Just One Evil Act il-18

by Elizabeth George

  “What d’you mean you ‘don’t know’?” was his subsequent demand. “You’re paid to know. You’re paid to make things happen.”

  “I set everything in motion as requested. But the plan went foul somewhere and I don’t know where.”

  “How in God’s name can you not know where?”

  There was a silence. Doughty listened intently. For a moment, he thought he’d lost the connection and he nearly rang off to redial the number. But then the other said, “I couldn’t risk it. Not the way you wanted it done. Using the mercato? I’d have been remembered.”

  “The mercato came from you, not from me, you sodding fool. It didn’t need to be the mercato. It could have been anywhere: the school, a park, on an outing, at the farm.”

  “None of that matters. What you do not understand is . . .” A pause and then, “No, you will not blame me. You wished her found, and I found her. I gave you the name. I gave you the place and its location. It was your idea to snatch her, not mine. Had you told me in advance that this was your intention, I never would have come . . . how do you say? . . . onto the train with you.”

  “You liked the idea of money well enough when I first found you, you bastard.”

  “You will think what you will think, my friend. But the fact that the police have not made progress in finding her tells me my plan was right. Giusto, we say.”

  Doughty felt a cold wind dive into his underwear when he heard my plan. There was supposed to be only one plan. His plan. Get the girl, stow her, and wait for his word to move her. That there was another plan which he’d not been told about made it nearly impossible for Doughty to speak. But he managed, “You’re after the Muras’ money, aren’t you? That’s been your scheme from the first.”

  “Pazzo” was the reply. “You listen like a jealous housewife.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means the cops have found me, sciocco. It means that had I not developed a plan different from yours, I would now be sitting in a gaol cell waiting for il Pubblico Ministero to decide how to deal with me. I am not in a gaol cell for the very reason you wish to berate me: I had a plan. You wished her taken. I arranged her taken. Capisce?”

  Doughty twigged the man’s meaning. “Someone else . . . ? Are you mad? Who took her? What did he do with her? Is it even a he or did you use some poor Italian grandmother in need of cash? How about an Albanian immigrant? Or an African? Or a bloody Romanian gypsy, for that matter? Did you even know who you were tagging to do this job? Or was it someone you picked up off the street?”

  “These insults of yours . . . They get us nowhere.”

  “I want that kid!”

  “I, too, am of the same mind, although I suspect for different reasons. I put things in motion as I told you. Something has happened, and I do not know what. She was being fetched to put an end to this matter, but the . . . the messenger sent to fetch her . . . This is what I do not know.”

  “What? Exactly what don’t you know?”

  “It was a . . . come si dice? A caution,” he said. “No. A precaution. It seemed wise for me not to know where she was being kept, so that if the police traced me—which, as I’ve told you, they did—I could give them nothing of substance no matter how long they decided to question me.”

  “So for all you know,” Doughty said, “she could be dead. This . . . this messenger of yours might have snatched her and killed her. She might have not been a cooperative victim of your garden kidnapping on the street, and she might well have raised a ruckus. He could have stuffed her into the boot of his car for all you know and she might have suffocated and there he was with a dead body on his hands.”

  “This did not happen. It would not have happened.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “My selection of . . . this messenger, let us call him . . . was carefully done. He has known from the first that complete payment for his services depends entirely on the condition of the child and on her safety at all times.”

  “So where is he? Where is she? What’s happened?”

  “This is what I’m now attempting to discover. I’ve telephoned, but so far I have heard not a word.”

  “Which means something’s gone wrong. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Sì. Sono d’accordo,” the other murmured. “I ask you to believe that I am attempting to discover exactly what this is. But even in this, I must proceed with caution because the police will be watching me.”

  “I don’t care if the bloody Swiss Guards are watching you,” Doughty said. “I want that kid found. I want her found today.”

  “I doubt that will be possible,” he admitted. “Until I find the messenger sent to fetch her, I will know nothing more than you.”

