Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  None of these conjectures made sense to Barbara. Azhar was innocent. He was in intolerable pain. And what she didn’t need to do at the moment was to make things worse with pointed questions about Dwayne Doughty’s claims and his declaration of khushi, as if a word in Urdu held the key to a life-and-death puzzle that seemed to enlarge with every day that passed.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  By late morning, Salvatore had the confirmation for his suspicions. The missing child’s fingerprints were, indeed, in the red convertible. Forensic officers in the company of DI Lynley had gone to Fattoria di Santa Zita to obtain samples from the little girl’s bedroom: fingerprints as well as DNA from her hairbrush and toothbrush. The DNA results would not come in for some time. But the fingerprints had been a matter of a few hours only, to collect them, to take them to the laboratory, and to compare them to what had been found in the car, on the sides of the leather passenger seat, on the seatbelt’s buckle, and on the fascia. DNA was hardly necessary after that, but since DNA results had long since become de rigueur during trials, appropriate tests would be made.

  For his own work, however, Salvatore didn’t need those results. What he needed was an interview with anyone who knew Roberto Squali, and he began with the man’s home address. This was in Via del Fosso, a north-south lane through the walled city. This route was, most unusually, cut down its centre by a narrow canal from which fresh ferns sprang between crevices on its edges, and Squali’s residence was on the west side of this canal, through a heavy door that hid one of Lucca’s fine private gardens.

  Most men of Squali’s age in Italy did not live alone. Rather, they lived at home with their parents, generally waited upon by their doting mammas until such a time as they married. But this did not prove true for Roberto Squali. As things turned out, Squali was from Rome and his parents still lived there. The young man himself had a residence at the home of his paternal aunt and her husband, and upon questioning them, Salvatore discovered that such had been the case since Roberto’s adolescence.

  The aunt and uncle—surnamed Medici (alas, no relation)—met with Salvatore in the garden, where beneath the branches of a fig tree, they sat on the edges of their chairs as if to spring away from him at the least provocation. From an earlier visit made by the police, they’d learned of their nephew’s death via automobile accident; his parents in Rome had been informed; there the family were devastated; a funeral was even now being arranged.

  No tears were shed in the garden for Roberto’s unexpected passing. Salvatore thought this strange. Considering the length of time that Squali had lived with his aunt and uncle, it seemed to him that they would have come to consider him something of a son. But they had not, and some careful probing on his part turned up the reason.

  Roberto had not been a source of pride to his family. Indeed, just the opposite was the case. At fifteen years old and enterprising well beyond his years, he’d found easy money available in running a minor prostitution ring featuring the services of immigrant women from Africa. His parents had got him out of Rome one step ahead of being arrested not only for this but also for having enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh offered—at least to hear Roberto’s account of the interlude—by the twelve-year-old daughter of a family acquaintance. The parents of the violated girl agreed to a hefty financial settlement for her deflowering, and the public prosecutor had been cajoled into accepting an arrangement that guaranteed Roberto’s absence from the Eternal City well into subsequent decades. Hence, an arrest and a trial associated with either matter were avoided and familial disgrace had been buried by means of the boy’s removal to Lucca. There he’d remained for the past ten years.

  “He is not a bad boy,” Signora Medici avowed to Salvatore, less with passion than with the habit of repetition. “It is just that . . . for Roberto . . .” She glanced at her husband. It seemed a wary look.

  He went on. “Vuole una vita facile” was how the signore put it. And to Roberto, the easy life had been defined as working as little as possible since there were pickings aplenty in their society and he’d been determined from childhood to be ready with a basket whenever something was hanging low enough on the tree. When he worked at all, it was as a waiter in one fine restaurant or another, either in Lucca or in Pisa or occasionally in Firenze. Charming as he was, he never had trouble finding employment. Keeping it, however, had always been another matter.

  “We pray for him,” Signora Medici murmured. “Since he is fifteen years old, all of us pray that he will perhaps grow into a man like his father or like his brother.”

