Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  “Perché?” Salvatore listened to the Moka’s final burbling. He reached for a marginally clean cup on the shelf above the sink, gave it a quick rinse and quick wipe, and poured the coffee. Perfetto, he thought. Bitter and coal-coloured. Just the way he liked it.

  First, he was told, the convertible top on the car was down. The caller—this was a man who identified himself as Mario Germano, on his way to see his mamma in the village of Fornovolasco—saw the vehicle parked beneath some chestnut trees in a lay-by, and his first thought was that it was foolish to leave a car like that parked with its top down where anyone could come along and play mischief with it. So he’d given the car a second look as he drove by, and that brought them to the second reason Signor Germano remembered the car.

  “Sì?” Salvatore sipped the coffee. He leaned against the counter and waited for more. It was soon in coming, and it made the coffee turn to bile in his mouth.

  A man was leading a child away from the car and into the woods, the officer said. Signor Germano saw them and assumed that it was a father leading his child to relieve herself out of sight of the road.

  “Why did he assume it was a father and child? Is he sure the child was female?” Salvatore asked.

  Truth be told, Signor Germano wasn’t completely sure about the sex of the child, but he thinks it was a little girl. And he assumed it was a father and child because . . . well, what else would it have been? Why would anyone assume anything else but an innocent drive in the hills on a sunny afternoon, interrupted momentarily by a child’s need to squat in the bushes out of sight?

  “This Signor Germano,” Salvatore asked, “is he certain about the sighting?”

  He was indeed because he visited his mamma on a regular schedule.

  “And he takes the same route every time?”

  Sì, sì, sì. The route is in the Apuan Alps, and it’s the only road to get to his mamma’s village.

  It was too much to hope for that Signor Germano would remember in which lay-by the red car had been parked, and he did not remember. But since he’d been on his way to his mamma’s village, the lay-by was, naturally, somewhere along the mountain road in advance of that place.

  Salvatore nodded. This was progress indeed. It could be nothing at all, but he had a feeling this was not so. He dispatched two officers to fetch Signor Germano and to drive him into the Apuan Alps on the route to his mamma’s village. If his memory was jogged as to the correct lay-by, excellent. If his memory failed him, then every lay-by would have to be checked. For the point was not the lay-by itself but the shrubbery beyond it, as well as the woods and any trail leading into the woods. Salvatore didn’t want to think that the child might have been disposed of in the Alps, but every day that passed without word about a ransom and without finding her alive made that possibility ever more likely.

  His order to the officers was to hold close this information about the red car in the Alps. The only people to be told would be the parents, he said. And they would be told only that a possible sighting was being looked into as there was no need to cause them further distress about a man leading a child into the woods until the police knew if this was, indeed, a relevant piece to the puzzle. Meantime, he said, he wanted an officer looking into all the car hire agencies from Pisa to Lucca. If a red convertible had been hired by someone, he wanted to know who, he wanted to know when, and he wanted to know for how long. And not a word about any of this, chiaro? he said. The last thing he wanted was Fanucci getting hold of the information and leaking it to the press.

  PISA

  TUSCANY

  Salvatore decided that it was time to have a word with Michelangelo Di Massimo. He also decided that the presence of New Scotland Yard, in addition to his own presence, might go some distance towards rattling the man. Since he’d been in Lucca looking for Angelina Upman and her daughter, he was the best lead they had. While it was true that he rode a motorcycle—a powerful Ducati, according to the records that Salvatore had dipped into—there was nothing to stop him from borrowing a vehicle from another, nor was there anything to stop him from hiring one for a single day to take him first into Lucca and then into the Apuan Alps.

  He rang DI Lynley and then fetched him at Porta di Borgo, one of the surviving gates of the internal, older walls that had once encircled the town. The London man had walked the short distance from the anfiteatro. He was waiting just outside the arch, flipping through the pages of Prima Voce. He slid into the passenger’s seat and said in his careful Italian, “The tabloids are choosing your drug addict, it seems.”

