The real news was that nothing was happening. Which was what normally happened in winter. Here, everything is as regular as clockwork: the schoolchildren, the buses, the meetings, the meals. It feels like the most punctual city in Italy. There’s something about the way people walk: they all know where they have to be next. If dinner isn’t served at the expected hour grown men think the end of the world is nigh.

I saw a couple jogging towards the Parco Ducale. Every now and then I heard the judder of a shop’s metallic shutters being raised.

It was almost eight and I headed towards Tonin’s office on one of the side streets off Via Farini. I was half hoping that the girl from last night would be there, but when I rang, the same male voice from yesterday spoke.

‘We’re on the ground floor on the left.’

The door clicked open. I wandered across the cold stone. There, on the left, stood an old man. He looked distinguished. He had a tie and a walking stick and smelt of expensive aftershave.

‘Good morning,’ he said formally. ‘You must be Castagnetti.’

I nodded. ‘You’re Tonin?’

The man held the door open for me. The office was similar to Crespi’s: furnished to feel luxurious. Entire walls were covered with legal reference books. He motioned for me to sit down.

‘You found us all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m here aren’t I?’

‘Could I offer you a coffee?’ There was steel inside his politeness, as if his politeness was nothing more than a warning that he expected deference in return. By being so overtly accommodating, he made it clear that he demanded esteem and subtlety. It was a charade that many powerful men played, a sort of conversation in code.

‘I assume this is about the will?’ he said, as if he were asking after my mother.

It was a strange question to ask. But that’s what lawyers did. They went to the documents and the money.

‘You’re wanting to prove Ricky’s dead?’ Tonin asked again.

I nodded. I would let the man ask his questions, but I didn’t like it.

‘Silvia’s other son,’ the man went on, placing a spoon back on the saucer, ‘what’s he called? Umberto is it? He’ll be wanting to prove Riccardo is dead. It makes sense.’

I looked at him. It wouldn’t be difficult to make the man come clean, but he would need a bit of flushing.

‘Listen,’ I interrupted, ‘I think you’re in trouble either way. You withheld information.’

‘Is that so?’ Tonin said, amused.

‘That would be the charge. A young man goes missing and you forgot to tell the police that he was your son.’

Tonin stared at me with a stony face. ‘How did you find out?’

‘You show up the year Silvia Salati’s husband died in 1995. Ricky’s flush with cash for once and no one knows how. You go round there after he goes missing. You huff and puff the way an anxious father would.’

Tonin had lost his balance. He was trying to regain it by putting his fingertips on the edge of the table but I could see his fingers shaking. He was staring into the drying brown stains on his cup.

‘It’s not something I’ve ever been ashamed of,’ he said quietly. ‘I kept it secret only because Silvia wanted it that way.’

‘For decorum?’

‘No, for kindness. She didn’t want to hurt her husband. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem to have the same scruples.’

‘Meaning?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘He never found out?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And as soon as he died, you decided you wanted to play the father after all?’

He looked at me with wry amusement. ‘I met Riccardo. It was completely by chance, but I met him and we got talking, and we got on.’

‘You told him you were his father.’

He nodded.

‘Never gave him any money?’

He looked up at me and nodded slowly.

‘He told me he was in danger. He had borrowed money from the wrong sort of people.’

‘And?’

‘I offered to help out.’

‘In what way?’

Tonin shrugged. ‘I lent him some money.’

‘How much?’

The pause was long enough to know that his next line was a lie. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘How much?’

He was shaking his head. ‘Eighty-five.’

I sucked in through my teeth. ‘Million lire?’

Tonin nodded.

I looked at him. That was enough to kill for. More than enough. It might even be enough to kill your child for. I’ve seen one killed for less, much less.

‘How did you give it to him?’

‘Cash.’

‘When?’

There was another pause. ‘I can’t remember.’

I put an elbow on the mantelpiece and deliberately knocked over a vase of flowers. The water and glass formed an icy lake on the floor.

‘When?’ I asked. The man said nothing and I nudged a framed photograph off the mantelpiece. The glass shattered on the floor.

‘Stop it.’ Tonin had his knuckles on his forehead and was trying to extend his fingertips upwards. ‘It was the weekend he went missing.’

‘Ninety-five?’

He nodded. ‘It was San Giovanni.’

Tonin must have known this was relevant. Eighty-five million. The amount and the timing said it all.

I looked at the little lawyer. He seemed broken.

‘Why have you never said all this before?’

Tonin was staring into space.

I couldn’t understand it. In most cases people withheld to protect themselves, but Tonin had kept quiet about giving money to his own son.

I bent down and picked up the photograph that was nude now, deprived of the frame and glass that made the two subjects look romantic. ‘Who are these monkeys?’ I asked, throwing him the photo.

‘Teresa and Sandro.’

‘Who are they?’

‘My family.’

‘Which family is this?’

He didn’t smile, but looked at me with resignation.

I suddenly felt myself losing control. I don’t often lose my cool, but sometimes people like Tonin really get to me: those kind of innocent idiots that don’t do anything bad, they just keep quiet so that bad people don’t get into trouble.

‘I should hand you over to the carabinieri right now,’ I spat. ‘How could you think that this had nothing to do with his disappearance? A boy that unreliable, that irregular, and you give him eighty-five million? And then he’s not around any more? You sat on this like you sat on the secret of your thing with the old Salati woman.’

The lawyer had turned white.

‘You make out you’re as pure as your cashmere but you’re like all the others. It wouldn’t surprise me if you suddenly wanted your money back and leaned on him a little too hard.’

I had gone too far, and Tonin was wagging a finger. ‘The only thing I ever did wrong’, he hissed, ‘was to make a bad marriage. That’s my only fault in all this.’

‘You really do think you’re innocent of everything? You withhold vital evidence in a missing person investigation, and you still make out like you’re a victim.’

Tonin looked up quickly at that. ‘The only victim in all this is that poor boy.’ He looked at me with pleading eyes. ‘What are you accusing me of?’ he said.

‘I want to know why were you still looking for Riccardo after he disappeared. I heard you went round to his woman’s house regularly afterwards.’

‘Sure. It’s true.’

‘Why?’

Tonin looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘Because I wanted to find him. Check he was all right.’

‘Why?’

‘He was my son,’ he shouted furiously, banging his fist on the table top.

‘It wasn’t a clever way of saying to the world that you had nothing to do with his disappearance? You kept going back there to prove that it wasn’t you that had buried him? Or were you going round there to look for your money?’

‘I’m not responsible for Ricky’s disappearance.’ Tonin was speaking through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve been suspected for fourteen years of a crime I would have laid down my life to avoid.’

‘And yet you’ve been keeping secrets all that time. Why didn’t you let people know you were the boy’s father?’