Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  She said, “No! No! You’ve got to understand. Salvatore, I had to. He didn’t give me a choice. If I didn’t cooperate . . . You don’t know what he’s holding you don’t know what I’ve done you don’t know how ruined this is going to make me and make Azhar and if that happens then Hadiyyah’s going to end up with those wretched people and I know how they are and what they think and how they feel which is that they don’t even care about her and they sure as bloody hell don’t want her round them and there is no one else because Azhar’s family . . . please, please, please.”

  “Mi dispiace,” he repeated. He was indeed sorry. He left her locked carefully in the room.

  He returned to Bruno and Rocco Garibaldi. After a negotiated glass of wine to still his nerves, Bruno made the phone call to Lorenzo Mura from a telephone set up to tape their exchange. It was very simple. Bruno said tersely that they needed to meet. The police had been to DARBA Italia. Things were heating up.

  Lorenzo Mura was hesitant. Daniele Bruno was insistent. They agreed to meet at the location that Salvatore had decided upon, its having the best possibility for an unobstructed view of their encounter as well as an unrestricted taping of their words. The Parco Fluviale in one hour, at the campo where Mura held his soccer clinics. Mura agreed to this and promised to be there. He sounded a little irritated but not suspicious.

  Rocco Garibaldi attended them. He and Salvatore rode in the white delivery van, which, Salvatore explained to him, would be parked at the outdoor café some one hundred metres from the field Mura used. At this time of year, on a fine day such as this, the café would be crowded. Its car park would be filled. A van such as theirs would go unnoticed. Anyone who saw it would merely conclude that its driver had stopped for refreshments.

  Daniele Bruno would, of course, drive his own car and leave it in the small parking area beside the campo. He would get out of it and wait at one of the two picnic tables beneath the trees. He would remain visible to Salvatore at all times, walking into the parking area once Lorenzo Mura arrived. Thus he would be monitored from the café. Binoculars would be fixed on him lest he decide to do something in silence to warn the other man that he was wired for sound.

  As Salvatore and his companions had a far shorter distance to drive to reach the Parco Fluviale, they were there within fifteen minutes. Bruno was put into position, the white van was established in such a way that Bruno remained well within sight, and then, after testing the quality of sound from the wire, they waited the forty minutes that remained.

  Mura didn’t show. An additional ten minutes past the appointed hour ticked by. Bruno stood from the picnic table and began to pace. With earphones on, Salvatore could hear his “Merda, merda” with perfect clarity.

  Another ten minutes. Bruno declared that the other man was clearly not coming. Salvatore rang his mobile and said, No, my friend. They would continue to wait. At the half-hour point, Lorenzo Mura showed up.

  He spoke first as he got out of his car. “What is it that we must talk about that cannot be talked about on the phone?” He sounded sharp, aggrieved. He was not yet worried about the conversation.

  Bruno’s response followed the instructions he’d been given. “We must speak of Angelina and how she died, Lorenzo.”

  “What is it you’re talking about?”

  “The E. coli and how you meant to use it. And what you told me the use would be. I believe you lied to me, Lorenzo. There was no experiment with wine and the vineyards that you had in mind.”

  “And this is why you asked me to meet you here?” Lorenzo demanded. “What is it that you think, my friend? And why are you so nervous, Daniele? You sweat like a pig in the heat.” He glanced round the area and for an instant seemed to look directly into Salvatore’s binoculars. But it was impossible that Mura could have seen anything other than a white van parked among many other vehicles some distance away from where he himself stood.

  “The police have been to DARBA Italia,” Bruno told him.

  Lorenzo glanced at him sharply. “You have told me this. What is your point?”

  And now the lie they had all agreed upon. Salvatore prayed that Bruno could carry it off: “Someone saw me take the E. coli,” he said. “It was nothing to him at first. He wasn’t even sure what he saw. He thought nothing at all until the story about Angelina’s death appeared in Prima Voce. And even then he thought little enough till the police showed up.”