  The fact that Roberto had a brother was a subject worth exploring, but the topic was dispatched fairly quickly. Cristoforo Squali, as things turned out, was the blue-eyed boy in the family, an architetto in Rome, married three years, and producing a grandchild for his proud parents eleven months after the I dos were said. With another child on the way, he was everything Roberto was not, this Cristo. He’d never put a foot wrong since the day of his birth. While Roberto . . . ? Signora Medici crossed herself. “We pray for him,” she repeated. “Weekly novenas, his mother and I. But God has never heard our prayers.”

  Salvatore told them, then, about the location of their nephew’s accident. They appeared to know little enough about his doings in Tuscany, but there was a chance that his trip into the Apuan Alps would trigger in them a memory of a conversation with him, the casual mention on his part of a friend, an associate, or an acquaintance who lived there. He did not tell them that Roberto was involved in some way in the disappearance of the English girl that had been reported in the newspapers and on the television. Telling them that would put them all on the fast track to family secrecy, considering Roberto’s hushed-up brush with the law in Rome.

  Salvatore didn’t expect them to know much about what Roberto had been doing in the Apuan Alps. He was surprised, then, when Signora Medici and her husband looked at each other in what appeared to be consternation when he told them where their nephew’s car had been found. The air among them fairly crackled with tension as the signora repeated, “Le Alpi Apuane?” As she spoke, her husband’s face hardened on an expression that mixed loathing and fury equally.

  “Sì,” Salvatore said. If they had a carta stradale of Tuscany, he could show them approximately where their nephew’s car had been found.

  Signora Medici looked at her husband. Her glance seemed to ask him if they even wanted to know more at this point. They were worried about something, Salvatore concluded, perhaps trying to decide if they preferred to remain in ignorance about Roberto’s activities.

  Signor Medici made the decision for them both. He pushed himself to his feet and told Salvatore to come with him into the house. Salvatore followed him through an open doorway shielded from bugs by strips of plastic. This gave way into a large kitchen floored in well-scrubbed terracotta tiles. “Aspetti qui” told Salvatore that he was to wait, and the signore vanished through another doorway to a darkened part of the house while his wife went to the stove and from a shelf above it took a large Moka into which she began to spoon coffee. This seemed more something to do with her hands than an offer of hospitality since once she added water and put the Moka onto the flame of the fornello, she promptly forgot all about it.

  The signore returned with a dog-eared road map of all of Tuscany. He spread it out upon a deeply dented chopping block that was a central feature of the kitchen. Salvatore studied it, trying to recall at what exact point the final turnoff appeared on the route to the accident site. With his finger he traced the route he and DI Lynley had taken. He got as far as the first turn they’d made off the main road when Signora Medici gave a whimper and her husband muttered a curse.

  “Che cosa sapete?” Salvatore asked them. “Dovete dirmi tutto.” For it was obvious to him that they did know more than they wished to say about the Apuan Alps. To convince them that they indeed had to tell him whatever they knew, he saw he had no choice in the matt
er and told them of Roberto’s possible involvement in a serious crime.

  “Ma lei, lei,” the signora murmured to her husband. She grabbed on to his arm as if for some kind of reassurance.

  “Chi?” Salvatore demanded. Who was this she to whom the signora referred?

  After an agonised glance between them, Signor Medici was the one to speak. She was their daughter, Domenica, who resided at a cloistered convent high in the Apuan Alps.

  “A nun?” Salvatore asked.

  No, she was not a nun, the signore told him. She was—and here the man’s lip curled with his disgust—una pazza, un’ imbecille, una—

  “No!” his wife cried. This was not true. She was not crazy, she was not an imbecile. She was, instead, just a simple girl who wanted and had been denied a life spent in the presence of God and a holy marriage to the Lord Jesus Christ. She wanted prayer. She wanted meditation. She wanted contemplation and silence, and if he did not understand that her deep love of her Catholic religion had created within their daughter a nature both massively spiritual and completely innocent—

  “They would not take her,” Signor Medici cut in, waving away his wife’s defence of their child. “She lacked the brains. You know this as well as I do, Maria.”

