‘The radio said at six that a dead body had been found. They haven’t formally identified it.’
‘So how do you know it’s him?’
‘Because this guy seemed to know the details. He said Salati had jumped.’
‘I can’t believe it. You’re sure it’s Umberto Salati?’
‘Like I say, it hasn’t been confirmed. What are you going to do?’
‘He lives in Via Pestalozzi, doesn’t he?’
‘By the cittadella.’
‘I’ve got to go. Thanks Mauro.’
I threw the phone on the bed and finished getting dressed. It was freezing. I pulled on a jumper and went to put on the coffee.
Salati had committed suicide. Umberto Salati had jumped and I was the one who had pushed him to the edge. I had tried to break him and I had succeeded nicely. I don’t normally feel guilt because I live, if I may say so, a pretty clean life. But now I felt guilt like an ice-cube in the heart. If it was true that Umberto was dead, I knew I was to blame.
It was still early and after last night’s rain the sky was a slightly lighter grey than yesterday. I slugged the coffee and headed out towards the
cittadella
. The city was still asleep, just the odd bike or moped heading off to work.
As I got closer, though, there were people running towards Via Pestalozzi. It made me impatient to get there first and I started walking more quickly. There were carabinieri at either end of the street holding back people with microphones.
‘Is it true?’ I asked a man with a camera on his shoulder.
‘Don’t know.’
‘What’s the official line?’
‘They’ve found a body.’
‘Has someone tried to call him?’ I didn’t even need to mention Salati’s name.
‘No reply.’
I moved towards the carabinieri.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘There’s been a suicide.’
‘Have they identified the body?’
‘No.’
The carabinieri didn’t like privates muscling in, but I had to try. I showed them my licence but it didn’t make any difference. I got the usual, dead-pan brush-off.
There was nothing to do. I went and sat in the bar at the corner of Via Solferino. Other journalists started turning up. Someone from
La Gazzetta
, one of the staff reporters from the local radio station, the local Rai guy.
Carabinieri kept coming and going. The first reliable confirmation we got was when one of the neighbours emerged from the condominium.
He was immediately besieged by the journalists and he seemed to enjoy the attention.
‘Is it true it’s Umberto Salati?’ one of the journalists asked.
‘It’s unbelievable. Poor man. I had no idea he was, no idea he might …’
‘Could you identify who it was?’
‘Umberto,’ he said, hearing the question for the first time. ‘He was on his back, but his head was, it was horrible.’
I looked beyond the crowd. I had to get to the site, but it was still cordoned off. I had already shown my badge to the blank carabiniere this end of the street, so I did three sides of a rectangle, walking along Solferino to the Stradone, along that to Passo Buole so that I came at the street from the other end. An officer held up his hand as I approached.
‘Forbidden,’ he said.
‘I live here.’
‘What number?’
‘Seventeen.’ I pointed at a building and the carabiniere fell into step with me, expecting to accompany me to my door just to make sure. He kept looking back every few steps to check that no one else had ducked under the thin plastic ribbon.
I walked slowly knowing I would be allowed to pass only once. After they had realised I didn’t live here, I would be hounded away with a choice insult. I slowed down even more as I came to the middle of the street. There was an ambulance, two carabinieri Alfa Romeos, and an unmarked car that was so badly parked it could only be the plainclothes.
Outside the block at number eight were men in white overalls taking measurements in the courtyard. I crouched down, pretending to be doing up my shoe-laces and saw between the various ankles a man’s face.
The chin was unnaturally far from the shoulder. The yellowing moustache was red. I tilted my head and saw the contorted features of Umberto Salati: the thick hair, the round cheeks. It looked like he was asleep.
I had an involuntary intake of breath. Seeing it like that didn’t leave much doubt about life and death.
I pretended that I had forgotten my keys and slinked away from my escort. I still couldn’t believe it.