  Lorenzo said nothing at first. Salvatore watched his face through the binoculars. He lit a cigarette, his eyes narrowing from the smoke of it. He picked a bit of tobacco from his tongue. He said, “Daniele, what is this that you speak of?”

  “You know what I speak of. This E. coli, the particular strain of it . . . The police are asking serious questions. If Angelina is dead because of E. coli, if they found it still within her body . . . Lorenzo, what did you do with the bacteria I gave you?”

  Salvatore held his breath. So much hung on Mura’s reply. The man finally said, “And this is why I come to meet you all the way from the fattoria? To tell you what I did with a bit of bacteria? I flushed it down the toilet, Daniele. It was not useful to me as I thought it would be . . . an experiment with bacteria and wine . . . so I flushed it away.”

  “Then how did Angelina die with E. coli in her system, Lorenzo? This is what the police want no one to know. This E. coli is what killed Angelina. It is what they are withholding from her murderer.”

  “What are you saying?” Lorenzo demanded. “I did not kill her. She carried my child. She was to be my wife. If her death was E. coli . . . You know as I do that this is everywhere, this bacteria, Daniele.”

  “Some E. coli is everywhere. But not this E. coli. Lorenzo, hear me. The police have been to DARBA Italia—”

  “You tell me this already.”

  “They speak to Antonio, they speak to Alessandro. They have made a connection and they will want to speak to me soon and I do not know what to tell them, Lorenzo. If I tell them that I gave the E. coli to you—”

  “You must not!”

  “But I did give it to you, and if I am to lie on your behalf, I must know—”

  “You need to know nothing! They can prove nothing. Who saw you give it to me? No one. Who saw what I did with it? No one.”

  “I do not wish to be arrested for what I did, my friend. I have a wife. I have children. My family is everything to me.”

  “As mine would have been. As it could have been had he not shown up. You talk of family while mine has been destroyed, just as he planned it.”

  “Who?”

  “The Muslim. The father of Angelina’s daughter. He came to Italy. He intended to have her back. I could see this: the loss of her, the loss of my child because she left me as she had left others and this is something . . .” Lorenzo’s voice cracked.

  Daniele Bruno said, “It was for him, no? The E. coli, Lorenzo. It was for the Muslim. To do what? To make him ill? To kill him? What?”

  “I do not know.” Lorenzo began to cry. “Just to be rid of him so that she would not look at him, she would not call him by a pet name, she would not allow him to touch her or to care for her while I stood by and had to watch this . . . this thing between them.” He stumbled towards the picnic tables. He fell onto one of the benches and sobbed into his hands.

  “Va bene,” Salvatore said, removing his headphones within the white van. He radioed the police cars that waited for his word, farther along the road and deep into the Parco Fluviale. “Adesso andiamo,” he told them. They had enough. It was time to bring Lorenzo Mura to justice.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  He lifted his head the moment he heard the scrape of tyres on the gravel of the parking area. He saw the police cars, and he didn’t wait to catch sight of the white van trundling along Via della Scogliera from the direction of the café. He knew in an instant what had happened. He ran.

  He w
as very fast. A football player, he had remarkable speed and equal endurance. He took off across the campo where he coached his soccer pupils, and before Salvatore was out of the van, he had crossed the field with four uniformed officers in pursuit.

  He quickly disappeared into the trees at the far side of the field. He was heading southwest, and on the other side of those trees, Salvatore knew, a steep berm rose, its side heavily grown with grass in this springtime month, with a walking path along its top.

  His officers were no match for the man’s speed. They were going to lose him in very short order. But this was of no import to Salvatore. Once he saw the direction that Mura was taking, he had a very good idea where the man was heading.

  He said, “Basta,” more to himself than to anyone else. He turned away, nodded at Daniele Bruno for a job well done, and left him in the hands of his avvocato and the officers within the white van who had taped his words. They would transport him to the questura and to his release. Meantime, Salvatore would take care of Mura.

