Just One Evil Act

11 May

LUCCA

TUSCANY

She was not Catholic but the Mura family had extraordinary influence, so she was given a Catholic funeral and an impressive burial at Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Salvatore went to the funeral out of respect for the Muras in general and to show Lorenzo in particular that he was indeed looking into the untimely death of the woman he loved and the child she carried. He went to the burial for another reason entirely: to observe the behaviour of every person there. At a great distance from the gravesite, Ottavia Schwartz observed as well. She was tasked with surreptitiously taking photos of everyone present.

There were three camps of people: the Muras and their friends and associates, the Upmans, and Taymullah Azhar. The Mura contingent was vast, in keeping with the extraordinary size of their family and the length of time they’d held influence in Lucca. The Upmans were a party of four consisting of Angelina’s parents, her sister—an astonishing identical twin of the dead woman—and this sister’s spouse. Taymullah Azhar was a party of two: himself and his daughter. This poor child’s confusion was total, her understanding of what had happened to her mother imperfect. She clung to her father’s waist at the gravesite. Her face was a study in incomprehension. As far as she had known, her mummy had had an upset tummy when she’d lain on a chaise longue on the loggia. She’d drifted into sleep and had not awakened. Then she was dead.

Salvatore thought of his own Bianca, nearly the same age as Hadiyyah. He prayed as he looked upon this little girl: God forbid that anything should happen to Birgit. How does a nine-year-old child recover from such a loss? he asked himself. And this poor child . . . kidnapped from the mercato, then taken to reside at Villa Rivelli with the half-mad Domenica Medici, and now this . . .

But that chain of thought led him ineluctably to the Pakistani professor. Salvatore observed Taymullah Azhar’s solemn face. He considered the way in which everything had come about to result in this moment of his daughter clinging to his waist. She was returned into his sole care, her remaining parent. There would be no sharing of her required, no to-ing and fro-ing from London for visits that would end all too soon. Was this present situation the terrible synchronicity of random and apparently unrelated events, or was this what it appeared to be: a convenient conclusion to the dispute over possession of a child?

Lorenzo Mura clearly thought the latter, and he had to be restrained from a graveside confrontation with Azhar. His sister and her husband held him back. “Stronzo!” he cried. “You wanted her dead and now you have it! For God’s sake, someone do something about him!”

It was an unseemly graveside display, but one not out of keeping with Mura’s nature. He was passionate in the first place. And now as a man who has suddenly lost the woman he loves and the child she carries . . . their future planned out together and then gone in an instant . . . ? The English present at the funeral and gravesite would always practise their stiff upper lips faced with a tragedy such as this. But an Italian? No. A release of grief, a reaction to grief . . . These things were natural. Reticence in the face of these things was what was inhuman. Salvatore only wished that the child of Angelina Upman did not have to witness it or hear what Lorenzo was shouting across the grave at her father.

Mura’s family seemed to feel likewise. His sister urged Lorenzo from the grave and their mamma drew him to her sumptuous bosom. He was soon encircled by his relations and they moved as one unified body away from the grave and towards the cemetery’s grand entrance where their cars had been left.

The Upman family approached Taymullah Azhar. Salvatore’s English was too limited for him to understand all that they said, but he could read their expressions well enough. They hated this man, and they cared little for the child he had produced with the dead woman. They looked upon her as if she was only a curiosity to them. They looked upon him with loathing. At least Angelina’s parents did so. Her sister extended a hand to the child, but Azhar moved Hadiyyah out of her reach.

“This is how it finishes,” the father of Angelina said to the Pakistani man. “She died as she lived. As will you. And soon, I hope.”

His wife, the mother, looked at the child. She opened her lips to speak, but before she could do so, the husband had her by the arm and was marching her in the same direction the Muras had taken. The twin sister said, “I’m sorry how it’s ended. You should have given her the only thing she wanted. I expect you know that now,” and she walked off as well.

Soon enough Salvatore alone remained at the gravesite with Taymullah Azhar and his daughter. He wished that little Hadiyyah did not have to hear what he was going to say. Certainly she had already heard enough for one day, and she didn’t need to know the various ways in which her father was under suspicion.

“There are some things you need to know, Salvatore” was how Cinzia Ruocco had put it to him as they sat in Piazza San Michele. “In this woman’s gut was something very strange. No one yet wishes to talk about it, but we call it a biofilm.”

“What is this, then? Is it something that harms?”

“An aggregate of bacteria,” she said, and she used her hand in a cupping motion as if to demonstrate. “A collection of it that was most unexpected. It was . . . Salvatore, it was highly evolved. It should not have been there in her gut. And I must tell you this, my friend. It is nowhere else. And it should be.”

He was confused. It should not have been there in her gut. It was not elsewhere, yet it should have been. What kind of medical riddle was this? He said, “She did not die of kidney failure, then?”

“Sì, sì, she did. But it was triggered.”

“By this . . . what did you call it?”

“A biofilm. But no, the biofilm—this thing in her gut—it began the process. But a toxin killed her.”

“She was poisoned, then.”

