Just One Evil Act

17 May

ISLE OF DOGS

LONDON

Prior to going to bed, Dwayne Doughty had been able to hold things together in front of his wife because he didn’t want to worry her nor did he want to watch her China-blue eyes fill with tears at the thought of their having to flee the country one step ahead of a police enquiry. He rued the day he’d ever got involved in the Italian mess, and the effort to hide from his wife his ruing from the time he arrived home to the time he went to bed resulted in what felt like a very sharp knitting needle piercing his head.

Candace knew something was wrong. She wasn’t stupid. But he managed to fend off her questions with the stock answer of “just a bit of a head-scratcher at work, luv,” which she accepted for the evening but wasn’t likely to accept into the following day. He needed either to perfect his acting skill—a doubtful prospect when it came to facing off with Can—or he needed to work out a solution to his little problem.

He rose at half past three. In the kitchen of their semidetached, he quietly made a pot of coffee, which he began to drink, sitting at the table and mostly staring at nothing as he turned over various possibilities. He had worked his way through an entire package of fig bars—always his favourite, since childhood—but had got not much further than a mild case of heartburn and a more serious case of dietary guilt.

There had to be possibilities for him at this point, he thought, for the simple reason that there always were if one took the time and had the patience to develop them. No way in hell was he going to flush his line of employment, the years he’d spent coaxing it out of nothing, and his whole life down the loo. He’d never let anything defeat him in the past, and he sure as bloody hell wasn’t going to be defeated now. Especially was he not going to be defeated by a Scotland Yard detective with a posh public school voice and a Savile Row suit that fairly screamed, Carefully worn by a faithful retainer for two years before being donned by me. Absolutely no way was that ever going to happen. But unless something did happen to prevent it, he was a few short days away from a knock on his office door that doubtless would herald the advent of some serious difficulties in his future.

It was his own fault. From the first and with Em Cass’s insistence, he’d twigged that the woman was a cop, but that hadn’t stopped him. He’d agreed to help the professor find his kid—Christ but he had to harden his soft heart or it would finish him off in this line of work—and now look where that had led. He’d spent the past twenty years of his postmilitary life working his arse down to nothing—like his father before him—in order to take the family and its name another step up from the coal mines of Wigan. He had two kids who’d collected respectable university degrees, and he swore that their children—when they had them—would do the same from Oxford or Cambridge. He wasn’t about to miss that due to having to flee the country or because of the need to spend a stretch of time playing some sweaty yob’s wife behind prison bars . . . so what in God’s name was he going to do to avoid either prospect?

Another cup of coffee. Another four fig bars. This took him to thoughts of his associates and how much blame he could possibly assign them. He’d always been a careful man, so there was no direct link from him to all the manoeuvring and the tinkering that had gone on. Aside from the one time in Emily’s sumptuous flat in Wapping and—all right—once in Emily’s office, he never himself actually discussed business with Bryan Smythe, so the truth was that he could throw up his hands in shock and despair and throw Em to the legal wolves. She, after all, had passed along his verbal instructions to Smythe. How difficult would it be to establish that every idea skittering to every lawless act had come from her? But the question was: Could he really do that to Em after the years in which they’d worked together?

He knew the answer to that before he even got to the end of the question. He had history with Em. He also had history with Bryan. So together they had to climb out of this pit. It was his curse that he was such an ethical bloke.

The second hour into his brooding about the problem had gained him only the insight that he might be able to use this bloke Lynley’s potential attachment to DS Barbara Havers in some way to benefit himself, much as he’d used her obvious attachment to the Pakistani professor to keep her in order. The difficulty with this was that he couldn’t work his mind round to believing there was an attachment between the detective sergeant and the posh inspector. So he was left with a nut needing to be cracked and having ninety minutes more in which to crack it before Can’s alarm went off and she staggered into the kitchen completely unamused at his having devoured all the fig bars.

