Just One Evil Act

28 April

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore Lo Bianco made the requisite offer of help to his mamma. As usual she refused. No one, she told him—also as usual—would ever wash and polish the marble cover of his father’s grave during what remained of the lifetime of his devoted wife. No, no, no, figlio mio, this chore will take no longer than is required for my old body to hobble round the plot itself, wielding soap and water and rags and marble polish and more rags till the stone reflects this ancient, sorrowing face of mine as well as the sky with its glorious clouds above me. You may watch, however, figlio mio, so that you will learn how to care for this stone where my poor corpse will lie with your father’s after my earthly days are done.

Salvatore told her that perhaps he would walk, instead. He would follow the path round the perimeter of this part of the cemetery. He needed to think a bit. She could call out to him if she needed help. He would not be far away.

Mamma gave a quintessential Italian mamma shrug. He could, of course, please himself in this matter. Sons so often did just that, didn’t they? And then she turned and said, “Ciao, Giuseppe, marito carissimo,” and told the dead man how deeply she missed him, how every moment of every day brought her closer to joining him in the ground. After this, she began her work upon the grave.

Salvatore watched her and stifled a chuckle. There were certain moments in their life together, he thought, when his mamma was not his real mamma at all but rather a caricature of an Italian mamma. This was one of them. For the truth of the matter was that Teresa Lo Bianco had spent what Salvatore knew of her married life absolutely furious with his father. She’d been one of those breathtaking Italian beauties who married young and lost her looks to childbearing and a lifetime of household drudgery, and she’d never forgiven or forgotten that fact. Except, of course, when she came to the Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Then, the instant that Salvatore parked in front of the great gates to the place, his mamma’s face transformed from its habitual look of pinched irritation to an expression that mixed grief and piety so superbly that had anyone other than Salvatore seen her, she would appear as a recent widow whose loss would never be assuaged.

He smiled. He folded a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, and he began to walk. He was halfway round his first circumambulation of the quadrangle of graves decorated with saints and the Virgin and her Son when his mobile rang. He glanced at the number of whoever was placing the call.

The Englishman, he thought. He liked this man Lynley. He’d thought the Londoner would be an irritating interloper into the Italian investigation, but this hadn’t proved to be the case.

His pronto was answered in the other detective’s careful Italian. Lynley was ringing to tell him that the mother of the kidnapped girl was in hospital. “I wasn’t sure if you’d know this,” Lynley told him. He went on to say that when he’d seen her two days earlier at the fattoria, she’d been very weak and yesterday she had grown even weaker. “Signor Mura insisted she go to hospital, for a check-over at least,” Lynley said. “I didn’t disagree.”

Lynley told him, then, of his conversations with both Lorenzo Mura and Angelina Upman. He spoke of a man who’d been at the fattoria, purportedly to purchase a donkey foal. A thick envelope had passed between this man and Lorenzo, and this was the payment, Lorenzo had claimed. But the British detective had begun to wonder about this exchange. What was the Mura family’s financial situation? What was Lorenzo’s own? And what could that mean?

Salvatore could see where Lynley was heading with this line of thought. For what Lorenzo Mura wished to do with his family’s old villa, vast amounts of money would be required. His extended family were fairly wealthy—they had always been so—but he himself was not. Would they leap to assist him if the young child of his lover was endangered and a ransom demand was made? Perhaps. But no ransom demand had been made, which suggested there was no involvement on Lorenzo’s part in the disappearance of Angelina’s daughter.

“Yet there might be reasons other than money that he would wish for Hadiyyah’s removal from her mother’s life,” Lynley noted.

“That would make the man a monster.”

“I’ve seen monsters aplenty in my time and I expect you have as well,” Lynley said.

“I have not entirely removed Lorenzo Mura from my thoughts,” Salvatore admitted. “Perhaps it is time for us—you and I—to speak with Carlo Casparia. Piero has had him ‘imagine’ how this crime was committed. Perhaps he can ‘imagine’ more about that day in the mercato when the child disappeared.”

He told the Englishman that he would come for him at the inner city gate where they had met before. At the moment, he was at the cimitero comunale, he explained, paying monthly respects to his papà’s grave. “In an hour, Ispettore?” he said to Lynley.

“Aspetterò,” Lynley told him. He would meet Salvatore at the gate.

And so he was waiting. Salvatore fetched Lynley at Porta di Borgo, where the detective was reading Prima Voce again. Carlo Casparia was all over the front page another time. His family had been located in Padova. Much was being made of their estrangement from their only son. This would keep Prima Voce busy for at least two days, printing stories of Carlo’s fall from favour. Meantime, Salvatore thought, the police could get work done without concern that the tabloid might get too close to what they were doing.

He stopped briefly at the questura to fetch the laptop upon which were loaded all of the photographs taken by the American tourist and her daughter who had been in the mercato when the child disappeared. Then he and Lynley took themselves to the prison in which the hapless young man was being held. For once a confession was obtained from a suspect or once he was formally charged with a crime, he was whisked to prison, where he remained unless the Tribunal of Reexamination determined he could be released pending trial. Since Carlo’s release depended upon having a suitable place to go—and clearly the abandoned stables in the Parco Fluviale would not qualify—his home would be the prison cell in which he currently languished. All of this Salvatore explained to Lynley as they drove to see the young man. When they arrived at the prison, however, it was to learn that Carlo was in the hospital ward. As it turned out, he wasn’t taking well to the sudden absence of drugs from his system. He was taking the cure in the worst possible way, and no particular sympathy was being extended in his direction.

Thus Salvatore and Lynley found the young man in a cheerless place of narrow beds. There the patients either were restrained by one ankle to the iron footboards or were too ill to care about attempting to effect an escape by overcoming the male nurses and single doctor who were on duty.

Carlo Casparia was of this latter group, a figure huddled into the foetal position beneath a white sheet topped with a thin blue blanket. He was shivering and staring sightlessly at nothing. His lips were raw, his face was unshaven, and his ginger hair had been shorn from his head. A rank smell came from him.

“Non so, Ispettore,” Lynley murmured uncertainly.

Salvatore agreed. He, too, didn’t know what possible good this was going to do or even if Carlo would be able to hear them and respond. But it was an avenue, and it needed to be explored.

“Ciao, Carlo.” He drew a straight-backed steel chair over to the bed as Lynley fetched another. Salvatore eased a hospital tray over and set up his laptop on it. “Ti voglio far vedere alcune foto, amico,”he said. “Gli dai uno sguardo?”

