The Salati Case

by Tobias Jones

  ‘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.’