The thought of Can’s displeasure with regard to the fig bars stirred Dwayne to hide the evidence. He needed to make another pot of coffee, so he roused himself from the kitchen table and crumpled the wrapping of the sinful biscuits. He couldn’t put this in the rubbish. His wife would find it and a lecture about his nutritional habits would ensue. So he grabbed up a folded newspaper from the stool by the kitchen door, where others of its ilk waited for recycling, and he unfolded it on the draining board. He would, he decided, dump the coffee grounds on this and hide the fig bar wrapping beneath them. He was supposed to recycle the grounds as well—or was it compost the grounds? He could never remember all the terminology for what one did with one’s rubbish these days—but allowance could be made this once for not putting the grounds to use for a higher purpose.

He took them from the coffeemaker. He spread the fig bar wrapping neatly onto the unfolded newspaper, and he was just about to dump the coffee grounds on top of this when his hand was stayed in best biblical fashion. There before him beneath the fig wrapping lay the answer. Or at least part of it. For he’d opened the newspaper to a story whose elements he well recognised: Italy, an Englishwoman’s death, a possible cover-up, and stay tuned for more. He shoved the fig bar wrapping to one side and read, and the names leapt out at him. The problem was that he’d opened the paper to the middle of the story, and one paragraph into it the floodgates of his ability to plan and devise and ultimately triumph opened . . . but he needed the rest of the story.

He wasn’t a praying man, but he did pray that Candace hadn’t used the front of the paper to discard last night’s leftover chili con carne into. He rooted through the stack of recycling aspirants, and he found what he was looking for. This was a name, a reporter’s name. And there it was beneath the page-one headline: Mitchell Corsico. It sounded Italian to Dwayne, but Italian or not, obviously the bloke spoke English. And since he spoke English, he was the answer. He was the plan.

For Dwayne Doughty, aside from heartburn and caffeine nerves strung out like wires for a tightrope walker, all was finally well.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

What Barbara hadn’t anticipated was Hadiyyah’s desire to be with her father. She’d been so anxious to get her away from Lorenzo Mura and to protect her from whatever might occur should her foul grandparents show up to fetch her that there had been nothing else on her mind but scooping her up and dashing back to Lucca with her.

That had been enough at first. They’d had dinner in Lucca, at a multinational restaurant/cafeteria in Via Malcontenti, where upon the walls hung placemats decorated by past clientele extolling the virtues of the pizzas, the goulash, and the hummus in various languages. They’d had gelato afterwards, from a vendor near the main tourist office in Piazzale Giuseppe Verdi. Then they’d walked up from that office to a section of the ancient wall among the Italians enjoying their evening stroll. When at last they’d returned to Pensione Giardino, Hadiyyah had been more than ready just to sleep in the second bed in Barbara’s room.

Bullets were not dodged for long, though. The first was from Corsico, who rang at half past seven in the morning wanting the next story for his editor, which, he told her, needed to be along the lines of English Child’s Agony with Dad in Prison. He said he’d be happy to make it all up—“par for the course, Barb”—if Barbara just produced the kid for a picture looking soulfully out of the window of the pensione. “Missing her dad and all that rubbish, you know what I mean,” he said. Barbara foisted him off with the information that Hadiyyah was still asleep and she would ring him when the child awakened. But that put her into contact with the second bullet, which was Hadiyyah’s desire to see her father.

That, Barbara knew, was the last thing Azhar would ever want: his beloved child getting an eyeful of him in prison garb, sitting alongside the other inmates on visiting day. She wasn’t about to do that to either of them, so she told Hadiyyah that her dad was helping Inspector Lo Bianco look into a few things about her mummy’s death. He was out of town just then, she explained to the child, and he wanted her to remain in Barbara’s care. This was true so if she had to expand on the story at a later time, she could do so without having to retrace her steps. She didn’t like keeping the full truth from Hadiyyah, but she didn’t see any other course.