  Salvatore chuckled. “They must choose someone. It is their way.”

  “Or, if they don’t have a suspect, they go after the police, yes?” Lynley said.

  Salvatore glanced in his direction and smiled. “They will do what they will do,” he said.

  “May I ask: Is someone leaking to the papers?”

  “Come un rubinetto che perde acqua,” Salvatore told him. “But this faucet’s dripping has them well occupied. Their concentration on Carlo keeps them away from what we’re doing and what we know.”

  “What’s made you decide to talk to him now?” Lynley asked, in reference to Michelangelo Di Massimo.

  Salvatore made the turn that would take them to Piazza Santa Maria del Borgo. It was crowded here, as usual, a combination of parcheggio for tour buses and milling tourist groups trying to orient themselves in the town as the bright sunlight fell upon their shoulders. At the piazza’s north side, Porta Santa Maria gave Salvatore access to the viale that encircled the town. They would take this roadway to navigate quickly round the wall and glide over to the autostrada.

  He told Lynley about the reported sighting in the Apuan Alps: a red convertible, a child, a man, their heading into the woods together. Lynley said astutely, “And this man . . . was he blond?”

  Salvatore said, “This we do not know from the sighting.”

  “But it would seem . . .” Lynley looked doubtful. “With someone looking as Di Massimo looks, that would have been noticed certainly?”

  “Who knows what will be remembered from one moment to the next, eh, Ispettore?” Salvatore said. “You may be right and our journey to Pisa may be for nothing, but the facts remain: He was looking for them in Lucca and he plays football for Pisa, so we have a possible connection between him and Mura. If that means something, it is time we learned what. I have a feeling about this Di Massimo.”

  He didn’t tell the London man the rest of what he knew about Di Massimo just then. But there were reasons beyond the man’s ridiculous blond hair that Salvatore knew who the Pisan was.

  Michelangelo Di Massimo had an office along the river in Pisa, walking distance from Campo dei Miracoli as well as from the university. There were people who found this section of the city reminiscent of Venice, but Salvatore had never been able to see it. The only things Venice and this part of Pisa had in common were water and ancient palazzi. In Pisa, the first was sluggish and unclean, and the second were uninspiring. No one, he thought, would be writing poetry about Pisa’s riverside anytime soon.

  When they reached the building that held Di Massimo’s home and office—which were one and the same—there was no answer when Salvatore rang the bell. But at the tobacconist two doors away, they discovered that the Pisan was having his regular hair appointment. They would find him, they were told, in an establishment called Desiderio Dorato, not far from the university. It was a name that Di Massimo had obviously taken straight into his heart.

  The man himself was enthroned within the place, enshrouded in a black plastic cape from shoulders to feet. His head was covered with whatever substance turned his hair from capelli castagni to the promised dorati. When they came upon him, he was deeply involved in reading a novel, a book whose traditional yellow cover announced it as a crime story.

  Salvatore took it out of his hands as preamble to their discussion. “Michelangelo,�
� he said pleasantly, “are you getting some pointers, my friend?” He felt, rather than saw, Thomas Lynley glance curiously in his direction. It was time, he decided, to tell the London man exactly who Di Massimo was.

  He did it by way of introduction, emphasising Lynley’s position at New Scotland Yard and revealing in a friendly fashion the London detective’s purpose in coming to Italy. No doubt, he said, Michelangelo had heard of the missing child from Lucca, non è vero? He couldn’t imagine a private investigator of Di Massimo’s stature to be uninterested in a case such as this one since, above everything else that made it intriguing, the man who stood in place of the missing child’s father was, like Di Massimo, a player of football.

  Di Massimo plucked the book back from Salvatore’s hands. He was unrattled. He said, “As you have eyes, you can see I’m in the middle of something here, Chief Inspector.”