In bed, Carlo was wordless. If he heard what Salvatore had said about the photos, he gave no indication. His eyes were fixed on something beyond Salvatore’s shoulder and, when Salvatore turned, he saw it was a clock on the wall. The poor fool was watching time pass, it seemed, counting the moments till the worst of his suffering ended.

Salvatore exchanged a glance with Lynley. The Englishman, he saw, looked as doubtful as Salvatore felt.

“Voglio aiutarti,” Salvatore said to Carlo. “Non credo che tu abbia rapito la bambina, amico.” He brought the first of the tourist photographs onto the screen of his laptop. “Prova,” he murmured. “Prova, prova a guardarle.”

If Carlo would only try, he himself could do the rest. Just look at the pictures, he silently told the young man. Just move your gaze to the computer screen.

He went through the entire set in vain. Then he told the addict they would try again. Did he want water? Did he need food? Would another blanket help him through this terrible time?

“Niente” was the first thing the young man said. Nothing would help him in the state he was in.

“Per favore,” Salvatore murmured. “Non sono un procuratore. Ti voglio aiutare, Carlo.”

This was what finally got through to him: I am not a prosecutor, Carlo. I want to help you. To this, Salvatore added that nothing the young man said at this point was being taken down and nothing he said would go into a statement that he would be forced to sign while he was in extremis. They—he and this other officer from London sitting next to your bed, Carlo—were looking for the man who’d kidnapped this child and they did not think Carlo was that man. He had nothing to fear from them. Things could not get worse if he spoke to them now.

Carlo shifted his gaze. It came to Salvatore that the addict’s pain made movement difficult, and he changed the position of the laptop, holding it on a level with the young man’s face and slowly going through the pictures again. But Carlo said nothing as he looked at them, merely shaking his head as Salvatore paused each one in front of his gaze and asked if there was anyone he recognised as having been with the little girl.

Again and again, the addict’s lips formed the word No. But finally his expression altered. It was a marginal change, to be true, but his eyebrows made a movement towards each other and his tongue—the colour of it nearly white—touched his scaly upper lip. Salvatore and Lynley saw this simultaneously, and both of them leaned forward to see what picture was on the screen. It was the photograph of the pig’s head at the bancarella selling meats to the citizens of Lucca. It was the photograph in which Lorenzo Mura was making a purchase just beyond the pig’s head.

“Conosci quest’ uomo?” Salvatore asked.

Carlo shook his head. He didn’t know him, he said, but he had seen him.

“Dove?” Salvatore asked, his hope stirring. He glanced at Lynley, and he could see that the London man was watching Carlo closely.

“Nel parco,” Carlo whispered. “Con un altro uomo.”

Salvatore asked if Carlo would recognise the other man he spoke of seeing with Lorenzo Mura in the park. He showed the addict an enlargement of the picture of the dark-haired man behind Hadiyyah in the crowd of people. But Carlo shook his head. It wasn’t that man. A few more questions took them to the fact that it also wasn’t Michelangelo Di Massimo with his head of bleached hair. It was someone else, but Carlo didn’t know who. Just that Lorenzo and this other, unnamed man had met, and when they met, the children whom Lorenzo coached in private to improve their football skills were not present. They had been earlier, running about the field, but when this man showed up, all the children were gone.

VICTORIA

LONDON

The next time Mitchell Corsico got in touch, it was by phone. This was a case of thank-God-for-very-small-favours, though, because the tune he was singing when Barbara took the call was the same tune he’d been singing the last time she’d spoken to him. Things were ramped up at this point, though.The Sun, the Mirror, and the Daily Mail had begun investing some rather significant money in following the kidnapping tale by means of placing boots on the ground in Tuscany. There was competition to get new angles every day, and Mitchell Corsico wanted his own.

Tiresomely, though, he was back to Met Officer Involved with Love Rat Dad, Barbara discovered. He was also back to making threats. He wanted his bloody exclusive interviews with Azhar and Nafeeza, and Barbara was the means to get them for him. If she didn’t manage this feat, she could expect to see her mug on the front page of The Source, entangled with the son and the father of Azhar in a street imbroglio.

There was no point in telling him that the angle to pursue was Mother of Kidnapped Girl in Hospital. The Daily Mail was already onto that. For its part, the Mirror was having fun speculating on what had put Angelina Upman into a hospital bed in the first place. They appeared to like the idea of a suicide attempt—Distraught Mother Ends Up in Hospital—which they were able to hint at since no one in Italy was telling their reporter a single thing.

Barbara tried to reason with Corsico. “The story’s in Italy,” she told him. “What the bloody hell are you still doing in London trying to follow it, Mitchell?”

“You and I both know the value of an interview,” Corsico countered. “Don’t pretend you think prowling round some Italian hospital is going to produce shit because we both know that’s bollocks.”

“Fine. Then interview someone over there. But interviewing Nafeeza or talking to Sayyid again . . . Where the bloody hell is that going to take you?”

“Give me Lynley, then,” Corsico told her. “Give me his mobile’s number.”

“If you want to talk to the inspector, you can get your arse over there and talk to the inspector. Hang round the Lucca police station and you’ll see him soon enough. Call the hotels to find him. The town’s not big. How many could there be?”

“I’m not pursuing the same fucking angle every other paper’s going with. We broke the story and we’re planning to keep breaking it. Joining every Tom, Dick, and Giuseppe over in Tuscany gives me nothing but shit in a basket. Now, way I see it is you’ve got a decision to make. Three choices and I’m giving you thirty seconds to decide once I name them, okay? One: You give me the wife for an interview. Two: You give me Azhar for an interview. Three: I break the Met Officer and Love Rat Dad angle. Come to think, I’ll give you four: You give me Lynley’s mobile. Now. Do I start counting, or do you have a watch to look at to see the seconds flying by while you decide which it’s going to be?”

“Look, you bloody fool,” Barbara said, “I don’t know how many ways to tell you the story’s in Italy. Lynley’s in Italy, Azhar’s in Italy, Angelina is in hospital in Italy. Hadiyyah’s in Italy and so’s her bloody kidnapper and so’re the police. Now if you want to stay here and follow the Love Rat Dad and whatever the hell you think my involvement with him is supposed to be, more power to you. You can write chapter and verse and another chapter about whatever you imagine our hot love affair is like, and you’ve got your scoop or whatever the hell you want to call it. But another rag is going to pick up the story and want to interview me for my explanation, and what I’m going to tell them—I promise you—is how I’ve been trying to keep The Source from exploiting an anguished teenager’s understandable upset about his dad in order to milk a story out of him that’s sixty percent fury and forty percent fantasy and perhaps they ought to look at the source—pardon the pun—of the story in The Source since for some reason that reporter is fixated on something having nothing to do with a little girl’s disappearance in a foreign country and what does that tell you about the value of even buying a copy of the worthless rag, gentle readers?”