What she knew was that she had to make some sort of arrangement to keep Hadiyyah out of the hands of the Upmans. The investigation into Angelina’s death was never going to lead to Azhar, but until the Italians saw things that way, he was going to stay in prison, giving the Upmans the ability to claim her if they chose to do so. She had to make Hadiyyah unavailable to them, and the best way to do that was to get her out of Italy and in a location where she couldn’t be found.

It didn’t take her long to come up with that location. She needed Lynley, though, in order to arrange it. So she suggested to Hadiyyah that they ask Signora Vallera if she could, perhaps, watch television in the family section of the pensione while Barbara made a few pressing phone calls, and when Hadiyyah said with an anxious but eager crumpling of her forehead, “Could I watch the film of Mummy, Barbara?” Barbara snatched at the idea as the best possible plan. It would soothe the little girl at the same time as it would occupy her. She said, “Let’s see if we c’n sort out a DVD player, then,” and she hoped Hadiyyah’s Italian was good enough to do so.

It was. In short order she and the Vallera toddler were side by side on a sofa watching Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar speak to the camera, and Barbara was back in the breakfast room, ringing Inspector Lynley’s mobile.

Before he could say anything other than “Isabelle’s had an appointment with Hillier, Barbara,” she cut in.

“I’ve got Hadiyyah. I need to get her back to London. Mura’s rung Angelina’s parents to fetch her, and in advance of that, we need to—”

He cut in irritably with “Barbara, do you ever listen to me? Did you hear me? I’ve no idea what they talked about, but whatever it is, it’s probably not good.”

“What you still don’t understand is that Hadiyyah is what matters,” she said. “I’ve got my police ID, so I can get her a ticket back to London, but you need to meet her at the other end.”

“And what?” he asked.

“And then you’ve got to hide her.”

“Tell me I’m not hearing you correctly as I think you might have just said I must hide her.”

“Sir, it would only be for as long as it takes me to get Azhar out of gaol. I need to rattle a few doorknobs over here. I need to shake a few skeletons. You and I know that if the Upmans get their hands on Hadiyyah, they’re going to make it impossible for Azhar to get her back.”

“You and I,” Lynley said, “know nothing of the sort.”

“Please, sir,” she said. “I’ll beg if I have to. I need your help. She c’n stay with you, can’t she? Charlie can mind her. He’ll love her to bits. And she’ll love him.”

“And when he has an audition, is he to take her with him or perhaps give her an assignment in the house? Something along the lines of polishing the silver, perhaps?”

“He can take her with him. She’d enjoy it. Or he c’n pop her over to Simon and Deborah. Deborah’s dad can mind her or Deborah herself can. She’s mad about kids. You know she is. Please, sir.”

He was silent. She prayed. But when he responded, it was not to say anything that lifted her spirits.

“I’ve been to his lab, Barbara.”

Her stomach was liquid. “Whose lab?”

“There’s another connection, one that existed between Azhar and Italy far in advance of Hadiyyah’s kidnapping and Angelina’s death. You’re going to need to come to terms with this, and you’re going to need to prepare Hadiyyah to do the same.”

“What?” She forced the word out. In the other room, she could hear the voice-over on the film of Angelina and Azhar, and she could hear Hadiyyah’s chatter in Italian either to Signora Vallera or to her daughter.

Lynley said, “He has incubators, Barbara. Two sets of them, in fact. One set comes from here, from Birmingham. The other set comes from Italy.”

“And?” she demanded, although her incredulity was forced. “He may have a bloody pair of Italian shoes as well, Inspector, but it’s rubbish to think that has anything to do with Angelina dying over here. Italian incubators have nothing to do with anything anyway, and you know it. Christ, what if he has Italian olive oil in his kitchen cupboard? How ’bout a bag of imported pasta? What about cheese? He might like Parmesan.”

“Are you quite finished? May I continue?” When she said nothing more, he did so. “Italian incubators in and of themselves mean nothing. But if you have incubators you also have the conditions under which the incubators are tested by the company that makes them, to make certain they do the job for which they were designed. Can we agree on that?”

