity. It’s no different to blackmail in the end and you end up selling your pics to the highest bidder.

So it’s more than just the money. I go through all this dirt because I’m fed up with everyone settling for appearances, fed up with conceitedness and menefreghismo. I’ve had it with the good life, the luxuries and the reputations that no one wants to offend. I don’t think my line of work is anything special. It’s usually grubby and aggressive. It’s fraught and frustrating. But it’s honest. It’s a bit like gardening: you’re never quite sure what’s going to come up, you work hard and keep guessing, just trying to keep things alive. And once in a while you can sit back and think you might have made a tiny corner of the world a better place.

I walked towards the Ponte di Mezzo. The river was a furious torrent now. All the snow in the mountains was melting and the river was surging through the city. The water curled and crashed only a few centimetres below the arches of the bridges, speeding away towards the Po with its cargo of tree trunks and drowned animals. The noise was so loud that you could barely hear anything else. The water was pounding under the bridge, speeding past but keeping exactly the same shape, the same frenetic rolls and whirlpools.

I walked to the other side of the bridge and only there did the roar of the water subside. That sudden change in volume shifted something in my brain. Maybe it was the image of that water, that sense that the real action of a bridge is not above it but below. All that water and talk about the keys had set something off. What happened to Salati, I realised, hadn’t happened upstairs, in the building, up top. It must have happened below.

I pulled out my phone and tried to get through to the pathology department. A sleepy voice came to the phone.

‘Garrone?’

‘Sì.’

‘My name’s Castagnetti. I’m working on a case and I believe you did the autopsy.’

‘I know you. You’re that private dick.’

I made a grunt. ‘You did an autopsy…’

‘I do dozens every day.’

‘Must be fun. The man’s name was Salati.’

‘The guy who used to have a shop on Via Cavour?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I zipped him up yesterday.’

‘And?’

‘The tidiest suicide I’ve ever seen.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was over ninety kilos, but his fall was so light he didn’t break a bone in his body.’

‘He didn’t jump?’

‘If he did, he flew down.’

‘So why’s everyone talking about suicide?’

‘Guesswork.’

‘So what killed him?’

‘Head injuries, sure, but not from falling to the ground. I would say it was something with a series of small, sharp protrusions… like an athlete’s spikes, or football boots with sharpened studs.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘There’s not much certainty about death but some things seem quite probable.’

‘Like it’s long.’

‘Yeah, right.’ The man laughed. ‘His skull and neck and back were perforated with these little indentations.’

‘How big?’

‘Fairly tiny. There were between eight and fifteen spikes for each blow. On the skin you can just see the outline of the shape holding those spikes. It’s slightly larger than a postage stamp. It wasn’t the spikes that killed him – they’re fairly shallow – it was the force behind them. It was some kind of hammer…’

‘You’ve got photographs of these wounds?’

‘Sure. Sent them up to Dall’Aglio yesterday.’

‘Time of death?’

‘We got the body yesterday morning. He had been dead roughly twelve hours. That puts the time between nine and eleven the evening before.’

I put the phone down. If Salati hadn’t fallen from his balcony, it meant that a woman could have been responsible. There might not have been a fight up there at all. It might have happened on the ground and he might have been hit from behind. Someone had tried to make it look like suicide, gone upstairs to open a window, tried to make it look like a jump. It was an amateur, that was for sure.

It wasn’t surprising that Dall’Aglio wasn’t publicising the news. He had enough media interest around him without them getting even more excitable. But it would come out sooner or later. The giallo would become a murder. It would go national by tonight.

My phone was vibrating.

‘Sì.’

‘Castagnetti?’ It was Dall’Aglio.

‘Why didn’t you tell me it wasn’t a jump? Salati died on the ground.’

‘You’ve spoken to Garrone?’

‘Sure. So much for swapping favours.’

‘I’ve told you before, I don’t trade favours. But I’ve got something for you. You’re going to like this. My women in the finance department have traced the Visa record for the Gazzetta payment.’

‘Go on.’

‘Unfortunately it’s not Riccardo. I half hoped we would hear that it was genuine, that it really was your boy. As it is, I really don’t understand it.’

‘Give me the name,’ I said impatiently.

‘Massimo Tonin, the lawyer.’

‘Tonin?’ I laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘It’s not funny, so much as…’ I shook my head. Humans never cease to surprise me, but Tonin was certainly a weird one. ‘I got the impression he really cared for that boy.’

‘Maybe that’s why he paid to put a piece in the paper.’

‘You don’t believe that?’

‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’

‘I reached that point a long time ago.’ I couldn’t understand why old Tonin would want to pretend to be Riccardo in print. Unless he didn’t want people to think he was dead, unless he wanted people to think his boy was alive and well.

‘We’re going to bring him in,’ Dall’Aglio said.