  “Ah, yes, the hair,” Salvatore said. “It was what made you so distinctive to the hotels and pensioni, Miko.” He was aware of Lynley next to him adjusting to the new information. He felt a slight twinge that he hadn’t told the English detective from the first about what he knew of Michelangelo Di Massimo’s profession, but he didn’t want the information relayed to the parents of the girl and, from them, to Lorenzo Mura. The risk was too great, and he hadn’t known whether he could trust Lynley to hold his tongue.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Pisan said.

  “What I’m talking about is your presence—in my city, Miko—seeking from one hotel to the next information about a woman from London and her daughter. You even had a photo of them. Does this rattle the cage bars of your memory, my friend, or will a trip to the questura be necessary to do so?”

  “It seems someone hired you to find them, signore,” Lynley said. “And now one of them is missing, which doesn’t look good. For you, that is.”

  “I know nothing of missing women and children,” Di Massimo said. “And the fact that someone thinks I was looking for them at one time or another . . . ? It could have been anyone. You know that.”

  “Described such as yourself?” Salvatore asked. “Miko, how many men can be said to combine the physical attributes that blend in you so well?”

  “Ask the parrucchiere,” the Pisan advised. “Ask anyone here. They will tell you Di Massimo isn’t the only man who chooses to alter the colour of his hair.”

  “Vero,” Salvatore said. “But perhaps the number of these men who also wear black leather”—and here he toed the plastic cape to one side to reveal Di Massimo’s trousers—“and whose whiskers sprout from his face as if in a contest to grow a full beard by this evening . . . ? I would suggest, Miko, that these two details alone set you above the others. We add to that your possession of a photo of a girl and her mother. We add to that your employment. We add to that your membership on the squadra di calcio and the fact that this team will have, from time to time, played matches against the team from Lucca . . .”

  “Calcio?” Di Massimo asked. “What has calcio to do with anything?”

  “Lorenzo Mura. Angelina Upman. The missing child. They are all connected and something has told me that you know this.”

  “You’re fishing and your bait is off the hook,” Di Massimo said.

  “We shall see if that’s the case, Miko, when you stand in an identity parade and the witnesses from the hotels who have identified you have a chance to see you once again. When that happens—as I assure you it will—you might then regret your reluctance to speak to us now. Il Pubblico Ministero, by the way, will be most interested in speaking to you once those witnesses have confirmed that the man who came into their hotels in his black leather trousers and his black leather jacket with his yellow hair and his very black eyebrows—”

  “Basta,” Di Massimo snapped. “I was asked to locate them, the girl and her mother. That is all. I search Pisa first: the hotels, the pensioni, even the convents that rent out rooms. Then I broaden the search.”

  “Why Lucca?” Lynley asked the man.

  His eyes became hooded as he considered the question and, apparently, what it would reveal if he answered it.

  “Why Lucca?” Salvatore repeated. “And who hired you, Michelangelo?”

  “There was a bank transaction that I was told about. It came from Lucca, so I went to Lucca. You know how it works, Chief Inspector. One thing leads to another and the investigator follows trails. That’s it.”

  “A bank transaction?” Salvatore said. “Who told you about a bank transaction? What kind of bank transaction, Miko?”

  “A transfer of money. That’s all I knew. The money started in Lucca. It ended in London.”

  “And who hired you?” Lynley asked the man. “When were you hired?”

  “In January,” Michelangelo said.

  “By whom?”

  “He’s called Dwayne Doughty. He hired me to find the girl. And that, Chief Inspector, is all I know. I did a job for him. I looked for a child who was supposed to be in the company of her mother. I had a photo of them, so I did what anyone searching would do: I went to the hotels and the pensioni. If that’s a crime, arrest me now. If it isn’t, let me go back to reading my book in peace.”

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Lynley rang Barbara Havers as he and Lo Bianco made the trip back to Lucca. He reached her deep into attempting to transcribe an action report for an officer whose cursive she was finding illegible. She sounded irritated and in need of nicotine. For the first time Lynley wouldn’t have minded her lighting up. He knew she would need to once he imparted the information he now had about Dwayne Doughty.