She was silent for a moment, thinking about this. There was a heaviness within her that she couldn’t ignore. “S’pose,” she finally said.

“Right. And what better way to test those incubators, Barbara, than with the different kinds of bacteria they’re meant to grow?”

She rallied. “Oh, please. That’s completely ridiculous. So what did he do? Drop by the company over here and say, ‘Afternoon, you lot. How ’bout handing over some truly virulent E. coli for a little romp on top of someone’s pizza? Just to see, mind you, if the incubators really work?’”

“I think you know what I’m saying, Barbara.”

“I bloody well don’t.”

“I’m saying there’s another link. And you can’t afford to ignore a link.”

“And what, exactly, do you intend to do with this information?”

“It has to go to Chief Inspector Lo Bianco. What he then decides to do with it—”

“Oh, for God’s bloody sake. What’s the matter with you? You’ve lost the plot. And when did you become such a sodding prig? Who turned you, eh? Has to be Isabelle.”

He was silent. She reckoned he was counting to ten. She knew she’d crossed over a line with the mention of Superintendent Ardery, but she was beyond social niceties at this point. He finally said, “Let’s not venture in that direction.”

She said, “No, no. Let’s stick to what we know for sure. What I know is that you’re not about to help me. Chuck Hadiyyah out with the bathwater and let her swim in it as best she can. That’s your game, isn’t it? You’ll do your duty. Or whatever you do, you’ll call it your duty. You’ll sigh and say, ‘It is what it is,’ or some rubbish like that and meantime lives hang in the balance but what do you care because one of those lives isn’t yours.” She waited for him to reply to this and when he did not, she went on. “Well. Right, then. I won’t ask you to hold back information for a day or two. That wouldn’t be doing your duty, would it?”

“For the love of God, Barbara.”

“It has nothing to do with God. Or with love. It has to do with what’s right.”

She cut off the call. She found her eyes were stinging. She found her palms were wet. Christ, she thought, she had to get herself sorted. She went to the breakfast room, downed a glass of orange juice still on the sideboard, sardonically thought, Whoops! Must be careful. Someone could’ve put E. coli in there. And she wanted to weep. But she had to think and what she thought first was that she would ring Simon and Deborah St. James. She would ask them. Or p’rhaps Winston. He lived with his parents, right? They could mind Hadiyyah, couldn’t they? Or a girlfriend of his could do the minding. He had to have dozens. Or Mrs. Silver back in Chalk Farm who minded Hadiyyah during school holidays. Except of course Chalk Farm would be the first place anyone would look for her, inside one of the other flats in the converted Edwardian house.

Something, something, something, she thought. She herself could take the child back to London, but that left Azhar to his fate and she couldn’t have that. No matter what anyone said or anyone believed, she knew the truth of who the man was.

She went in search of Hadiyyah. For now she would keep the little girl with her. It was the best she could do. Come hell or whatever, she had no intention of allowing her to fall into the hands of the Upmans.

Hadiyyah was still in the family area. Signora Vallera had joined her to watch the DVD, which looked to Barbara as if it was on its third or fourth time through the interview.

She sat in a straight-backed chair to watch along with the others as Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar talked about their missing child. The camera showed Angelina’s exhausted face. The camera showed Azhar. The camera dollied back to show where they sat at the table beneath the arbour in the company of the man with the wart-infested face. He talked with such velocity and such passion that it was difficult to notice anything save him. The other two people, the table, the background . . . it all faded away as the man spat and roared.

Which, Barbara realised with a bolt of understanding, was why the film had played on television, had been given to Hadiyyah, had been watched and watched without a single person involved seeing what was in front of them the entire time.

“Oh my God,” she murmured.

She felt dazed and her mind began to spin as she tried to come up with a next step and then another and then a third, all of which could evolve into a plan. Lynley, she knew, would not help her now. That left only one possibility.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Thus, Mitchell Corsico was the proverbial port in the storm that was brewing. He’d been in Italy long enough to acquire the sort of sources Barbara needed now, but she knew he was going to want a deal. He wouldn’t hand anything over to her unless he had his picture of Hadiyyah. So she rang his mobile and she prepared herself for a round of bargaining with the bloke.

