‘Silvia forbade it. Said it was out of the question. That was a condition of having him at all. And because,’ he paused, ‘that would only have hurt my wife, and Silvia’s family. I didn’t think I needed to publicise my relationship to Riccardo to prove my innocence. I still don’t.’

‘Your wife didn’t know?’

‘She found out.’

‘When?’

‘After Riccardo had disappeared. I told her. I think she must have known anyway.’

‘How come?’

‘Women know.’

I wondered. If that was true, maybe his wife had known long before.

‘There’s something phoney here,’ I said. ‘A man who loves his son, and gives him money, doesn’t keep it hushed up for so long.’ I looked at the lawyer. ‘And a man who has a granddaughter doesn’t ignore her.’

He looked up eagerly at that.

‘You’ve met her?’

‘I’ve spoken to her, sure.’

Tonin shut his eyes as if trying to picture her.

‘Listen,’ I said, trying to reach him, ‘it doesn’t seem to me like you’re the kind of man who would kill his son. Only thing is, you don’t seem like the kind of man to have a son, if you don’t mind my saying. Until you drop the respectable, suited lawyer act and start talking to me like a man, I can’t do anything for you.’

I got up and made for the door. Tonin just pushed himself up on his walking stick and nodded at me as I turned the handle.

I still couldn’t understand what Tonin was keeping to himself. He seemed impassioned when accused of hurting the boy, but was shifty when I had tried to press him for an explanation of his conduct. Maybe he was simply from the old school where discretion and appearances were paramount. He had kept a secret, he said, out of kindness. It sounded phoney to me, but kindness and love always sound phoney to me. Love is normally only the afterburn of remorse.

I walked to the station. It was crowded with the usual suspects: salesmen and students going to Milan, groups of North Africans in sandy jackets; rounder, darker Africans with more colourful clothes and tall, elderly tourists looking at maps.

The boards announcing the reconstruction work in this square were decorated with all the most important symbols of the city: a bank’s crest, the seal of the town council, the arms of a construction firm.

I looked around. There was a bar opposite where I could have a drink whilst watching the anxious commuters. I ordered a pompari: a twist of pompelmo with a shot of campari.

I took my drink to the fruit machine and put in a coin. I pressed some buttons idly and looked around. The station square was being revamped, the whole area to the north was being given a face-lift. The workers gathered in this bar to eat large sandwiches and drink pints of icy water. The usual customers, the Romanian and Moroccan plasterers, were talking about the worst foremen in the city.

Bicycles and pedestrians and pushchairs were going in all directions. This was rush hour. The cars were backed up as far as I could see. I recognised many of the people. That was the thing about this city. No matter how often I hear it, it still amazes me how small it is.

I found the stationmaster in his office on the second floor. He was an elderly man, short and sprightly. He was wearing the green and purple outfit with the FS logo of Ferrovie dello Stato on his chest. He had a baseball cap on his head which, given his age and the weather, seemed incongruous.

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said, holding out my badge.

The man took it from my hands and looked at it closely. Officially stamped documents have an alchemic quality in Italy, and the stationmaster bowed slightly, a gesture which meant he would be happy to help.

‘Taxes?’ He asked.

‘Murder.’

He shrugged and smiled. ‘I haven’t killed anything other than rabbits.’

‘You know the timetables from 1995?’

The man looked at me smugly and smiled. ‘Test me.’

‘A train to Rimini, San Giovanni, 1995. A Saturday night.’

The man looked at the ceiling.

‘1995? They had already started cutting out the trundlers. Those ones that stopped at all the villages. There would have been, let me see, the 18.32, the 20.32 and the 22.32.’

‘And through the night?’

The man looked at me seriously, like he didn’t like being pushed. ‘Well now. There would have been something around two, and another around five.’

I looked at the old man. ‘Your memory seems all right.’ I was trying to wean out the man’s jovial side. ‘How come you remember all these timetables?’

‘It was my work,’ he said, pleased I had finally asked the question he wanted; ‘it’s what I’ve done every day of my working life for forty-two years. People like you coming up to me, asking me impatient questions about this or that train to this or that town. My whole life has been remembering hours and minutes and connections.’

‘Snap,’ I said. ‘And the waiting room hasn’t always been where it is now, right?’

The man laughed. ‘It’s moved more times than I can remember. They move it every year. In 1995 it would have still been next to the bar, on platform one.’

I was looking into the distance. ‘Say someone missed a train, or the train was late, where would a young man go and wait?’

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Depends what kind of young man.’

‘This one was unpredictable from what I hear. Probably prey to the usual vices.’

It was the first time the man had paused and let a question sink in. ‘Some men would wait around in the parks outside. There were always a lot of people to pass the time of day with, if you see what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t see.’

The man looked uncomfortable. ‘There were women. And boys.’

‘And where would they go?’

‘Parco Ducale, Via Palermo. One or two had flats nearby.’

‘And there are always people selling shit in the shadows I assume?’

‘Never used to be. When I started back in the 60s, we didn’t know what drugs were. Nowadays,’ the man was getting worked up, ‘you see them hanging out there all day and all night, constantly selling stuff to young kids. There are half a dozen people within fifty metres of this office who are here selling drugs every day and the police never pick them up. Why is that? I’ve never understood it. They’re allowed to sell poison to our children in the broad daylight. Just don’t understand it.’

‘Me neither.’ I shook my head with what I hoped was enough indignation to persuade the man I was on his side. ‘And if someone just waited in the station? Where would someone go to kill time?’

‘There’s the bar.’

‘Which one?’

‘There’s the station bar. Or that other one outside the station, the other side of the bus-stops.’

I nodded. It was going nowhere. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you must have seen a lot in forty-two years. A lot of people coming and going. Did you ever see anything that you had to take to the police?’

He smiled whilst blinking slowly. ‘All the time. Every week I see couples screaming at each other. There are knife fights and the Ultras and political extremists. You see them all when you work here.’

‘But you never saw anything, back in the summer of ’95?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘This man.’ I pulled the mug-shot from my pocket. ‘He disappeared from this station in 1995.’

The man took the photo from my hand and held it up to the light. ‘I know the face, I’m sure.’

‘That’s because it was in the papers back then.’

‘That’s right.’ He squinted at the photograph again. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing him around the station, but there was some policeman who came and asked me all about it. The times of the trains and so on, just as you are.’

‘Colonello Franchini?’

‘I don’t remember his name. We went for a drink after work-’

‘That was Franchini.’

‘He asked me about the trains, showed me some photographs.’