Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  He said, “Piero, there is nothing more to be learned from this man Carlo. Believe me, his brain is too addled to have planned a kidnapping.”

  “Planned?” Fanucci repeated. “Topo, why do you say this was planned? He saw her, and he took her.”

  And then? Salvatore thought. He produced an expression on his face that he hoped projected that question without having to ask it directly.

  “It could be,” Fanucci said, “that we have a crime of opportunity, my friend. Can you not see that? He has told you that he saw the child, no? He was not so brain-addled that he forgot that. So why this one child in his memory, Topo? Why not another? Why did Carlo remember a child at all?”

  “She gave him food, Magistrato. A banana.”

  “Bah! What she gave him was a promise.”

  “Come?”

  “The promise of money. Must I spell it out for you what happens once he takes the child?”

  “There has been no demand for ransom.”

  “Why should there be ransom when so many other opportunities exist to make money off an innocent girl?” Fanucci counted them off on the fingers of his six-fingered hand. “She is bundled into the back of a car and bundled out of the country, Topo. She is sold into the sex trade somewhere. She is made into a household slave. She is handed over to a paedophile with a clever basement into which she is stuffed. She is given to a satanic worship group for sacrifice. She is made a rich Arab’s plaything.”

  “All of which, Piero, would beg for planning, no?”

  “None of which, Topo, we will ever learn until you question Carlo again. You must see to this without delay. I wish to read it in your next report to me. Tell me how else you intend to spend your time, little man, if not with this and in this direction?”

  In answer to the insulting question, Salvatore first asked his blood to cool. Then he chose a significant detail that had arisen from the posters and handbills round the central part of town. He’d received two phone calls from two hotels in Lucca, one within the city’s wall and one from Arancio, not far from the road to Montecatini. A man had come by, in possession of a picture of the missing child in the company of a nice-looking woman, presumably her mother. The man had been looking for them, and he’d left a card with the hotel receptionists. Unfortunately, the card in both cases had been tossed away.

  Fanucci swore at the stupidity of women. Salvatore didn’t bother to tell him that in both cases the receptionists had been men. What he did tell him was that this individual had been seeking the girl at least a month earlier or perhaps six weeks. That, he said, was the limit of what they knew.

  “Who was this man?” Fanucci demanded. “What did he look like, at least?”

  Salvatore shook his head. Trying to get a local receptionist to remember what someone looked like a month or six weeks or eight weeks after having seen the individual only once and probably for less than a minute . . . ? He extended his hands, palms up, empty. It could have been anyone, Magistrato.

  “And this is all you know? This is all you have?” Fanucci demanded.

  “With regard to this person seeking the woman and the girl, purtroppo, it is,” Salvatore lied. And when Fanucci would have begun a tedious lecture about Salvatore’s general incompetence or a diatribe ending with a threat to replace him, Salvatore threw the magistrate a bone.

  He shared the fact of the emails that had gone from the child Hadiyyah and her father. “He’s here in Lucca now,” Salvatore said. “This is something that must be explored.”

  “A London father who writes emails to his daughter residing in Italy?” Fanucci scoffed. “How is this important?”

  “There are broken promises about visits he intended to make here,” Salvatore said. “Broken visits, broken hearts, and runaway children. It is a possibility that must be explored.” He looked at his watch. “I meet with these people—the parents together—in forty minutes.”

  “After which you’ll report . . . ”

  “Sempre,” Salvatore said. He would report something, he told himself. Just enough to keep il Pubblico Ministero satisfied that things were moving along under his idiotic direction. “So, my friend, if there is nothing else . . . ?” He got to his feet.

  “As it happens, we are not finished,” Fanucci said. A smile touched his mouth without touching his eyes. Power still lay within his hands, and Salvatore saw he’d been outmanoeuvred again.

  He sat. He looked as unruffled as he could. “E allora?” he said.

  “The British embassy has phoned,” Fanucci told him. There was a tinge of pleasure in the tone he used, and Salvatore knew at once that the infuriating man had saved the best for last. He said nothing in reply. It was the least he could do to attain revenge. “The English police are sending a Scotland Yard detective.” Piero jerked his head at the television, at the recording they’d watched. “It seems they have no choice after the publicity.”

  Salvatore swore. This was not a development he’d anticipated. Nor was it a development he liked.

  “He’ll stay out of the way,” Fanucci told him. “His purpose, I’m told, will be to liaise between the investigation and the girl’s mother.”

  Salvatore swore again. Not only would he now have to attend to the demands of il Pubblico Ministero but he’d also have to do the same for a Scotland Yard officer. More exasperating calls upon his time.

  “Who is this officer?” he asked in resignation.

  “Thomas Lynley is his name. That’s all I know. Except for one detail you should keep in mind.” Fanucci paused for dramatic effect and, as their encounter had gone on quite long enough, Salvatore played along with him for once.

  “What’s the detail?” he asked wearily.

  “He speaks Italian,” Fanucci said.

  “How well?”

  “Well enough, I understand. Stai attento, Topo.”

