Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Barbara minded not in the least. Her intention was to grab Nafeeza and paint a proper picture for her about Mitch Corsico’s intentions just in case Mrs. Croak hadn’t done so. She had to be made to understand that, no matter how appealing it might sound to unburden oneself and one’s grievances in a public forum, The Source could not that forum be. “No tabloid journalist is your friend,” she would say.

  So she waited outside. Thus she was in position when Nafeeza and Azhar’s father showed up. Thus she was in position when Mitch Corsico showed up as well.

  Luckily Nafeeza arrived at the school first. She and Azhar’s father came hustling towards the main doors, and they saw Barbara simultaneously. Nafeeza said with great dignity, “Thank you, Sergeant. We are in your debt,” and Azhar’s father nodded at her.

  “Don’t let anyone get to him,” Barbara said as they went inside. “It’ll turn out bad. Try to explain this to him.”

  “We understand. We will.”

  Then they were gone. Then Corsico arrived.

  Barbara saw him take up a lurking position across the street from the school at a newsagent’s shop. He clocked her at once, cocked his ridiculous Stetson at her, and crossed his arms on his chest beneath the digital camera that hung round his neck. His expression said that she’d checked his king but shouldn’t feel exactly triumphant about it.

  Barbara looked away from him. All she needed to do was to get Sayyid, his mum, and his granddad to their car. All she needed to do was to have a word with the boy in order to underscore the dangers he faced if he gave in to his inclination to abuse his dad in the press. The fact that Sayyid wouldn’t see the opportunity as dangerous had to be dealt with. Barbara doubted that it was going to be enough for his mum and his grandfather merely to instruct him to hold his tongue.

  After ten minutes of waiting, the main door to the comprehensive opened once again. Barbara had been lingering near the pavement, at the side of an urn planted with a sad-looking holly bush. She came forward as the three others approached. In her peripheral vision, she saw Corsico take a step into the quiet street.

  She said quickly, “Nafeeza, the reporter’s just there in the cowboy get-up. He’s got a camera. Sayyid, that’s who you need to keep clear of. He means to—”

  “You!” Sayyid snarled. And to his mother, “You didn’t say that his whore . . . You didn’t tell me that his whore was the one—”

  “Sayyid!” his mother said. “This woman is not your father’s—”

  “You’re so bloody stupid! Both of you are stupid!”

  His grandfather grabbed onto him and said something in Urdu. He began to strong-arm him towards a battered Golf.

  “I’ll talk to whoever I want to talk to!” Sayyid declared. “You,” to Barbara, “you fucking whore. You keep away from me. Keep away from us. Go back to my father’s bed and suck his cock like you want to.”

  Nafeeza slapped him so hard his head snapped to one side. He began to shout. “I’ll talk to anyone I want! I’ll tell the truth. About her. About him. About what they do when they’re alone because I know, I know, I know what he’s like and what she’s like and—”

  His grandfather punched him. He began to roar in Urdu. Over his roaring, Nafeeza cried out and grabbed onto him. He shook her off and hit Sayyid again. Blood spurted from the boy’s nose to speckle the front of his neat white shirt.

  “Bloody hell,” Barbara said. She dashed forward to free the teenager from his grandfather’s clutches.

  Dog’s dinner was what she thought about the mess. What Corsico thought she reckoned she’d be seeing sooner or later on the front page of The Source.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Lynley went to the questura once he and Taymullah Azhar parted at Pensione Giardino. This police building sat outside the city wall, not far from Porta San Pietro, an easy walk from anywhere within the medieval centre of the town. The colour of apricots, it was an imposing Romanesque building given to sobriety and solidity, located a short distance from the train station. Police and other judicial officials came and went from it, and while Lynley’s entrance garnered him curious looks, he was taken quickly enough to Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco’s office.

  Salvatore Lo Bianco had been brought fully into the picture about Lynley’s assignment to the case, he discovered. Clearly, the Italian wasn’t pleased about this. A stiff smile of welcome indicated where he stood on the matter of a Scotland Yard copper showing up on his patch, but he was far too polite to let anything other than perfectly—and rather cool—good manners indicate his displeasure.