  From all of this, Salvatore attempted to put together the pieces of a puzzle that seemed to be growing by the minute. Domenica was not a nun, then. But she lived in the convent with the other nuns? She was, perhaps, an acolyte of some sort? Perhaps a servant? A cook? A laundress? A seamstress assisting with the manufacture of vestments for the province’s priests?

  Signor Medici barked an unpleasant laugh. All of Salvatore’s suggestions, it appeared, were far more challenging than his figlia stupida could have contended with. She was none of these things. Rather, she was a caretaker on the convent property, and she lived there in rooms above its hovel of a barn. She milked goats, she grew vegetables, and she fancied herself part of the community. She even called herself Sister Domenica Giustina, and she’d created out of table linens from their home here in Lucca a form of nun’s habit that resembled that which the sisters themselves wore.

  During the man’s recitation, his wife began to weep. She looked away from her husband and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. When the man was finished, she turned back to Salvatore and said, “Figlia unica,” which explained something of the grief she felt and the anger harboured by her husband. Domenica was their only child. She’d held her parents’ hopes for the future, which had been dashed as over the years it had become more and more obvious that the girl was not normal.

  Salvatore had to ask the next question, despite their distress at having to speak of Domenica at all. Could Roberto Squali have been heading to the convent where Domenica lived? Had he and Domenica stayed in touch since she’d gone to live there?

  This they did not know. Their nephew and their daughter had been close at one time as adolescents, but that time had passed as Roberto had learned the limits of what Domenica could offer anyone in companionship. This had not taken long and it was to be expected. Indeed, Domenica’s life had largely been defined by abridged relationships with people who came to understand that what appeared to be a deeply spiritual nature was, in reality, an inability to exist in the world as it was.

  All of this Salvatore gleaned, but none of it could eliminate the possibility of Roberto Squali’s driving his convertible into the mountains in order to see his cousin. It would be a piece of luck if a visit to the convent had been his intention. No matter her simplicity, there was a very good chance that Sister Domenica Giustina could tell them something about what had happened to the English girl.

  VILLA RIVELLI

  TUSCANY

  Domenica went to seek Carina. For the past three days the child had avoided her. During Domenica’s praying and fasting, she’d heard Carina moving about in the rooms above the barn, and she’d felt the child’s presence as she’d watched and waited for Sister Domenica Giustina to understand what had to be done next. Now she would be somewhere on the grounds of the Villa Rivelli. Sister Domenica Giustina felt secure in the knowledge that God would lead her to Carina without trouble.

  And so it was. As if guided by the angel Gabriel, Sister Domenica Giustina made her way to the sunken giardino with its splashing fountains. Carina wasn’t in sight, but that was of no account. For at the far end of the garden, the Grotta dei Venti stood. This grotta offered a chamber of stone and shell along with four marble statues from whose feet water flowed continuously into a channel from a spring far below. This made the air within the grotto cool and inviting in the heat of the day. And here it was that Sister Domenica Giustina saw the little girl, as if waiting for her.

  She was sitting on the stone floor of the place, her knees drawn up to her chin and her thin arms holding her legs in place. She was tucked into the deepest cool shadows, and as Sister Domenica Giustina entered the grotto, she saw the child shrink away.

  “Vieni, Carina,” she said softly to the child, extending her hand. “Vieni con me.”

  The girl looked up, her face like a haunted thing. She began to speak, but the words she used were not in Italian, so Sister Domenica Giustina understood from them only a few words. “I want my mummy,” Carina said. “I want my dad. I was s’posed to see him and where is he and I want him and I don’t want to be here anymore and I’mscaredandIwantmydadnownownow!”

  Dad was the word Sister Domenica Giustina caught among the rush of language. She said, “Tuo padre, Carina?”

  “IwanttogohomeandIwantmydad.”

  “Padre, sì?” Sister Domenica Giustina clarified. “Vorresti vedere tuo padre?”

  “Voglio andare a casa,” the little girl said, her voice growing stronger. “Voglio andare da mio padre, chiaro?”

