The Salati Case (2 page)

And I don’t know why I did. At the beginning it might have been kindness, looking into troubles because some people seemed to have an unfair amount of them. I listened to their stories and asked questions in return. Question after question until someone didn’t want to reply.

But it’s not kindness any more. I’ve seen what polite people can do and I don’t trust politeness or kindness any more. It’s just a job and I do it for the money. And I take the money because the costs are so high: after a few months in this line you lose trust in everything. When you’ve seen that much betrayal and deception, you can’t trust what you see, let alone what you don’t. Everyone becomes a suspect. Mauro says that’s why I’m no good with women. I always look for a motive, and when someone says they’re in love, that they’re living without an ulterior motive, I worry about what they’re really up to.

I waited for a pause in the traffic to cross the road. Cars loomed out of the damp cottonwool air and sped past. I felt my ankle throbbing and leaned on my right instead.

I decided to go and look at Salati Fashions and turned into Via Cavour. It was there on the right on the way to the Battistero.

Through the shop window I could see a man who looked like the proprietor. Salati must have been mid-fifties. He had a thick grey moustache which covered the top of his mouth. It was yellowing on the right-hand side so I assumed he was a smoker. He looked thick set, like he had rounded out in recent years.

I watched a couple walk into the shop and Salati was on them, offering help, pulling hangers off the rails. I watched the way the man smiled at the young couple. He put his head on one side, a move that made him look as manipulative as a six-year-old in plaits.

The couple left the shop and I heard Salati offer them a curt
buongiorno
as if he were saying get lost. I walked through the door before it had sprung shut.

‘Umberto Salati?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator.’

Salati hesitated and tried to get his eyebrows to touch. ‘You’re the person who’s going to verify,’ he paused out of delicacy, ‘as to the status of my brother, is that right?’

‘It is.’

‘He’s already hired you?’

‘Crespi? This morning.’

‘Tell me your name again.’

‘Castagnetti.’

He looked aggrieved.

‘What did he tell you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How did he find you?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

He clicked his tongue and walked around the shop shuffling hangers. He looked nervous. ‘You know someone is trying to pretend Riccardo is alive?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The mourning notices in the paper today … there was one from Riccardo.’ He must have seen me perk up, because he quickly tried to damp down any excitement. ‘Riccardo’s not alive,’ he said, holding my stare. ‘Someone wants us to think he is, but he’s long gone, I’m afraid.’

‘So why would someone pay to publish a mourning notice in the newspaper?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘That’s your job.’

‘When did she die?’ I asked quietly.

‘Friday.’ He looked up at me as if trying to work out why I had asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.

Salati sighed. ‘At least we saw it coming.’

In my line, I thought, it’s always coming. Only difference is, I’m supposed to do something about it. I looked up at Salati and he looked tired. I knew what it was like to lose a parent because I lost both a long time ago. Salati was in a bleak place.

I looked around the shop. There were light pink jumpers and shirts with extraordinarily large collars.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Thanks.’

‘Laura,’ he cooed to his young assistant, a girl whose body was perfect but for her cantilevered nose, ‘could you make us a coffee?’

There was something gentle in the way he spoke to her and I wondered if they were lovers. Most of the shopkeepers ended up taking their pretty assistants out for dinner as a prelude to showing them the finest hotel rooms in Romagna.

‘You’re not closing for lutto?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘It actually helps having something to do. We’re closing up later.’

Laura was out back now and I decided to iron out what I knew. ‘The night your brother disappeared, he was waiting for a train back to Rimini, right?’

‘He had bought a ticket. Some people came forward to say they had seen him buying a ticket.’

‘And then?’

‘Nothing. He was supposed to be going back to Anna in—’

‘Who’s Anna?’

‘His woman. They had a daughter, my niece.’

‘Called?’

‘Elisabetta.’

I was writing down the names. ‘Anna what? Salati?’

‘No, di Pietro.’

I wrote it down. ‘Do they still live in Rimini?’

‘Last I heard.’

‘You’re not in touch?’