  He commandeered one of the police cars. He headed along Via della Scogliera, northeast along the River Serchio. The river sparkled in the sun of the afternoon. He lowered the window and enjoyed the breeze.

  At the entrance to the park, he headed back towards the centre of Lucca. But he did not go as far as the viale circumambient to the ancient wall. Instead, he chose to skirt the neighbourhood of Borgo Giannotti on its north side, coursing down a street where luxurious garden trees sheltered houses hidden behind tall walls. He was held up for two minutes along this route by a large camion carico attempting to manoeuvre into position so as to deliver its load of furniture to the occupants of a newly purchased house. Several impatient drivers behind him applied their car horns to the frustration of having to wait, but he felt no need to do so. When he set off again, he passed Palazetto dello Sport and the large playing field of Campo CONI. At last he reached his destination: the cimitero comunale.

  There were cars and bicycles in the main car park, but there was no indication of a burial going on within the tall and silent walls of the cemetery on this day. The gates were open as always, and Salvatore entered them respectfully. He crossed himself at the feet of the guano- and weather-streaked bronze Jesus and Mary. A solemn mausoleum rose behind them forbiddingly, but the statues themselves bore faces at peace.

  He paced along the gravel path, where the scent of flowers was a mixed perfume in the air and the sun cast brilliant light upon the marble slabs that topped the gravesites. Across the large quadrangle that he was walking through, tombstones rose as quiet witnesses to his progress towards Lorenzo Mura.

  He was where Salvatore had concluded he would be: at the grave of Angelina Upman. He had thrown himself across the patch of dirt that would remain unmarked until her own marble slab covered the site of her burial. In the dry, warm dust that stood in place of this marker, Lorenzo Mura wept.

  Salvatore allowed him this time to mourn, and he did not approach him for some minutes. The man’s agony was a terrible thing to behold, but Salvatore beheld it. It was a reminder to him of the price of love and he asked himself if he ever wanted to feel such attachment to a woman again.

  Finally, when Mura’s worst weeping had passed, he went to the man. He bent and took his arm in a grip that was firm but was not fierce.

  “Venga, signore,” he said to Lorenzo, and Lorenzo rose without protest or question or fight.

  Salvatore walked him out of the cemetery and eased him into the car for the short drive to the questura.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  At first, she banged on the door like a bad actress in an even worse television drama. The first time, Ottavia Schwartz came to see if she was in danger or in urgent need of something, and she tried to explain, tried to bully her way past the policewoman, tried to beg, tried to flee. But Ottavia spoke no English, and even if she had done, it was clear she’d had her orders from Salvatore. As had everyone else, it seemed, for no one came in answer to her shouts once Ottavia had again secured the door against her.

  All she needed was a mobile phone. She tried to make this understandable to Ottavia by mimicking, by saying telefonino when she finally remembered the word she’d heard used, by begging, by telling her that all she required was the ability to make one simple brief phone call . . . But she achieved nothing.

  She was left with watching the time pass. She watched it on a wall clock. She saw it on the inexpensive watch she wore. With the passage of the deadline that Mitchell Corsico had given her, she tried to tell herself that the journalist had only been bluffing. But she knew the story he had was far too huge. It was page-one material and Mitchell wanted to reestablish his place on page one. Every tabloid reporter worth his salt wanted this: a by-line that melted the nerves of anyone whose activities suggested that a reputation-demolishing exposé was in order in the inimitable style of The Source. She’d known that when she’d got involved with the bloke.

  So she paced. She had her cigarettes, and she smoked. Someone brought her a panino which she did not eat and a bottle of water which she did not drink. Once a female officer escorted her to the loo. And that was all.

  Hours had passed by the time she was released. Salvatore was the one to fetch her. In those hours, much had happened. Lorenzo Mura had been brought to the questura, he had been questioned, he had been processed, and all the details had been taken care of.