“Where are you?” she asked him. “We need to talk.”

“Your lucky day,” he told her. He was just outside in the piazza at that very moment, enjoying a caffè and a brioche as he waited for Barb to come to her senses in the matter of Hadiyyah Upman. He’d been working on the story, by the way. It was a real tearjerker. Rodney Aronson was going to love it. Page one guaranteed.

Barbara said sourly, “You’re the confident one, aren’t you?”

“In this business, you’d better be confident. ’Sides, one gets to know the scent of desperation.”

“Whose?”

“Oh, I wager you know.”

She told him to stay where he was as she was coming out to meet him. She found him as promised: beneath an umbrella at a café table across from the pensione. He’d finished his coffee and pastry, and he was busily tapping away at his laptop. His remark of “Christ, I’m brilliant” as she reached him told her he was working on his Hadiyyah story.

She took from her bag the school photo of Hadiyyah that she had showed Aldo Greco on the previous day. She laid it on the table, but she didn’t sit.

Mitch looked at the photo and then at her. “And this is . . . ?”

“What you want.”

“Uh . . . no.” He pushed it back to her and went on typing. “If I’m manufacturing horse dung here”—with a gesture at his laptop—“for the delectation of the great UK public, then something about the tale has to be genuine and what that something is going to be is a picture of the kid here in Italy.”

“Mitch, listen—”

“You listen, Barb. F’r all Rod knows I’m here having the holiday of a lifetime although God knows why I’d choose Lucca to have it in since its after-dinner nightlife consists of hundreds of Italians on bikes, in trainers, or with pushchairs circling the town on that wall like crows contemplating fresh roadkill. But he doesn’t know that, does he? Far as he’s concerned, Lucca’s Italy’s answer to Miami Beach. I need something that shows him I’m hot on the trail of whatever. Now, from what I can tell, you need to be hot on the trail of whatever, so let’s cooperate with each other. We’ll start with a picture of the kid—showing she’s in goddamn Italy, by the way—and we’ll go from there.”

Barbara could see that further argument would get her nowhere. She took back the photo of Hadiyyah and struck the deal. She’d get him that picture herself as there was no way in hell she ever wanted it getting back to Azhar that she’d allowed a tabloid journalist to photograph his daughter. She’d pose Hadiyyah at the window of the breakfast room, which looked out on the piazza. She’d photograph the front of the building so that Mitchell’s editor would be able to see that his ace reporter was indeed in Italy with his nose to the grindstone. He could then edit the size of the picture any way he wanted to. Her guarantee was that Hadiyyah would look soulful in spades.

Corsico wasn’t thrilled to bits with this plan, but he handed over his digital camera. Barbara took it from him and told him what she wanted in exchange for the picture, which was a conversation with one of his new Italian journalist mates, one with access to the television news.

“Why?” Corsico asked her warily.

“Just do it, Mitchell.” She strode back across the piazza.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

When Salvatore took the phone call from DI Lynley, he saw at once that the connection suggested by the London man had more than one application. DARBA Italia, Lynley had told him, was the manufacturer of two of the incubators in the laboratory of Professor Taymullah Azhar, creating a heretofore unknown link between the microbiologist and Italy that needed exploration. Salvatore agreed with this, but the very idea of manufacturers of incubators prompted him to think in larger terms than a single company. At an international conference of microbiologists, surely manufacturers of the equipment they used showed up to demonstrate their wares in the hope of sales, no?

So he gave Ottavia Schwartz new direction under the topic of Investigating the Berlin Conference. She had two new assignments, he told her. Had manufacturers of laboratory equipment been present at the conference? If so, who were they and what individuals—by name—had represented them in Berlin?

“What are we looking for?” Ottavia asked, not unreasonably.

