The Salati Case

by Tobias Jones

  We watched the men coming and going, bringing samples of this or that to the commanding officer. ‘They’ll leave this place tidier than when they arrived,’ I joked to the farmer, who only grimaced unhappily.

  I told him what they were looking for and he just nodded with his eyes closed.

  ‘Looks like good land,’ I started, trying to engage him. I gave him my card and told him to give me a call if he ever needed help of any kind.

  ‘This you?’ he said, reading the card.

  I walked back to the car. There wasn’t anything I could do but watch. I tried to talk to some of the combers, but no one would say anything.

  *

  I phoned Lo Bue.

  ‘Lo Bue?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Castagnetti, I had an enjoyable stay at your hotel a few days ago if you remember.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I might have your man.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Or woman. We think we know what happened to Riccardo Salati.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘And his purse?’

  Lo Bue would have ripped pearls out of a woman’s ears if they were worth it.

  ‘We don’t know yet. We don’t even have the body. But we think we know what happened.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘One’s dead, the other’s inside.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You were right. Riccardo had money on him at the time. Eighty-five million. He really was about to pay his debts.’

  ‘Who took it?’

  ‘My bet would be with the guy that’s dead.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who took his money?’

  ‘Like I said, the guy who’s dead might have pocketed it, might have been the woman.’

  I laughed. Trying his patience was my only revenge for the kicking he had served up. I would rather have kicked him back but you couldn’t do that to a Calabrian hotel manager.

  ‘I’ll give you the number of the notary dealing with the case. I’m sure he’ll be helpful. His name’s Crespi.’

  I hung up. I didn’t like dealing with him but you couldn’t get anything done here unless you cut deals. It was as if you had to ask permission from the underworld to go after the loose cannon criminals. Lo Bue might be useful to me in the future and I was sure Crespi was man enough to know how to deal with his sort. He probably was his sort, for all I knew.

  I tried to call Tonin on his phone but it was permanently off. He had probably had journalists and friends calling him all morning, and he had given up answering.

  It took under an hour to get to his house. The gate was as foreboding as ever. There were a couple of photographers hanging around outside. They said they had been ringing the intercom all morning with no joy.

  I walked up to the thing and held the buzzer for long enough to appear rude again. No answer. I rang again, holding the buzzer for a good ten seconds.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Castagnetti.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough?’

  ‘Not quite. There are a few loose ends, and you’re one of them.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I thought it only polite to tell Elisabetta of her father’s fate in person. Before she reads it in my report or, more probably, in the papers. I’m driving there now.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I wondered if you wanted to come.’

  The line went quiet. It would have sounded like he was laughing, but the pauses between breaths were too long. It sounded like he was shuddering plenty of tears. I felt almost sorry for the man. The carabinieri had arrested his wife and were searching for his son’s body. His other son, the man he thought was his son, was probably another man’s. The girl in Rimini was the last thing he had left in the world.

  We didn’t talk until we were past Bologna. After an hour of silence I started making small talk, asking about his favourite food. He replied almost absent-mindedly, telling me about how he loved seafood, how his parents were from near Venice and used to cook anything they pulled out of the sea.

  ‘My favourite’, I said, watching the road disappear underneath us, ‘is cotolette. When I was growing up I spent some time with my aunt and uncle, and she used to make the most incredible cotolette.’

  ‘Veal or pork?’ he asked

  ‘Veal,’ I said, as if it were obvious. ‘Do you like cotolette?’ I turned to look at him but he was staring ahead, narrowing his eyes.

  He must have realised where I was going because he sighed as if I were forcing him to betray his wife one last time.

  ‘Did your wife ever make cotolette?’ I asked gently.

  ‘She did,’ he said formally, like he was already in court.

  ‘Traditional way?’ I asked. ‘Flour, egg and breadcrumbs?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And a bit of lemon.’

  ‘And how did she thin out the fillets?’

  I turned to look at him quickly. He had closed his eyes. ‘The usual way,’ he whispered. ‘She uses a batticarne.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, trying to make it easier. ‘It might be nothing.’

  The batticarne was the size of an auctioneer’s gavel. It was the little metallic hammer used to thin out meat. One side was usually smooth and the other slightly spiked.

  We didn’t speak again until we got to Via dei Caduti. I left Tonin in the car and walked up to the palazzo.

  ‘Who is it?’ said a young voice when I had rung the buzzer.

  ‘Elisabetta? It’s Castagnetti.’

  ‘No one’s in,’ she said.

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  The gate clicked open and I walked up to the flat. The sun was coming through the windows and bouncing off the light walls.

  ‘It’s about your father.’

  She nodded.

  ‘They’re searching a farm up in the mountains. It’s possible something might turn up. I thought you should know.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Are you on something?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You look spaced.’

  ‘I’m fine. I just, I just want to know, you know? I’ve always had this terrible thought that, that he had, sort of, left me here on purpose.’ She wiped away a tear with the back of her thumb. ‘I’m glad it might not be true.’

