Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

Bicycles and pedestrians and pushchairs were going in all directions. This was rush hour. The cars were backed up as far as I could see. I recognised many of the people. That was the thing about this city. No matter how often I hear it, it still amazes me how small it is.

I found the stationmaster in his office on the second floor. He was an elderly man, short and sprightly. He was wearing the green and purple outfit with the FS logo of Ferrovie dello Stato on his chest. He had a baseball cap on his head which, given his age and the weather, seemed incongruous.

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said, holding out my badge.

The man took it from my hands and looked at it closely. Officially stamped documents have an alchemic quality in Italy, and the stationmaster bowed slightly, a gesture which meant he would be happy to help.

‘Taxes?’ He asked.

‘Murder.’

He shrugged and smiled. ‘I haven’t killed anything other than rabbits.’

‘You know the timetables from 1995?’

The man looked at me smugly and smiled. ‘Test me.’

‘A train to Rimini, San Giovanni, 1995. A Saturday night.’

The man looked at the ceiling.

‘1995? They had already started cutting out the trundlers. Those ones that stopped at all the villages. There would have been, let me see, the 18.32, the 20.32 and the 22.32.’

‘And through the night?’

The man looked at me seriously, like he didn’t like being pushed. ‘Well now. There would have been something around two, and another around five.’

I looked at the old man. ‘Your memory seems all right.’ I was trying to wean out the man’s jovial side. ‘How come you remember all these timetables?’

‘It was my work,’ he said, pleased I had finally asked the question he wanted; ‘it’s what I’ve done every day of my working life for forty-two years. People like you coming up to me, asking me impatient questions about this or that train to this or that town. My whole life has been remembering hours and minutes and connections.’

‘Snap,’ I said. ‘And the waiting room hasn’t always been where it is now, right?’

The man laughed. ‘It’s moved more times than I can remember. They move it every year. In 1995 it would have still been next to the bar, on platform one.’

I was looking into the distance. ‘Say someone missed a train, or the train was late, where would a young man go and wait?’

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Depends what kind of young man.’

‘This one was unpredictable from what I hear. Probably prey to the usual vices.’

It was the first time the man had paused and let a question sink in. ‘Some men would wait around in the parks outside. There were always a lot of people to pass the time of day with, if you see what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t see.’

The man looked uncomfortable. ‘There were women. And boys.’

‘And where would they go?’

‘Parco Ducale, Via Palermo. One or two had flats nearby.’

‘And there are always people selling shit in the shadows I assume?’

‘Never used to be. When I started back in the 60s, we didn’t know what drugs were. Nowadays,’ the man was getting worked up, ‘you see them hanging out there all day and all night, constantly selling stuff to young kids. There are half a dozen people within fifty metres of this office who are here selling drugs every day and the police never pick them up. Why is that? I’ve never understood it. They’re allowed to sell poison to our children in the broad daylight. Just don’t understand it.’

‘Me neither.’ I shook my head with what I hoped was enough indignation to persuade the man I was on his side. ‘And if someone just waited in the station? Where would someone go to kill time?’

‘There’s the bar.’

‘Which one?’

‘There’s the station bar. Or that other one outside the station, the other side of the bus-stops.’

I nodded. It was going nowhere. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you must have seen a lot in forty-two years. A lot of people coming and going. Did you ever see anything that you had to take to the police?’

He smiled whilst blinking slowly. ‘All the time. Every week I see couples screaming at each other. There are knife fights and the Ultras and political extremists. You see them all when you work here.’

‘But you never saw anything, back in the summer of ’95?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘This man.’ I pulled the mug-shot from my pocket. ‘He disappeared from this station in 1995.’

The man took the photo from my hand and held it up to the light. ‘I know the face, I’m sure.’

‘That’s because it was in the papers back then.’

‘That’s right.’ He squinted at the photograph again. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing him around the station, but there was some policeman who came and asked me all about it. The times of the trains and so on, just as you are.’

‘Colonello Franchini?’

‘I don’t remember his name. We went for a drink after work-’

‘That was Franchini.’

‘He asked me about the trains, showed me some photographs.’

‘Photographs of who?’

‘He didn’t say anything except they were suspects and had I seen them one particular Saturday night.’

I pulled out the photograph I had knocked off Tonin’s mantelpiece.

‘He show you either of these two?’

He looked very briefly, but looked at me with tiredness. ‘This was many, many years ago. I see thousands of faces every day. I see millions in a year…’

It was useless. I would have to ask Franchini if he had ever got this far, whether he had ever got as far as the Tonin link.

I decided to take the train back to Rimini. I had a box of photocopies of Riccardo and walked up and down the train distributing them.

The carriages had corridors down one side with little rooms of six seats off to the other. My arm was soon tired from having to yank the doors open, leaning away from the handle to pull with my chest as well as my arm.

In each I handed out the photocopies. People either looked at young Riccardo’s face in silence or else started asking too many questions. There was no middle ground. I answered them all patiently, telling them what little I knew.

‘I remember reading about this. I can’t believe it was fourteen years ago, it feels like three.’

‘That so?’ I said and let another door suck itself shut.

I had walked up and down the train before it even pulled into Modena. I changed at Bologna, but the connecting train was late. I sat on the platform wondering what percentage of trains were late. When I finally got into Rimini it was already past midday. As soon as I stepped out of the station the air smelt of seaweed and salt. There were fat gulls swooping on to the pavements to take any spare crumbs that the pedestrians left in their wake.

I walked over to Via dei Caduti. The di Pietro woman clicked the gate open after a little protest about wanting to be left alone. I walked up the short path towards the front door of her block of flats. She was on the third floor, a door half-ajar at her back.

‘What is it now?’

‘I wanted to ask you a couple more questions. Has anyone ever tried to contact Elisabetta, someone claiming to be a relative?’

She shook her head.

‘No one? No calls or letters out of the blue…?’

‘You think Ricky has tried to contact her?’

‘No, not Ricky. I fear the only person he’s talking to now is his maker. I was thinking about someone from a different generation. Her paternal grandfather.’

‘Ricky’s father?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But he died in 1995.’

‘Massimo Tonin was Ricky’s father.’

She looked at me as if it were a wind-up. ‘Are you sure?’