Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  But it was not enough for Fanucci until Salvatore lay motionless on the ground. And by then Salvatore could only dimly hear the magistrate’s final words to him. “We shall see which of us is the greater fool, Topo.”

  Which was, Salvatore decided as Fanucci walked off, Piero’s way of giving him permission to investigate the death of Angelina Upman to his heart’s content.

  Bene, he thought. It very nearly made the beating worthwhile.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  He could barely get his key in the lock. Luckily his mamma heard the scraping of metal against metal. She came to the door, demanding to know who was there, and when she heard his weak voice, she threw the door open. He tumbled directly into her arms.

  She screamed. Then she wept. Then she cursed the monster who had laid his brutal hands upon her only son. Then she wept some more. Finally, she helped him into a chair only three feet from the doorway. He was to sit, sit, sit, she told him. She was going to phone for un’ ambulanza. And then she was going to phone the police.

  “I am the police,” he reminded her feebly. He added, “Non ho bisogno di un’ambulanza. Non la chiamare, Mamma.”

  What? she demanded. He didn’t need an ambulance? He couldn’t walk, he could barely talk, his jaw looked broken, his eyes were blacked, his mouth was bleeding, his lips were cut, his nose could be broken, and inside his body God alone knew what damage had been done. She wept anew. “Who did this to you?” she demanded. “Where did this happen?”

  He was too embarrassed to tell his mamma that il Pubblico Ministero—a man more than twenty years his senior—had beaten him so. He said, “Non è importante, Mamma. Ma puoi aiutarmi?”

  She took a step back from him. What was he asking? she demanded, a hand at her breast. Did he think his own mamma might not help him? Would she not give her life for him? He was her blood. All of her children and their children were her reason for living in the first place.

  So she bustled round and began to see to his injuries. She was accomplished at this, a woman who was mother to three and nonna to ten. She’d bound more wounds than she could remember. He was to put himself into her hands.

  She did it well. She still wept as she worked, but she was tenderness itself. When she had finished her ministrations, she helped him carefully to a divano. He was to lie there, she told him, and he was to rest. She would call his two sisters. They would want to know what had happened. They would want to visit. And she herself would make his favourite farro soup. He would sleep while she worked upon this, and—

  “No, grazie, Mamma,” Salvatore told her. He would rest a quarter of an hour and then he would return to work.

  “Dio mio!” was her response to this idea. They went back and forth on the subject of his continuing his day as if nothing untoward had occurred. She would not hear of it, she would bar the door, she would cut off her hair and pour ashes on her head if he so much as put one toe outside of Torre Lo Bianco, chiaro?

  He smiled weakly at her drama. Half an hour, he compromised. He would rest that long and that was all.

  She threw her hands up. At least he would take a fortifying glass of wine, no? An ounce or two of limoncello?

  He would take the limoncello, he told her. He knew that she was going to be relentless till he agreed with at least one of her suggestions.

  At the half-hour mark, he eased himself off the divano. A wave of dizziness passed over him, followed by a surge of nausea, and he wondered if he’d been concussed. He made his way to a mirror near the entry to the tower and had a look at his reflection to assess the damage.

  He thought wryly that at least the scars on his face from adolescent acne were now unremarkable since his features were at present so much more interesting than the remains of what those eruptions on his face had done to his skin. His eyes were swollen, his lips looked lumpy as if injected with a foreign substance, his nose was indeed possibly broken—its position seeming somewhat different from what he remembered—and already the bruising from Piero’s fists was starting to appear. He felt additionally bruised on every part of his body, as well. Cracked ribs were likely. Even his wrists hurt.

  Salvatore had not known that Piero Fanucci was such a fighter. But on consideration, he had to admit that it made sense. Ugly beyond all possibility of self-reconciliation to this fact, possessing that unsettling adventitious finger upon his hand, springing from poverty and familial ignorance, exposed to the derision of others . . . Who could doubt that, given the alternative between life as a victim and life as an aggressor, Piero Fanucci had made the better choice? Reluctantly, Salvatore rather admired the man.