  “Then goddamn bloody find the messenger!” Doughty roared. “Because if I have to come to Italy myself, you aren’t going to be happy about it.”

  That said, he snapped the mobile phone in half. He was on the bridge that carried Gunmakers Lane over the Hertford Union Canal. He cursed and threw the broken pieces of the mobile into the murky water there. He watched them sink and hoped against hope that they weren’t a metaphor for what was going on in his life.

  28 April

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Salvatore Lo Bianco made the requisite offer of help to his mamma. As usual she refused. No one, she told him—also as usual—would ever wash and polish the marble cover of his father’s grave during what remained of the lifetime of his devoted wife. No, no, no, figlio mio, this chore will take no longer than is required for my old body to hobble round the plot itself, wielding soap and water and rags and marble polish and more rags till the stone reflects this ancient, sorrowing face of mine as well as the sky with its glorious clouds above me. You may watch, however, figlio mio, so that you will learn how to care for this stone where my poor corpse will lie with your father’s after my earthly days are done.

  Salvatore told her that perhaps he would walk, instead. He would follow the path round the perimeter of this part of the cemetery. He needed to think a bit. She could call out to him if she needed help. He would not be far away.

  Mamma gave a quintessential Italian mamma shrug. He could, of course, please himself in this matter. Sons so often did just that, didn’t they? And then she turned and said, “Ciao, Giuseppe, marito carissimo,” and told the dead man how deeply she missed him, how every moment of every day brought her closer to joining him in the ground. After this, she began her work upon the grave.

  Salvatore watched her and stifled a chuckle. There were certain moments in their life together, he thought, when his mamma was not his real mamma at all but rather a caricature of an Italian mamma. This was one of them. For the truth of the matter was that Teresa Lo Bianco had spent what Salvatore knew of her married life absolutely furious with his father. She’d been one of those breathtaking Italian beauties who married young and lost her looks to childbearing and a lifetime of household drudgery, and she’d never forgiven or forgotten that fact. Except, of course, when she came to the Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Then, the instant that Salvatore parked in front of the great gates to the place, his mamma’s face transformed from its habitual look of pinched irritation to an expression that mixed grief and piety so superbly that had anyone other than Salvatore seen her, she would appear as a recent widow whose loss would never be assuaged.

  He smiled. He folded a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, and he began to walk. He was halfway round his first circumambulation of the quadrangle of graves decorated with saints and the Virgin and her Son when his mobile rang. He glanced at the number of whoever was placing the call.

  The Englishman, he thought. He liked this man Lynley. He’d thought the Londoner would be an irritating interloper into the Italian investigation, but this hadn’t proved to be the case.

  His pronto was answered in the other detective’s careful Italian. Lynley was ringing to tell him that the mother of the kidnapped girl was in hospital
. “I wasn’t sure if you’d know this,” Lynley told him. He went on to say that when he’d seen her two days earlier at the fattoria, she’d been very weak and yesterday she had grown even weaker. “Signor Mura insisted she go to hospital, for a check-over at least,” Lynley said. “I didn’t disagree.”

  Lynley told him, then, of his conversations with both Lorenzo Mura and Angelina Upman. He spoke of a man who’d been at the fattoria, purportedly to purchase a donkey foal. A thick envelope had passed between this man and Lorenzo, and this was the payment, Lorenzo had claimed. But the British detective had begun to wonder about this exchange. What was the Mura family’s financial situation? What was Lorenzo’s own? And what could that mean?

  Salvatore could see where Lynley was heading with this line of thought. For what Lorenzo Mura wished to do with his family’s old villa, vast amounts of money would be required. His extended family were fairly wealthy—they had always been so—but he himself was not. Would they leap to assist him if the young child of his lover was endangered and a ransom demand was made? Perhaps. But no ransom demand had been made, which suggested there was no involvement on Lorenzo’s part in the disappearance of Angelina’s daughter.

  “Yet there might be reasons other than money that he would wish for Hadiyyah’s removal from her mother’s life,” Lynley noted.