I felt my limbs tense up. Once he was in custody he would be all buttoned up. I would have no element of surprise. I wanted to race round to his now, before they brought him in.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t race round there on information Dall’Aglio had just given me. Dall’Aglio would accuse me of interference and favoreggiamento. I would have to come in on Dall’Aglio’s coat-tails.

‘I’ll come,’ I said.

Dall’Aglio didn’t say anything.

‘As an observer. Nothing else.’

Dall’Aglio was still silent. He must know, I thought, that this was my case as well as his. It was my information that gave him the breakthrough.

‘All right,’ said Dall’Aglio. ‘You know the rules. You don’t touch anything, you don’t say anything.’

‘Right. When’s the arrest?’

‘We’re going there now. Wait for us on Via Trento by the cinema.’

I put the phone down and went out. Tonin was a strange one. He had seemed to me one of those astute lawyers. He might sell his soul for a few percentage points, but I couldn’t see him knocking off his own son. But then, you never think that when you first set eyes on someone. There is no dark streak, not until you know someone’s killed another human being and you put that streak on them yourself. They’re just ordinary people who do something irreversible. They’re all different, and Tonin might be just one more specimen for me to study.

Dall’Aglio picked me up in the force’s luxury Alfa Romeo.

‘You armed?’ Dall’Aglio asked as soon as I opened the car door.

‘Sure.’

‘Give it to me.’

I reached inside my jacket and passed him the pistol. It wasn’t because Dall’Aglio didn’t trust me. He knew me well enough not to worry about me getting twitchy if it got tense. It was a power thing. It meant he was in complete control of the operation. I admired the formality, even though I didn’t like going after a suspect with only my bare fists.

Tonin came to the door before Dall’Aglio had even rung the bell. He stood there like a condemned man as Dall’Aglio read him his rights. Two officers then bundled him into the car. That was it.

‘I’m taking him to the station. You coming?’ Dall’Aglio said.

‘I’ll have a look round.’ I replied. There was no point going back to the station. We would hang around for at least two or three hours whilst they searched for evidence to lay on Tonin’s plate. I calculated that I might as well hang around and watch what happened at the house.

I went inside. The cadets were surprisingly efficient. Everything was turned upside down very neatly. I had expected them to send in the heavies, but it was all very deferential.

They went through all the drawers, pulled them out and looked underneath and behind. They took pictures off the walls, leafed through the books and magazines. The bathroom was pulled apart. They lifted up the shower tray and dismantled the bath. They listened to the plumbing and examined the surface of the soil in the garden. They went through the cypress and poplar trees with sticks. Still looking for those keys, I thought.

I wandered upstairs. It was a house like you used to see in American movies: a staircase wide enough for large plants where it turned a corner. The corridor upstairs was long and all lit up. Beings covered in white overalls kept coming out of rooms to the left and right.

I pushed into a room that looked like an old man’s place. There were suits in the wardrobe, a single toothbrush and razor in the bathroom. I took the top off a rectangular bottle of aftershave and sniffed it. It smelt like Tonin.

The couple obviously slept apart because the next room along was feminine. The wardrobe was full of designer outfits in garish colours. On the reproduction chest of drawers were photographs of the same man. He was good-looking in an overdone sort of way. He had long curling hair and facial hair which changed in each photo: a goatee in one, long, narrow sideburns in another. He must have spent half an hour shaving every day. There was a large photo where the man was wearing yellow corduroys. His brogues looked like the narrow nib of a fountain pen and they had fat, external stitching as if to pretend they were done by hand instead of by a machine. It looked like the same guy from the photo in Tonin’s office.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked one of the cadets taking tape samples from the carpet.

‘No idea.’

I looked at the photographs again. I assumed it was their son Sandro because he was everywhere. There wasn’t anyone else, no sibling to rival his place on his mother’s chest of drawers. He must have thought he was an only child until poor Riccardo came along.

I went back downstairs and saw the huge hall. It was cold and unloved. Even the sofa against the far wall looked austere, like it had never been sat in. The cushions were placed at deliberate angles. I remembered when I had come in here two days ago how the woman’s voice had bounced off the walls. I closed my eyes and tried to recall that atmosphere when we had first walked in. She had been on the phone.

I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the handset. She had been speaking to someone. I got out my mobile and called Dall’Aglio. He was still in the car by the sound of it.

‘I’ve got something else for you. Find out who their phone operator is and get an itemised breakdown of the calls from the Tonin house on Wednesday night.’

Dall’Aglio said nothing. He wasn’t happy taking dictation from a rival.

‘Has Tonin said anything?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. Says he will reply to questions in the presence of his lawyer.’

I laughed and hung up. Why a lawyer needed another lawyer to defend himself I couldn’t understand. It made it look like the truth wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to find a way out, and that meant calling in a colleague to help.

I went outside on to the drive and walked slowly towards the gate. I dialled the switchboard sweetheart.

‘Studio Tonin.’

‘That Serena?’

‘Sì.’

‘Castagnetti here.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘How you doing?’ I asked.

‘Fine. Can I help you?’ She sounded distant, as if there were someone listening to her talking.

