‘The what?’

‘One of the prostitutes who hang around the cittadella… she claims to have seen Bocchialini’s car that night, parked there for an hour with him inside it.’

‘She’s sure?’

‘She says she asked him for a cigarette, asked if he wanted company. She got a good look at his face.’

‘And she’s identified him?’

‘That’s what she says.’

‘Complimenti,’ I said. ‘And the keys?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have you searched Bocchialini’s house?’

‘They’re still on it. They’ll turn up.’

‘You won’t get anywhere without them. There’s something else…’

‘Go on,’ Dall’Aglio said eagerly.

‘Have forensics gone over the tools in Bocchialini’s shed?’

‘Sure.’

‘Nothing of interest I take it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Didn’t think so. Let me tell you where you’ll find the murder weapon. Or where, I’m afraid, you won’t find it. A while back I was talking to the receptionist at Tonin’s law firm and she was telling me how Teresa Tonin used to fill young Sandro’s fridge with food. And then when we went round to the house to arrest Massimo Tonin, old Teresa was there cooking in the kitchen.’

‘So?’

‘It’s just that she’s a cook and like all good cooks she’ll have all the equipment. I asked old Massimo Tonin if she has a batticarne and he says she uses one. But I doubt you’ll find she’s got one any more. She will have got rid of it after she used it on Umberto Salati on Wednesday night.’

‘The tiny spikes…’ Dall’Aglio said under his breath.

‘It fits. But I fear it will only be more missing evidence…’

I was watching the street outside when I saw Anna di Pietro walking towards her flat with a man and a young boy. I told Dall’Aglio I had to go. I walked out of the bar and shouted over at her.

Anna looked at me with suspicion. I told her Tonin was upstairs with her daughter and she froze.

‘Tonin?’ She looked at me with incredulity.

‘He’s in there with Elisabetta now.’

‘What’s going on?’ the man asked.

‘You Giovanni?’

He nodded.

I introduced myself. The woman was already racing inside, the Standa plastic bags bouncing against her ankles as she ran.

‘Anna,’ I shouted.

She turned around and I walked over to her.

I told her about the farm they were searching and what they had found. She dropped her shopping.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said as I left them to it.

I like to think I’m a man of my word. Some wise bloke once said that it’s not the oath that makes you believe the man, but the man the oath.

So when I got back to the flat I called Mazzuli from La Gazzetta. He came on the line spitting blood, saying I had let him down, hadn’t honoured a deal we had made.

I told him I was ready to spill, just as long as my name never came up.

‘Is it related to what happened to that gardener last night?’

I told it to him from start to finish. It helped clear everything up in my mind before writing the report for Crespi. I spoke so much he didn’t say a word for ten minutes. It didn’t even sound like he was taking notes.

‘You’re sure about all this?’ was all he said at the end.

‘It’s only hints and suppositions. It’s just an informed opinion. The only difference between my job and yours is the “informed” bit.’

He laughed and muttered something about us having a drink sometime.

Telling him all about the case made me realise how incomplete it was. I went and sat in the armchair and thought it all through again. Bocchialini’s suicide had, in some ways, been the ultimate act of love. With him out of the way, there was little chance Teresa Tonin would stand trial for the murder of either Ricky or Umberto. He must have known he was the only link between the dead men and the woman he loved, and he decided to eradicate the link with a bullet to the brain. We hadn’t found the keys, and Dall’Aglio, I knew, was unlikely to find the weapon. Without them the only evidence connecting the woman to Ricky’s disappearance was the fact that she had spent a large amount of cash back in the 1990s. Even if we did some DNA tests on Sandro, and even if we found out he really was their child, it didn’t prove anything. The woman had been right when she had taunted me at her house that we had no evidence. That’s the way in Italy. You have suspicions, you might even get the satisfaction of knowing who did something, and how, but the satisfaction is short-lived because you rarely see them face justice. You know, that’s all, and knowledge is no good unless other people get it too.

One day something would turn up and bring me back to her. Someone would remember something, or somebody would chance across some old keys in the undergrowth somewhere. Someone would hear that rattle of metal as they walked through the woods one day and bend down to pick up the object, see the Salati surname, and remember about a murder from way back. A drought next summer might reveal a batticarne deep in the river bed. It might be tomorrow, it might be in ten years’ time. My life was like that: a blizzard of action followed by inactivity, as I waited for fate to take its course. But I would get her one day.

The phone started ringing. I got up out of the chair half wondering if this was the missing link already. I put the phone to my ear all excited, but it was Mauro.

‘You know what propolis is?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’ It was one of the most annoying aspects of beekeeping. It was a dark brown substance like chewing gum that the bees got from plants and used as a glue to plug holes in the hive and kill off fungal infections. My bee suit is all stained with the stuff. ‘What about it?’

‘I met a woman the other day who’s into alternative medicine.’

‘And?’

‘She’s looking for a source of propolis and I mentioned you. Apparently it’s quite valuable.’

‘It’s useless to me.’

‘Then sell it to her.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Just a woman I met.’ It always amazed me how many women Mauro met.

‘Bring her to the Circolo,’ I said.

‘I was thinking of somewhere slightly classier.’

‘Bruno’s then.’

We agreed to meet for dinner. The woman must have been something special because the Circolo was usually quite classy enough for Mauro. Not that Bruno’s was that much better, but at least they served something other than cotto and crudo.

I was glad of the distraction. If it weren’t for Mauro and my bees I wouldn’t ever stop thinking about work. So Bruno’s was fine by me. And besides, if we went to Bruno’s there was always an outside chance I would run into Serena again. Anything’s possible in a city this small.

About the Author

Tobias Jones studied at Jesus College, Oxford. He was on the staff of the London Review of Books and the Independent on Sunday before moving to Parma in 1999. Since the publication of The Dark Heart of Italy he has written and presented documentaries for BBC Television and radio and for RAI 3. He is a regular contributor for the British and Italian press and is a columnist for Internazionale. His second book, Utopian Dreams, was published in 2007.