Just One Evil Act il-18

by Elizabeth George

15 April

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  He decided that the encounter between them could happen most easily in a mercato. There were enough of them in and around Lucca, and the best took place inside the colossal wall that encircled the oldest part of the town. Piazza San Michele’s mercato was a now-and-then occurrence, mad with Lucchese from neighbourhoods beyond the wall who wandered in through one of the great gates for a day of browsing through stalls selling everything from scarves to wheels of cheese. But Piazza San Michele was also the central point of the walled city, making an escape from the place fraught with problems. That left him with a choice between either the mercato in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi not more than a stone’s throw from escape through Porta San Pietro, or the decided insanity of the mercato that stretched the distance from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo.

  When he thought about these latter two mercati, his final decision had to do with the atmosphere and with what sort of people tended to frequent each of them. Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi attracted tourists, along with a more well-heeled kind of shopper, and its offerings appealed to those with ready cash to hand over for its delicacies. Because of this, he found that the family did not shop often in this place. So he was left with the other.

  This other mercato stretched along the narrow, curving lane of Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane, which backed right up to the looming mass of the city’s wall. Frequenters of the place had to elbow between one another, and in doing so they had to avoid stepping on barking dogs and encountering beggars at the same time as they attempted to make their demands of lo venderebbe a meno? heard above the din of conversations, arguments, musicians playing for a handout, and people shouting into their mobile phones. Indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that this mercato in Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane was actually perfect. Anything could happen unnoticed in the place, and it had the additional advantage of being quite close to the home on Via Santa Gemma Galgani, where every Saturday the family met for lunch. On nice days, such as this one, that lunch was served in the garden just a portion of which he’d been able to glimpse from the street.

  It was to this place—to this house and garden—that everyone would assume at first that the child had gone. It was a natural conclusion for people to reach, and he could easily imagine how things would play out. Papà would turn round and see she wasn’t immediately within sight, but he would actually think nothing of it. For the house was close, and in that house standing within its beautiful garden lived a boy just the age of the child. She called him Cugino Gugli, which she pronounced Goo-lee because her Italian was limited and she could not yet say Guglielmo. But the boy did not seem to mind since he could not pronounce her name either, and anyway their bond was of calcio only. And one did not need a real language for bonding over calcio. One only needed the willingness to kick a football towards a goal.

  She wouldn’t fear him when he approached her. She didn’t know him, but she would have been taught that the strangers to fear were the ones with lost animals in need of finding, the ones with kittens in a box—just behind that parked car, cara bambina—the ones who gave off the stench of lust and longing, the ill-dressed, the foul-breathed, the unbathed, the ones with something to show you or give you or a special place to take you where a very special treat was waiting for you . . . But he was none of this, and he had none of this. What he did have was his looks—la faccia d’un angelo, as his mamma liked to say—along with a message. Plus, he was to say a single word and that word was going to seal the deal. It was a word he’d never heard before in any of the three languages he spoke, but he’d been told it would convince the child of the veracity of the tale he would tell her. Hearing it, she would understand him perfectly. This was why he—and not someone else—had been chosen for the job at hand.

  Because he was good at his job, he’d taken time to gather the information he needed to carry off the assignment. Most families, he knew, kept to routines. It made life easier for them. So a month of careful watching, surreptitious following, and copious note-taking had told him what was required of him. Once he’d been given the date for action, he was ready.

  They would park their Lancia outside the city wall, in the parcheggio near Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. From there, they would part ways for two hours. Mamma would head towards Via della Cittadella, where the yoga studio was. Papà and Bambina would stroll towards and through Porta Elisa. Mamma’s walk was the longer one, but she carried only her yoga mat and she liked the exercise. Papà and Bambina each carried one borsa della spesa, indicating that at the end of their time in the mercato, they’d be burdened with their purchases within those bags.

  At this point, he knew them all so well that he could have described the likely clothes that Mamma would wear and he could have named the colours of the borse that Papà and Bambina would carry. His would be green and made of webbing. Hers would be orange and of solid material. They were nothing if not creatures of habit.

  On the day set for everything to happen, he established himself in the parcheggio early. This was his eighth time following the family, and he was assured that nothing was going to disrupt their normal routine. He was in no hurry. For when the job was done, it had to be done perfectly and in such a way that several hours would pass before anyone had the slightest idea that something might be wrong.

  He’d left his own vehicle in the parcheggio in Viale Guglielmo Marconi. He’d arrived several hours before the mercato opened in order to capture a parking bay that gave him quick access to the exit. He’d bought a large piece of focaccia alle cipolle on his way to Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. After he ate, he chewed on breath mints to rid his mouth of the scent of the onions. He took a pianta stradale from the shoulder bag he carried, and he unfolded this on the boot of a car, ostensibly looking for a route. He would be just another tourist in Lucca to anyone who saw him.

  The family arrived ten minutes behind schedule, but he didn’t consider this a problem. They parted as always just inside the gate, with Mamma walking off to her yoga experience and Papà and Bambina heading inside the tourist office where there was a WC. They were innately practical people as well as being utterly consistent. First things first and besides, there were no toilets once one began to wander through the mercato.