“Yeah. Right. Brilliant move, Barb. As if the unwashed public out there is the least bit interested in anything beyond gossip. You’re threatening me in the wrong direction. I make my living feeding garbage to the gulls, and they’re eating it up just like always.”

Barbara knew there was truth in this. Tabloids appealed to the worst inclinations in human nature. They made their money off people’s appetite for learning about others’ sins, corruption, and greed. Because of this fact, however, she had an ace and she knew there was nothing for it but to play the card now.

“That being the case,” she said to Corsico, “how about a new angle for you, then, one the other tabloids don’t have?”

“They don’t have Met Officer Involved—”

“Right. Let’s give that a rest for forty-five seconds. They also don’t have Love Rat Mum Who Took Off with Her Kid in the First Place Now Up the Spout with Yet Another Bloke’s Kid. Trust me on this. They don’t have that story.”

There was silence at the other end. In it, Barbara could almost hear the wheels of speculation turning in Corsico’s head. Because of those wheels and what they might come up with, she went on.

“You like that one, Mitchell? It’s gold and it’s true. Now, the bloody story’s in Italy where it’s been all along and I’ve given you something no one else has. You can use it, abuse it, or lose it, okay? As for me, I’ve got other things to do.”

Then she rang off. Doing this was a risk. Corsico could easily call the bluff of her bravado and run with his story, whose picture on the front page of the paper would call into question how she’d got herself over to Ilford in the first place in the middle of her workday. With John Stewart scrutinising her every move, this was something so far less than desirable that Barbara knew she was in no small part mad to risk alienating Corsico by cutting him off. But she had things to do and none of them were related to dancing to the journalist’s tune just now.

She’d talked to Lynley. She knew an arrest had been made, but she also knew from his description of things in Lucca that this arrest of one Carlo Casparia was based mostly on the fantasy of the public prosecutor. Lynley had explained to her how investigations proceeded in Italy—with the public prosecutor madly up to his eyeballs in the enquiry almost from the get-go—and he’d also told her that the chief inspector had ideas in conflict with the public prosecutor who headed the investigation, so “Chief Inspector Lo Bianco and I are walking rather carefully over here,” he said. This, she knew, was code for “We’re following our own leads in the matter.” These apparently had to do with Lorenzo Mura, a red convertible, a playing field in a park, and a set of photographs taken by a tourist in the mercato from which Hadiyyah had disappeared. Lynley didn’t say how these things related to each other, but the fact that he and the chief inspector in Italy were not satisfied with the arrest told her that there was still fertile ground to be explored both there and in London and she needed to see about exploring it.

In this, Isabelle Ardery inadvertently helped out. Since she’d instructed DI Stewart to give Barbara assignments that reflected her rank as a detective sergeant, he’d had no choice but to put her back out in the street with a suitable action assigned to her, one relating to either of the two investigations that he was supposed to be conducting. That the DI wasn’t happy with this turn of events was evident in his surly manner of making the day’s assignments. That he intended to dog Barbara, despite Ardery’s instructions, was evident when he continued watching her like a bird of prey in search of a meal.

She had phone calls to make before she set out on her given activities, and Stewart placed himself close enough to her to hear every word of them. It was only luck that Corsico had rung her while she was making a purchase at one of the vending machines in the stairwell, Barbara realised.

She made three phone calls to set up the three interviews she’d been directed by Stewart to conduct. She made a show of taking down times and addresses, and she made more of a show of using the Internet to plot a route from one interview to the next that used her time in an efficacious manner. Then she gathered her notebook and her bag, and she headed out. Luckily Winston Nkata was still at his desk, so she stopped there, flipped open her notebook ostentatiously, and made a show of noting Winston’s replies to her questions.

These were simple enough. She’d asked him to check on Azhar’s Berlin alibi because she knew she couldn’t risk further censure from Stewart for checking on it herself. So what had he managed to glean? she asked Winston. Was Azhar as good as his word? Had Doughty been telling her the truth when he’d pursued the Berlin story?

“’S good, Barb,” Winston told her sotto voce. He made a show of pulling out a manila folder, flipping it open, and looking down upon its contents with a studious frown. Barbara glanced to see what he was using as the “evidence” under discussion. Insurance papers for his car, it appeared. “It all checks out square,” he said. “He was at the hotel in Berlin the whole time. He presented two papers like Doughty told you. He was on a panel ’s well.”

Barbara felt the relief of having one less thing to worry about. Still she said, “D’you think someone could’ve been posing as Azhar?”

Winston gave her a quirky look. “Barb, the bloke’s a microbiologist, yeah? How’s someone goin to pretend to be that and talk the lingo with th’other blokes? First, a poser’d have to be Pakistani, eh? Second, a poser’d have to be able to talk the talk: present his paper and . . . what else d’they do? . . . answer questions ’bout it? Third, a poser’d have to wonder why the hell he was in Berlin actin the part of Azhar in the first place while Azhar was . . . what? Off in Italy kidnappin his own kid?”

Barbara chewed on her lip. She thought about what Winston had said. He was right. It was a ludicrous line of enquiry, no matter how she felt about Dwayne Doughty’s half-truths. Still, she knew the wisdom of pursuing every angle, so she said, “What about someone from his lab? What about a graduate student? You know, someone wanting to oil the waters of his path to an advanced degree? How do these things work anyway, being a graduate student? I dunno. Do you?”

Winston tapped at the battle scar on his cheek. “I look like a bloke knows ’bout university, Barb?” he enquired pleasantly.

“Ah. Right,” she said. “So . . .”

“Seems to me ’f you want more information, it’s comin from Doughty. I say you put pressure on him. If there’s more to know out there, he’s the one to tell it.”

Winston was right, of course. Only pressure on Dwayne Doughty was going to get her any further. Barbara flipped her notebook closed, stowed it in her bag, said, “Right. Got it. Thanks, Winnie,” for John Stewart’s benefit, and went on her way.

When it came to using the thumbscrews on anyone, the best way was always a visit to the local nick. So on her way to her car, Barbara rang the Bow Road station. She identified herself. She told them that in conjunction with an ongoing case in Italy that officers from Scotland Yard were dealing with, one private investigator Dwayne Doughty needed questioning. Would someone from the local station pick him up, haul him in, and hold him till she got there? Indeed, someone would, she was told. Glad to oblige, DS Havers. He’ll be twiddling his thumbs, stewing in his own juices, or whatever else you wish in an interview room whenever you arrive.