‘Sure you can. In the next hour or two a call is going to come in from jail. It will be Massimo Tonin, asking to speak to one of his colleagues.’

‘Massimo’s been arrested?’ She sounded indignant.

‘He has.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. Here’s what I need you to do. As soon as you’ve put the call through, phone me and let me know who he asked to speak to.’

‘I can’t do that.’ You would have thought I had asked her to show me her thighs.

‘It’s very simple,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll give you my number.’ I

started giving her the numbers and she didn’t interrupt. ‘You got that? And you call me. Just one name. It’s for Massimo’s benefit. Take my word.’

‘I don’t know what your word’s worth. I don’t know you.’

‘I know a really good way to get to know someone,’ I said.

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘Call me.’ I hung up before she could protest.

I had wandered back into the house and into the kitchen as we had been speaking. It was a large room with a central island of speckled granite. Above it hung huge pans and ladles. In one recess to the right was a large cooker where a pan was bubbling away.

Teresa Tonin came in from a far corner just as I was about to go out. She had an apron on which was smeared with flour. She suddenly saw me and jumped slightly with the surprise.

‘You,’ she said.

‘You heard your husband’s been arrested?’

‘Of course I have. I’ve had men crawling all over my house for the last hour.’ She looked at me bitterly, her lips pursed in anger. ‘It’s not enough that he publicly humiliated me by having that boy. To think that he could have done something even worse, so much worse. Not just give life to him, but…’

‘But what?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘What did Umberto Salati want with you two days ago?’ I asked.

She sighed heavily and then seemed to snap out of her reverie. ‘Sorry?’

‘Was Umberto Salati after money? The first words you said to me were over the intercom. “You’re not getting anything from us,” you said, or something similar.’

She stared at me. ‘He was after money, sure.’

‘Why?’

‘He was threatening to tell the authorities about Massimo.’

‘What about Massimo?’

‘About Massimo’s affair with that Salati woman.’

‘Why would you pay him not to talk?’

‘I wouldn’t. That’s what you heard me say, wasn’t it? Everyone seems to know about it now anyway. I’ve no idea why that Umberto Salati thought he could get money from us. The innocent can’t be blackmailed, isn’t that right?’

‘So why did Umberto think he could get money out of you? Because Riccardo had in the past?’

She had been about to turn her back and slice an onion, but she turned to face me.

‘Was Riccardo blackmailing your husband back in ’95?’

She held my stare and the earth seemed to stop turning for an instant. She didn’t say anything.

‘Tell me again,’ I said slowly, ‘what Umberto Salati wanted on Wednesday when he came round here.’

She looked at me with fiery, impatient eyes. ‘He said Massimo was a disgrace. Said he had humiliated his mother. He said he knew everything, said he would hand it all over to the authorities.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t understand it.’

It clearly meant something to her. ‘What did you think he meant?’

‘I assumed… I don’t know. He said Massimo would pay for it. Said he could pay now or later, but he would pay.’

‘Did he mention figures?’

‘All he said is that he wanted the proof his brother was dead.’

‘And he thought he could find it here?’ She looked at me with anger, so I asked her another. ‘So who did you phone?’

She froze. ‘I phoned…’

‘And then Salati was murdered?’

She stared at me with fury now. ‘What exactly are you accusing me of?’

‘Who did you phone?’ I pressed.

She started walking towards me with a finger taking aim at my face. ‘Get off my property. Get out of here.’

‘Want me to call the police?’ I said, and turned away.

‘Castagnetti?’

‘Serena?’

‘The name’s Giulio Tanzi.’

‘Thank you. Put me through.’

The phone rang once and he picked it up.

‘You the counsel for Tonin?’

‘I don’t talk to the press,’ he said straight off.

‘I’m not the press. Not police either. My name’s Castagnetti.’

‘And?’

‘I’m a private.’ The lawyer hesitated so I tried to say it quick, before he could interrupt. ‘Your colleague Massimo Tonin has been arrested and the charge is pretty serious. Wouldn’t look good for your firm to have a murderer in the ranks. Clients could kind of back off if they heard that. But I’ve got some great news for you. This charge won’t stand up any more than a new-born baby.’

‘How so?’

I brought him up to speed on the case. Told him what he already knew, like old Tonin was a gent, and some stuff he didn’t, like the Gazzetta payment in Riccardo’s name which was paid for with Tonin’s card.

‘What do you want?’ he asked when I had finished.

‘I want to interview him.’

‘What’s your interest?’

‘Professional satisfaction. Proving someone wrong. The usual reasons.’

‘If you do interview him, I will expect to be present.’

‘Fine. I’m sure your presence would help.’ I caressed the man’s vanity. ‘The whole city will be knocking on your door by tonight, pleading for an interview. You’re in the spotlight like you’ve never been before. You’re defending the most famous accused in Emilia-Romagna and you’re about to clear his name.’

‘Let me talk to my client and I’ll call you back.’