  There was a moment of silence when he told her: The London private investigator had hired a Pisa private investigator to track down Angelina Upman and her daughter in Lucca. This investigator had begun his work for Doughty in January, four months earlier. To her “Bloody hell, he lied to me!” Lynley added that a bank account was involved, as was a transfer of money from Lucca to London. “Doughty has apparently known a great deal more than he’s been telling you, Barbara,” Lynley said.

  “He’s working for me,” she fumed. “He’s bloody goddamn working for me!”

  “You’ll need to have a word.”

  “Oh, I bloody know that,” she barked. “When I get my hands on the sodding worm—”

  “Just don’t do it now. Don’t leave the office. And if I might suggest . . . ?”

  “What? Because if you think I’m handing this little matter over to someone else, you’re bleeding from your ears.”

  “I wasn’t heading there,” he told her. “But you might want to take Winston with you if you’re going to confront this bloke.”

  “I don’t need protection, Inspector.”

  “Believe me, I know. But the cachet of authority that Winston will lend to an interview . . . ? Not to mention the implied threat of his presence . . . ? You do need that. These aren’t the most cooperative of blokes, Barbara. Doughty might need convincing in the matter of talking if he’s been hiding details from you.”

  She agreed to this, and they rang off. Lynley told Lo Bianco who Doughty was and how he had fitted into the search for Hadiyyah from the previous November. Lo Bianco whistled and shot him a look. “For an Englishman to have taken the child,” he said, “this would have been an easier matter.”

  “Only as to language,” Lynley pointed out. “Because if the Englishman doesn’t live in Lucca or somewhere nearby . . . Where would he have taken her?”

  At the questura, they quickly learned that there was an additional development. As it happened, a tourist using a local apartment in Piazza San Alessandro as a base for her trip to Tuscany had been in the mercato on the day of Hadiyyah’s disappearance. She was an American woman travelling with her daughter, both of them students of the Italian language, neither of them fluent, but both in town to practise as much as they could. So they read the tab
loids as well as the newspapers, they watched the television and tried to understand what was being said, and they talked to the cittadini of the town. They’d seen the appeal on the news, and they’d looked through the thousand or more digital photos they’d taken in Tuscany to see if there was anything among them that might be of help to the police. They’d located the photos they’d taken in the mercato on the day that the child went missing, and they’d cooperatively delivered the memory cards from their digital cameras so that the police could examine the pictures. They’d included a message along with the memory cards: Should the police wish to question the photographers themselves, they would be that day taking in the beauties of Palazzo Pfanner.

  Lo Bianco sent for someone who knew what to do with memory cards from cameras, compact discs, computers, and getting the photographs onto a monitor’s screen. There turned out to be nearly two hundred that the American and her daughter had taken in the mercato. Lynley and the chief inspector began to go through them, studying each to see if Hadiyyah was featured in any, looking for the reappearance of anyone from one picture to the next. Especially they looked for Michelangelo Di Massimo. He would, after all, be unmistakable.

  They found Lorenzo Mura doing his weekly shop at a bancarella featuring cheese. They found him at another featuring meat. At this one a great pig’s head on the counter looked, unappetisingly, like something directly out of Lord of the Flies, and Mura was gazing to his left in the direction, Lo Bianco said, of Porta San Jacopo and the accordion player. They scrutinised every picture that Lo Bianco identified as being in the vicinity of that musician. Finally, they came upon two in which Hadiyyah could be seen, at the front of the crowd listening to the music and watching the man’s poodle doing its dance.

  The focal point of the picture was the dancing dog, not Hadiyyah, so she wasn’t entirely in focus. But it was an easy matter to enlarge the picture on the screen so that the detectives could see that it was unmistakably her. To her right stood an old woman in the black of a widow, while on her left huddled three teenage girls engaged in lighting two cigarettes from the burning tobacco of a third.