Excellent, she thought. She gave a look to the locations of the interviews she needed to conduct for DI Stewart. One was south of the river; the other two were in north London. Bow Road was east. In the world of eenie, meenie, minie, and moe, there was no question in her mind where she would go first.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

By the time Salvatore and DI Lynley had returned from their questioning of Carlo Casparia in the prison hospital, the officers tracking down the cars driven by every member of Lorenzo Mura’s squadra di calcio had finished that job. There was one red car among all the vehicles, but it was not a convertible. No matter, Salvatore told them. It was now time to trace the cars belonging to the families of every child Lorenzo coached in his private calcio clinic at the Parco Fluviale. Get the name of every child he coaches from Mura, get the name of every parent of every child, check their cars, then speak to each parent individually about meeting Lorenzo Mura there for a private conversation. Meantime, get a photograph of every father of every child and dig up pictures of Lorenzo’s fellow team members as well.

DI Lynley remained silent during this exchange, although Salvatore could tell from the expression on the Englishman’s face that he hadn’t followed the rapid-fire Italian around him. So he explained how they were proceeding, and to this Lynley indicated the nature of the report he would make to the parents of the girl. Obviously, reporting anything having to do with Lorenzo Mura was out of the question. For the moment, then, it was best to tell them that information from the television appeal was continuing to be followed up on, that Carlo Casparia was attempting to be helpful, and to leave it at that.

Lynley was departing when a uniformed officer dashed down the corridor to speak to Salvatore. His face was flushed and his news was good: Regarding the red convertible seen by the driver on his way to visit his mamma in the Apuan Alps? the young man said breathlessly.

“Sì, sì,” Salvatore responded tersely.

It had been found. Checking every lay-by on the road into the Alps prior to the turnoff for the mamma’s village had gleaned them nothing, as the chief inspector would recall. But an enterprising officer had on his own time continued up that mountain road and six kilometres farther along he had found a crash barrier destroyed on a hairpin turn. The car in question had been discovered at the bottom of a gully beyond that barrier. There was no body inside. But there was a body some twenty metres away: the driver’s, apparently thrown from the vehicle.

“Andiamo,” Salvatore said at once to Lynley. Pray God, he thought, that there was no small girl’s body nearby as well.

It took nearly an hour to reach the turnoff, their route coursing along the River Serchio, first on the great alluvial plain, then into the hills, and at last into the Alps. The river was a fast-moving torrent at this time of year since snow at the highest elevation in the mountains had been melting for weeks. The result was waterfalls, sunstruck cascades, and glittering pools, all of which could be glimpsed as the police car rushed past them. The new growth of spring was thick and lush as they climbed into the mountains, and the wildflowers splashed yellow, violet, and red in swathes of colour along verges and into the trees. And the trees themselves—pines, oaks, and ilexes—grew right to the edges of villages that had no vehicular access, forming a wall of greenery that seemed to prevent the mountains themselves from descending upon and swallowing up the scattering of terracotta-roofed buildings perched precariously on the edges of cliffs that dropped hundreds of feet into more forest beneath them.

With each turn they made into a secondary or tertiary road, the way narrowed until they were at last on a route the width of the car itself. One hairpin curve followed the next. It was an ear-popping, white-knuckle ride, a by-the-grace-of-God course in which God’s grace was defined by having the luck not to encounter a vehicle on its way down. Finally, they came to a police roadblock. They got out of the car, and Salvatore nodded at the uniformed officer who approached. He asked him only, “Dov’è la macchina?” although this was mere formality since the likely position of the red convertible was indicated some fifty metres farther along and up, by the remains of the crash barrier through which the vehicle had shot to its final resting place.

As Salvatore and Lynley approached the broken barrier, an ambulance crew came into sight, heaving a stretcher between them. On it, a body bag was strapped, its zip tightly closed, sealing the corpse from sight.

“Fermatevi,” Salvatore told the two attendants. He added, “Per favore” as an afterthought and introduced both himself and DI Lynley to them.

They did as he asked, halting their progress to the waiting ambulance. They set the stretcher on the ground, and Salvatore squatted. He steeled himself—only on television, he thought, did detectives unzip the body bags of corpses who’d lain for God only knew how many days in the hot Italian sun without preparing themselves for what they were about to see—and he lowered the zip.

Had the man been handsome in life—indeed, had he possibly been the individual behind Hadiyyah in the photographs taken by the tourists in the mercato—it was now impossible to tell. Those forensic specialists of the open air—the insects—had found the body as they would do, and they had worked their ways upon it. Maggots still writhed in the man’s eyes, nose, and mouth; beetles had been feasting on his skin; mites and millipedes scurried into the open neck of his linen shirt. He had come to rest facedown, as well, and the settling of blood to this part of his body rendered his features purple while the gas forming within the protective covering of his skin as his tissues disintegrated had created pustules wherever he was exposed. Soon these would leak their noxious fluid, which would also seep from his orifices. Death in this manner was a horrifying sight. Nothing immured one from its impact.

Salvatore gave Lynley a look and heard the other officer whistle low as he blew out a breath and gazed on the remains. Salvatore said to the ambulance attendants, “Carta d’identità?” and they indicated with a simultaneous jerking of their heads that whoever was with the car below had in their possession the man’s identification. Salvatore nodded and rose, thankful that he was not going to have to go through the corpse’s pockets. He indicated that the body could be taken off for postmortem examination. Then, with Lynley, he approached the edge of the bluff.

Far below them was the red convertible. Two uniformed officers were with it, while two others were smoking up above them where an area of ground at the base of a boulder some eighty metres higher than the car was marked to indicate the position of the corpse. He had obviously been thrown from the vehicle as it crashed down the bluff. Wearing a seatbelt or not, he would not have survived the car’s rolling sotto sopra as it soared from the road to its resting place. The miracle involved was that the vehicle had not burst into flames. This led to the possibility of evidence. Salvatore hoped it was evidence of life, however, and not evidence of a second individual in the convertible when it took its fatal plunge, and hence not evidence of a second body still undiscovered in the area.

Carefully, he and Lynley worked their way down to the point where the man’s body had lain. He gave the officers there terse instructions: “Cercate se ce n’è un altro.” If there was another body nearby, they were to find it.

They didn’t look happy about this turn of events but when he added, “Una bambina. Cercate subito,” their expressions altered and they set off. If a little girl’s body was somewhere nearby, it probably wasn’t going to be far.

At the car, Salvatore repeated his question about the man’s identification. An evidence bag was passed to him by one of the two officers at the vehicle. Inside was a black portafoglio. It had been tucked inside the glove box of the car, the car itself a wreck of mangled metal with one wheel missing, three others flattened, and a door ripped off. While Salvatore opened the evidence bag and removed the wallet within it, Lynley moved to look more closely at the vehicle.