He phoned as I was driving to my office. Tonin had agreed to see me immediately.

I walked over there and went down into the pit where he was being held with seven other men. He looked like a caged animal, pacing his confined space with frustration. He was still dressed in suit and tie.

The guards let him out and escorted us into an interview room.

‘What does he want?’ Tonin said to his lawyer as he looked at me.

‘He wants to ask you some questions. He wants to help you.’

He stared at me. ‘How are you going to help?’

‘By proving you had nothing to do with Umberto’s murder.’

He shook his head. He was contradicting me, as if he wanted to be charged in person, like he actually wanted to be accused of it.

‘Why did you place a mourning notice in La Gazzetta under the name of a missing man?’

He stared at me but didn’t deny it. It almost seemed to surprise him.

‘Why’, I fixed him, ‘would you do a thing like that?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Why would someone do that?’

‘It’s a very unusual thing to do if you haven’t got a motive.’

‘Maybe I felt sorry for her.’

‘For Silvia Salati?’

‘Sure. I thought the idea of her dying not knowing about our son was too much. I wanted to think that somewhere out there he actually was mourning her.’

‘Who says he isn’t?’

He looked angrily at me. ‘What do you really want?’

‘Try the truth. Why did you pay to publish a mourning notice under the name of a missing person?’

‘I told you. I liked the idea of a son mourning his mother.’

‘That sounds phoney to me.’

‘That’s how it was. It was harmless.’

‘Harmless acts have a habit of turning nasty.’

We looked at each other like cats about to fight. But I had lost the element of surprise. Old Tonin had improvised his story and was sticking to it. He had paid, he said, for a mourning notice out of compassion. It was bull, but I had nothing to disprove it. I decided to change tack.

‘Where was your wife on Wednesday night?’

‘At home,’ he said, ‘you saw her yourself.’

‘I saw her at seven-thirty,’ I corrected. ‘Umberto Salati died a couple of hours later. More than enough time for her to get into town. You’ve got separate bedrooms,’ I said quickly. ‘She could quite easily get up and go out without you noticing it.’

‘Sure. Where’s she going to go? She doesn’t drive.’

That was a turn-up. It was either a last-minute lie, the sort of no-hoper people throw out when the game is up. Or it was true and I was barking up the wrong tree.

‘She doesn’t drive?’ I tried not to make it sound like a question, as if I had known as much all along.

‘Never has. If you think she walked into the city you’re out of your mind. My wife doesn’t walk anywhere.’

‘Bicycle?’

‘Sure. On the tangenziale in that fog. Not even you believe that, Castagnetti.’

I had been thrown off balance. I couldn’t understand why a man who kept protesting his innocence still wouldn’t explain what he was up to. I had yet to hear a rational explanation for that mourning notice. Maybe Tonin wasn’t as rational as he appeared. Perhaps he had published the mourning notice because he wanted to see it, he longed to believe it. People will believe anything if they want it to be true, even little lies they’ve sown themselves.

‘So why did you pay for a mourning notice in the name of Riccardo Salati? I’ve yet to hear a rational explanation.’

Tonin was shaking his head. He couldn’t say anything, but I knew he was protecting someone. And it wasn’t his wife. It didn’t sound to me like he was particularly inclined to protect her at all. But he was protecting someone else.

‘How many kids you got, other than Riccardo?’

‘Just Sandro.’

‘He’s the one with long hair?’

Tonin nodded. He had his head in his hands, his palms almost covering his ears as if he didn’t want to hear any more.

‘Why don’t you tell me about Sandro?’ I said gently.

Tonin looked up at me and shrugged. It wasn’t convincing but he wasn’t going to say anything. I wasn’t sure the old man even knew himself what his son had been up to. Or perhaps he had only just realised.

I tried another angle. ‘This money you say you were giving the boy, who knew you were giving it to him?’

Tonin frowned, uncertain where the question was coming from.

‘Did your family know you were giving the boy money?’

‘Not that I know of, no.’

‘You kept it secret?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘So someone could have found out about it?’

‘Very easily. Everyone knows where my filing cabinet is, all my accounts are kept there.’

I looked at the old man. He seemed sincere, almost dignified in his despair. There was something about his glazed look that made me think he really had only just worked out what was going on.

‘Which telephone company do you use?’ I asked.

The man frowned.

‘Which operator do you use at home?’

‘Infostrada,’ he said quickly, as if angry at the irrelevance of the question.

‘You’re still not telling me everything, Tonin.’ I stood up. ‘There will come a time when the murderer of your son Ricky is going to stand trial for this, and it would be just as well for you if it don’t look like you had aided and abetted.’ I picked a pen out of my jacket pocket and passed it to him. ‘Write down what you know. It will help.’

Even the force of looking up at me seemed too much for him, but he took the pen out of my hand and nodded. He looked almost grateful that the time had come.