  He was quite a small man, Lynley topping him by at least ten inches. His salt-and-pepper hair was thinning at the crown, and he was swarthy of complexion with the scars of adolescent acne pitting his cheeks. But he was a man who’d obviously learned to make the most of his physical assets, for he was trim, athletic-looking, and beautifully suited. His hands looked as if they were manicured weekly.

  “Piacere,” he said to Lynley, although Lynley doubted the other man was at all pleased to make his acquaintance and he couldn’t blame him. “Parla italiano, sì?”

  Lynley said yes, as long as the person speaking to him didn’t talk like someone describing the action at a horse race. To this, Lo Bianco smiled. He gestured to a chair.

  He offered caffè . . . macchiato? americano? Lynley demurred. He then offered tè caldo. After all, Lynley was a mad Englishman, no?, and everyone knew the English drank tea by the gallon. Lynley smiled and said he required nothing. He went on to tell Lo Bianco he’d met Taymullah Azhar at the pensione where they both were staying. He had yet to meet with the missing girl’s mother. He hoped the chief inspector would facilitate that.

  Lo Bianco nodded. He eyed Lynley and seemed to take the measure of him. Lynley hadn’t failed to note that while he was seated, Lo Bianco had remained standing. He wasn’t bothered by this. He was in foreign territory in more ways than one, and both of them knew it.

  “This thing that you do,” Lo Bianco said in Italian from in front of a filing cabinet where he had positioned himself. “This liaison with the family. It suggests to us—especially to the public minister, I must tell you—that the British police think we do not work well here in Italy. As police, I mean.”

  Lynley hastened to reassure the chief inspector. His presence, he told him, was largely a political move on the part of the Met. The UK tabloids had begun to cover the story of the little girl’s disappearance. In particular, a rather base tabloid—if the chief inspector knew what he meant—was giving the Met a proper caning about the matter. Tabloids in general were not so much interested in the regulations of policing between countries as they were in stirring up trouble. To avoid this, he had been sent to Italy, but it was not his intention to get in Chief Inspector Lo Bianco’s way. If he could be of assistance, of course, he would be happy to offer himself in the investigation. But the chief inspector should be assured that his sole purpose was to serve the family in whatever way he could.

  “As it happens, I’m acquainted with the child’s father,” he said. He didn’t add that one of his colleagues was more than merely acquainted with Taymullah Azhar.

  Lo Bianco watched him closely as he spoke. He nodded and seemed appeased by all of this. He said knowingly, “Ah, your UK tabloids,” in a fashion that indicated Italy did not itself suffer from the same sort of gutter journalism that went on in England, but then he relented and said, “Here, too,” and he went to his desk, where, from a briefcase, he brought out a paper called Prima Voce. Its front page, Lynley saw, bore the headline Dov’è la bambina? It also featured a picture of a man kneeling in the street somewhere in Lucca, his head bent and a hand-lettered sign reading Ho fame in his hands. For a crazy moment, Lynley thought this was a form of strange Italian punishment akin to being held in the stocks for public ridicule. But the man turned out to be the only person of interest the police had come up with: an
inveterate drug user called Carlo Casparia who had seen Hadiyyah on the morning of her disappearance. He’d been in for questioning twice, the second time at the request of il Pubblico Ministero himself. This man, Piero Fanucci, had become convinced that Carlo was involved in the child’s disappearance.

  “Perché?”

  “At first because of the drugs themselves and his need to purchase more. Now because he has not been in the mercato to beg since the girl disappeared.” Lo Bianco produced a philosophical expression. “Il Pubblico Ministero? He thinks this is an indication of guilt.”

  “And you?”

  Lo Bianco smiled, seeming pleased at having been read by his fellow detective. “I think Carlo does not wish to be further harassed by the police and, until this matter is settled, will not return to the mercato where he can be easily picked up for more questions. But you see, it is an important matter to the magistrato—and to the public—that progress be made. And this questioning of Carlo, it looks like progress. You will see that for yourself, I think.”

