Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

‘I understand.’

‘Maybe you do,’ she said, ‘maybe you don’t. Maybe you just know the jargon. Closure, they call it.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why didn’t you marry Riccardo?’

She stared at me, looking like she was weighing me up. ‘Why didn’t I marry Ricky?’ She laughed. ‘Because his mother was opposed to it. She didn’t want him to waste himself on a girl who lived in a caravan by the beach.’

‘Silvia Salati was against it?’

‘Sure.’

‘You were both adults.’

‘In age we were, though you wouldn’t have known it. He was her little boy. She was protective in ways that confused him. She manipulated him. Going against her will had consequences. She was helping him out financially. There were all sorts of threats about what she would do if he tied himself to me.’

‘She was lending him money?’

‘Lend was an elastic term to Ricky. She was giving him money, sure. I didn’t even want to get married, but she had made it pretty clear I was to exclude the idea anyway. I stopped going up there altogether. I hadn’t seen her for two years when Ricky went missing.’

‘You seem to have moved up in the world since then,’ I said, casting an eye around her salubrious suburb.

‘It’s called middle age,’ she said.

We had walked towards a small park where a grey-haired woman was pushing a young child on a swing.

‘And what was he like?’ I said softly when she seemed calmed.

She laughed with a wheeze.

‘Ricky? He was all show, just like Umberto. Only he didn’t have his luck. He was a real charmer. He could talk and talk, and make you laugh. But when he went out the room you couldn’t remember a word he had said.’

‘When did you meet him?’

‘When I was a barmaid at the Hotel Palace.’

‘The one on the waterfront?’

She nodded.

‘Doing what?’

‘He was working there for the summer as a lifeguard and poolside assistant. By the end of the second week Ricky was asking if he could fix drinks for the guests. Sometimes he came in wearing only flip-flops and a beach gown, like he owned the place. The manager hated him, but the guests thought he was a hoot. I think it was because he was seventeen and full of dreams. People loved his infectious confidence. We ended up visiting each other’s rooms off duty and you can imagine. By the end of the summer I was pregnant. We were only together properly for a couple of years. At the Palace in the summers, at my caravan in the winters.’

‘How was he earning his dough?’

‘Same as before: working poolside, opening deck-chairs, fixing drinks, making friends.’

‘And in winter?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose you would call him a hustler. Only he got blown around because people had more bluster than him. He was never successful in business because they always pulled something on him.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go on.’

‘Oh, everything.’ She sighed heavily. ‘He tried to make fitness videos.’

‘And?’

‘He spent millions of lire hiring the equipment and the girls and never made a single video. I can’t remember why. He invested in a company that built swimming pools that couldn’t hold water. He imported sandals from an Austrian he had met in a bar. He paid two million up front and received seven of them. It wasn’t even an even number. He got three pairs and an odd one.’ She laughed bitterly.

‘Did he have debts?’

‘He didn’t, the rest of us did.’

‘Who?’

‘Me, his mother, Umberto. He called himself a professional gambler, as if it were something to be proud of. He borrowed from his mother constantly. That was why he had gone round there that weekend, to ask for money. He borrowed from me. Usually he would tell me about some sure project that would make us wonderfully rich, if only we could get in there first and invest before anyone else. And each time he got burnt it only made him more keen to keep trying, to prove them all wrong.’

‘And he borrowed from you?’

‘Sure. Only he knew I was drying up. I didn’t have anything left to give him, not if I wanted our child to eat. So he went after anyone who would listen to him.’

‘Umberto?’

‘Sure. It was the same with all of us.’

‘Where did he go to lose it?’

‘The same place he earned it. The Palace. He would spend more money there in a night than he could earn in a month.’

‘Cards?’

She nodded.

‘Scopa? Blackjack?’

‘Anything. He would play anything as long as there was money involved.’

‘And he ran up big losses?’

‘Like I said, we did. Not him.’

‘You always paid his debts?’

‘I had no choice. What would you have done?’

‘Doesn’t seem to have made much difference. How much?’

‘A few million lire.’

‘How often?’

She moved the top of her head from side to side as if to say that it was a regular occurrence.

We watched the grandmother lifting the child out of the swing. Ricky sounded like the usual, unreliable rover. He had settled down with a woman only long enough to get her to open her purse. He ran around Romagna trying to spin cash out of get-rich-quick schemes. He had bad debts and worse friends. The most likely scenario was that an angry, impatient creditor had caught up with him and made him pay in the highest currency there is. It might have been his brother. It might have been this woman. It might have been another gamer from the Palace.

I looked at Anna again. There was something cold and calculating about her. I had noticed it when I had mentioned inheritance.

‘Those months before Ricky went missing, anything happen?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Any unusual behaviour? New friendships?’

‘Unusual behaviour was all there was in Ricky’s life.’

‘You make him sound pretty shallow.’

‘No,’ she fixed me. ‘No, he wasn’t. He was unpredictable. He did unexpected things. If he won a lot of money he couldn’t sit on it. He would have to invite everyone around, have a big party, show he wasn’t a loser.’

‘And that summer he went missing. 1995. Anyone new in his life?’

She looked at me with tired eyes. ‘I don’t suppose he was any more faithful than other men. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. I would see him getting all dressed up to go out and put two and two together. But there was nothing new about that. He had been doing that ever since I was pregnant.’

‘Was he asking for money at the time?’

She closed her eyes, as if this were the first question she had thought about. ‘No, no he wasn’t.’

‘Wasn’t that unusual?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was. I didn’t think much about it because he was always saying that he was turning the corner, that this time it was for real. That he had everything sorted out. I didn’t listen to him because I had heard it all before. I recognised that excitement in his voice. It was all self-deception. We always had more money in the summer anyway. It was the only season we had regular work at the hotel. And he was a master at soliciting tips. He didn’t have time to gamble. He had even given me back some of the stuff I had lent him.’

‘How did he manage to do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How much?’

‘Small change. A few million lire.’

‘And that day he went back to the city for San Giovanni. Where were you?’

‘I was in the caravan. He left early morning, before I was even awake. I was here all weekend.’

‘On your own?’

‘With Elisabetta.’

‘Your girl?’

‘Sure.’

‘Who was how old?’

‘Two.’

‘Not much of a witness.’