The man was one Roberto Squali, Salvatore saw from his identity card. He felt a rush of excitement to see that the man was a Lucchese. This had to take them, he believed, another step closer to the missing child. Pray God she hadn’t ended up here, he thought as he looked round at the wilderness. His hope lay in the fact that at least ten days separated the girl’s vanishing at the mercato from the moment when this accident had occurred. How likely was it that she would have been in the car with this man so long after her kidnapping in Lucca?

Within Squali’s wallet, Salvatore also found the man’s driving licence, two credit cards, and five business cards. Three of these were from boutiques in Lucca, one was from a restaurant in the town, and the fifth was the link he had prayed to see: something that tied this man to Michelangelo Di Massimo. It was the private investigator’s card and on it was his name, the number of his mobile, and the address of his questionable centre of operations in Pisa.

“Guardi qui,” Salvatore said to Lynley. He handed the card to him, waited while the other man put on his reading spectacles, and met his gaze when Lynley looked up quickly. “Sì,” Salvatore said with a smile. “Addesso abbiamo la prova che sono connessi.”

“Penso proprio di sì,” Lynley said in agreement. They had their tie between the two men. “E la bambina?” he continued. “Che pensa?”

Salvatore looked round them and then up at the mountains that surrounded them on every side. The little girl had been with this man, he thought. He was sure of that. But not at the moment when he’d gone over the cliff. He told Lynley this and the London man nodded. Salvatore returned to his inspection of the car, however, and soon enough he had what he was looking for.

It was a hair caught up in the mechanics of the seatbelt. It was long. It was dark. A test would tell them if it was Hadiyyah’s. Dusting the vehicle for prints would also tell them if the child had ridden in the car. The only piece of information that the car couldn’t give them was what had happened to her and where she was now.

Both men knew the hard reality of the situation with which they were faced, however: If Roberto Squali had indeed taken Hadiyyah from the mercato in Lucca, if he indeed had been the man seen leading a little girl into the woods somewhere along this road from which his car had toppled, where was she now? What had happened to her? For the truth was that the area in which they stood was vast, and if Squali had handed the child off to another or had killed and disposed of her somewhere to fulfill a sick fantasy, the location in which either of these things had occurred was going to prove almost impossible to find.

Salvatore considered cadaver dogs. Pray God, he thought, they would not have to use them.

VILLA RIVELLI

TUSCANY

Sister Domenica Giustina was light-headed from the fasting. She was sore from kneeling on the hard stone floor. She was thick in the brain from going without sleep, and she was still waiting for God to send her a sign about what it was He wished her to do next.

She’d failed with Carina. The child simply had not understood the crucial importance of what had lain before them both. Something within her had stirred her to fear and trepidation. And now, instead of joyful acceptance, curious playfulness, and eager cooperation with every aspect of life at the Villa Rivelli, the child kept her distance from Sister Domenica Giustina. She watched and she waited. Sometimes, she hid. This was not good.

Sister Domenica Giustina had begun to think that she had, perhaps, misinterpreted what she’d seen as she’d watched her cousin’s car come roaring up the narrow mountain road. She’d known God’s hand was behind the car’s ripping through the crash barrier, flying into space, and disappearing. What she did not know and had to clarify was what it meant that God had placed her at that precise moment in a position to see what end had been met by her cousin Roberto. The sight of his car shooting into the void had seemed an illustration of the importance of being shriven of sins, but perhaps it meant something else entirely.

For this reason had she fasted and prayed. As a form of scourging, she tightened the swaddling that was a torment to her flesh. At the end of forty-eight hours like this, she rose with some difficulty but without the peace of knowing what she was meant to do. God’s answer hadn’t come from her suffering and her supplication. Perhaps, she thought, it would come from careful attention to a soft breeze that she could hear blowing through the trees of the forest that edged the immediate grounds of the villa. Perhaps God’s voice would be on that breeze.

She went outside. She felt the restorative light wind on her cheeks. She paused at the top of the stone steps that led to her rooms above the barn, and she gazed upon the shuttered villa and wondered if the answers she sought might be contained within its walls. For she needed answers soon at this point. Roberto’s terrible passage from the mountain road into the vacancy of space told her that.

She descended the stone steps. She began to consider an important way in which she might have misunderstood. She’d been dwelling upon Roberto’s demise when, perhaps, he had not met his end at all. If that was the case, then seeking God’s message in the death of her cousin would be a completely useless activity. She should, in other words, have been seeking God’s message in something else.

There would be a sign of this. There had always been signs, and if she was correct in this new understanding, something was going to tell her soon. It seemed to her that the only place a sign might come to her was the same spot where she’d seen the last sign. So she went to where the low wall allowed her a view of the road that twisted up from the valley floor, and in very short order, she was given precisely what she had been praying for.

Even at this distance from the place where Roberto’s car had crashed through the barrier, she could see the police cars. More important, she could see that among them un’ambulanza stood. As she watched, so far from them, she made out the workers carrying a stretcher up from some point below the twist of road. When they had lifted it onto the tarmac, they paused, and someone waiting for them bent over the stretcher as if to have a word with whoever rode upon it. This did not take long, after which the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance and it drove away.

Sister Domenica Giustina watched all this, her heart feeling as if it would catch in her chest. It was hard to believe what she was witnessing, but there could be no doubt in interpreting what she’d seen. Even as she had prayed and fasted within her cell, seeking to understand God’s intention for her, her cousin Roberto had lain injured within the wreckage of his car. It came to Sister Domenica Giustina that both she and her cousin Roberto had been challenged. Have faith through suffering, their God had proclaimed. I will move in your life as I will.

It was challenge, she realised. It was all about challenge. It was about not giving up for an instant, no matter the blackness of what lay ahead.

Job had faced this. Abraham had faced this as well. In the case of that great patriarch of the Hebrews, the challenge he’d endured surpassed any other that God had ever given to man. Sacrifice your son Isaac to me, God had demanded of his servant Abraham. Take him into the mountains, build an altar of stone, and upon that altar put your sword to his throat. Let his blood flow forth. Burn his body. In this way prove your love for Me. This will not be easy, but it is what I ask. Obey your God.

Yes, yes, she understood at last. A challenge such as Abraham’s could only be a challenge if it was not easy.

BOW

LONDON

She would get it all done, Barbara told herself. But first she had to talk to Doughty. After that, she’d be back on track, heading south of the river first and then doing the north London bit at the end of the day. These things always took time. No interview went like clockwork. She would be able to smooth the rough edges of her day’s employment in such a way as to please anyone who decided to scrutinise it.

