‘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.