Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

‘It’s all screwed up, Casta,’ he was saying. ‘I mean, why don’t people do something about organised crime? Everyone complains about the system here, but the majority has never stood up to it. A few thousand go to the piazza, but millions don’t bother.’

‘Mauro,’ I said, ‘crime is like religion: it’s no good unless it’s organised.’

He laughed at that, and refilled our glasses. I told him I was on a new case, and he started ridiculing me as if I had said I was taking holy orders.

‘What have you got that needs redeeming?’ he said, swigging his second.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, what is it you’re feeling so guilty about?’

‘Maybe not doing the washing-up.’ I tried to laugh. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, why do you have to save everyone?’

‘I don’t.’

‘It’s like you’re always trying to prove yourself.’

‘I’m always trying to prove something. That’s my job.’

‘But all you’re really doing is trying to prove yourself.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I did.’

‘You’re talking in riddles, Mauro. I go after real people and real crimes. Things happen, I try to uncover clues, events,

motives.’ I pushed away my empty glass. ‘I’d better head off, I’m going to a funeral tomorrow,’ I said.

Mauro slipped in his watery way from spiteful to solicitous. That’s why I still liked him. He would challenge you constantly, but in the end he always cared, though he hated to show it. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘No. It’s work.’

‘Let’s raise a drink to him.’

‘Her. I’ve raised enough for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I glanced at old Mauro. His face looked desperate, like he couldn’t stop what he was doing, which was filling up our glasses. If I didn’t keep him company he would sink both, so I picked up mine and threw it back.

I woke up with a headache the next day. It was another morning of dense white fog and as I walked to my car I could just see the vague outlines of people shuffling along the pavement, their collars tight around their throats.

I drove back to Sissa. It was a short drive and I was there two hours before the funeral was due. I parked in the piazza and looked at the church. The wooden door was open so I walked up the steps and shuffled inside.

It was dark and still. The walls were so thick that the silence seemed to echo. The roof was supported by a row of wooden triangles that rested on thick walls where the old mortar had dried mid-drip between the bricks, forming cracks which spiders had tried to conceal with their white lace.

There was something about this blank hole of a building that seemed to echo emptiness. Perhaps that’s all church was about. A hollow, meaningless building where hollow meaningless people could feel they belonged. It certainly made me feel at home.

I heard the sound of someone coughing. I listened more carefully and heard muffled footsteps from inside the vestry, to the right of the altar.

The footsteps came closer. A tall man in an ill-fitting jacket and a dog collar marched down the little church’s only aisle.

He walked past me without looking. Either he hadn’t seen me or he assumed I had come in to be on my own. I looked over my shoulder and saw that he had sat down on a bench in a recess at the back of the church.

I got up and walked over. ‘Is this your church?’

‘One of them. They spread us thinly nowadays.’

I introduced myself but the priest didn’t say anything other than ‘ piacere ’, so I didn’t get his name.

‘Did you ever know a man called Riccardo Salati?’ I asked. It sounded abrupt in the quiet of that building, and he looked at me sideways.

‘Chi?’

‘Riccardo Salati.’

The priest sighed and put his head on one side.

‘I’ve known a lot of Riccardos,’ he said.

‘Ever a Riccardo Salati? He grew up here in the 1970s and 80s.’

‘I only arrived in 2001.’

‘So you never knew a Riccardo Salati?’

‘There’s a Salati, a Silvia Salati, here. Or there was. She died on Friday.’

‘She was Riccardo’s mother.’

‘I see.’

Priests were always like this. You started trying to get information from them, but ended up getting the feeling that they had got it from you.

I looked at him. He had an unusual face and jokey, sad eyes like a puffin. And he was younger than most. If he hadn’t been wearing the dog collar he would have seemed completely normal. He was completely normal, I reminded myself, as much as any of us ever are.

‘Do you have records?’ I asked.

‘Records?’

‘Births, marriages, deaths.’

‘We have records for everything,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All services, meetings, baptisms, first communions, marriages and funerals.’

‘Which are kept?’

‘In the church office.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘Of course.’

We stood up. The representative of Rome is always the surest way into the Italian countryside. I should have thought of it when I was here yesterday.

We went through to the vestry. Along the far wall was a low, plastic cupboard with sliding doors that didn’t move smoothly.

‘Each register covers a twelve-month period,’ the priest said. The years were written in thick pen on the spine of each binder.

I took a handful and laid them on the table. I went through them hastily, skipping past irrelevant things like collection amounts and congregation size. There were fewer baptisms or marriages as I went on. The only thing on the increase was the funerals.

An hour later I had everything I needed. Silvia had married Paolo Salati in 1958. Umberto had been baptised in 1960. He had had his first communion with six other villagers in 1969. Riccardo was baptised in 1975 but had never had a first communion. I kept going until he got to 1980 and decided Riccardo either didn’t like church, or church didn’t like him.

‘What are you looking for?’ the young priest asked.

‘Everything and nothing.’

I walked over to the plastic cupboard and pulled out two more volumes: 1994 and 1995. I leafed through everything quickly. In spring 1995 I found an entry for Paolo Salati’s funeral. I wrote it down alongside the other names and dates and put the volumes back.

The priest was sitting down in a corner with a large, leather book.

‘Isn’t it Silvia’s funeral this morning?’ I said.

The priest looked up. ‘Could be. But not here. I never saw her in church and she’s not one of those who only come feet first, if you see what I mean. She’ll probably go straight to the cemetery.’

The priest went back to his book.

‘I’ll see you around,’ I said.

He didn’t say anything but nodded with a smile.

I went back to the car and drove beyond the cemetery and turned it around so I was facing the road that the mourners would be coming up. It was still half an hour before the ceremony was due to start, so I opened La Gazzetta and pretended to be reading. I skimmed through the headlines. It was mostly reports about viabilità : how new roundabouts were replacing traffic lights and making the city move more smoothly.

It doesn’t need to move more smoothly, I thought. It already has a velveteen smoothness that is thrown like a blanket over any dust or dirt. There’s an official civility that makes the city blissfully polite and considerate. But it also means that people see no evil, or pretend they don’t.

I put the paper on the dashboard and looked down the road. The fog was lifting slightly but the colours still looked boringly uniform: wet and white. A few minutes later the first two mourners appeared.