I didn’t say anything. I just slapped his shoulders and left the hardened drinkers of the Circolo to their favourite poisons.

I wandered aimlessly and listened to people’s conversations. There’s a saying that the city is so quiet that people whisper. That’s what it seemed like this morning. There were small groups gathered together in the corner of bars, leaning close together so that no one else could hear. I could guess what they were saying. I had heard all the old men at the Circolo. I had heard people in the bus-stops. They were all asking about the Salati suicide and saying it sounded wrong. It was a mess which had been served up too neatly.

There was too much I didn’t know. And even when I knew the facts, there might only be one pointer hidden amongst them all. Like the time Umberto Salati had returned home. Where had he been? Who he had spoken to? Who was in the block of flats? What had they heard?

My phone was ringing. I slid it open and before I even got it to my ear I heard a man’s voice: ‘Castagnetti?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Mazzuli from La Gazzetta. We met the other day. We’re running a story tomorrow about Umberto Salati’s death.’

He hadn’t said suicide and I felt on edge.

The journalist kept talking. ‘Is it true you were investigating the disappearance of Riccardo, Umberto Salati’s younger brother?’

I paused. I could hear the hack tapping his keyboard impatiently.

‘What are you writing?’

‘Just taking notes.’

‘I haven’t even said anything yet.’ I couldn’t be sure what he already knew. La Gazzetta was the official mouthpiece of the city’s wealthy industrialists, and it didn’t go out on a limb for a story like this without being very sure of its facts. If this man was being given space to write about the Salati death they must have had some information.

‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Is it true there’s evidence Riccardo Salati is alive?’

So much for them knowing their facts. ‘Absolutely none at all.’

‘Didn’t he publish a mourning notice in our newspaper on the occasion of his mother’s death?’

‘That was someone else,’ I said disdainfully.

‘Have you got any proof of that?’

‘You know the answer to that.’ I remembered the Visa slip that this same journalist had passed me only two days ago.

‘You’ve traced the payment?’

‘Sure,’ I lied.

‘Who made the payment?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘I thought we had a deal?’

‘That doesn’t include passing information to a journalist before it’s passed to the appropriate authorities.’ When I lie I become more self-righteous than an altar boy.

‘Is it true Riccardo Salati is a suspect in his older brother’s murder?’

I laughed. ‘You’re talking to the wrong man. I don’t know who’s a suspect any more than you or your chickens.’

‘Do you believe the suicide story?’

Mazzuli was waiting for a reply. I didn’t say anything and eventually I heard him fingertipping a keyboard.

‘This is all off the record,’ I said. ‘You put my name in print and I’ll never speak to you again. You with me?’

‘Fair enough,’ he said like he hadn’t heard. ‘So?’

‘Put it this way: I would be amazed if it were suicide.’

‘Let me ask you another question. Is it true Umberto was investigating Riccardo’s death?’

‘That’s a more intelligent question.’ I scratched a sideburn. It sounded loud inside my head.

‘And?’

‘He was probably doing something similar to yourself. Asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Listen, you want a scoop on the Salati story, I’ll give it to you the minute I find it, believe me. I’ll call you. We had a deal and I’m a man of my word. But for now I know nothing about it other than what I’ve heard on TV.’

‘Had you already interviewed Salati about his brother’s disappearance?’

‘No comment.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘You can take that as goodbye.’ I hung up and stared at the phone. So much for trying to swap favours with a journalist. This was exactly what I had dreaded from the start. I was at the centre of a media storm.

Crespi was already waiting under the hooves of Garibaldi’s horse when I arrived.

‘You will obviously’, the notary said first up, ‘have to make a statement to the police about your own investigations.’

That angered me. Crespi was condescendingly telling me my own moral duty as if I didn’t know what it was. I already knew that my poking around would have to be made public and I didn’t need Crespi reminding me of it.

‘My commission’, I said slowly, ‘was merely to verify the legal status of the subject Salati, Riccardo.’

‘And had you already contacted the now deceased older brother?’

‘Of course I had contacted him,’ I spat. ‘I interviewed him briefly in his shop, nothing more.’

My words sounded aggressive, and it shocked me how quickly I was brushing myself clean of a man who had only just died.

‘Dear Castagnetti, they were brothers. You surely realise that their fates were in all probability linked? What happened to one is almost certainly related to what happened to the other.’

I didn’t know what to say. It was undeniable. Crespi knew it. Riccardo might have been killed by Umberto, or – if you were imaginative – the other way round. Somewhere there was the crime of fratricide, that was likely. My problem was that if one of the brothers had murdered the other, that still left one dead body unaccounted for.

‘What you tell the police is your business,’ Crespi carried on. ‘All I ask is that you provide me with a report regarding the legal status of my client’s younger son, Riccardo.’ He spoke as if he were dictating a letter.

‘Coglione,’ I said to myself as I walked away.

I walked back to my place in Borgo delle Colonne. I picked up the phone and dialled the number of the di Pietro woman in Rimini.

‘You’ve heard then?’ I said when she came to the phone.

‘I heard.’

‘Do you believe it?’

‘What?’

‘The suicide.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where were you last night?’

She laughed. I repeated the sentence a little more slowly.

‘I was here, with the family.’

‘Giovanni and the children?’

‘Right.’

‘And they can confirm that can they?’

‘Come and ask them. Where else would I be?’

I nodded to myself. It was far-fetched to see her wrestling Salati out of a window, but I had to ask. It was another fact that would need checking.

‘You need to get a guard on Elisabetta,’ I said.

‘She’s very safe here,’ Anna said. ‘What she needs is rest, not all this anxiety around her.’

‘There’s no point looking after her well-being if she’s dead, you with me? Her uncle has been murdered, and her father has been missing for more than a dozen years. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s next.’

The woman didn’t say anything but was breathing heavily. I could hear little coughs like she was trying to get a fishbone out of her throat. It’s strange listening to someone you don’t know crying on the phone. Almost like listening to them have a shower through a bathroom door.

‘I want to hire you,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘If she really is in danger, I need someone to look after her.’

‘I’m already hired,’ I said sadly. Working freelance is like waiting for a bus. Nothing turns up for ages, then everything comes at once.

‘Couldn’t you do both?’

‘Conflict of interests, sweetness.’

‘But you just said, she’s in danger.’

‘She might be. Call the police, let them know. Or call a private. There are enough in Rimini from what I remember. You could always call in the heavies from the Hotel Palace. Another thing, you’re going to get a herd of hacks coming your way. They’re probably on the Via Emilia as we speak.’