Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

‘You said your father didn’t like him…’

‘It’s a turn of phrase. He wouldn’t,’ she looked at me incredulous. ‘That’s impossible.’

The thing about the keys still worried me. I knew what I was looking for now, a key-ring with the Salati Fashions logo. I would have to find how many had been handed out as freebies to customers and suppliers. I figured that the fact that Salati was absent-minded meant those keys couldn’t have given access to any secret part of Salati’s empire. No reputation or fortune depended upon them. There would be no confession locked away in some safe. If Salati mislaid his keys all the time, it didn’t seem likely that they led anywhere. Another dead end, I thought.

‘And had he forgotten his keys last night?’ I asked her. ‘Did you let him in last night?’

She shook her head.

‘What was he doing last night?’

‘Nothing. He said he was going home to sleep. He had been shattered since his mother’s illness. He hadn’t stopped for months. He just needed to sleep. That’s what he said.’

‘Who else had keys to his flat?’

She shrugged.

‘Did he have other women?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Were there other women in his life?’

She looked up at me as if I had insulted her. ‘There was his wife, his mother, if that’s what you mean. They both had the keys to his flat.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because they used to let themselves in to do his laundry, make his bed, that sort of stuff. Less so recently, but when I first got to know him they were always around.’ I shook my head. It always amazed me that grown men couldn’t pull a sheet over a mattress.

It was a short drive to Traversetolo where Umberto’s estranged wife Roberta lived. I found her place easily enough and rang the bell on the outside gate. There was no reply so I called the number.

‘Pronto.’

‘Signora, my name’s Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator hired by your late mother-in-law to find her son, Riccardo. Could we talk? I’m outside.’

‘Was it you who rang the bell just now?’

‘Yeah.’

She didn’t say anything. I looked at the condominium. It had long brass letterboxes at the entrance and it looked spacious and calm: there were a couple of armchairs by the porter’s glass lodge with ashtrays on their arms.

‘Ground floor,’ she said.

The door clicked open and I walked in towards the main door. I stopped and looked at the block. It was the standard thing. They’re all the same: six or so stories, a flat on each corner. I once saw an old painting of these kinds of places from way back. Then they had courtyards, communal areas on the inside. The flats were like lines of a square, and in the middle was a well with some chickens or some pigs. It had been beautiful, a perfect design for a sunny country.

But now, in these palazzi, the tiny communal part was on the outside: little patches of scrawny grass between the outer and inner gates, rickety bike racks and bins and curls of dog shit. That was it. You had no shared view. No one ever looked over the centre of the place, only at the fringes, at the cars speeding past.

She came out of a flat to the left as I was going through the inner door. She was a slim, blonde woman. She had a beautiful face with bright eyes. But there was a sadness about her. It looked like it had been with her long before Umberto died.

‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said as she showed me in.

‘He was an ex,’ she said, bowing her head slightly as if to acknowledge the condolences. ‘You knew him?’

‘I met him on Monday, as soon as I was hired. When did you last speak to him?’

‘At the funeral on Tuesday.’

‘And you had a cordial relationship?’

‘Friendly enough. We had fewer arguments after separation than we did before, that’s for sure.’

‘Why did you separate?’

‘I don’t think that matters now, do you?’

There was something mechanical about her, as if she was getting by out of habit. I had seen it before, the pride and defiance of a middle-aged woman bringing up children on her own. It was as if she were proving a point all the time, trying to show that she could still be attractive, but in doing so only showed that she had mislaid her spontaneity.

‘He was a good man and a good father,’ she said. ‘He just couldn’t stick to one woman. But he was always generous and warm. That’s what all those girls saw in him, I suppose. He lavished presents on them, the same as he had with me when we met.’

I looked at her. It sounded like a wife trying to show her late husband’s best side, trying to justify his behaviour.

‘He told me that the night his brother went missing, in June 1995, he was with you.’ I looked at her. ‘Can you confirm that?’

‘To be completely honest, I have no memory of where I was that night, but I remember telling police years ago that we were together that evening, and if I said that then, it must have been that way.’

‘But you don’t remember?’

‘Do you remember where you were on a given night fourteen years ago?’

I shrugged. ‘I probably would if it was the night my brother-in-law was murdered.’

She looked at me with disdain.

‘Was there any rancour between the two of them, between Ricky and Umberto?’

‘They didn’t exactly get on. They were competitive.’

‘And what happened between them the year Ricky went missing? In 1995?’

She drew a deep breath.

‘I knew that Umberto had lent him a lot of money. I knew because it meant we couldn’t move house that year. Umberto had found out that he was borrowing money from all and sundry and they had quite an argument.’ She looked at me as if she didn’t want me to get the wrong impression. ‘But he was incapable of… there’s no way he would have ever…’

‘Did his disappearance have an effect on Umberto?’

‘To be honest, he didn’t seem unduly worried at the time. It had happened before. And then, when it became clear Ricky wasn’t coming back, I think Umberto was more concerned about the effect on his mother.’

‘And recently?’

‘I think he changed when he saw Silvia dying. I think he longed to be able to bring news of Ricky to her dying bedside, even if it was only confirmation of what they all feared.’

‘What made you think that?’

‘I inferred it from the way he was speaking to the boys recently.’

‘Your children?’

‘Sure. He was always talking to them about the importance of the family, of looking after your own, of loyalty.’

‘Did he think Ricky was still alive?’

She paused. ‘I don’t think so. I think he knew he was never going to find him. But he was looking for him, trying to work out what had happened.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘What?’

‘That he was investigating Ricky’s disappearance?’

‘Sure. He told me about it at the funeral.’

‘On Tuesday?’

She nodded. ‘We were standing beside each other at the burial and he whispered to me about his desire to sort everything out once and for all. Umberto liked the idea of playing the hero. He felt like he had to avenge those who had insulted his family. He got very worked up when talking about it.’

I listened to her as she spoke. She talked with precision and speed and I imagined she was a strict mother.

‘Have you thought,’ I said slowly, ‘that the reason Umberto was keen to find Ricky was merely this: he wanted his mother’s money and wanted to confirm his brother’s death. He didn’t want to share the jackpot with anyone else.’

She looked at me closely with her eyes almost shut. ‘I thought exactly the same thing. I can’t pretend I didn’t.’