When Salvatore said that he wasn’t entirely sure, she sighed, muttered, but got on with it.

He went to Giorgio Simione next. “DARBA Italia,” he said to him. “I want to know everything about it.”

“What is it?” Giorgio asked.

“I have no idea. That’s why I want to know everything.”

Salvatore was heading back to his office, then, when he saw Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers just entering the lobby of the questura. She was not accompanied by translator Marcella Lapaglia on this day, however. She was alone.

Salvatore went to her. She was, he noted, garbed not dissimilarly from the previous day. The clothes themselves were different, but their dishevelled nature was unchanged. Her tank top was, at least, tucked in. But as this emphasised the wine-barrel shape of her body, she might have been better advised to wear it untucked.

When she saw him, she began speaking, at a volume and with exaggerated movements that attempted to clarify what she was trying to tell him. In spite of himself, he had to smile. She was as earnest as he’d ever seen anyone. It took some fortitude to attempt to make oneself understood in a country where one was a stranger and didn’t speak the language. In her place, he wondered if he’d be able to do the same.

She pointed to herself. “I,” she said, “want you”—pointing at him—“to watch”—pointing to her eyeballs—“this”—pointing to the screen of a laptop that she was holding.

“Ah. You want I must to watch something,” he said in his terrible English. Then, “Che cos’è? E perché? Mi dispiace, ma sono molto occupato stamattina.”

“Bloody goddamn,” the woman muttered to herself. “What’d he just say?”

She went through the pointing and speaking routine a second time. Salvatore realised it would be quicker to watch whatever she wanted him to watch than it would be to find someone who could translate what he already understood. So he gestured that she was to follow him to his office. On the way he asked Ottavia to find the usual translator on the chance that what the English detective wanted him to see was going to prompt him to ask her questions. Barring that individual’s availability, he told her, find someone else. But not Birgit. Chiaro?

Ottavia raised an eyebrow at the Birgit part, but she nodded. She shot a look at the detective sergeant that managed to convey an Italian woman’s incredulity that a member of the same gender would wander about thus garbed, but then she went about her business. She would find someone and she would do it quickly.

Salvatore ushered the detective sergeant into his office. He said politely, “Un caffè?” to which Sergeant Havers went on at some length. Among her words, Salvatore caught one: time. Ah, he thought. She was telling him they did not have time. Bah, Salvatore thought. There was always time for caffè.

He went to make it after gesturing her into a seat. When he returned to his office, she’d set up her laptop in the middle of his desk and she was standing at the ready. She’d lit a cigarette, which she looked at, gestured to, and said, “Hope it’s buono with you.” Salvatore smiled, nodded, and opened a window. He indicated the caffè he’d brought her. She put two sugar cubes into it, but during the course of their meeting, she never took a sip.

As he stirred his own caffè, she said, “Ready?” with lifted eyebrows. She pointed to the laptop and smiled encouragingly. He shrugged his acceptance. She left-clicked on the laptop and gestured Salvatore over to join her at the desk.

She said, “Right. Well, watch this, Salvatore,” from which he presumed she meant guardi, so that was what he did. In short order he found himself viewing the interview of Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar that had appeared on the television news. It contained their appeal for the safety of their child and their appeal for her return. It also contained Piero Fanucci’s frothing rant about bringing the malefactor to justice one way or the other. Salvatore cooperatively watched the sequence, but he gained absolutely nothing from it. When it was over, he looked at Barbara Havers, frowning. She pointed upward with a finger and said, “Wait,” and she directed him to watch the screen where the film continued.

The sequence comprised conversation that was mostly inaudible during which people removed their microphones. Salvatore didn’t see what any of this had to do with anything. Then Lorenzo Mura appeared with a tray. On it were an array of wineglasses and plates that he began to hand out to the film crew. He then set a plate and a glass in front of Fanucci, gave the same to the reporter, and then to Taymullah Azhar. To Angelina he gave only a plate.