I went back to see Dall’Aglio but was kept waiting over an hour. Once I was admitted it was made clear that my presence was a distraction. He was reading report after report, calling people into his office to pick up a folder or bring in another. He was aloof and I didn’t like it.

I tried to needle him by telling him about Tonin. ‘Tonin’s not involved, at least not how you think.’

‘Criminals sometimes seem invincible,’ Dall’Aglio said, ‘and you feel therefore impotent. That is why so many of us take these crimes personally. They are an affront to our professional powers.’ He looked at me as if he expected applause for his insight.

I shrugged.

‘Did you get a trace on the phone call from the house that evening? Their phone company is Infostrada.’

‘I know. I’ve got the list of calls in front of me.’ He said it slowly, enjoying watching my impatience. ‘There appears to have been only one phone call from the Tonin house that evening.’

‘Go on.’

‘0521-498444.’

‘And who is it?’

‘We haven’t checked.’

‘Thanks’.

Dall’Aglio looked up, wondering whether the gratitude was sarcastic. ‘Now you. Why are you so interested?’

I decided I couldn’t drop half a brick. I might as well drop the lot. ‘Tonin lent the boy some money. The boy disappeared.’

‘And you think Tonin…’

‘No. I think the person who answers,’ I looked down at his notebook, ‘0521…’

‘Did what exactly?’

‘I don’t know. But the way I see it, the only person pissed off when Ricky started paying off his debts was someone on Tonin’s side of the fence. When Tonin started opening his purse to his bastard son, the only person who really cared was his son Sandro.’ I looked up at Dall’Aglio to see if he was following me. ‘Pass me the phone.’

Dall’Aglio obeyed as if it had been a command from a superior. I smiled with as much falsity as I could muster. Before letting go of the handset, Dall’Aglio put it on loudspeaker.

I punched in the numbers as I read them. There was a long pause and then the line began its long beeps.

‘Sì?’

‘Is that Sandro Tonin?’

‘Speaking.’

I hung up and smiled smugly now. I looked at Dall’Aglio who was nodding and frowning at the same time.

‘She phoned her son,’ he said. ‘That’s all. It’s a mother calling her son, nothing else.’

‘It’s him, trust me. Teresa Tonin phoned her son to say that Umberto Salati had been round. She told him Salati knew everything. He knows about the boy, she must have said, he knows about the bastard.’

I got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to have a chat with Sandro.’

It wasn’t hard to find where the city’s only Alessandro Tonin lived. I watched the flat for over an hour before a man came out.

I recognised him from the photographs. Facial hair in thin lines, long hair, expensive clothes.

I followed him to a hairdresser’s salon, one of the spacious, expensive salons in the city centre.

I watched from outside and saw him hand over his coat and bag to a girl. He sat himself down to read a magazine.

I looked up at the 1950s board above the shop. I called Pagine Gialle and asked for the number of the place. They gave me the number immediately. I dialled it and saw a girl pick up the phone. She had a short white coat and coffee-coloured tights.

‘Can I help?’

‘I’m an investigator,’ I said. ‘I’m standing outside your salon. The man who just walked in, the guy with long curls, he’s under investigation. He just handed you his bag and jacket. I’m going to walk into your salon in thirty seconds. I’m going to show you my badge and you’re going to take me to the cloakroom. You understand?’

‘You sure do talk quick,’ she said in a whisper.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Sveva.’

‘Sveva? OK,’ I hung up and walked between cars.

She smiled at me as I walked in.

‘Hello stranger,’ she said as if she were greeting an old friend. I looked at her legs as she led me to the back of the salon.

‘In here,’ she said as we went through two doors. She led me into a small cloakroom. We were pushed close together by the shoulders of the clients’ thick coats. ‘First show me your badge,’ she said.

I pulled out my licence.

‘But you’re private.’

‘Same thing. Still trying to keep scum off the streets.’

She looked at me with a come-on smile. ‘You’ve got me into a cupboard under false pretences. You don’t even look like an investigator.’

‘You wanted a trilby and a magnifying glass?’

‘No, it’s just you look so normal.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, not sure it was a compliment. At least it was an improvement on comments about my swollen face. ‘Show me his bag.’

‘What’s he done?’ She passed me a leather shoulder bag and ripped off a sticker.

I pulled out his diary and spun the pages. I looked at dates and appointments but nothing stood out. A set of keys were in there.

‘How long’s he in for?’ I asked the girl.

‘He’s having highlights. Could be an hour.’

‘Highlights?’ I shook my head. The guy was one of the peacocks. ‘Is there a back way out?’

She nodded and opened the door to the cloakroom. ‘Out there.’

I put the keys in my pocket and walked out the back. There was a dirty white door that looked out on to a courtyard car park. I followed the driveway back to the main road and went to the key cutters in Via Sauro.

‘I need the whole bunch done. I’ve got fifty for you if you can do it in ten minutes.’