I tried to think straight. I had been in the game long enough to know that something was suspicious. This had something to do with Riccardo. Whatever had started a couple days ago had caused Umberto Salati to jump. Or had persuaded someone to push him. Because it was always like this. A case was never just a case. It became many, each one knocking into the next. What I had assumed was a cold case had become suddenly hot. A bit of gentle sport had become dangerous.
I felt under threat myself, as if I were somehow responsible for what had happened. I was often tense on a case, but I never felt, like now, that I was somehow at the centre of it. It might even have been my aggressive openness the night before that had unhinged Salati.
I hated not being at the scene of the crime. If this really was a murder, every minute was precious. You needed to stop people moving. You couldn’t let them into or out of the building. You had to do everything quickly: take statements, swabs, photographs, measurements, record number plates, request phone records, dust every handle and button in the building. I didn’t trust the officials to be anything like thorough enough.
‘What are you doing?’ The voice made me jump and I stood up quickly. ‘Castagnetti?’ The voice sounded surprised.
It was Dall’Aglio. He had the same uniform as the young boy who had been escorting me, but he looked much older. ‘You shouldn’t be here. I’m going to have to move you on.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said wearily.
‘What are you doing here anyway? I know you’re quick, but this isn’t even public knowledge yet.’
‘Tip-off.’
‘Always a tip-off, eh?’
I looked at him, trying to work out if he was malleable. ‘Was it really suicide?’
‘I can’t answer that, you know the rules.’
‘What time did it happen?’
‘There will be an official announcement later today.’
‘What floor was he on?’
Dall’Aglio didn’t say anything, but subtly put his index finger vertically upwards.
‘Top?’
He nodded.
I looked at Dall’Aglio. We had been out for a drink together a couple of times but now he was in uniform and this was different. It was pointless to throw more questions his way.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK. See you around.’
I walked a little further on and took out my binoculars. There was a row of trees shielding the building from the street. I moved further on to see the building better. It was a six-storey block. It looked elegant and large. Through the brass and glass doors you could see the dark banisters. The lighting was low. It looked typical for this chic part of town: large awnings overhanging balconies laden with leafy plants.
The top floor was surrounded by a terrace which formed a continuous balcony on all four sides. It had no plants. I could see an open door leading on to the balcony above where the body lay.
I moved my gaze downwards, past the trees to the gravel path where Salati had fallen. Closer towards me was a sloping concrete drive leading down to what was presumably the underground car park.
I put the binoculars back and ducked under the cordon the other side of the street. I pulled out my mobile and called Crespi.
‘Umberto Salati is dead,’ I said bluntly.
‘Who is this?’
‘Castagnetti. You hired me a few days ago, remember? Umberto Salati is dead. There’s no official confirmation but I’ve been to the scene. It’s him.’
For once he was speechless.
‘We need to talk,’ I said. I didn’t want to go back to Crespi’s office. The man seemed impregnable there. ‘Let’s meet in the square at eleven.’
I snapped the phone shut. I looked back one last time at the palazzo. There were armed guards at the front and back entrance. By the cordon I could see an old-fashioned Italian circus. I could see the carabinieri taking statements in the car park, and the reporters were then taking statements from the carabinieri. Both were then reporting those statements to their superiors who would publicise them when it suited.
The people coming out of the
cittadella
paused to look at the disorder and ask questions.
‘What’s going on?’ people kept asking me. I shrugged so many times I got backache.
On the Stradone it was business as usual. Women in slack fur coats bustled along the pavements. They looked like hairy eggs. I saw a man carrying a dog in a Burberry handbag. A young girl was wearing a silver-grey Belstaff jacket, only it was imitation because the label said Belfast. Perhaps it was deliberate, a subversive logo. But it looked the same as the real thing. That was the important thing in this city: to look the part, to give off the signals if you only knew how.
I walked slowly towards the Circolo. I called Mauro and told him to meet me there. I wanted to do what the rest of the city would be doing: watch the story on TV.
Mauro was there before me, already nursing a glass of malvasia. The TV was on full volume. There were live feeds from Salati’s house. Only hours after his death there were camera crews outside his palazzo, some conducting interviews with his neighbours via the intercom, others filming the roof terrace from below. Funny how police always let in their favourite journalists.