Barbara Havers froze the picture at that moment. She pointed to the screen and said with excitement in her voice, “There’s your E. coli, Salvatore. It’s right there in the glass he gave to Azhar.”

Salvatore heard “E. coli.” From where she was directing his attention—her finger pointing to the glass sitting in front of the professor—he understood what she meant. He was less clear when she went on, her voice so rapid that only individual names were clear to him. She said, “He intended Azhar, not Angelina, to drink the wine with the E. coli in it. But he didn’t know that Azhar’s a Muslim. He has one vice that he shouldn’t have—he smokes—but he doesn’t drink. And he does the whole Muslim bit from A to Z otherwise. The hajj, the fasting, the almsgiving, whatever. But he doesn’t drink. He probably never has. Angelina knew that, so she took the wine from him. Here, watch.” And she showed the next sequence of the film. In it, Angelina took the wine meant for Azhar and Barbara Havers said with a wink at him, “Just like bloody Hamlet, eh, mate? Mura tried to stop her from drinking it, but she thought he was just worried because she was pregnant. So what the hell was he supposed to do? I expect he could’ve leapt over the table and dashed the glass out of her hand. But it all happened too fast. She just knocked the vino back. And then? That’s what you want to ask, eh? Well, he could’ve made her sick it up, I s’pose, or he could’ve thrown himself on her mercy and told the truth, but he was never completely sure of her, was he? No bloke ever was. She loved ’em and she left ’em and sometimes she had three of ’em at once and that’s just who she was. It’s what, I expect, made her different from her sister and God knows they wanted to be different from each other. But let’s suppose he goes ahead and tells her what he’s done—sorry, darling, but you’ve just knocked back a glass of deadly bacteria—and then what? How does she view him then, eh?”

Nearly all of which Salvatore did not follow. So he was more than grateful when Ottavia appeared with the questura’s translator, a multilingual and distractingly buxom thirtyish woman showing so much cleavage—Dio, was it eight inches?—that he momentarily forgot her name. Then it came to him: Giuditta Something. She asked how she could be of assistance.

She and Barbara Havers spoke at some length. After an equally lengthy translation from Giuditta, Salvatore asked only two questions. Both were crucial to building a case if, indeed, a case even could be built on something that seemed so speculative. How? he wanted to know. And why?

Barbara Havers went with the why first: Why would Lorenzo Mura want to kill this man Taymullah Azhar? Good question, Salvatore. He, after all, had won Azhar’s woman. He had taken her from the Pakistani man. She lived with him in Italy, far from London. He had made her pregnant. They were to marry. What was the point?

“But who could ever be sure of Angelina Upman?” was the Englishwoman’s explanation. “She’d messed about with Esteban Castro while she was with Azhar. She’d left them both for Lorenzo Mura. Anyone could see there was still a bond between Azhar and her, and beyond that, they shared Hadiyyah. Once Azhar appeared on the scene, he was going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. She might have decided to return to him. Who the hell ever knew what she would do?”

“But ridding their lives of Azhar would not have made his own position with Angelina secure,” Salvatore pointed out.

Barbara listened to the translation, then said, “Sure, but he wasn’t thinking like that. He wasn’t looking at the big picture of If Not Azhar, Then Who Else Might She Leave Me For? He just wanted Azhar gone and he was doing it the best way he knew: make him good and ill and hope he keels over and there’s an end to the problem. Salvatore, when people are jealous, they don’t think straight. They just want the object of their jealousy gone. Or ruined. Or devastated. Or whatever. But what did Lorenzo Mura have? The return of the rejected lover, Hadiyyah’s dad back in Hadiyyah’s life, Hadiyyah’s dad back in Angelina’s life.”

“Men survive that sort of thing all the time.”

“But those men aren’t entangled with Angelina.”

Salvatore considered this. It was plausible, he thought. But it was only plausible. There still existed the biggest sticking point: the E. coli itself. If what the sergeant was saying was true, how had Lorenzo come to put his hands upon it? And not just E. coli but a deadly strain of it.