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Salvatore chose Café di Simo as their meeting place. In other circumstances, he might have met the parents of the missing child in the questura, but his preference generally was to save the questura for purposes of intimidation. He wished to see the parents as much at ease as he could possibly make them, and requiring them to come to the questura with its hustle, bustle, and inescapable police presence would not effect the degree of calm he wanted in them. Café di Simo, on the other hand, was rich in history, atmosphere, and delectable items from its pasticceria. It spoke not of suspicion but of comfort: a cappuccino or caffè macchiato for each of them, a plate of cantucci to be shared among all of them, and a quiet chat in the soothing side room with its panelled walls, small tables, and bright white floor.

  They did not come together, the mother and the father. She arrived alone, without her partner Lorenzo Mura, and the professor arrived three minutes later. Salvatore placed the order for their drinks at the bar and, piatto di biscotti in hand, led them to the back of the café, where a doorway gave onto the interior room and where, conveniently, no one else was sitting at present. Salvatore intended to keep things that way.

  “Signor Mura?” was how he politely asked about the signora’s partner. Odd, he thought, that Mura was not with her. In their earlier meetings, he’d hovered about like the woman’s guardian angel.

  “Verrà,” she said. He would be coming. She added, “Sta giocando a calcio,” with a sad little smile. Obviously, Angelina Upman knew how it looked that her lover was off at a football match instead of at her side. She added, “Lo aiuta,” as if to clarify.

  Salvatore wondered at this. It didn’t seem likely that football—either played or watched or coached—would do much to help anyone in the situation, as she claimed. But perhaps an hour or two of the sport took Mura’s mind off things. Or perhaps it merely got him away from his partner’s understandable, unceasing, and probably frenzied worry about her daughter.

  She did not, however, appear frenzied now
. She appeared deadened. She looked quite ill. The girl’s father—the Pakistani from London—did not look much better. Both of them were raw nerve endings and twisted stomachs. And who could blame them?

  He noted how the professor held out a chair for the signora before taking a seat himself. He noted how the signora’s hands shook when she put the zucchero into her espresso. He noted how the professor offered her the plate of biscotti although Salvatore had gently pushed it in his own direction. He noted the signora’s use of Hari in speaking to the father of her child. He noted the father wince when he heard her use this name.

  Every detail of every interaction between these two people was important to Salvatore. He had not spent twenty years of his life as a policeman only to escape knowing that family came under suspicion first when tragedy fell upon a member of it.

  Using a combination of his wretched English and the signora’s moderately decent Italian, Salvatore brought them as up-to-date as he wished them to be. The airports had all been checked, he told them. So had the train stations. So had the buses. The net of their search for the child had been cast and was still in place: not only in Lucca but outward into the surrounding towns. So far, purtroppo, there was nothing to report.

  He waited for the signora to make a slow translation for the father of her child. Her serviceable Italian got the main points across to the dark-skinned man.

  “None of this is as . . . as simple as it used to be,” he said when she was finished. “Before EU, the borders were, of course, a different thing. Now?” He made a what-you-will gesture, not to show indifference but rather to indicate the difficulties they faced. “It has been a good thing for criminals, this lack of strong borders. Here in Italy”—with an apologetic smile—“with EU we gain a system of money that is no longer mad, eh? But as for everything else, as for policing . . . tracing movements is much more difficult now. And if the motorway is used to access the border . . . These things can be checked, but it takes much time.”

  “And the ports?” The child’s father asked the question. The mother translated, unnecessarily in this case.

  “Ports are being checked.” He didn’t tell them what anyone with a basic knowledge of geography knew. How many ports and accessible beaches were there in a narrow country with a coastline of thousands of kilometres? If someone had smuggled the child out of Italy via the sea, she was lost to them. “But there is a chance—every chance—that your Hadiyyah is still in Italy,” he told them. “Possibly she is still in the province. This is how you must think, please.”

  The signora’s eyes shone with tears, but she blinked quickly and did not shed them. She said, “How many days is it usually, Inspector, before . . . something . . . some kind of clue? . . . is found.” She did not, of course, wish to say “before a body is found.” None of them wished to say that despite all of them probably thinking it.

  He explained to her as best he could the complexity of the area in which they lived. Not only were the Tuscan hills nearby, but beyond them the Apuan Alps rose like threats. Within both these places were hundreds of villages, hamlets, villas, farms, cottages, retreats, caves, churches, convents, monasteries, and grottoes. The child could be literally anywhere, he told them. Until they had a sighting, a clue, a memory shaken from someone’s busy life, they were playing a waiting game.

  Angelina Upman’s tears fell then. She accompanied them with not the slightest drama. They merely leaked out of her eyes and down her cheeks, and she did nothing to blot them away. The professor moved his chair closer to hers. He put his hand on her arm.

  Salvatore told them about Carlo Casparia to give them a small hope to hold on to. The drug addict had been questioned and would be questioned again, he said. They were still trying to excavate something from the wasteland that was his brain. At first he had seemed a possible candidate to have orchestrated an abduction, Salvatore explained. But as there was no ransom demanded by anyone . . . ? He paused questioningly.