  But he would have to do something about his own appearance lest he frighten women and children in the street. And there was the small matter of his clothing as well, which was filthy and, in some places, torn. So before he went anywhere, he was going to have to make himself presentable. This meant he was going to have to climb three flights of the tower steps to his bedroom.

  He managed it, just. It took a quarter of an hour, and he did it mostly by dragging himself up via the handrail while below him his mamma clucked and chattered and called the Blessed Virgin to bring him to his senses before he killed himself. He staggered into his boyhood bedroom and did his best to remove his clothing without crying out in pain. It was the effort of another quarter hour that allowed him to succeed in fighting his way into a change of clothing.

  In the bathroom he found the aspirina, and he downed four of them with big gulps of water from the tap. He washed his face, told himself he was feeling better already, and made his way back down the stairs. His mother waved both of her arms in a gesture declaring that, Pilate-like, she was not about to take responsibility for whatever lunacy he chose to commit himself to next. She decamped into the kitchen and started to bang round with her pots and pans. She would, he knew, make the farro soup. If she couldn’t stop him, at least she could nourish him on his return.

  Before he left the torre, Salvatore placed the phone calls that would bring him up to the minute on the subject of the source of the E. coli that had resulted in Angelina Upman’s death. What he discovered was that the health authorities were playing a careful waiting game. Word had not gone out far and wide as to the cause of death because it had so far been an isolated incident. Steps had been taken at Fattoria di Santa Zita to locate a source of the bacteria there. All results of all tests were negative. So the health officials had moved on.

  Every place Angelina had been in the weeks before her death was being considered, he was told. But still the curiosity of only a single person being affected by the bacteria had not yet been resolved. This was unheard of. It brought into question Cinzia Ruocco’s findings and the findings of the laboratory that had done the tests on the samples Cinzia had sent. Cross-contamination of some sort was now being considered. Cinzia’s own workplace was being evaluated. Nothing, frankly, about the death of the Englishwoman was making sense.

  Salvatore noted all of this and from it he could draw only one conclusion. Her death from the bacteria made no sense to the health officials because they were looking at it the wrong way round. They were still seeing it as an accidental ingestion when it was nothing of the kind.

  When it came to murder, the starting point was generally motive. In this case, though, it was also—and more important, perhaps—access to means. But Salvatore chose to look at motive first. It was a glaring one that could not be denied. It pointed directly at Taymullah Azhar.

  When the question was, Who benefited from Angelina Upman’s untimely death?, the answer was the father of her child. When the question was, Who most probably would wish her dead?, the answer again was the father of her child. Her death gained him the return of Hadiyyah into his care permanently. Her death also garnered the vengeance he might have been seeking for having put him through the ordeal of losing her in the first place, not to mention the humiliation of his woman having h
ad an affair while still living with him. No one else had a reason to murder her unless, possibly, there was someone in her life the police had yet to learn about. Another man, perhaps? A thwarted lover? A jealous friend? Salvatore supposed any of these were possible. But not likely, he thought. Sometimes the reason for the dog not barking at night was the most obvious reason of all.

  Doing his homework on Taymullah Azhar was a simple enough thing. It required only access to the Internet, followed by a phone call to London. Taymullah Azhar was doing nothing to hide who he was, anyway. And the list of who he was was a point of significant interest: a professor of microbiology with a laboratory at University College London and an impressive list of academic papers to his name, the topics of which were indecipherable to Salvatore. But they were not as important as that one detail, microbiology. It was time to have a talk with the good professor, he decided. But to do that he would need the assistance of a discreet translator, his own English being far too limited to do justice to an interrogation.