  ‘It’s probably not true,’ I said gently. ‘Something else came up.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Your father’s father. He wants to meet you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Ricky, your father, was what they used to call a love child.’

  She frowned. She started shaking her head but was smiling like she didn’t get it. I explained it all, about Tonin and the Salati woman. About Riccardo and his half-brothers, Umberto and Sandro. I told it all to her straight.

  ‘So this Tonin man is my grandfather?’

  ‘He says he is.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He might be your grandfather. But if I were you I would do the tests.’

  She looked at me with a face I’ve seen before: disappointment that the world might be so mean. I had to disappoint her further.

  ‘There’s something else you should know. This man, Massimo Tonin, is a lawyer. He might be able to look after you, but he might not. His wife and son are in custody.’

  It was too much for the teenager and she broke down again. I realised I was breaking everything to a girl who needed her family around her and a branch of it was sitting in my car.

  ‘He’s outside if you want me to bring him in.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Your grandfather.’ I went out on to her balcony and pointed out my car. Tonin was sat there like a dog on a summer’s day, his forlorn eyes longing for someone to let him out. I motioned with my head and he was at the buzzer in a flash.

  When he came in, she didn’t s
ay anything but just looked at him.

  ‘Elisabetta,’ I said, ‘this is Massimo Tonin.’

  She laughed nervously.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry I haven’t …’ he stammered.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  Tonin was stumbling over lines he must have rehearsed in his head for years. ‘I’m sorry all this is my fault. Your father – I didn’t even know him as a son, not until the end of his life, and all I did was try to help him. But your grandmother, she insisted I never see you. She thought I was responsible, my family was responsible, for your father’s disappearance.’

  She looked at me for confirmation of what he was saying.

  ‘Silvia’, Tonin said, looking at me, ‘knew that my family were involved in Ricky’s disappearance. She said so to me. She had nothing to prove it, and I didn’t believe her until you, Castagnetti, came along this week. She said that if I ever went near her family again, Elisabetta included, she would denounce us.’

  ‘How did she know?’

  ‘I don’t know how, but she was convinced Teresa or Sandro had done something terrible.’

  Tonin looked at his granddaughter and seemed to change. ‘I am your grandfather,’ he said. It was the first time I had seen him smile since we had met. ‘I understand if you distrust me, and you would be right to be angry at all the pain I have, inadvertently, caused you.’ He was on a roll now, holding her hand. ‘But I’ve prayed for you for years, I’ve thought about this moment thousands of times …’

  I walked away. I figured they had been apart so long, they could do without someone taking notes now they were finally together.

  I went outside and looked for a bar. There was a place just opposite that was busy with the football crowd. They had all assembled to watch the highlights from the day’s games and were shouting insults at players they didn’t like.

  My phone started ringing. It was Dall’Aglio.

  ‘We’ve found something.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘One of the dogs has turned up something.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s just a few bones.’

  ‘Human?’

  ‘We’ll be doing tests.’

  I took it all in. It had to be Riccardo. It couldn’t be anyone else. When you go looking for a body and you find one, the identification is just a formality and Dall’Aglio knew it.

  Poor boy. Murdered because he spent too much of other people’s money. Hidden in the hills, forgotten by everyone except his elderly mother.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Dall’Aglio said. ‘We ran checks on Bocchialini and Teresa Tonin. It turns out they both spent big in the autumn of ’95. He bought a car in cash, and she put down the deposit for her son’s flat.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘Split it fifty-fifty,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘Something else,’ he said. ‘One of the fireflies …’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘One of the prostitutes who hang around the cittadella … she claims to have seen Bocchialini’s car that night, parked there for an hour with him inside it.’

  ‘She’s sure?’

  ‘She says she asked him for a cigarette, asked if he wanted company. She got a good look at his face.’

  ‘And she’s identified him?’

  ‘That’s what she says.’

  ‘Complimenti,’ I said. ‘And the keys?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Have you searched Bocchialini’s house?’

  ‘They’re still on it. They’ll turn up.’

  ‘You won’t get anywhere without them. There’s something else …’

  ‘Go on,’ Dall’Aglio said eagerly.

  ‘Have forensics gone over the tools in Bocchialini’s shed?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Nothing of interest I take it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. Let me tell you where you’ll find the murder weapon. Or where, I’m afraid, you won’t find it. A while back I was talking to the receptionist at Tonin’s law firm and she was telling me how Teresa Tonin used to fill young Sandro’s fridge with food. And then when we went round to the house to arrest Massimo Tonin, old Teresa was there cooking in the kitchen.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s just that she’s a cook and like all good cooks she’ll have all the equipment. I asked old Massimo Tonin if she has a batticarne and he says she uses one. But I doubt you’ll find she’s got one any more. She will have got rid of it after she used it on Umberto Salati on Wednesday night.’

