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because it hadn’t been done up for a few decades. The food was perfect and the place was full of customers noisily talking to old friends across the tables. I needed to find out where Filippo Marinelli was living. I called in a favour from a low-ranking carabiniere who put me in touch with someone else and by the time they had brought the bill – it seemed wrong it was so low – I had an address.
    I headed back to Rome. I drove with the window down, feeling the warm air gusting in like a wide-angle hairdryer. The fields round here were dotted with ancient ruins, stones that had stood there for thousands of years. There were sheep huddling in the shade of ancient Roman walls, weeds growing out of long-lost settlements. Rome always felt like this to me: a place where the grandeur of an empire had slipped away centuries ago, but one that still retained hints of that lost magnificence. Even meandering livestock lived in the shadow of that great civilisation and we moderns somehow knew we could never emulate, let alone surpass, it. That was what it was like here: it was a constant reminder of past glories and present inadequacies.
    I came to a smart suburb where the shops were shaded by large trees. I could hear the clatter of cutlery as a waiter cleared the outside tables of a restaurant that had bright orange tablecloths. It was clearly an elegant suburb: even the pharmacy, I saw through the window, had long, leather sofas for its waiting customers.
    Marinelli’s house was just round the corner from the chic shops. The villa looked large and immaculate. There were stone balconies outside every window with ornate, slightly convex iron railings covered with wisteria. There was a convertible BMW in the drive parked between large, stone sculptures of eagles.
    I rang the buzzer.
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘My name’s Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘It’s a delicate subject. A girl has gone missing.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
    ‘Can we talk face to face?’
    I heard a click and then saw the large gate sliding back. As soon as it did so, two large Alsatians ran towards me, stopping a metre in front of me and lowering their heads to bark madly as they bared their wet, yellow teeth.
    A man appeared at the door of the villa fifty metres away and shouted aggressively at the dogs. They ignored him, continuing to snarl at me, until he shouted again and they slowly retreated, occasionally turning round to offer a half-hearted bark to register their protest at my intrusion.
    The man was walking towards me now. He looked about fifty and had salt and pepper hair. He looked fit, wearing trainers and shorts and a black Lacoste top. He was tanned and good-looking.
    ‘Sorry about the dogs. They’re not very hospitable.’ He pointed towards me. ‘They didn’t do that, did they?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You’re limping.’
    ‘No, that’s an old injury.’ We shook hands. ‘I’m Castagnetti.’
    ‘Marinelli. Come in.’
    The place was immaculate but sterile. It felt like it wasn’t lived in, as if there were more money than warmth here. It reminded me of the Biondi pad. Every surface was shiny: the hall floor was a dark, polished wood, the walls had large mirrors, the hall table was a long slab of granite.
    ‘Coffee?’ he asked.
    We walked into the kitchen and he put the two halves of the hour-glass of metal together.
    ‘You want to tell me what this is all about?’ He stared at me. There was something about his manner that was direct and honest, like he wanted everything out in the open. I don’t know why but I liked him.
    ‘Like I said, I’m an investigator. I’ve been hired by two distraught parents to look for their young daughter.’
    He nodded as he took a cloth and wiped up a few fallen coffee grounds. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
    ‘The man who abducted her is someone you’ve . . .’