  He decided to have his conversation with Taymullah Azhar at the pensione where the man was staying. In advance of going there, he phoned the questura. He spoke to Ottavia Schwartz. Could the resourceful Ottavia arrange a translator to meet him inside the anfiteatro? he enquired. Not a police translator, mind you, but perhaps one of the many tour guides in the town . . . ?

  “Sì, sì,” she told him. This would not be a problem, Ispettore. “Ma perché non un traduttore dalla questura?” she asked, and truthfully, it wasn’t an unreasonable question since they had a multilingual translator on staff who worked among all the police agencies in Lucca. But to involve that person would also involve word filtering over to Piero, and Salvatore had had enough of the magistrato for one day.

  He told Ottavia it was more of the same that had gone before. Better for no one to know what he was up to until he had all his soldiers lined up for the attack.

  This arrangement made, he went for his car and drove carefully to the anfiteatro. As with the narrow streets on which he travelled, one of the arched entries to the amphitheatre was wide enough for a small car, so he drove straight in and parked in front of the ample display of succulents arranged in tiers beneath Pensione Giardino’s windows. There he waited. He phoned London in the meantime and made a single request of Inspector Lynley. Lynley agreed to be of assistance in this matter. And yes, he said, he believed he could manage it without anyone at University College becoming wise to the matter.

  Salvatore went across the piazza for a quick espresso, taken at the inside bar and mindful of the curious looks his appearance was garnering from the barista. He took his time about downing the caffè, and when he’d finished, he headed back to his car to see that the translator was waiting for him there.

  He took a sharp breath that hurt his chest. He wondered if Ottavia’s selection of translator was deliberate or merely a chance assignment given by whatever independent organisation the young police officer had phoned. For leaning against the police car across the piazza and gazing round through enormous sunglasses for the policeman she was to meet was Salvatore’s own former wife.

  He’d had no idea Birgit had taken up doing translating on the side, away from her work at the university in Pisa. It seemed out of character in her although, as a Swede, Birgit spoke six languages equally well. She would be in demand if she wished to make extra money as she no doubt did. On a policeman’s salary, Salvatore had little enough to give her in the way of child support.

  She leaned against the side of his car, smoking a cigarette, as blond and shapely and attractive as ever. Salvatore girded himself to greet her. When he got to the car, she peered at him. She pursed her lips, then shook her head. “Non voglio che i tuoi figli ti vedano così,” she said abruptly. Typical of her. Not a question about what had happened to her poor former husband but rather a declaration about the children not seeing him in such a state. He couldn’t actually blame her, however. He didn’t want the children to see him looking like this either.

  He told her he was surprised that she had taken up translating. She shrugged, a quintessential Italian movement that she’d learned from her years living in Tuscany. He had never seen it from another Swede. “Money,” she told him. “There’s never enough.”

  He looked at her sharply to see if this was a dig. She wasn’t giving him one of her sardonic glances, though. He contented himself with understanding that she was merely stating a fact. He said, “You will explain to Bianca and Marco why their papà cannot see them for a day or two, Birgit?”

  “I’m not heartless, Salvatore,” she told him. “You only think I am.”

  This was not true. He only thought that they had been from the first badly matched, and this was what he told her.

  She dropped her cigarette, crushing it with the toe of one of the stilettos that made her six inches taller than he. She said, “No one sustains lust. You thought otherwise. You were wrong.”

  “No, no. At the end I still lusted—”

  “I’m not speaking of you, Salvatore.” She nodded at the pensione. “Our English speaker is here?” she said.

  He was still trying to wrest the sword from his throat. He nodded and followed her to the door.

  Signora Vallera greeted them. Sì, Taymullah Azhar was still within the pensione, she told Salvatore, casting a curious glance at Birgit and taking in her great Swedish height, her tailored suit, her silk scarf, her sunlight hair, her silver earrings. The professor and his daughter had been making a plan to purchase flowers and ride bicycles to the cimitero comunale, but they had not yet left, she told them. They were in the breakfast room, studying the pianta stradale to plan a route. Should she fetch . . . ?

