The Salati Case Read Free Page A

middle-aged men I met in this city: a financial success and a family failure. One out of two wasn’t bad, I always thought. I would settle for one out of two.
    I looked around the shop one last time. I turned over one or two labels. The prices were written by hand with an ink pen.
    Salati saw me and took a shirt out of my hands and rubbed the cloth between his thumb and forefinger and started explaining the quality of his stock. His fingers looked, like him, slightly chubby. He obviously liked the finer things in life. He was a bon viveur, but then everyone was around here.
    ‘I’m going to make some enquiries’, I said, ‘and come back to you. Buongiorno.’
    I walked out quickly. I didn’t like getting sucked into idle conversation with suspects. As soon as they offered you something, they would be asking for something in return. I heard Salati shouting goodbye to my back as if I were one of his customers, but by then I was back in the fog, enveloped in its icy white cold.
    I crossed the road and walked towards Borgo delle Colonne. It was one of the few colonnaded streets in the old city. Protected from the rain, and close to the inner ring road, this was where the city’s prostitutes used to wait for their clients at night. It had been a bohemian haven when I had moved in here ten years ago, but the whole area was now being made ‘
signorile
’ and the prostitutes had been moved on to the motorway slip-roads. I missed their ugly honesty.
    I walked up to my flat and sat at my desk. I rested the phone between my jaw and ear as I dialled the familiar number of the carabinieri.
    ‘Dall’Aglio? It’s Castagnetti.’
    ‘Good morning.’ He paused. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I’m reopening a case. The disappearance in 1995 of a young man called Riccardo Salati.’
    ‘Silvia’s son?’
    ‘Exactly. You knew her?’
    ‘Vaguely. I heard she died last week, is that right?’
    ‘Yeah. It’s about the will. This boy disappeared in 1995. It would have been the Questura that dealt with it.
    ‘I remember. And what do you want?’
    ‘The name of the officer who took the report, his present posting, and any documentation which you might have in the records regarding the case.’
    ‘That all?’ He laughed. ‘It’s very busy here, I doubt anyone will have time to look into it until this evening. I’ll get someone on it when I can, and I’ll call you back by the end of the day.’
    It went on like that for an hour. I phoned everyone I thought necessary. I phoned the town hall to ask if I could distribute the photocopies of the missing boy. I had to fax my request, so I typed up a letter. I made a note to ask Umberto Salati or Crespi for a photograph. I phoned every school in the city until I found out which ones Riccardo had attended. I phoned the secretaries to arrange visits.
    On a whim I decided to phone the only doctor listed for Sissa. A secretary answered the phone and eventually put me through to the doctor. I introduced myself and the man started buttoning up.
    ‘An investigator you say?’
    ‘Sure. I’m after just a couple of—’
    ‘I can’t tell you any details of any of my patients. You understand, confidentiality …’
    ‘Even the ones who are dead?’
    The man didn’t say anything and I pushed it.
    ‘Silvia Salati.’
    ‘Silvia? What do you want to know about her? She only died last week.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘How did she die?’ The man breathed out loudly. ‘Nothing confidential about that. It was her lungs. She had been a smoker all her life.’
    ‘Nothing unexpected?’
    ‘I told her thirty years ago it was going to happen.’
    I thanked him and put my finger on the phone cradle and lifted it again. I listened to the dialling tone, thinking about what to do next. I opened my diary and found the number for the library.
    Long beeps followed long silences.
    ‘Emeroteca,’ said a young woman’s voice.
    ‘Have you got
La Gazzetta
from the last few days?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Open