  “That would make the man a monster.”

  “I’ve seen monsters aplenty in my time and I expect you have as well,” Lynley said.

  “I have not entirely removed Lorenzo Mura from my thoughts,” Salvatore admitted. “Perhaps it is time for us—you and I—to speak with Carlo Casparia. Piero has had him ‘imagine’ how this crime was committed. Perhaps he can ‘imagine’ more about that day in the mercato when the child disappeared.”

  He told the Englishman that he would come for him at the inner city gate where they had met before. At the moment, he was at the cimitero comunale, he explained, paying monthly respects to his papà’s grave. “In an hour, Ispettore?” he said to Lynley.

  “Aspetterò,” Lynley told him. He would meet Salvatore at the gate.

  And so he was waiting. Salvatore fetched Lynley at Porta di Borgo, where the detective was reading Prima Voce again. Carlo Casparia was all over the front page another time. His family had been located in Padova. Much was being made of their estrangement from their only son. This would keep Prima Voce busy for at least two days, printing stories of Carlo’s fall from favour. Meantime, Salvatore thought, the police could get work done without concern that the tabloid might get too close to what they were doing.

  He stopped briefly at the questura to fetch the laptop upon which were loaded all of the photographs taken by the American tourist and her daughter who had been in the mercato when the child disappeared. Then he and Lynley took themselves to the prison in which the hapless young man was being held. For once a confession was obtained from a suspect or once he was formally charged with a crime, he was whisked to prison, where he remained unless the Tribunal of Reexamination determined he could be released pending trial. Since Carlo’s release depended upon having a suitable place to go—and clearly the abandoned stables in the Parco Fluviale would not qualify—his home would be the prison cell in which he currently languished. All of this Salvatore explained to Lynley as they drove to see the young man. When they arrived at the prison, however, it was to learn that Carlo was in the hospital ward. As it turned out, he wasn’t taking well to the sudden absence of drugs from his system. He was taking the cure in the worst possible way, and no particular sympathy was being extended in his direction.

  Thus Salvatore and Lynley found the young man in a cheerless place of narrow beds. There the patients either were restrained by one ankle to the iron footboards or were too ill to care about attempting to effect an escape by overcoming the male nurses and single doctor who were on duty.

  Carlo Casparia was of this latter group, a figure huddled into the foetal position beneath a white sheet topped with a thin blue blanket. He was shivering and staring sightlessly at nothing. His lips were raw, his face was unshaven, and his ginger hair had been shorn from his head. A rank smell came from him.

  “Non so, Ispettore,” Lynley murmured uncertainly.

  Salvatore agreed. He, too, didn’t know what possible good this was going to do or even if Carlo would be able to hear them and respond. But it was an avenue, and it needed to be explored.

  “Ciao, Carlo.” He drew a straight-backed steel chair over to the bed as Lynley fetched another. Salvatore eased a hospital tray over and set up his laptop on it. “Ti voglio far vedere alcune foto, amico,”he said. “Gli dai uno sguardo?”

  In bed, Carlo was wordless. If he heard what Salvatore had said about the photos, he gave no indication. His eyes were fixed on something beyond Salvatore’s shoulder and, when Salvatore turned, he saw it was a clock on the wall. The poor fool was watching time pass, it seemed, counting the moments till the worst of his suffering ended.

  Salvatore exchanged a glance with Lynley. The Englishman, he saw, looked as doubtful as Salvatore felt.

  “Voglio aiutarti,” Salvatore said to Carlo. “Non credo che tu abbia rapito la bambina, amico.” He brought the first of the tourist photographs onto the screen of his laptop. “Prova,” he murmured. “Prova, prova a guardarle.”

  If Carlo would only try, he himself could do the rest. Just look at the pictures, he silently told the young man. Just move your gaze to the computer screen.

  He went through the entire set in vain. Then he told the addict they would try again. Did he want water? Did he need food? Would another blanket help him through this terrible time?