  He lingered outside, across the street, waiting for them. It was a glorious day, sunny but not yet blazing hot the way it would be in three months’ time. Trees on the top of the great wall behind him bore new, freshly unfurling leaves, and these were shading the mercato at the moment, rustling in a soft breeze as well. As the morning continued, the sun would fall brightly on the stalls that lined the lane. As the day grew older, the bright light would move from the merchants onto the ancient buildings across from them.

  He lit a cigarette and smoked with great pleasure. He’d nearly finished when Papà and Bambina left the tourist office and set off into the mercato.

  He followed them. In the times he’d spent tailing them from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo, he’d come to know where and when they would stop, and he’d been careful about selecting the point at which he knew the time would have arrived for him to act. For just within the city wall at Porta San Jacopo, the far end of the mercato—a musician played. Here Bambina always stopped to listen, with a two-euro coin in her hand to offer the man at some point during his performance. She waited for Papà to join her there. But today that was not going to happen. She would be gone when Papà finally arrived.

  The mercato was, as always, crowded. He remained unnoticed. Where Papà and Bambina stopped, he stopped, too. They bought fruit and a selection of vegetables. Then, Papà bought fresh pasta while Bambina danced over to the kitchen goods and sang out, “She wanted a potato peeler.” He himself chose a cheese grater and then it was on to the scarves. They were cheap but colourful, and Bambina always tried new ways of tying one round her pretty little neck. On and on it went, with an extended stay at Tutti per 1 Euro, where everything from buckets to hair ornaments was sold. An exami
nation of shoes neatly arranged in rows and available for trying on if one’s feet were clean led to intimate apparel for le donne and from that to sunglasses and leather cinture. Papà tried on one of these, weaving it into the loops of his faded blue jeans. He shook his head and handed it back. By the time he had done so, Bambina had already gone on ahead.

  It was where the severed head of a pig announced the stall of the macellaio and his display of meats that Bambina skipped onward towards Porta San Jacopo. At this point, he knew, things would follow an unbreaking pattern, so he removed the five-euro note that he had folded carefully into his pocket.

  The musician was where he always stood, some twenty yards from Porta San Jacopo. The man was, as usual, gathering a crowd as he played Italian folksongs on his accordion. He had a dancing poodle as a companion, and he accompanied his music and the dog by singing into a microphone clipped onto the collar of his blue shirt. It was the same shirt he wore every week, tattered along the cuffs.

  He waited through two songs. Then he saw his moment. Bambina dodged forward to put her customary two-euro coin in the collection basket, and he moved forward for the moment when she would return to the other listeners.

  “Scusa,” he said to her once she’d rejoined the crowd and stood in front of him. “Per favore, glielo puoi dare . . . ?” He nodded at his hand. The five-euro note was folded neatly in half. It lay across a greeting card that he had removed from his jacket pocket.

  She frowned. A tiny part of her lip was sucked into her mouth. She looked up at him.

  He indicated the collection basket with a tilt of his head. “Per favore,” he repeated with a smile. And then, “Anche . . . leggi questo. Non importa ma . . .” He let the rest hang there, with another smile. The card he handed her had no envelope. It would be easy enough to open and to read the message within, as he’d asked her to do.

  And then he added what he knew would convince her. It was a single word and her eyes widened in surprise. At that point he went on in English, the words formed in such a way that their derivation was something she would not fail to recognise:

  “I shall be happy to wait on the other side of Porta San Jacopo. You have absolutely nothing to fear.”

  17 April

  BELGRAVIA

  LONDON

  The day had been bloody odd. Barbara Havers was long used to still waters when it came to Lynley, but even she had been surprised that his depths had somehow managed to hide from her the fact that he had been seeing someone. If it could actually be called seeing someone. For it appeared his social life post the Isabelle Ardery entanglement consisted of regular attendance at a sporting event she had never heard of.

  He’d insisted that she had to see it. An experience she was unlikely to forget, was how he’d put it. She’d avoided the dubious thrill of this attempt to broaden her social sphere for as long as she could. Ultimately, though, she’d caved in to his insistence. Thus, she’d found herself at a daylong roller derby elimination tournament in which the victors turned out to be a group of extremely athletic women from Birmingham who looked as if eating small children was their other extracurricular activity of choice.

  During the event, Lynley had explained all the fine points of the sport—such as they were—to Barbara. He’d named the positions, the responsibilities of the players, the penalties, and the points. He’d talked about the pack and the objective that the pack had in relation to the jammer. And along with everyone else—including her, it had to be said—he’d leapt to his feet in protest when someone got an elbow to the face and a penalty was not called.

  After several hours, she reached the point of wondering what the hell this entire experience was all about and she also reached the point of considering that Lynley might have brought her to witness the spectacle as a potential outlet for her aggressions. But then, it transpired that at the end of God only knew which bout it was, because at that point she had lost count, they were approached by a skater with lightning bolts painted on her cheeks, fire-red lipstick on her mouth, and glitter rising from her eyelids to her eyebrows. This vision of athleticism had removed her helmet, said, “How nice to see you again, Sergeant Havers,” and Barbara found herself looking upon Daidre Trahair. At which point things became remarkably clearer.