The man looked up at me like he wasn’t used to being rushed. But he took the keys and fixed the first one into his vice. He pressed a button and the large metal box began to whine. Metallic dust flew off. Once the new key was done, the man went back over it, his hand rising and falling with the contours of the key’s canines. He put the key by the counter and started with the next one.

Once he had done all eight he lined them up on the counter. I picked them up and compared them to the originals. The only difference was that the old were cold, the new warm. I blew a bit of dust off them.

‘That’ll be fifty euros,’ the man said, proud of his profession.

‘Thank you.’ I put the note on the counter.

I retraced my steps and let myself in the back door to the salon. I went into the cloakroom where a girl I hadn’t seen before was hanging a coat. She looked shocked to see me.

‘Sveva around?’ I asked.

She relaxed and said she was out front. I dropped the keys back into Sandro’s bag and walked out the front way. The smell changed as I opened the door back into the salon. It smelt of expensive soap. The music was on loud, though you could only just hear it above the drone of driers.

Sandro had rectangles of aluminium foil in his hair. He was reading a magazine. Even in this bright light his tan looked dark and perfect. He had cold, blue eyes.

I walked past him and nodded at the girl I had seen before.

‘Ciao cara,’ I said to Sveva as I walked out the door.

I walked over to Umberto Salati’s block of flats on Via Pestalozzi. The carabinieri cordon had gone now and I could stroll up to the outside gate without being stopped. I took out the eight keys and tried them one by one.

‘What are you doing?’

I straightened up and saw a man watching me. ‘I’m trying to get these keys to work,’ I said.

The man looked at me with suspicion. ‘Who are you?’

I evaded the question. ‘I found a bunch of keys near here. I heard on the news that Umberto Salati’s had been lost, so I thought I would just check here to see if they were his.’

‘You found a bunch of keys? Let me have a look.’

I didn’t pass them over. ‘Listen, friend, I’ve been hired by the family to work out what really went on here.’ It was stretching the truth only a little bit. The man seemed nonplussed, so I pulled out my ID.

The man stepped back and watched me trying the keys one by one. ‘Mind if I try the inside door?’ I asked, expecting the man to click open the outer gate. But he stood his ground, and asked to look at the keys. I couldn’t see the harm and handed them over. The man looked at them one by one.

‘None of these are ours,’ he said. ‘Try if you like.’

He pulled the gate open and I walked up to the main door. I tried all the keys but none of them worked.

I straightened up and looked at the man again. He had the sort of face that looked distrustful.

‘Who lives on the ground floor this side of the building?’ I asked casually.

‘That’ll be the Veronesi.’

‘Are they in?’

‘They’re always in. If you want to talk to them though, I suggest you go back outside and ring their bell.’

I nodded at the man and walked back outside to the main gate. I found the Veronesi name on the buzzer. I pressed the button and an elderly voice came on.

I explained that I needed to ask him a couple of questions. The gate clicked open. By the time I was back at the inner door there was a short, bald man in slippers opening it for me.

‘Come in. You’ll want to know about the night Salati died? There’s nothing I haven’t already said to the police and the press. We came home early, ate, watched television and went to bed. Salati is five floors up. We very rarely saw him.’

‘On good terms?’

‘Formal niceties, nothing else.’

He had led me into a dark flat. It was in the shade of trees and balconies and felt claustrophobic. But its doors opened on to the small garden outside where Salati had been found dead. The man’s wife was sitting on one of the armchairs.

‘Anything else about that night?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you heard him hit the ground?’

The man looked at his wife and shook his head.

‘You’re deep sleepers?’

‘No, we’re not. But we didn’t hear him…’ The woman trailed off, not wanting to describe what had happened.

‘What did you hear?’

‘Nothing. The rain was so loud you could barely hear anything anyway.’

The woman interrupted him. ‘We heard the cat tinkling around outside.’

‘How can you hear a cat?’

The man thumbed at his wife. ‘She’s a bird-lover and doesn’t like old Jemima killing the birds. So she put a small bell on her collar to warn them off.’

‘And that’s all you heard? The rain and the cat?’

They both nodded.

I thanked them and walked back towards the porter’s cabin at the entrance of the condominium. I don’t know much about cats, because I don’t like them. They’re too feline for my liking, which is kind of the point of cats, I guess. But I know they don’t tend to go for a stroll in the rain. I don’t suppose the old couple were lying about what they heard. They were just interpreting it wrong.

The porter wasn’t around, so I walked to the top of the building. Salati’s flat was the last one at the end of the staircase. The door was locked and there was still police tape across the entrance.

I walked down a floor. There were four doors leading into separate flats. Presumably they all had Salati above them. I rang one bell after another but the first three didn’t answer. Only the last one gave me any joy.

I introduced myself. The old woman wrapped her cardigan around herself more tightly when she heard I was investigating the death of Salati. She didn’t want to talk, she said, she knew nothing about it.

I tried to talk quietly, to see how her hearing was, but she picked up on everything I said, so she seemed safe enough. I couldn’t see a hearing aid wrapped around her ear at all.