  What he meant by this last statement became clear when Lo Bianco suggested Lynley meet the public minister. He was in Piazza Napoleone—“Piazza Grande, we call it,” he said—which was not far, but they would drive. “The privilege of the police,” he said, for few vehicles were allowed within the city’s wall, where most people either walked, rode bicycles, or took the tiny buses that scooted along with virtually no sound.

  In Piazza Grande, they entered an enormous palazzo converted—like the vast majority of such buildings in Italy—into a use far removed from its original one. They climbed a wide stairway to the offices of Piero Fanucci. They were shown into his office without ado by a secretary whose surprised “Di nuovo, Salvatore?” indicated this was not Lo Bianco’s first visit to the magistrate that day.

  Piero Fanucci, the public minister in charge of the investigation and, as was customary in Italy, the man who would ultimately prosecute the case, did not look up from the work upon which he was intent when Lo Bianco and Lynley entered. Lynley recognised this move for what it was, and when Lo Bianco shot him a look, he lifted one shoulder an inch. It was not necessary, this gesture told Lo Bianco, that he be welcomed to Italy with open arms.

  “Magistrato,” Lo Bianco said, “this is the Scotland Yard officer, Thomas Lynley.”

  Fanucci made a noise somewhere between his nose and his throat. He shuffled papers. He signed two documents. He punched a button on his phone and barked at his secretary. In a moment she entered and removed from in front of him several manila folders, replacing them with others. He began to look through them. Lo Bianco bristled.

  “Basta, Piero,” Lo Bianco said. “Sono occupato, eh?”

  At this declaration, Piero Fanucci looked up. Clearly, he was not in a mood to care particularly about how busy the chief inspector might be. He said, “Anch’io, Topo,” and in response Lynley saw the chief inspector’s jaw set, either at being called “mouse” by the public minister or at the man’s lack of cooperation. Then Fanucci directed his gaze at Lynley. He was ugly beyond measure, and he spoke without the slightest attempt to ensure that Lynley understood his Italian, which was heavily accented, dropping endings off the words in the manner of the southern part of the country. Lynley picked up the gist more by the man’s tone than anything else. Either because he felt it or because he found it useful, outrage was what Fanucci projected.

  “So the British police believe we need a liaison with the missing girl’s family,” he said, more or less. “This is absurd. We are keeping the family fully informed. We have a suspect. It is a matter of one or two more interrogations before he directs us to this child.”

  Lynley said, as he had said to Lo Bianco, “It’s merely a matter of public pressure in England, generated by our press. The relationship between our police and our journalists is an uneasy one, Signor Fanucci. Mistakes have been made in the past: unsafe convictions, overturned imprisonments based on poor investigations, revelations of officers selling information . . . Oftentimes when the tabloids speak, the higher-ups react. That’s the case here, I’m afraid.”

  Fanucci steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He had, Lynley saw, an adventitious finger on his right hand. It was hard not to look at, considering the position in which the public minister—doubtless deliberately—had placed them. “We have not that situation here,” Fanucci declared. “Our journalists do not determine our movements.”

  “You’re very lucky in this,” Lynley said with all seriousness. “Were that only the case at home.”

  Fanucci scrutinised Lynley, taking in everything from the cut of his clothes to the cut of his hair to the adolescent scar that marred his upper lip. “You will, I hope, remain out of our way in this matter,” he said. “We do things differently here in Italy. Here il Pubblico Ministero from the first involves himself in the investigation. He does not depend solely upon the police to present him with a case tied in ribbons.”

  Lynley didn’t comment on the oddity of a system that, on the surface, appeared to have no checks and balances. He merely told the public minister that he understood how things proceeded and, if necessary, he would make certain that the parents of the missing girl also understood since they would, perforce, be used to a rather different system of law and justice.

  “Good.” Fanucci waved his hand in an off-with-you-then motion that gave the advantage to his sixth finger. They were being dismissed but not before he said to Lo Bianco, “What more do you have on this business of the hotels, Topo?”

