‘Let me talk to my client and I’ll call you back.’

He phoned as I was driving to my office. Tonin had agreed to see me immediately.

I walked over there and went down into the pit where he was being held with seven other men. He looked like a caged animal, pacing his confined space with frustration. He was still dressed in suit and tie.

The guards let him out and escorted us into an interview room.

‘What does he want?’ Tonin said to his lawyer as he looked at me.

‘He wants to ask you some questions. He wants to help you.’

He stared at me. ‘How are you going to help?’

‘By proving you had nothing to do with Umberto’s murder.’

He shook his head. He was contradicting me, as if he wanted to be charged in person, like he actually wanted to be accused of it.

‘Why did you place a mourning notice in La Gazzetta under the name of a missing man?’

He stared at me but didn’t deny it. It almost seemed to surprise him.

‘Why’, I fixed him, ‘would you do a thing like that?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Why would someone do that?’

‘It’s a very unusual thing to do if you haven’t got a motive.’

‘Maybe I felt sorry for her.’

‘For Silvia Salati?’

‘Sure. I thought the idea of her dying not knowing about our son was too much. I wanted to think that somewhere out there he actually was mourning her.’

‘Who says he isn’t?’

He looked angrily at me. ‘What do you really want?’

‘Try the truth. Why did you pay to publish a mourning notice under the name of a missing person?’

‘I told you. I liked the idea of a son mourning his mother.’

‘That sounds phoney to me.’

‘That’s how it was. It was harmless.’

‘Harmless acts have a habit of turning nasty.’

We looked at each other like cats about to fight. But I had lost the element of surprise. Old Tonin had improvised his story and was sticking to it. He had paid, he said, for a mourning notice out of compassion. It was bull, but I had nothing to disprove it. I decided to change tack.

‘Where was your wife on Wednesday night?’

‘At home,’ he said, ‘you saw her yourself.’

‘I saw her at seven-thirty,’ I corrected. ‘Umberto Salati died a couple of hours later. More than enough time for her to get into town. You’ve got separate bedrooms,’ I said quickly. ‘She could quite easily get up and go out without you noticing it.’

‘Sure. Where’s she going to go? She doesn’t drive.’

That was a turn-up. It was either a last-minute lie, the sort of no-hoper people throw out when the game is up. Or it was true and I was barking up the wrong tree.

‘She doesn’t drive?’ I tried not to make it sound like a question, as if I had known as much all along.

‘Never has. If you think she walked into the city you’re out of your mind. My wife doesn’t walk anywhere.’

‘Bicycle?’

‘Sure. On the tangenziale in that fog. Not even you believe that, Castagnetti.’

I had been thrown off balance. I couldn’t understand why a man who kept protesting his innocence still wouldn’t explain what he was up to. I had yet to hear a rational explanation for that mourning notice. Maybe Tonin wasn’t as rational as he appeared. Perhaps he had published the mourning notice because he wanted to see it, he longed to believe it. People will believe anything if they want it to be true, even little lies they’ve sown themselves.

‘So why did you pay for a mourning notice in the name of Riccardo Salati? I’ve yet to hear a rational explanation.’

Tonin was shaking his head. He couldn’t say anything, but I knew he was protecting someone. And it wasn’t his wife. It didn’t sound to me like he was particularly inclined to protect her at all. But he was protecting someone else.

‘How many kids you got, other than Riccardo?’

‘Just Sandro.’

‘He’s the one with long hair?’

Tonin nodded. He had his head in his hands, his palms almost covering his ears as if he didn’t want to hear any more.

‘Why don’t you tell me about Sandro?’ I said gently.

Tonin looked up at me and shrugged. It wasn’t convincing but he wasn’t going to say anything. I wasn’t sure the old man even knew himself what his son had been up to. Or perhaps he had only just realised.

I tried another angle. ‘This money you say you were giving the boy, who knew you were giving it to him?’

Tonin frowned, uncertain where the question was coming from.

‘Did your family know you were giving the boy money?’

‘Not that I know of, no.’

‘You kept it secret?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘So someone could have found out about it?’

‘Very easily. Everyone knows where my filing cabinet is, all my accounts are kept there.’

I looked at the old man. He seemed sincere, almost dignified in his despair. There was something about his glazed look that made me think he really had only just worked out what was going on.

‘Which telephone company do you use?’ I asked.

The man frowned.

‘Which operator do you use at home?’

‘Infostrada,’ he said quickly, as if angry at the irrelevance of the question.

‘You’re still not telling me everything, Tonin.’ I stood up. ‘There will come a time when the murderer of your son Ricky is going to stand trial for this, and it would be just as well for you if it don’t look like you had aided and abetted.’ I picked a pen out of my jacket pocket and passed it to him. ‘Write down what you know. It will help.’

Even the force of looking up at me seemed too much for him, but he took the pen out of my hand and nodded. He looked almost grateful that the time had come.

I went back to see Dall’Aglio but was kept waiting over an hour. Once I was admitted it was made clear that my presence was a distraction. He was reading report after report, calling people into his office to pick up a folder or bring in another. He was aloof and I didn’t like it.

I tried to needle him by telling him about Tonin. ‘Tonin’s not involved, at least not how you think.’

‘Criminals sometimes seem invincible,’ Dall’Aglio said, ‘and you feel therefore impotent. That is why so many of us take these crimes personally. They are an affront to our professional powers.’ He looked at me as if he expected applause for his insight.

I shrugged.

‘Did you get a trace on the phone call from the house that evening? Their phone company is Infostrada.’

‘I know. I’ve got the list of calls in front of me.’ He said it slowly, enjoying watching my impatience. ‘There appears to have been only one phone call from the Tonin house that evening.’

‘Go on.’

‘0521-498444.’

‘And who is it?’

‘We haven’t checked.’

‘Thanks’.

Dall’Aglio looked up, wondering whether the gratitude was sarcastic. ‘Now you. Why are you so interested?’

I decided I couldn’t drop half a brick. I might as well drop the lot. ‘Tonin lent the boy some money. The boy disappeared.’

‘And you think Tonin…’

‘No. I think the person who answers,’ I looked down at his notebook, ‘0521…’

‘Did what exactly?’

‘I don’t know. But the way I see it, the only person pissed off when Ricky started paying off his debts was someone on Tonin’s side of the fence. When Tonin started opening his purse to his bastard son, the only person who really cared was his son Sandro.’ I looked up at Dall’Aglio to see if he was following me. ‘Pass me the phone.’

Dall’Aglio obeyed as if it had been a command from a superior. I smiled with as much falsity as I could muster. Before letting go of the handset, Dall’Aglio put it on loudspeaker.

I punched in the numbers as I read them. There was a long pause and then the line began its long beeps.

‘Sì?’

‘Is that Sandro Tonin?’

‘Speaking.’

I hung up and smiled smugly now. I looked at Dall’Aglio who was nodding and frowning at the same time.

‘She phoned her son,’ he said. ‘That’s all. It’s a mother calling her son, nothing else.’