‘On and off. Not as much as back then, but sure, we talk occasionally. Anna and my mother weren’t close.’

‘Why?’

‘You would have to ask Anna. But they didn’t get any closer once Ricky went missing. The opposite. Once it was clear

Ricky wasn’t coming back, we saw a lot less of her and of little Elisabetta. She was two I think when it happened.’

‘And what brought Ricky back this way that weekend?’

‘He had just come to see my mother in Sissa for the day.’

‘Sissa? That where you’re from?’

‘Right. She had driven him back to the station, dropped him there. I think that was another reason it hurt her so much. She blamed herself for not staying with him on the platform until the train came. As if you had to wait with a twenty-year-old. He would have thought it ridiculous, and so, in other circumstances, would she. But because she never saw him again, she felt it was her fault that she had just dropped him there.’

‘What time, do you remember?’

‘She said it was twenty minutes before the ten thirty train.’

‘And she drove off as he went to buy a ticket?’

‘Sure.’ He said it like he was still defending her.

‘Where will I find Anna?’ I changed tack.

‘I told you, Rimini.’ Salati’s tone had altered now. He clearly felt he alone was left to defend his family’s honour.

‘Any address?’

‘I’ll go find it.’ Salati stomped out to a back room and I looked at Laura, the young assistant. She had come back with two plastic thimbles of coffee. She looked at me and held the tray out.

‘Thanks.’

Salati returned with a piece of paper: ‘Via dei Caduti, 34. Rimini.’ He took the other coffee and smiled at the girl.

‘What were you doing’, I caught Salati’s eye, ‘the night Ricky disappeared? 24 June, wasn’t it?’

Umberto looked at me and laughed nervously. He was

about to say something, but then wiped down his moustache with his thumb and his forefinger and looked at me again. ‘You don’t waste time do you?’

‘Who were you with?’

‘Roberta.’

‘Your wife?’

He nodded. ‘My ex.’

‘Anyone else with you two that Saturday night?’

‘Just the two of us. I think she was due that weekend, or the one after. I can’t remember. We were just sitting there at home waiting.’

‘Your first?’

‘Yeah. Daniele.’

‘How many you got?’

‘Two boys.’

‘They still in the city?’

‘No. She took them back to Traversetolo when we split.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Why did she go to Traversetolo? That’s where her parents were from.’

‘No, why did you split?’

‘Roberta and I?’

I threw my chin into an upward nod.

‘She didn’t give a reason. Just said our marriage was over.’

He didn’t look particularly wistful about the separation. If there was any pain there, I guessed Laura eased it nicely. He seemed like so many of the middle-aged men I met in this city: a financial success and a family failure. One out of two wasn’t bad, I always thought. I would settle for one out of two.

I looked around the shop one last time. I turned over one or two labels. The prices were written by hand with an ink pen.

Salati saw me and took a shirt out of my hands and rubbed the cloth between his thumb and forefinger and started explaining the quality of his stock. His fingers looked, like him, slightly chubby. He obviously liked the finer things in life. He was a bon viveur, but then everyone was around here.

‘I’m going to make some enquiries’, I said, ‘and come back to you. Buongiorno.’

I walked out quickly. I didn’t like getting sucked into idle conversation with suspects. As soon as they offered you something, they would be asking for something in return. I heard Salati shouting goodbye to my back as if I were one of his customers, but by then I was back in the fog, enveloped in its icy white cold.

I crossed the road and walked towards Borgo delle Colonne. It was one of the few colonnaded streets in the old city. Protected from the rain, and close to the inner ring road, this was where the city’s prostitutes used to wait for their clients at night. It had been a bohemian haven when I had moved in here ten years ago, but the whole area was now being made ‘
signorile
’ and the prostitutes had been moved on to the motorway slip-roads. I missed their ugly honesty.

I walked up to my flat and sat at my desk. I rested the phone between my jaw and ear as I dialled the familiar number of the carabinieri.

‘Dall’Aglio? It’s Castagnetti.’