  At first Barbara thought she was meant to play the duenna. She reckoned Lynley needed someone whose presence would soothe the veterinarian into accepting a dinner invitation. But then it turned out that Lynley had been seeing Daidre Trahair regularly since first running into her the previous November. That was where he had been on the night he’d failed to return her phone call. First at a roller derby match and then out for drinks although, from the look of things, matters hadn’t got too much further than that between them lo these many months that had passed, a point that Lynley made clear as they waited for the skaters at the end of the tournament.

  Daidre Trahair came to join them. What happened next was, apparently, what had happened each of the times she and Lynley had met. She invited him—and Barbara—to attend a postgame celebration, which would take place in a pub called Famous Three Kings. Lynley demurred and instead invited her—and Barbara—out for an early dinner. Daidre claimed she was hardly dressed for a meal. Lynley—and Barbara twigged that this was the new bit in their routine—said that wouldn’t matter as he’d laid on something at his home. If Daidre—and Barbara, of course—would dance attendance there, he would be only too pleased to drive Daidre to her hotel afterwards.

  Clever man. Barbara decided not to be offended by his use of her. She only hoped he hadn’t cooked the food himself or they were in for a meal they would long remember, and for all the wrong reasons.

  Daidre hesitated. She looked from Lynley to Barbara. An Amazonian woman approached and asked them all if they were coming to tipple a few at the pub where someone called McQueen was waiting to challenge Daidre at darts again. Her moment of escape was at hand, but Daidre didn’t grasp at it. She said—her gaze flickering to the woman and then back to Lynley—that she would have to beg off. Her friends, she said, were insisting . . . if Lisa would make her excuses? Lisa tossed a knowing look Lynley’s way. Right, she said. Stay safe, not sorry.

  Barbara wondered if she was supposed to leg it, now that Daidre’s presence in Lynley’s home was assured, but he made it clear that she was to do nothing of the sort. Besides, she’d left her Mini blocking his garage in a mews round the corner from his digs, so one way or another she was going to have to get to it in order to scarper.

  On the way to Belgravia, they made polite conversation in the manner of their countrymen: They talked about the weather. After that, Daidre and Lynley went on to speak of gorillas, for a reason that Barbara couldn’t suss out. Some female gorilla was happily pregnant. On the other hand, something was wrong with the right front foot of one of the elephants. Negotiations were ongoing for a visit from some pandas, and Berlin Zoo still wished to get its hands on a polar bear cub born early last year. Was that difficult, Lynley wanted to know, breeding polar bears in captivity? It was always difficult breeding in captivity, Daidre told him. Then she fell silent, as if she’d accidentally spoken a double entendre.

  At Lynley’s house, they parked in the mews. Since Barbara had to move her car to allow Lynley access to his garage, she made noises as if to leave them then. Lynley said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Barbara. I know you’re dying for a meal,” and he shot her a look whose meaning she couldn’t fail to read: She was not to desert him in his hour of need.

  Barbara hadn’t a clue how she was supposed to facilitate matters for Lynley. She knew Daidre Trahair’s background. She knew how unlikely it was that the veterinarian would allow things—whatever they were at present—to progress with Lynley. Through no fault of his own, the poor bloke had a title, an ancestral line stretching back to the Domesday Book, and a gargantuan family pile in Cornwall. Sitting at a table laid out with sixteen pieces of silver cutlery, he would know innately which fork to use when and why there were additional spoons
and whatevers at the top of his plate, along with those on each side of it. For her part, Daidre’s family probably still ate with knives and their fingers. The niceties of life where she was from did not extend to place settings of heirloom china and a line of wineglasses to the right of one’s dinner plate.

  Luckily, Lynley had thought of all this, Barbara saw. Inside the house and laid out in the dining room—although it was a bit of a problem that the bloke actually had a dining room—were three settings of plain white crockery, and the cutlery had handles that looked like Bakelite. Probably purchased for this exact moment, Barbara thought sardonically. She’d seen his regular stuff. It hadn’t been purchased at the local Conran Shop.

  The meal itself was simple. Anyone could have put it together, and although Barbara would have laid easy money on that anyone not being Thomas Lynley, she went along with the pretence that he’d actually stood over a hob stirring the soup and had worn an apron over his bespoke suit while he tossed the salad. Even followed a recipe to make the quiche, she decided. What he’d actually done, of course, was hoof it down to Partridges on the King’s Road. If Daidre knew this, though, she didn’t let on.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Barbara asked as she and Daidre stood uselessly by with wineglasses clasped in their hands as Lynley went to and from the kitchen.

  Charlie Denton had decamped to Hampstead for the day, Lynley told them, attending a matinee production of The Iceman Cometh. But “Back any time now,” he assured them heartily. Daidre was not to feel ill at ease that he might leap upon her should Barbara leave them.

  Which was what she did as soon as she could. Lynley was guiding them into the drawing room for postprandial drinks when Barbara decided that she’d done her duty by her superior officer and it was time to go home. Early hours yet, she declared airily, but there you had it. There was something about roller derby, you know. She was knackered.