Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

‘For decorum?’

‘No, for kindness. She didn’t want to hurt her husband. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem to have the same scruples.’

‘Meaning?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘He never found out?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And as soon as he died, you decided you wanted to play the father after all?’

He looked at me with wry amusement. ‘I met Riccardo. It was completely by chance, but I met him and we got talking, and we got on.’

‘You told him you were his father.’

He nodded.

‘Never gave him any money?’

He looked up at me and nodded slowly.

‘He told me he was in danger. He had borrowed money from the wrong sort of people.’

‘And?’

‘I offered to help out.’

‘In what way?’

Tonin shrugged. ‘I lent him some money.’

‘How much?’

The pause was long enough to know that his next line was a lie. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘How much?’

He was shaking his head. ‘Eighty-five.’

I sucked in through my teeth. ‘Million lire?’

Tonin nodded.

I looked at him. That was enough to kill for. More than enough. It might even be enough to kill your child for. I’ve seen one killed for less, much less.

‘How did you give it to him?’

‘Cash.’

‘When?’

There was another pause. ‘I can’t remember.’

I put an elbow on the mantelpiece and deliberately knocked over a vase of flowers. The water and glass formed an icy lake on the floor.

‘When?’ I asked. The man said nothing and I nudged a framed photograph off the mantelpiece. The glass shattered on the floor.

‘Stop it.’ Tonin had his knuckles on his forehead and was trying to extend his fingertips upwards. ‘It was the weekend he went missing.’

‘Ninety-five?’

He nodded. ‘It was San Giovanni.’

Tonin must have known this was relevant. Eighty-five million. The amount and the timing said it all.

I looked at the little lawyer. He seemed broken.

‘Why have you never said all this before?’

Tonin was staring into space.

I couldn’t understand it. In most cases people withheld to protect themselves, but Tonin had kept quiet about giving money to his own son.

I bent down and picked up the photograph that was nude now, deprived of the frame and glass that made the two subjects look romantic. ‘Who are these monkeys?’ I asked, throwing him the photo.

‘Teresa and Sandro.’

‘Who are they?’

‘My family.’

‘Which family is this?’

He didn’t smile, but looked at me with resignation.

I suddenly felt myself losing control. I don’t often lose my cool, but sometimes people like Tonin really get to me: those kind of innocent idiots that don’t do anything bad, they just keep quiet so that bad people don’t get into trouble.

‘I should hand you over to the carabinieri right now,’ I spat. ‘How could you think that this had nothing to do with his disappearance? A boy that unreliable, that irregular, and you give him eighty-five million? And then he’s not around any more? You sat on this like you sat on the secret of your thing with the old Salati woman.’

The lawyer had turned white.

‘You make out you’re as pure as your cashmere but you’re like all the others. It wouldn’t surprise me if you suddenly wanted your money back and leaned on him a little too hard.’

I had gone too far, and Tonin was wagging a finger. ‘The only thing I ever did wrong’, he hissed, ‘was to make a bad marriage. That’s my only fault in all this.’

‘You really do think you’re innocent of everything? You withhold vital evidence in a missing person investigation, and you still make out like you’re a victim.’

Tonin looked up quickly at that. ‘The only victim in all this is that poor boy.’ He looked at me with pleading eyes. ‘What are you accusing me of?’ he said.

‘I want to know why were you still looking for Riccardo after he disappeared. I heard you went round to his woman’s house regularly afterwards.’

‘Sure. It’s true.’

‘Why?’

Tonin looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘Because I wanted to find him. Check he was all right.’

‘Why?’

‘He was my son,’ he shouted furiously, banging his fist on the table top.

‘It wasn’t a clever way of saying to the world that you had nothing to do with his disappearance? You kept going back there to prove that it wasn’t you that had buried him? Or were you going round there to look for your money?’

‘I’m not responsible for Ricky’s disappearance.’ Tonin was speaking through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve been suspected for fourteen years of a crime I would have laid down my life to avoid.’

‘And yet you’ve been keeping secrets all that time. Why didn’t you let people know you were the boy’s father?’

‘Silvia forbade it. Said it was out of the question. That was a condition of having him at all. And because,’ he paused, ‘that would only have hurt my wife, and Silvia’s family. I didn’t think I needed to publicise my relationship to Riccardo to prove my innocence. I still don’t.’

‘Your wife didn’t know?’

‘She found out.’

‘When?’

‘After Riccardo had disappeared. I told her. I think she must have known anyway.’

‘How come?’

‘Women know.’

I wondered. If that was true, maybe his wife had known long before.

‘There’s something phoney here,’ I said. ‘A man who loves his son, and gives him money, doesn’t keep it hushed up for so long.’ I looked at the lawyer. ‘And a man who has a granddaughter doesn’t ignore her.’

He looked up eagerly at that.

‘You’ve met her?’

‘I’ve spoken to her, sure.’

Tonin shut his eyes as if trying to picture her.

‘Listen,’ I said, trying to reach him, ‘it doesn’t seem to me like you’re the kind of man who would kill his son. Only thing is, you don’t seem like the kind of man to have a son, if you don’t mind my saying. Until you drop the respectable, suited lawyer act and start talking to me like a man, I can’t do anything for you.’

I got up and made for the door. Tonin just pushed himself up on his walking stick and nodded at me as I turned the handle.

I still couldn’t understand what Tonin was keeping to himself. He seemed impassioned when accused of hurting the boy, but was shifty when I had tried to press him for an explanation of his conduct. Maybe he was simply from the old school where discretion and appearances were paramount. He had kept a secret, he said, out of kindness. It sounded phoney to me, but kindness and love always sound phoney to me. Love is normally only the afterburn of remorse.

I walked to the station. It was crowded with the usual suspects: salesmen and students going to Milan, groups of North Africans in sandy jackets; rounder, darker Africans with more colourful clothes and tall, elderly tourists looking at maps.

The boards announcing the reconstruction work in this square were decorated with all the most important symbols of the city: a bank’s crest, the seal of the town council, the arms of a construction firm.

I looked around. There was a bar opposite where I could have a drink whilst watching the anxious commuters. I ordered a pompari : a twist of pompelmo with a shot of campari.

I took my drink to the fruit machine and put in a coin. I pressed some buttons idly and looked around. The station square was being revamped, the whole area to the north was being given a face-lift. The workers gathered in this bar to eat large sandwiches and drink pints of icy water. The usual customers, the Romanian and Moroccan plasterers, were talking about the worst foremen in the city.