‘What happened to you?’ Mauro asked cheerfully. ‘Looks like old Salati landed on you.’
On the TV, twenty police cadets were shown combing the gardens and shrubs below. Tall trees were being searched, prodded and pulled by policeman standing in the rectangular fist at the end of a crane’s yellow arm.
Then there was an interview with the slippery mayor. He chose his words very carefully, as if he were trying to save himself from something: ‘He was a dedicated man who represented the best of this city — enterprise, imagination, generosity. We are all in mourning. Our thoughts’, the mayor was now looking into the camera, ‘are with his family.’
As usual the institutional expressions of regret disguised any discord. I knew the official civility by now. It meant no one had a bad word to say against anyone who was dead. Death always made everyone wonderful.
‘Are you personally convinced’, the bald journalist asked the mayor, ‘that Umberto Salati voluntarily took his own life?’ It didn’t look right and the little journalist obviously knew it. No one dared to ask such a question on live TV to such a powerful politician unless the piazza was with you.
The mayor drew breath slowly and nodded. ‘From early indications it seems so. Although it does appear that Umberto Salati died by his own hand, I hope we remember him for the way he lived his life, not for the way in which he ended it.’ Mauro threw a shiny napkin at the set. ‘Balle’, he said. ‘You know that “suicidarsi” isn’t just a reflexive verb? Sometimes there’s a subject and an object involved. It’s something that someone does to someone else.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. I had heard it all before: people were always being ‘suicided’.
‘You’ve got a crazy situation’, said Mauro, ‘where you might suspect Umberto of murdering Riccardo back in 1995, but at the same time you now suspect Riccardo of murdering Umberto over fourteen years later. And until you find Riccardo, walking or rotting, you won’t know which one it is.’
‘Maybe neither,’ I said with resigned frustration. It was like trying to thread a needle with cooked spaghetti.
It was surely too much to think that Salati’s death was Ricky’s doing. Things like that just didn’t happen. People didn’t turn up out of the blue to commit a fatal push and disappear again. The only connection I could find between the brothers was some meaningless word like ‘cursed’ or ‘jinxed’. Silvia Salati’s sons were gone. And for the time being not even death connected them, at least not until I found Ricky’s skeleton somewhere.
Even if Riccardo was alive, why would he bump off his brother? If it was greed, he surely would have done something before their mother died. That way her estate would all be his. As it was, Umberto’s share of the estate would now pass to his ex-wife or their children. There didn’t seem to be a motive.
Maybe it really was suicide. Maybe Umberto was distraught at the death of his mother, distraught at the fact that he might never have truly known who she was. He might have been filled with remorse for what had happened, or what he had done, to his brother. Maybe he thought I was closing in on him and had preferred to face death than face the music. There were certainly enough motives for suicide.
But it just didn’t add up. Umberto didn’t seem like a broken man. He seemed like the sort to get angry, to get even, rather than let life run him over.
Mauro switched to the other local channel. An anchorman announced an interview with Salati’s grieving ex-wife from Traversetolo, Roberta. She was filmed stepping on to her doorstep to say she was saddened to hear of the death of her former husband, and that for the sake of their children the family would ask to be allowed to mourn in private.
‘Auguri,’ I said sarcastically.
I knew that the television would pollute everything about this case. It would be the source of all information. We always complain about the lack of justice in Italy, about the fact that most iconic crimes in the country’s history go unpunished. But that’s largely because everyone expects clarity to come from the television. Its studio experts speculate on these
misteri
, they combine excited guesses with stoked indignation. Every new scoop pretends to offer clarity, but actually spreads confusion to keep the story going. That way the spectacle will never finish and it can be rewritten through bar-room gossip. And then the
grande pubblico
will be able to show, through paranoia and fantasy, that you really can’t believe in anything. In the end, everyone will have their own, breathtaking explanation for what happened in this or that tragedy.