At the Bow Road station she identified herself and was in short order escorted to the interview room in which Dwayne Doughty was cooling his heels. He’d been there for more than an hour, she was told. His sole reaction so far had been the demand of “What the hell is going on, you sods?”

When she walked into the room, Doughty said, “You again?” At the narrow table, he had a plastic cup of tea with a skin of cooling milk formed on its surface. He shoved this to one side, and its contents sloshed out. “Bloody hell,” he went on. “I’ve told you everything. What more do you want from me?”

Barbara evaluated him before she spoke. He wasn’t as cool a customer as he’d been in their earlier encounters, so she reckoned this jaunt to the nick had been a very good idea. A sour smell came off him—he must have begun sweating like a glass holding a bad martini the moment uniforms had shown up in his office—and he’d loosened his necktie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt to reveal a band of oily sweat round the inside of the collar.

“What the fuck is this about?” he demanded.

She sat. She put her shoulder bag on the floor and took her time about digging out her notebook and pencil. She flipped the notebook open and then studied the detective. “Azhar’s alibi checks out,” she told him.

He exploded like an overblown balloon. “I bloody told you that!” he snapped. “I looked into it myself. You paid me to do it, I did it, I made my report to you, and if that doesn’t prove to you that I’m walking on the sodding right side of the bleeding law—”

“The only thing that’s ever going to prove that is the full truth, Dwayne. The whole A to Z of it, if you read my meaning.”

“I’ve given you the full truth. I’ve got nothing more to give. This ‘interview’ or whatever the hell you’re up to here is bloody well over. I know my rights, and one of them isn’t to sit here and have you harp on things we’ve already discussed. The cops asked me to come in for a few questions. I came in cooperatively. And now I’m leaving.” He shoved back from the table.

“They’ve made an arrest in Italy,” she told him.

That stopped him like a fist in the face. He said nothing, but he also didn’t move.

“They’re holding a bloke called Carlo Casparia,” she said. “We’re about twenty-four hours from tracing him to you. So what I’d suggest is that you come clean before we pack you up, put you on a plane, and deliver you to the cops in Lucca.”

“You can’t do that.” But he sounded rather stiff when he spoke.

“Dwayne, you’d be surprised, amazed, astonished, and gobsmacked at what we can do when our little minds get going. Now the way I see things, you have a decision to make. You can tell me everything, or you can act the leaky hosepipe like you’ve been doing from the first, giving me information in dribs and drabs.”

“I told you the truth,” he said, but his tone had definitely altered. Barbara heard no outrage in it at this point but rather intensity, and this change was a good thing. It meant his mind was working on all cylinders and her job was to oil the gears of his brain so the entire mechanism began to operate in her direction. “I gave all the information I had to Professor Azhar,” Doughty said. “I swear it. What the professor did with it, I don’t know and I have no clue. He wanted the kid back, you know that. Maybe he found someone over there to snatch her for him. What I did—and I’ve already told you this—was hire a bloke in Italy once we learned a bank account in Lucca was involved. I gave him the information, the professor. I also told him the name of the bloke who did the work for me. Michelangelo Di Massimo. Now, if Professor Azhar then hired Di Massimo to take things further . . . I had nothing to do with that.”

Barbara nodded, unimpressed. It was a nice performance verbally, but she watched the private detective’s eyes as he spoke. They were as jittery as the rest of him was. They fairly danced in his head. And his fingers were restless, tapping in unison against his thumbs.

“So you say,” she said. “But I expect this Carlo Casparia they’ve got over there is saying something else. See, he’s not going to want to take the fall for this, not completely, because no one ever does. And what I reckon is that between him and that Michelangelo bloke, someone’s not going to have your skill set when it comes to wiping hard drives, emails, and telephone records and God knows what else squeaky clean. So my guess is that in the next day or so, there’s going to be a trail uncovered that leads from Casparia to Michelangelo to you, dates and times included. And you’re going to have one bloody hell of a time trying to explain it all away. See, Dwayne, the trouble with cooking up schemes like this one to snatch Hadiyyah is that the old ‘no honour among thieves’—or in this case kidnappers—always applies. You get more than one person involved, and someone’s going to break, because when it comes to necks being saved, most people choose their own.”

Doughty was silent. He was, of course, evaluating all this for its potential to be the truth. Barbara herself didn’t know what this bloke Casparia had to do with anything, but if dropping his name and his arrest and stretching things from there was going to get her one step closer to Hadiyyah, she intended to drop it at every opportunity.

Doughty finally spoke. “All right.”

“Meaning?”

He looked away from her. He was suddenly still, and only a steadying breath moved his body. “It was Professor Azhar’s idea from the first.”

Barbara narrowed her eyes. “What was Professor Azhar’s idea?”

“To find her, to plan it all, to wait until the time was right, then to snatch her. The right time turned out to be when he was in Berlin for his conference, establishing an alibi. The kid was supposed to be snatched and held in a location until Azhar could get there and fetch her back to London.”

“Bollocks,” Barbara said.

Doughty’s gaze flew back to her. “I’m telling you the truth!”

“Oh, are you? Aside from a few little problems having to do with getting her out of Italy and into England without a passport, what was supposed to happen when Azhar got her back to London, eh? Let me tell you: What was supposed to happen is what actually happened, which is why your tale is rubbish. Hadiyyah’s mum showed up, demanding her back, because the first person she suspected of having snatched her daughter was the dad she’d stolen her from in the first place.”

“Right, right,” Doughty said. “That’s how it was supposed to play out. She’d show up, he’d prove to her that he didn’t have the girl, he’d return to Italy with the mother, and then—while he was in Italy—she’d be handed over to him. And he’s there now, isn’t he? Isn’t that proof enough for what I’m trying to tell—”

“Same problem, mate. Double problem, actually. He doesn’t have her, and even if he does or if he knows where she is and is putting on the performance of a lifetime for the Italian cops, my colleague over there, and everyone else, what’s next on the chart for him when she’s handed over? Is he supposed to bring her back to London without her mum ever knowing she’s here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. It didn’t make any difference to me. All he wanted from me was information and that’s what I gave him. End of story.”

“Not quite, mate. You’re doing nothing but trying to drop a load of cow manure on me. If you think that’s going to come close to convincing me you aren’t in this up to your eyeballs, then you’re bloody wrong. So let’s start again. And believe me, I’ve got hours to spare till we get to the truth.”

“I’ve told you—”

“Hours and hours,” she said pleasantly.