“She was poisoned, sì. Just not in the way her doctors would immediately recognise because, you see, she had already been ill. It was very clever. Someone was either very lucky to kill her in this way, or someone had thought of everything. Because, you see, in the normal course of events, it would be assumed that her death was natural, especially since she had been so ill from the pregnancy. But nothing about this death was natural. It was a chain reaction, as inevitable as knocking dominoes over.”

Which left Salvatore with the job he had to do now. He approached Taymullah Azhar to do it.

CHALK FARM

LONDON

Barbara kept watch. Once she arrived home at the end of her workday, she went immediately to Azhar’s flat. His intention had been to return to London directly after Angelina’s funeral, bringing Hadiyyah with him, all the better to return the little girl to the environment she’d known for all of her life save for the past few months. But he had not yet arrived.

She wasn’t concerned at first. The funeral had been scheduled for the morning, but there would have been a reception of some sort afterwards, wouldn’t there? People would want an opportunity to express further condolences and to do what they could to suggest to the bereaved that life would go on. After that, Hadiyyah’s things would need to be packed, if they weren’t already, and the drive to Pisa would have to be made. Then there was the wait at the airport and the flight itself, and of course she shouldn’t have expected them before evening at the earliest.

But evening came and went and darkness fell, and still Azhar and Hadiyyah did not return. Again and again, Barbara left her bungalow to pace to the front of the building, thinking that they had returned without letting her know for some reason. Finally, at half past nine, she rang Azhar’s mobile.

“How did it go?” she asked him. “Where are you?”

“Still in Lucca,” he said. He sounded exhausted as he added, “Hadiyyah is asleep.”

“Ah. I did wonder . . . I expect it was too much for her, wasn’t it?” Barbara said. “Everything that’s happened and then the funeral and on top of that a flight to London? I didn’t think of that. I won’t keep you, then. You must be all done in as well. When you get back to town, we c’n—”

“He took my passport, Barbara.”

A fist gripped her heart. “Who? Azhar, what’s happened?”

“Chief Inspector Lo Bianco. It was after the . . . her burial.”

“He was there?” Barbara knew only too well what it meant when the coppers went to the funeral of someone with whom they were not personally involved.

“Yes. At the church and then at the cemetery. This is where . . . Barbara, Hadiyyah was with me. She did not hear him as he took me aside, but she will wonder why we do not leave in the morning. What am I to tell her?”

“Why does he want your passport? Never mind. What a bloody stupid question. Let me think.” But she found it was nearly impossible to do so because every thought led her to one place only and that was a place in which Dwayne Doughty had cut a deal with someone to save his own neck and had provided the necessary information pointing to Azhar’s involvement in his daughter’s kidnapping. Or perhaps Di Massimo had done so, although, according to Azhar, he’d never spoken to the man. Or perhaps it was Smythe, with a backup to his backup sent by express to the Italian police. Or . . . God only knew because the real point was that without his passport, Azhar was stuck in Lucca at the mercy of the coppers. “They’ve not questioned you, have they?” she asked him. “Azhar, if they want to ask you questions, you must find a solicitor at once. D’you understand? Don’t say a sodding word to those people without a solicitor sitting next to you.”

“They have not even asked to question me. But, Barbara, I fear that perhaps Mr. Doughty . . . or one of his associates . . . Someone must have told the inspector something to make him begin to think that I . . .” He was silent for a moment and then, quietly, “Oh God, I should have let it all go.”

“Let what go? Let your own daughter go? How the bloody hell were you supposed to do that, eh? Angelina took her. She disappeared. You did what you had to do to find her.”

“It fell apart, Barbara. This is what I fear.”

She couldn’t tell him his fears were unreasonable. Yet unless the Italians had sent someone from Italy to talk to Doughty or unless Smythe somehow had contacted them, the only person who could have told them anything would have been Di Massimo. And according to Azhar, he’d engaged in no communication with the Italian detective at all, all of that being done by Doughty with every trail removed by Bryan Smythe. So it was likely that the Italian cops had something more, something different beyond information they would have gleaned from an interrogation of Di Massimo. She had to find out what that was. Until she discovered it, they could plan no further.

She said to Azhar, “You listen to me. First thing tomorrow, you ring the embassy. Then you ring for a solicitor.”

“But if he asks me to come to the questura . . . and what of Hadiyyah? Barbara, what of Hadiyyah? I am not innocent in this matter. Had I not arranged to have her taken—”

“Just stay where you are and wait till you hear from me.”

“What will you do? From London, Barbara, what can you do?”

“I c’n get the information we need. Without that, we’re wandering in the dark.”

“If you could have seen how they looked upon us,” he murmured. “Not only upon me but upon Hadiyyah.”

“Who? The coppers?”

“The Upmans. That I am worse than nothing to these people is something I can bear. It is as it has always been. But Hadiyyah . . . They looked at her as if she carried a disease, some deformity of body . . . She is a child. She is innocent. And these people—”

“Set them aside, Azhar,” Barbara cut in. “Don’t think about them. Promise me that. I’ll be in touch.”

They rang off. Barbara spent the rest of the evening and far into the night sitting at the table in her tiny kitchen, smoking one fag after another, and trying to work out what she could do that did not involve anyone other than herself. She knew this was a pointless activity, but she engaged in it anyway till she had to admit there was only one action she could take next.