‘Good morning.’ He paused. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m reopening a case. The disappearance in 1995 of a young man called Riccardo Salati.’

‘Silvia’s son?’

‘Exactly. You knew her?’

‘Vaguely. I heard she died last week, is that right?’

‘Yeah. It’s about the will. This boy disappeared in 1995. It would have been the Questura that dealt with it.

‘I remember. And what do you want?’

‘The name of the officer who took the report, his present posting, and any documentation which you might have in the records regarding the case.’

‘That all?’ He laughed. ‘It’s very busy here, I doubt anyone will have time to look into it until this evening. I’ll get someone on it when I can, and I’ll call you back by the end of the day.’

It went on like that for an hour. I phoned everyone I thought necessary. I phoned the town hall to ask if I could distribute the photocopies of the missing boy. I had to fax my request, so I typed up a letter. I made a note to ask Umberto Salati or Crespi for a photograph. I phoned every school in the city until I found out which ones Riccardo had attended. I phoned the secretaries to arrange visits.

On a whim I decided to phone the only doctor listed for Sissa. A secretary answered the phone and eventually put me through to the doctor. I introduced myself and the man started buttoning up.

‘An investigator you say?’

‘Sure. I’m after just a couple of—’

‘I can’t tell you any details of any of my patients. You understand, confidentiality …’

‘Even the ones who are dead?’

The man didn’t say anything and I pushed it.

‘Silvia Salati.’

‘Silvia? What do you want to know about her? She only died last week.’

‘How?’

‘How did she die?’ The man breathed out loudly. ‘Nothing confidential about that. It was her lungs. She had been a smoker all her life.’

‘Nothing unexpected?’

‘I told her thirty years ago it was going to happen.’

I thanked him and put my finger on the phone cradle and lifted it again. I listened to the dialling tone, thinking about what to do next. I opened my diary and found the number for the library.

Long beeps followed long silences.

‘Emeroteca,’ said a young woman’s voice.

‘Have you got
La Gazzetta
from the last few days?’

‘Sure.’

‘Open shelf?’

‘Sure.’

‘You’re open all morning?’

‘Until five tonight.’

I dropped the phone in the cradle, stood up and pulled on my jacket. I walked the back way, along Viale Mentana and Viale Piacenza, coming at the library through the Parco Ducale. It was a small building, but quick and efficient. A girl, the one I had spoken to by the sound of her Roman accent, fetched the two
Gazzettas
published over the weekend and passed them to me in a pile the size of a child’s mattress.

I took them to a desk and laid them out in front of me. I took the Saturday edition and opened up the paper.

It was winter and the sports section was full of
calciomercato
: the transfer gossip surrounding the big teams. All the important clubs and names were in bold so that you could read all the likely deals in a few seconds.

I turned over another page and saw a wall of faces staring back at me. These were photographs of the people who had died in the last few days.
La Gazzetta
must have been making a mint out of mourners. I knew how much each inch cost from when I had lost a friend a while back. The
necrologi
were money for old rope.

Most of the photographs looked as if they were taken when the deceased were in middle age and they made the paper like a throwback to the 1970s. There was something about the faces, the thickness of the glasses and the length of the hair, which looked out of date. Alongside each photograph or name were expressions of mourning from relatives and friends.

There was no mention of Salati. She had probably died too late on the Friday for anyone to publish a mourning notice on the Saturday. I took the Sunday paper and flicked through it to the pages of the dead. Almost a third of a page was dedicated to her. There were thirty or forty rectangular inches of sympathy from relatives and friends, each announcing their deep regret. Everywhere the name Silvia was written in bold like one of those footballers about to be transferred.

There was a photograph of her, a black and white shot. She looked purposeful: a thin necklace around a tight jumper. A good-looking woman with a determined mouth.

I read through the names of those who had publicised their sense of loss. They were just meaningless names to me but I would get copies. My work was all about methodology. I would cut out every mourning notice and arrange them in some kind of alphabetical order. Many of the mourners wrote only first names, so it wouldn’t be an authoritative index of her kith and kin, but it was the closest I could come up with for now.