  “Nothing as yet,” Lo Bianco said.

  “Get something today,” Fanucci instructed him.

  “Centamente” was Lo Bianco’s evenly spoken reply, but once again that tightening of his jaw demonstrated how he felt about being so directed. He made no further remarks until they were out of the palazzo and standing in the enormous piazza. Chestnut trees newly in leaf lined two sides of this, and in its centre a group of boys were elbowing each other, shouting to one another as they kicked a football in the direction of a carousel.

  Lynley said to him, “Interesting gentleman, il Pubblico Ministero.”

  Lo Bianco snorted. “He is who he is.”

  “May I ask: What did he mean about the hotels?”

  Lo Bianco shot him a look but then explained: a stranger coming to enquire about this same missing girl and her mother.

  “Before her disappearance or after?” Lynley asked.

  “Before.” It was, Lo Bianco told him, six or eight weeks earlier. When the girl disappeared and her photo was shown in the newspapers and on posters round Lucca, a few hotels and pensioni reported a man who had been seeking either her or her mother. He had, Lo Bianco said, pictures of them both. The receptionists and the pensioni owners all agreed upon that. They all, interestingly enough, agreed upon the man himself. Indeed, they remembered him quite clearly and were able to provide Lo Bianco with an adequate description of the fellow.

  “From eight weeks ago?” Lynley asked. “Why are their memories so clear?”

  “Because of who it was who came to ask about this child.”

  “You know? They knew?”

  “Not his name, of course. They did not know his name. But his description? That would not be so easy to forget. His name is Michelangelo Di Massimo, and he comes from Pisa.”

  “Why was someone from Pisa looking for Hadiyyah and her mother?” Lynley asked, more of himself than of Lo Bianco.

  “That is a most interesting question, no?” Lo Bianco said. “I am working on an answer to it. When I have it, then it will be time to have some words with Signor Di Massimo. Until then, I know where he is.” Lo Bianco shot him a look, shot another look at the palazzo behind them, and smiled briefly.

  Lynley read in both the smile and those glances something that told him much about the man. “You haven’t told Signor Fanucci this, have you?” he said. “Why not?”

  “Becau
se the magistrato would have him dragged from Pisa to our questura. He would grill him for six or seven hours, a day, three days, four. He would threaten him, not feed him, give him no water, give him no sleep, and then ask him to ‘imagine, if he would’ how this abduction of the child occurred. And then he would charge him based on what it was he ‘imagined.’”

  “Charge him with what?” Lynley asked.

  “Chissà?” he said. Who knows. “Anything to keep the journalists supplied with details showing the case is well in hand. Despite his words to you, this is often his way.” He began walking towards the police car and he said over his shoulder to Lynley, “Would you like to have a look at this man, this Michelangelo Di Massimo, Ispettore?”

  “I would indeed,” Lynley told him.

  PISA

  TUSCANY

  Lynley hadn’t known that catching a glimpse of Michelangelo Di Massimo was going to involve a lengthy drive to Pisa. When it became obvious by their entrance onto the autostrada that this was the case, he wondered about Lo Bianco’s motives.

  Lo Bianco took them to a playing field on the north side of il centro. There, a training session of football was going on. At least three dozen men were on the field, engaged in dribbling towards a goal.

  At the edge of the field, Lo Bianco stopped the police car. He got out, as did Lynley, but he did not approach the players. Instead, he leaned against the car and removed from his jacket pocket a packet of cigarettes. He offered one to Lynley, to which Lynley demurred. He took one himself, keeping his gaze fixed on the players on the field as he lit up. He watched the action, but said nothing at all. Clearly, he was waiting for some sort of reaction from Lynley, something that would indicate that the English policeman had passed a test which had nothing at all to do with his knowledge of the rules of football.

  Lynley gave his own attention to the field and the players upon it. In the way of many things Italian, on the surface the practice session appeared to be a largely disorganised affair. But as he watched, matters began to take on more clarity, especially when he noted a single individual who appeared to be attempting to direct a lot of the action.