  “Mi dispiace,” Salvatore told her. His eyes were indescribably sad.

  Barbara said, “Yeah. Me too,” and when he handed her her mobile phone, she said, “D’you mind if I . . . ?”

  “Vada, Barbara, vada,” he told her.

  He left her. He closed the door, but he didn’t lock it. She wondered if the room was wired, figured it was, and stepped out into the corridor. She rang Mitchell Corsico.

  It was, of course, too late. Mitch said, “Sorry, Barb, but a bloke’s got to do what a bloke’s—”

  She ended the call without listening to the rest. She trudged to Salvatore’s office. He was on the phone with someone called Piero, but when he saw Barbara, he rang off. He stood.

  She said, throat tight, “I wish I could make you understand. I didn’t have a choice, see? Because of Hadiyyah. And now . . . things’re going to be worse because of what comes next and I still don’t have a choice. Not really. Not in the ways that are the most important. And you’re not going to understand the way it comes down, Salvatore. You’re going to think once again that I’m betraying you and I s’pose I will be, but what else is there to do? A story—a big one—is going to hit a major tabloid tomorrow morning. It’s going to be about Azhar, about me, about what was planned and who planned it, about hiring certain people to snatch Hadiyyah, about money exchanging hands and records altered and all of this is very bad. Your tabloids are going to pick up on it, and even if they don’t, DI Lynley is going to ring you and tell you the truth. And you see, I can’t let that happen although I’ve already failed to stop the tabloid story from being sent in.” She cleared her throat mightily and said through lips that felt as if they would bleed, “And I’m so sorry because you are one very decent bloke.”

  Salvatore listened carefully. She could see the care he was taking to try to sort it all out. But it seemed to her that the only things he picked up on were names: Azhar and Hadiyyah. He spoke about Lorenzo Mura in reply, about Azhar, about Angelina. From this she reckoned he was telling her that Mura had confessed to what she herself had suspected: that Azhar was intended to drink that wine with the E. coli in it. She nodded as he said to her, “Aveva ragione, Barbara Havers. Aveva proprio ragione.”

  From this, she supposed he was telling her that she had been right all along. It certainly gave her not a moment’s pleasure.

  19 May

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Barbara rose before half past five. She dressed and sat on the edge of her bed. She watched Hadiyyah s
leeping, innocent of the knowledge of the change that now had to come to her life.

  One did not orchestrate an international kidnapping and simply walk away from that kidnapping’s fallout. Within a few hours, Azhar was going to be free to return to London with his child, but once the full story came out, the hell that would follow would ruin him financially, personally, and professionally. Interpol would see to that. Italian prosecution would see to that. Extradition would see to that. A London investigation would see to that. And the Upman family would see to that.

  What Barbara knew she had to do was to get to work on the problem and do it quickly. She had little enough time to see to things properly, and she needed Aldo Greco to help her.

  She’d rung him late on the previous day. She told him what she needed. He’d already been informed of Lorenzo Mura’s arrest and of Azhar’s being in the clear of all charges related to the death of Angelina Upman, so when she suggested that it was imperative to little Hadiyyah’s mental and psychological state—“The kid’s been through the emotional wringer, eh?” was how she put it—that she be reunited with her father quickly, he was on board at once.

  Unfortunately, he explained, he had to be in court in the morning. But he would ring Ispetorre Lo Bianco immediately and make the appropriate arrangements.

  She said, “C’n you ask him . . . I’d like to . . . Well, he and I are a bit on the outs—”

  “Come? The ‘outs’?”

  “We’ve had a difference of opinion. It’s a language thing. I’ve had a bloody hard time making myself understood. But I’d like to be able to speak to Azhar before he sees Hadiyyah. Everything that’s gone on? It’s rattled her, and he needs to know before he sees her, to prepare himself, eh? He doesn’t speak Italian either, so Salvatore can’t tell him and as you’ve got to be in court . . .”