  “Sì, no ransom,” Angelina Upman affirmed in a whisper.

  . . . Then they had to assume he was not involved. He could, of course, have taken the child and handed her over to someone else for payment. But this suggested a degree of planning and an ability to go unnoticed in the mercato that did not seem possible for Carlo. He was as well known as the accordion player to whom their daughter had given money. Had he led the child off somewhere, one of the venditori would have seen this.

  Into this explanation that Salvatore was giving, Lorenzo Mura finally arrived. He deposited an athletic bag on the floor and brought a chair to the table. His eyes took in the proximity of the London professor to the signora. His glance lingered on the other man’s hand, still on the signora’s arm. Taymullah Azhar removed it, but he did not change the position of his chair. Mura said, “Cara,” to Angelina Upman and kissed the top of her head.

  Salvatore did not like the fact that Mura’s practice, coaching, or game of calcio had taken precedence over this meeting. Thus, he merely went on. Should Lorenzo Mura wish to be updated at this point, someone else was going to have to do it. He said, “So this, you see, would have been out of character in Carlo. We seek someone for whom the taking of a child is in character. This has led us to the paedophiles we have under surveillance and to those we suspect of being paedophiles.”

  “So?” Lorenzo was the one to ask the question. He did it abruptly, the way one would expect of someone from such a distinguished family. They would assume the police would jump to their bidding in the manner in which the police had done during the years of their immense wealth. Salvatore did not like this, but he understood it. Nonetheless, he did not intend to be cowed.

  He ignored Mura’s question and said to the parents of the missing girl, “As it happens, my daughter is acquainted with your Hadiyyah, although I did not know this until my Bianca saw the posters in town. They attend the Dante Alighieri school together. They have, it seems, spoken many times since your daughter joined Bianca’s class. She told me something that has caused me to wonder if perhaps it is not an abduction that we are looking upon.”

  The parents said nothing. Mura frowned. They were, clearly, all thinking the same thing. If the police weren’t considering the child’s disappearance an abduction, then the police were considering it a runaway. Or a murder. There was no other alternative.

  “Your little one told my Bianca much about you,” Salvatore said, this time to the professor alone. He waited patiently for the signora to translate. “She said that you had written in emails that you would visit her at Christmas and then at Easter.”

  The professor’s strangled cry stopped Salvatore from going on. The signora raised a hand to her mouth. Mura looked from his lover to the father of her child, his eyes narrowing in speculation, as the professor said, “I did not . . . Emails?” and the situation became immediately more complex.

  Salvatore said, “Sì. You wrote no emails to Hadiyyah?”

  The professor, stricken, said, “I did not know . . . When Angelina left me, there was no word where they had gone. I had no way to . . . Her laptop was left behind. I had no idea . . .” He spoke with such difficulty that Salvatore knew every word he said was the absolute truth. “Angelina . . .” The professor looked at her. “Angelina . . .” It seemed the only thing he could say.

  “I had to.” She breathed the words rather than said them. “Hari. You would have . . . I didn’t know how else . . . If she’d had no word from you, she would have wanted . . . She would have wondered. She adores you and it was the only way . . .”

  Salvatore sat back in his chair and examined the signora. His English was just good enough to pick up the gist. He examined the professor. He looked at Mura. He could see that Mura was in the dark about this matter, but he—Salvatore—was quickly putting together pieces that he did not like. “There were no real emails,” he clarified. “These emails that Hadiyyah received . . . You wrote them, Signora?”

  Sh
e shook her head. She lowered it so her face was partially obscured by her hair, and she said, “My sister. I told her what to say.”

  “Bathsheba?” the professor asked. “Bathsheba wrote emails, Angelina? Pretending? And yet when we spoke to her . . . when we spoke to your parents . . . all of them said . . .” One of his two hands clenched into a fist. “Hadiyyah believed the emails, didn’t she? You set the address to be authentically English. So she would have no doubt, no questions,” he finally said. “So she would think I wrote to her, making promises that I did not keep.”

  “Hari, I’m sorry.” The signora’s tears fell copiously now. A broken story came from her lips. This story was about her sister, the aversion she felt—and the family felt—for this man from Pakistan, her willingness to assist Angelina in escaping and hiding away from him, the communication between the two women, how everything from last November until this moment had come to pass, except, of course, the abduction of the child.

  The signora’s head was in her hands as she spoke. “I’m so sorry” was her conclusion.

  The professor looked at her long. To Salvatore, it seemed that he went inside himself to find some inner quality that would allow him to bring forth what, in the same position, Salvatore could not possibly have produced. “It’s done, Angelina,” the professor said. He spoke with astounding dignity. “I cannot pretend to understand. I never will understand. Your hatred of me? This . . . what you have done . . . Hadiyyah’s safety is what is important now.”

  “I don’t hate you!” the signora wept. “It’s that you don’t understand me, that you never understood me, that I tried and tried and couldn’t make you see—”

  The professor put his hand on her arm once again. “Perhaps we failed each other,” he said. “But that is of no importance now. Only Hadiyyah. Angelina, hear me. Only Hadiyyah.”