He seemed to think frantically of where to go next with his wild allegations, and he finally said with a snap of his fingers, “Khushi, then.”

Barbara drew in a deep breath.

He said it again. “Khushi, Sergeant Havers. Would I say that if I was lying to you? Professor Azhar said this to me: ‘She’ll listen to someone who calls her khushi because she’ll know the message is from me.’”

Barbara’s mouth went dry. She could feel her lips sticking to the front of her teeth. Happiness was the definition of the word khushi, but it was from the word itself that the impact came. For khushi was Azhar’s nickname for his daughter, and Barbara had heard the man say it hundreds of times in the two years that she’d known him.

She felt as if the chair she was sitting on was sinking into the floor of the room. Doughty’s face got wavy in her vision. She blinked and tried to fight off dizziness.

The bloody man, she realised, was finally telling her the truth.

BOW

LONDON

Dwayne Doughty knew there was very little time at this point. He was into this mess up to his nostrils, the sweating nerve-strung personification of the best laid plans of mice and men, et cetera. Once he was back out in the street—with his hours at the Bow Road nick just an aftertaste like burnt garlic in his mouth—he made for his office. There were things to be done and he was going to have to use every one of his skills to bring about the result he needed. Failing that, he knew that the barrel-shaped and outstandingly ill-dressed Met officer was completely right: A study of Michelangelo Di Massimo’s phone records and computer files was going to provide trails leading in more than one direction. Since Dwayne could hardly export the talented Bryan Smythe to deal with the Italian phone system and whatever went for the Pisan detective’s technology, he—Dwayne—was going to have to set up a series of offensive manoeuvres.

In the Roman Road, he pounded up the stairs to his office. He shouted, “Emily!” as he went. Her blagging expertise was going to be required. So was the superlative hacking expertise of Bryan Smythe and every one of his well-placed contacts.

Emily’s door was open. Two cardboard boxes sat outside her office in the area at the top of the stairs. They were taped and ready . . . but ready for what Dwayne didn’t know until he walked into the room that housed her operation and saw exactly what she intended.

She’d removed her tailored pinstriped jacket, her waistcoat, and her tie. They all lay across the back of her chair. This chair she’d pushed against the window, the better to access the inside of her desk, her files, her supplies, and everything else that marked her employment.

She shot him a look in the midst of dumping the contents of a drawer willy-nilly into an open box. “Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what? What’re you doing?”

“Don’t ask me what I’m doing when you can see for yourself. Or don’t play dumb. Or don’t be a fool. How about don’t put us in jeopardy? Take your pick.” She reached for the Sellotape and sealed the box. She heaved it up, heaved herself likewise, and carried the box past him in the doorway. She dumped it on top of the others and returned to her office, where, at a bulletin board, she began pulling down her map of London along with bus schedules, train schedules, a map of the Underground, and—for some reason—a poster of Montacute House and three picture postcards featuring the Cliffs of Moher, Beachy Head, and the Needles on the Isle of Wight.

“This can’t mean what I think it means,” he said.

“I don’t get paid enough to be caught up in shit like this. You do. But I don’t.”

“So you’re leaving? Just like that?”

“Your powers of observation . . . ? Incredible. No wonder you’ve been such a howling success in your chosen line of work.”

She was folding her maps and making a hash of it, paper maps always being a nightmare to put back into their original, neat form. She wasn’t following the designated folds and creases. It appeared that she couldn’t be bothered to do so, which told Dwayne Doughty how determined she was to be gone as soon as possible. And this told him how unnerved she was by what had happened: the cops showing up unexpectedly on their doorstep with the silver bracelets ready to be slapped on the wrists of two malefactors called Doughty and Cass.

He said, “You have a hell of a lot more nerve than this. For someone who pulls complete strangers in pubs—”

“Don’t even go there,” she shot at him. “If I’m not mistaken, unless things have really changed in this country, pulling strangers in pubs for anonymous sex is not going to get me hauled into the dock.”

“We’re not getting hauled into the dock,” he told her. “I’m not. You’re not. Bryan’s not. Full stop.”

“I’m not getting hauled to the nick, either. I’m not ringing up some solicitor to come hold my hand while the cops go through my life like it’s infested with bedbugs. I’m done with this, Dwayne. I told you from the first, and you wouldn’t listen because to you the bottom line is cash. Whoever pays the most is whose job we take on. Wrong side of the law? No problem, madam. We’re just who you want to take the bloody fall should everything in the case go to hell. Like it has now. So I’m out of here.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Em.” Dwayne did his best to hide his desperation. Without Em Cass at the helm of his computer system—not to mention on the phones acting the part of whatever official was needed to glean information from sources who’d be less than cooperative faced with someone with little talent for hoodwinking them—he was sunk and he knew it. “I called in the cavalry,” he told her. “I told them the truth.”

She was unimpressed. “There is no bloody cavalry. I tried to tell you that right from the first, didn’t I, but you wouldn’t listen. Oh no. You were far too clever for that.”

“Stop being dramatic. I gave them the professor. All right? Are you hearing me? I gave them the professor. Full stop. That’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? Well, it’s been done and you and I are on our way to being in the clear.”

“And they’re going to believe you?” she scoffed. “You name a name and that’s all there is to it?” She raised her head heavenward and spoke to some deity on the ceiling, saying, “Why didn’t I see what an idiot he is? Why didn’t I get out when this whole thing started?”

“Because you knew I’d never go into something without an exit strategy planned. And I have one for this. So d’you want to run off or do you want to unpack your boxes and help me set it in motion?”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Lynley located Taymullah Azhar in the Cathedral of San Martino, which stood enormously in a large piazza along with a palazzo and the traditional, separate battistero. It was an elaborate Romanesque building not dissimilar to a wedding cake, with a façade comprising four tiers of arches, and mounted upon it was a marble depiction of the eponymous saint performing his act of kindness with garment and sword upon a mendicant at the side of his horse. Lynley wouldn’t have thought to find Azhar inside this building. As a Muslim, he didn’t seem like a man who’d seek a Christian church in order to pray. But when Lynley rang his mobile, Azhar’s hushed voice said he was with the Holy Face inside the Duomo. Lynley wasn’t certain what this meant, but he asked the Pakistani man to wait for him there.

“You have news?” Azhar asked hopefully.

“Wait for me please” was Lynley’s reply.

Inside the cathedral, a tour was ongoing: A young woman with an official badge round her neck was shepherding some dozen or so people to stand at the foot of a Last Supper, the work of Tintoretto brightly lit to show angels above, apostles below, and the Lord in the midst of feeding a piece of bread to St. Peter as his companions managed to look suitably impressed with the goings on. Midway down the right aisle, a partition kept unticketed visitors away from the beauties of the sacristy, while to the left an octagonal temple was the centre of attention of ten elderly women who looked like pilgrims come specifically to the spot.