‘What did you hear that night?’ I asked her.

‘I heard him go out,’ she said curtly. ‘I heard his intercom sound, and out he went.’

‘What sort of time?’

‘I have no idea. It was late though. I was going to bed.’

‘What time’s that?’

‘Nine-thirty.’

‘How long was he out for?’

‘Five minutes or so.’

‘So he came back five minutes later?’

‘I heard the door open again.’

‘And you heard him?’

She looked like she was unsure. ‘No, I didn’t. But I heard the door open.’

‘Don’t you usually hear his footsteps above you?’

‘Always, every one. He wore expensive shoes and liked to hear the heels.’

‘But you didn’t hear him walking around?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Wasn’t that unusual?’

‘I suppose so.’ She looked at me with a frown. ‘The other thing I heard was him pulling up his shutters.’

‘Opening a window?’

‘I didn’t hear that, just the shutters.’

I thanked her and walked down the stairs.

It was beginning to fit together slowly. If someone had whacked Umberto Salati outside, they had come up and opened the shutters. I assumed they had opened the windows as well, though they wouldn’t have made any noise. What the old woman had heard wasn’t her neighbour upstairs – she didn’t hear the usual heavy footsteps of an overweight man in his expensive shoes – it was his murderer.

My phone was going again. I put it to my ear and heard that superior tone again. ‘Castagnetti? It’s Crespi.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m awaiting your report.’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. It wasn’t due until Monday and even then I doubted I would have anything to say. As far as I’m concerned, deadlines are like hurdles. There to be avoided, nothing else.

‘The heirs of Silvia Salati’s estate are anxious that you…’

‘Which heirs are left?’ I interrupted. I felt impatient and Crespi was the best person to take it out on. ‘This case has proved crooked from the start.’

‘How so?’

‘I was under-briefed by you. Nothing you gave me last week prepared me for this.’

‘I thought that was your job.’

‘I’m an investigator, not a shit-stirrer. This was all shit and someone’s been using me as a spoon.’

‘I see it every day. The report?’

‘Monday morning,’ I sighed. I would have to write something. ‘Though it may take longer.’

‘I need it for Monday.’

‘What’s the rush?’

‘I surely don’t need to remind you of economic realities. It takes months to disinvest a deceased person’s…’

‘I get it. People want money. Who’s been pushing?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Who wants everything wrapped up so quick?’

‘I’m employed to get things done. I don’t need people to press me, I press myself.’

‘I’m sure you do. Let me ask you something else, Crespi. Have you got a way in to title deeds to houses, real estate records, that sort of stuff?’

‘I can commission searches, certainly.’

‘At this time of day?’

‘It’s Friday evening.’

‘Let me give you some addresses and you could call one of your powerful friends.’

‘I don’t have powerful friends.’

‘And I don’t have toes. Come on, Crespi.’

‘The only channels for that kind of thing at this time of day are the forces of order. They could find out with the click of a mouse.’

‘And you can’t?’

‘I couldn’t do anything until Monday.’

I gave him every address I had been to in the previous few days: the Tonin household, Sandro’s flat, the di Pietro place out in Rimini, Roberta’s joint in Traversetolo, Umberto’s loft apartment. It was another long shot, but it needed doing. Whoever had got to Riccardo had almost certainly got to his money too. I wanted to know who was spending big in the months after his disappearance.

‘I’ll be round your office on Monday morning,’ I said. ‘You’ll have everything by then?’

He grunted.

I started walking home. My whole body was aching. My ribs and right hand still hurt from the beating at the Hotel Palace. Every time I raised my voice above a whisper my ribcage seemed to protest.

I was in a foul mood. I wasn’t getting anywhere and I felt like smashing something.

I’ve changed the way I deal with moods. When I was younger I used to walk in a straight line on busy pavements, bumping people off it. I didn’t even notice I was doing it until I was older. That’s when I started dealing with my little furies by attempting to drown them in nocino and mirto and any other digestif that would rot me from the inside. All that happened was that I got drunk and the furies got bigger, so I gave it up.

Nowadays I like to think I don’t get black moods, but it’s not true. I’m more serene on the outside, but inside I still get steamed up. The cost of serenity is deep bouts of lethargy when I can’t even see the point of getting off the sofa.

I can’t see the point because I know that cases like this are never conclusive. There are hints which a jury can accept or reject, but even when hints approach certainty, the courts can still be perverse. But at the moment I didn’t even have many hints.

I walked home feeling exhausted. Sometimes I overdo it, go in hard on people, start punishing them because I want to punish myself. Don’t ask me what for.

I suppose that’s why I like my bees. I prefer their company to that of humans. They’re more productive and more precise. They might sting you but they never sting each other. And I like the fact that they sting you. It means that when you start out you have to confront fear. And when you’re used to it all, you still know they could get under your skin, literally. When they don’t sting you’re grateful for the peace, or at least the pact of non-aggression. That’s all civilisation is anyway. A pact of non-aggression.