  ‘The tiny spikes …’ Dall’Aglio said under his breath.

  ‘It fits. But I fear it will only be more missing evidence …’

  I was watching the street outside when I saw Anna di Pietro walking towards her flat with a man and a young boy. I told Dall’Aglio I had to go. I walked out of the bar and shouted over at her.

  Anna looked at me with suspicion. I told her Tonin was upstairs with her daughter and she froze.

  ‘Tonin?’ She looked at me with incredulity.

  ‘He’s in there with Elisabetta now.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ the man asked.

  ‘You Giovanni?’

  He nodded.

  I introduced myself. The woman was already racing inside, the Standa plastic bags bouncing against her ankles as she ran.

  ‘Anna,’ I shouted.

  She turned around and I walked over to her.

  I told her about the farm they were searching and what they had found. She dropped her shopping.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said as I left them to it.

  I like to think I’m a man of my word. Some wise bloke once said that it’s not the oath that makes you believe the man, but the man the oath.

  So when I got back to the flat I called Mazzuli from La Gazzetta. He came on the line spitting blood, saying I had let him down, hadn’t honoured a deal we had made.

  I told him I was ready to spill, just as long as my name never came up.

  ‘Is it related to what happened to that gardener last night?’

  I told it to him from start to finish. It helped clear everything up in my mind before writing the report for Crespi. I spoke so much he didn’t say a word for ten minutes. It didn’t even sound like he was taking notes.

  ‘You’re sure about all this?’ was all he said at the end.

  ‘It’s only hints and suppositions. It’s just an informed opinion. The only difference between my job and yours is the “informed” bit.’

  He laughed and muttered something about us having a drink sometime.

  Telling him all about the case made me realise how incomplete it was. I went and sat in the armchair and thought it all through again. Bocchialini’s suicide had, in some ways, been the ultimate act of love. With him out of the way, there was little chance Teresa Tonin would stand trial for the murder of either Ricky or Umberto. He must have known he was the only link between the dead men and the woman he loved, and he decided to eradicate the link with a bullet to the brain. We hadn’t found the keys, and Dall’Aglio, I knew, was unlikely to find the weapon. Without them the only evidence connecting the woman to Ricky’s disappearance was the fact that she had spent a large amount of cash back in the 1990s. Even if we did some DNA tests on Sandro, and even if we found out he really was their child, it didn’t prove anything. The woman had been right when she had taunted me at her house that we had no evidence. That’s the way in Italy. You have suspicions, you might even get the satisfaction of knowing who did something, and how, but the satisfaction is short-lived because you rarely see them face justice. You know, that’s all, and knowledge is no good unless other people get it too.

  One day something would turn up and bring me back to her. Someone would remember something, or somebody would chance across some old keys in the undergrowth somewhere. Someone would hear that rattle of metal as they walked through the woods one day and bend down to pick up the object, see the Salati surname, and
remember about a murder from way back. A drought next summer might reveal a batticarne deep in the river bed. It might be tomorrow, it might be in ten years’ time. My life was like that: a blizzard of action followed by inactivity, as I waited for fate to take its course. But I would get her one day.

  The phone started ringing. I got up out of the chair half wondering if this was the missing link already. I put the phone to my ear all excited, but it was Mauro.

  ‘You know what propolis is?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’ It was one of the most annoying aspects of beekeeping. It was a dark brown substance like chewing gum that the bees got from plants and used as a glue to plug holes in the hive and kill off fungal infections. My bee suit is all stained with the stuff. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I met a woman the other day who’s into alternative medicine.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s looking for a source of propolis and I mentioned you. Apparently it’s quite valuable.’

  ‘It’s useless to me.’

  ‘Then sell it to her.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Just a woman I met.’ It always amazed me how many women Mauro met.

  ‘Bring her to the Circolo,’ I said.

  ‘I was thinking of somewhere slightly classier.’

  ‘Bruno’s then.’

  We agreed to meet for dinner. The woman must have been something special because the Circolo was usually quite classy enough for Mauro. Not that Bruno’s was that much better, but at least they served something other than cotto and crudo.

  I was glad of the distraction. If it weren’t for Mauro and my bees I wouldn’t ever stop thinking about work. So Bruno’s was fine by me. And besides, if we went to Bruno’s there was always an outside chance I would run into Serena again. Anything’s possible in a city this small.

  by the same author

  THE DARK HEART OF ITALY

  UTOPIAN DREAMS: In Search of the Good Life

  About the Author

  Tobias Jones studied at Jesus College, Oxford. He was on the staff of the London Review of Books and the Independent on Sunday before moving to Parma in 1999. Since the publication of The Dark Heart of Italy he has written and presented documentaries for BBC Television and radio and for RAI 3. He is a regular contributor for the British and Italian press and is a columnist for Internazionale. His second book, Utopian Dreams, was published in 2007.