It was at this temple that Lynley found Azhar, standing respectfully back from the pilgrims but gazing upon a huge and severely stylised crucified Christ rendered in wood. The Christ had on his face an expression that looked more surprised than suffering, as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with what had put him into the position in which he found himself.

“It’s called the Holy Face,” Azhar said to Lynley quietly as Lynley joined him next to one of the Duomo’s pillars. “It’s supposed to . . .” He cleared his throat. “Signora Vallera told me of it.”

Lynley glanced at the other man. Here was anguish, he thought, a mental and spiritual crucifixion. He wanted to put an end to Azhar’s suffering. But there was a limit to what he could tell him while so much of what they needed to know was still floating out there, waiting to be discovered.

“She said,” Azhar murmured, “that the Holy Face works miracles for people, but this is something I find I cannot believe. How can a piece of wood—no matter how lovingly carved—do anything for anyone, Inspector Lynley? And yet, here I am, standing in front of it, ready to ask it for my daughter. And yet unable to ask for anything because to ask such a thing of a piece of wood . . . This means to me that hope is gone.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Lynley told him.

Azhar looked at him. Lynley saw how dark the skin beneath his eyes had become, acting as a stark contrast to the whites of his eyes, which were themselves sketched with red. Every day that Lynley had been in Italy, the man had looked worse than the day before. “Which part of it?” Azhar asked him. “The wood performing a miracle or the hope?”

“Both,” he said. “Either.”

“You’ve learned something,” Azhar guessed. “You would not have come otherwise.”

“I’d prefer to speak to you with Angelina.” And when he saw the momentary terror of every parent whose child is missing shoot across Azhar’s face, Lynley went on. “It’s neither good nor bad,” he said hastily. “It’s just a development. Will you come with me?”

They set off for the hospital. It was outside the great wall of Lucca, but they went on foot as the route was not overly long and their use of the wall itself for part of the walk—sheltered by the great trees upon it—made the way both pleasant and shorter. They descended from one of the diamond-shaped baluardi, and from that point they made their way to Via dell’Ospedale.

When they reached the hospital, they were in time to see Lorenzo Mura and Angelina Upman together leaving the place. Angelina was in a wheelchair being pushed by an attendant. Grim-faced, Lorenzo walked at her side. He caught sight of Lynley and Azhar approaching, and he spoke to the attendant, who halted.

At least, Lynley thought, this appeared to be a piece of good news: Angelina sufficiently well to return to her home. She was very pale, but that was the extent of things.

When she saw Lynley and Azhar approaching her together, she pressed herself back in the wheelchair as if she could stop whatever news was coming. Lynley understood at once. He and Azhar arriving as one to see her . . . She would be terrified that the worst had occurred.

He said hastily, “It’s information only, Ms. Upman,” and he saw her swallow convulsively.

Lorenzo was the one to speak. “She wishes it. Me, I do not.”

For an insane moment, Lynley thought he was referring to her daughter’s death at the hands of a kidnapper. But when Lorenzo went on, his meaning became clear.

“She says she is better. This I do not believe.”

Apparently, she’d checked herself out of the hospital. She had good reason, she said. The chance of infection in a hospital was greater than the benefit of being under the care of nursing staff for what amounted to morning sickness. At least, this was Angelina’s belief, and she turned to her former lover for corroboration, saying, “Hari, will you explain to him how dangerous it is for me to stay here any longer?”

Azhar didn’t look like a man ready to embrace a position as intermediary between the mother of his child and the father of her next child, but he was a microbiologist, after all, and he did know something about the transmission of sickness and disease. He said, “There are risks everywhere, Angelina. While there is truth in what you say—”

“Capisci?” she cut in, speaking to Lorenzo.

“—there is also truth in the dangers of illnesses associated with pregnancy if you don’t attend to them.”

“Well, I have attended to them,” she said. “I’m keeping food down now—”

“Solo minestra,” Lorenzo muttered.

“Soup is something,” Angelina told him. “And I’ve no other symptoms any longer.”

“She does not listen to me,” Lorenzo said to them.

“You don’t listen to me. I have no symptoms. It was flu or a bad meal or a twenty-four-hour whatever. I’m fine now. I’m going home. You’re the one being ridiculous about this.”

Lorenzo’s face darkened but that was the extent of his reaction. “Le donne incinte,” Lynley murmured to him. Pregnant women needed to be humoured. Things would return to normal again—at least in this matter—when Angelina was safely delivered of their child. As to the rest of their life together . . . He knew this depended on the outcome of Hadiyyah’s disappearance.

“If we can speak for a moment?” he said to them. “Perhaps inside?” He indicated the doors of the hospital. There was a lobby within.

They agreed to this, and they established themselves in such a way that the light was good on all of their faces, rendering them readable to Lynley as he imparted the information. A car had been found in the Apuan Alps, he said, at the scene of an accident that had apparently occurred a few days earlier, although they wouldn’t know the exact time until a forensic pathologist examined a man’s body that had been near the vehicle. He hastened to add that no child’s body had been at the accident site, but because the car in question matched the description of a car seen parked in a lay-by with a man and a young girl near it, the vehicle was being taken off for study. They would be looking for a child’s fingerprints as well as any other evidence of her presence.

Angelina nodded numbly. She said, “Capisco, capisco,” and then, “I understand. You must need . . .” She didn’t seem able to continue.

Lynley said, “I’m afraid we do. Her toothbrush, her hairbrush, anything to give us a DNA sample. The police will want to dust for her fingerprints, perhaps in her bedroom, so comparisons can be made.”

“Of course.” She looked at Azhar and then away, out of the window where Italian cypresses shielded the car park from view and a fountain bubbled on a square of gravel with benches on all four of its sides. “What do you think?” she said to Lynley. “What do they think . . . the police?”

“They’ll be checking into everything about the man whose body was there.”

“Do they know . . . Can they tell . . . ?”

“He had identification with him,” Lynley said. And here was the important part, their reactions when he said the name. “Roberto Squali,” he told them. “Is that name familiar to any of you?”

But there was nothing. Just three blank faces and an exchange of looks between Lorenzo and Angelina as they asked each other nonverbally if this was a person either of them knew. As for Azhar, he repeated the name. But it seemed more an effort to commit it to memory than an attempt to appear in the dark about who this man was.

Whatever came next, it would be from police work on the part of the Italian force, Lynley reckoned. Either that or from Barbara’s uncovering something in London.

They would all have to wait.