  He shook his head. She pointed out the way, and he headed there with Birgit following. The pensione was small, so all that was needed was the sound of a conversation and in particular the sound of Hadiyyah Upman’s sweet voice. He wondered if, at nine years old, she was completely aware of what the loss of her mother meant to her now and was going to mean to her in the future.

  Taymullah Azhar saw them at once, and he put a protective hand on Hadiyyah’s shoulder. His dark eyes moved as his gaze took in Birgit first and Salvatore second. He frowned at the state of Salvatore’s appearance. “Un incidente,” Salvatore told him.

  “An accident,” Birgit translated. Her face looked as if she wanted to add “with someone’s fists,” but she didn’t do so. She told him that Ispettore Lo Bianco had some questions he wished to ask. She explained her purpose needlessly, but Salvatore didn’t stop her from doing so: Ispettore Lo Bianco, she said, had only limited English. Taymullah Azhar nodded although, of course, he knew this already.

  He said to Hadiyyah, “Khushi, I will need to talk to these people for a few minutes. If you wait for me . . . Perhaps Signora Vallera will allow you to remain in the kitchen to play with little Graziella . . . ?”

  Hadiyyah looked from his face to the face of Salvatore. She said, “Babies don’t play much, Dad.”

  “Nonetheless,” he said, and she nodded solemnly and scooted out of the room. She called out something in Italian, but Salvatore didn’t catch it. He and Birgit moved to the table on which the street plan of the city was spread out. Azhar folded the map neatly as Signora Vallera came to the door of the breakfast room. She asked if they wanted caffè and they accepted. As they waited for her to bring it to them, Salvatore enquired politely about Hadiyyah’s well-being as well as Azhar’s.

  He watched the Pakistani man carefully, the answers of little import to him. What he thought about was what he had learned about the London professor in the hours since Cinzia Ruocco had revealed what her findings were and what her thoughts were as they related to the findings. What Salvatore knew about Taymullah Azhar at that point was that he was a microbiologist of some considerable reputation. What he didn’t know was whether one of the microbes he studied was E. coli. Nor did he know how that particular bacteria mig
ht be transported. Nor did he know how, having transported it, one managed to get a single individual to ingest it without her knowledge.

  He said through Birgit, “Dottore, can you tell me about your relationship with Hadiyyah’s mamma? She left you for Signor Mura. She returned to you at some point into her relationship with Signor Mura, sì?, to soothe you into believing she’d come back. She disappeared then with Hadiyyah. You were left not knowing what had become of them, vero?”

  Unlike so many people who rely on a translation of the speaker’s words, Azhar didn’t look at Birgit as she repeated Salvatore’s statements in English. Nor would he do so for the rest of the interview. Salvatore wondered at this unnatural form of discipline in the man.

  “It was not a good relationship,” Azhar said. “How could it have been otherwise? As you have said, she took Hadiyyah from me.”

  “She had other men from time to time, vero? While you and she were together?”

  “I understand this now to be the case.”

  “You did not know this previously?”

  “While she lived with me in London? I did not know. Not until she left me for Lorenzo Mura. And even then I did not know about him. Just that it was likely there was someone, somewhere. When she returned to me, I thought she had . . . returned to me. When she left with Hadiyyah, my thought was that she had gone back to whoever it was she had left me for. To him or to someone else.”

  “Do you mean that the first time she left you, she might have left you for someone other than Signor Mura?”

  “That is what I mean,” Azhar affirmed. “We did not discuss it. When we saw each other again once Hadiyyah had been taken, there was no point to that sort of discussion.”

  “And once you reached Italy?”

  Azhar drew his eyebrows together as if to say, What about it? He didn’t answer at first as Signora Vallera came into the room with the caffè and a plate of biscotti. They were shaped like balls and covered with powdered sugar. Salvatore took one and let it melt in his mouth. Signora Vallera poured caffè from a tall crockery jug.