  “Niente” was the first thing the young man said. Nothing would help him in the state he was in.

  “Per favore,” Salvatore murmured. “Non sono un procuratore. Ti voglio aiutare, Carlo.”

  This was what finally got through to him: I am not a prosecutor, Carlo. I want to help you. To this, Salvatore added that nothing the young man said at this point was being taken down and nothing he said would go into a statement that he would be forced to sign while he was in extremis. They—he and this other officer from London sitting next to your bed, Carlo—were looking for the man who’d kidnapped this child and they did not think Carlo was that man. He had nothing to fear from them. Things could not get worse if he spoke to them now.

  Carlo shifted his gaze. It came to Salvatore that the addict’s pain made movement difficult, and he changed the position of the laptop, holding it on a level with the young man’s face and slowly going through the pictures again. But Carlo said nothing as he looked at them, merely shaking his head as Salvatore paused each one in front of his gaze and asked if there was anyone he recognised as having been with the little girl.

  Again and again, the addict’s lips formed the word No. But finally his expression altered. It was a marginal change, to be true, but his eyebrows made a movement towards each other and his tongue—the colour of it nearly white—touched his scaly upper lip. Salvatore and Lynley saw this simultaneously, and both of them leaned forward to see what picture was on the screen. It was the photograph of the pig’s head at the bancarella selling meats to the citizens of Lucca. It was the photograph in which Lorenzo Mura was making a purchase just beyond the pig’s head.

  “Conosci quest’ uomo?” Salvatore asked.

  Carlo shook his head. He didn’t know him, he said, but he had seen him.

  “Dove?” Salvatore asked, his hope stirring. He glanced at Lynley, and he could see that the London man was watching Carlo closely.

  “Nel parco,” Carlo whispered. “Con un altro uomo.”

  Salvatore asked if Carlo would recognise the other man he spoke of seeing with Lorenzo Mura in the park. He showed the addict an enlargement of the picture of the dark-haired man behind Hadiyyah in the crowd of people. But Carlo shook his head. It wasn’t that man. A few more questions took them to the fact that it also wasn’t Michelangelo Di Massimo with his head of bleached hair. It was someone else,
but Carlo didn’t know who. Just that Lorenzo and this other, unnamed man had met, and when they met, the children whom Lorenzo coached in private to improve their football skills were not present. They had been earlier, running about the field, but when this man showed up, all the children were gone.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  The next time Mitchell Corsico got in touch, it was by phone. This was a case of thank-God-for-very-small-favours, though, because the tune he was singing when Barbara took the call was the same tune he’d been singing the last time she’d spoken to him. Things were ramped up at this point, though.The Sun, the Mirror, and the Daily Mail had begun investing some rather significant money in following the kidnapping tale by means of placing boots on the ground in Tuscany. There was competition to get new angles every day, and Mitchell Corsico wanted his own.

  Tiresomely, though, he was back to Met Officer Involved with Love Rat Dad, Barbara discovered. He was also back to making threats. He wanted his bloody exclusive interviews with Azhar and Nafeeza, and Barbara was the means to get them for him. If she didn’t manage this feat, she could expect to see her mug on the front page of The Source, entangled with the son and the father of Azhar in a street imbroglio.

  There was no point in telling him that the angle to pursue was Mother of Kidnapped Girl in Hospital. The Daily Mail was already onto that. For its part, the Mirror was having fun speculating on what had put Angelina Upman into a hospital bed in the first place. They appeared to like the idea of a suicide attempt—Distraught Mother Ends Up in Hospital—which they were able to hint at since no one in Italy was telling their reporter a single thing.

  Barbara tried to reason with Corsico. “The story’s in Italy,” she told him. “What the bloody hell are you still doing in London trying to follow it, Mitchell?”

  “You and I both know the value of an interview,” Corsico countered. “Don’t pretend you think prowling round some Italian hospital is going to produce shit because we both know that’s bollocks.”