I sometimes think murder should be like a bee sting. If you do it, you die. You strike and you’re out. We don’t do that round here any more. Not because we don’t want to, but because we want to pretend we’re at peace. If you start killing people back, everything escalates. Everyone knows there’s a war on then. There always is, only now everyone’s got it, and they’ll start tooling up, or hiding behind someone who is. So instead we pretend everything is civilised, and because we’re civilised we don’t kill. Not at home, anyway. We watch them, wait, eavesdrop, try to anticipate, try to read the warning signs.

I was beginning to form an idea of what had happened to Riccardo Salati. Ricky hadn’t been the sentimental type. When an ageing lawyer turned up claiming to be his true father, he saw an opening. He knew that something was secret and Tonin would probably pay to keep it that way. He didn’t see a father but a pot of cash.

Ricky decided it would be an easy shake-down. He threatened to tell all to Tonin’s family. He started asking for money on the quiet. Never calling it a blackmail, just a bit of help to get him through hard times. But he didn’t go away. He kept coming back for more.

Ricky’s train that night had been almost an hour late. And I knew enough about Ferrovie dello Stato to know that a late train always gets later. If a train is an hour late now, in half an hour it will probably be two hours late. That’s the way with Ferrovie dello Stato. Ricky would have been looking around for some way to kill time. A restless type like him didn’t sit in the waiting room helping old ladies with the crossword.

So he had wandered around the station looking for something to do. By chance or design, someone saw him at the station and it went from there. Someone had seen to him. Someone decided to do them all a favour.

It was pretty vague, but it seemed to fit the facts. Once Riccardo had disappeared Tonin kept his paternity hidden because he feared his family was involved. He had lost one son and didn’t want to lose another. He must have guessed years ago that Sandro was involved, and that to tell the world that he, Tonin, was Riccardo’s father, would lead everyone to the boy who, until then, had been his only son: Sandro.

It added up but I’m not so keen on guesses. For a ‘scomparso’ to become a ‘presunto morto’ you need more than guesses. I turned my keys and let myself into the flat. It was freezing. The boiler must have broken again.

I took an ingot of beeswax out of a cupboard. It was thick and heavy, so I shredded it with a cheese grater into a pan. I warmed it gently, adjusting the flame so that the deep yellow lump slowly melted.

The old Salati woman’s death had been a spanner in the works. She had made sure that when she died there would be one last investigation into the disappearance of her son, Ricky. Sandro had overheard about it in the office when the two receptionists had been talking about their work one Saturday morning. So Sandro decided to make the most public declaration of mourning possible and make it look like Riccardo had just been playing hide-and-seek for more than a decade. It was an amateur attempt to put us off the scent. But it was clear that old Massimo Tonin hadn’t made the payment. A lawyer knows all about the documents he leaves in his wake and wouldn’t be that inept. The only explanation was that the son was using the father’s credit card. Nothing new about that in this city.

Then Umberto found out about his late mother’s love life; he wanted it out with the Tonins. He stormed round there, to the domestic nest rather than the chilly offices of the lawyer. Salati stammered his disgust, and the Tonin woman panicked. She thought Salati knew more than he said and she called her son.

Sandro assumed his time was almost up. The only way to make sure his disposal of Ricky stayed secret was to dump Umberto. He hangs around outside the block of flats and gets impatient. He buzzes Umberto and tells him to come down, says there’s a delivery, or an emergency, anything to get the man in his sights. When Umberto goes outside Sandro’s on to him. He smacks Salati on the side of the head with anything he has to hand.

I put on another pan and heated up some oil I had bought in that African shop just off Viale Imbriani. The kitchen began to smell good, like suncream or something, and it made me feel better. It smelt like a childhood summer from long ago. I mixed the oil and the wax and stirred in a few spoonfuls of honey and some vanilla drops. The liquid was transparent but thick. I took it off the heat and poured it into tiny glass pots. I filled about sixty all told.

Sandro must have gone upstairs. He had seen Salati there with his body broken and had decided to go upstairs and open a door on to Salati’s terrace. Make it look like a suicide and whilst he’s there, check Salati hasn’t done anything foolish like write a confessional. That’s what the old woman heard in the flat below: Sandro pulling up shutters.

And then he makes his only mistake. He forgets to put Salati’s keys somewhere. He walks out with them for some reason. Maybe his mind was elsewhere, or else he thought Salati really had written it all down and that the keys would be useful. It all came back to the keys.

Whilst the mixture was cooling it turned white, and I wrote small labels that I stuck on the lids one by one. It was satisfying work, making something beautiful and useful, doing something slowly and methodically. It was the opposite of detection, the hurried discovery of something terrible, a discovery that was useless except for the purposes of punishment or revenge.

I sat down in the armchair once I was done and tried to think about nothing. It’s harder than it sounds. I tried for half an hour to think of nothing, but I kept seeing keys and Visa slips and Umberto Salati’s bushy moustache caked with dry blood.