  “Ah, sì?” Sister Domenica Giustina said. “Capisco, ma prima devi venire qui.”

  She held out her hand once more. If the child wanted to go to her father’s home, as she said, there were steps to be taken and those steps could not begin in the Grotta dei Venti.

  The child looked at the hand extended to her. Her face wore an expression of doubt. Sister Domenica Giustina smiled softly to encourage her. “Non avere paura,” she told her, for there was indeed no reason to have fear.

  Slowly, then, Carina got to her feet. She put her hand in Sister Domenica Giustina’s. Together, they left the cool confines of the grotto. Together, they climbed the stairs out of the sunken garden and began to approach the great shuttered villa.

  “Ti dobbiamo preparare,” Sister Domenica Giustina murmured to the little girl. For she could not meet with her father unprepared. She had to be ready: sweet and clean and pure. She explained this to the child as she urged her forward, past the villa’s wide and empty loggia, past the sweeping steps that led up to this, round the corner of the building itself, and in the direction of the vast cellars of the place.

  It was on the approach to the steps leading down to the cellars that Carina’s footsteps began to falter. She began to pull back in obvious reluctance. She began to speak words that Sister Domenica Giustina could not hope to understand.

  “Mydadsnottherehe’snotinthecellaryousaidmydadyousaidyouwouldtakemetomydadIwon’tgoIwon’tIwon’tit’sdarkinthereitsmells I’mafraid!”

  Sister Domenica Giustina said, “No, no, no. Non devi . . .” But the child did not understand. She tried to pull away with all the strength she had, but with surpassing strength Sister Domenica Giustina pulled back. “Vieni,” she said. “Devi venire.”

  Down one step, down two, down three. An enormous effort and she had the child within the damp, dank darkness of the cellar.

  But there the little girl began to scream. And the only way to silence her was to drag her far, far inside the rooms of the cellar until she could not be heard by the world outside the forbidding walls of that terrible place.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

&
nbsp; Salvatore knew that the possibility of Roberto Squali’s having arranged the kidnapping of the English child on his own was remote. Although his past clearly identified him as a player on the field of illegal activities, there had for years been no hint of scandal or law-breaking on his part. The logical conclusion was that although the child had been with him, she had not come to his attention as a kidnap victim via his own inspiration. The business card of Michelangelo Di Massimo within Squali’s portafoglio suggested that there was a substantial link among the private detective, Squali, and the crime, and Salvatore was intent upon finding it.

  This did not take long for the simple reason that Roberto Squali had done nothing at all to hide the link, so sure had he apparently been of the potential success of the scheme. The records of his telefonino revealed calls made to him by Michelangelo Di Massimo. The records of his bank account showed a significant deposit made into his account—in cash—on the very day of the girl’s disappearance. This deposit far exceeded anything that Roberto Squali had put into his account at any other time. Salvatore was not a betting man, but he found himself willing to wager that an amount identical to Squali’s deposit had left the account of Michelangelo Di Massimo on the very same day. Salvatore made the necessary arrangements to have those banking records sent to him via the Internet. Then he ordered the Pisan detective to be brought to the questura. There would be no polite visit by the police to Di Massimo’s office or to the salon of his hairdresser or to any other place the man might have established himself. Salvatore wanted Di Massimo intimidated, and he knew how best to effect that reaction.

  He rang DI Lynley in advance of Di Massimo’s arrival. He also rang Piero Fanucci to bring him up to the minute on what he’d discovered and on which direction he was now headed with the case. On the part of Lynley, the conversation was brief: If the chief inspector didn’t mind, the British detective would like to be present for the questioning of this man. On the part of Fanucci, the conversation was quite mad: They had their kidnapper or at least their mastermind in the person of Carlo Casparia, and Salvatore’s instructions had been and still were to find the connection that existed between this Roberto Squali and him. If he couldn’t manage that much . . . Did Fanucci need to see to it that someone else was assigned to this case, or was Topo going to come to his senses and resist the inclination to follow every wild hare that happened to hop by him?