He spoke to the detective sergeant about this: about the how of the E. coli’s acquisition. She listened but could offer him no advice. They—along with Giuditta—meditated in silence upon this thorny issue. Then Giorgio Simione came into Salvatore’s office.

For a moment, Salvatore blinked at him in absolute incomprehension. He’d given him an assignment, but he couldn’t recall what it was, even when Giorgio said helpfully, “DARBA, Ispettore.”

Salvatore said, “Come?” and repeated the word. When Giorgio said, “DARBA Italia,” Salvatore recalled.

“It’s here in Lucca,” Giorgio told him. “It’s on the route to Montecatini.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Mitchell Corsico had to be dealt with first. He’d done her an enormous favour in getting the entire, unedited television news film via one of the contacts he’d made with the Italian journalists. He was going to want the payoff for this, and he was going to need to pass along a juicy and otherwise significant detail to the Italian who’d helped him in the first place. Quid pro quo and all that. So Barbara had to tell him something, and she had to make sure it was something good.

When she understood from the translator that Salvatore’s intention was an unannounced call upon DARBA Italia, she fully intended to accompany him there. But she couldn’t have Mitch Corsico tagging along with them. She and Salvatore needed time to pin down their information. What they didn’t need was any of it leaking to the press.

She’d left him in the café down the street from the questura, across the road from the railway station, and the last thing she’d needed was Salvatore Lo Bianco putting his hooded gaze upon the UK’s version of the Lone Ranger sans mask. Because of the distance and the crowds of people milling about, she knew she’d be able to make her escape from the questura without Mitchell becoming wise to her whereabouts. But if he discovered she’d done this, there would be hell to pay.

She had to use half-truths. While Salvatore went for a vehicle in the car park next to the questura, she rang Corsico.

“We’ve got a potential source for the E. coli,” she told him. “I’m heading there now.”

“Hang the hell on. You and I had an agreement. I’m not letting you—”

“You’ll get the story, Mitch, and you’ll get it first. But ’f you show up now and want to play tagalong, Salvatore’s going to want to know who you are. And believe me, that’ll be tough to explain. He trusts me, and we need to keep things that way. He finds I’m leaking to the press, we’re done for.”

“It’s Salvatore now? What the hell’s going on?”

“Oh for God’s bloody sake. He’s a colleague. We’re heading for a place called DARBA Italia, and that’s all I know just now. It’s here in Lucca, and ’f you ask me, it’s the source of the E. coli and that’s where Lorenzo Mura got it.”

“If it’s here in Lucca, it could also be where the professor got it,” Corsico pointed out. “He was here in April looking for the kid. All he had to do was waltz over to this place and make the buy.”

“Oh, too right. Are you trying to tell me that Azhar—a man who speaks no Italian, by the way—swanned over to DARBA Italia with euros in hand and said, ‘How much for a test tube of the worst bacteria you lot have going? I’ll need something I don’t grow in my own lab, so all forms of Strep are off the table.’ And then what, Mitch? One of their salesmen tap-danced into the place where they keep this stuff—Quality Control, maybe?—and nicked a little bacteria without anyone noticing? Don’t be a fool. This stuff is going to be controlled. It can take out an entire population, for the love of God.”

“So why the hell are you going there? Because what you just said—save not speaking Italian—applies to Lorenzo Mura as well. And while we’re talking about this whole bloody mess, how the hell do you know they have E. coli in the first place?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re paying them a visit.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I’m sitting here waiting for a story, Barb.”

“You’ve got your piece on Hadiyyah. Go with that.”

“Rod’s not chuffed. He says page five. He says Professor Falsely Imprisoned is the only path to page one. Thing is, of course, from what you just told me it sounds like the falsely part of the headline might not be needed.”

“I’ve told you how—”

“I got you the television film. What’s the payoff for me?”

Salvatore Lo Bianco pulled to the kerb and leaned over to push open the passenger door. Barbara said, “It’s coming. I swear I’ll keep you in the loop. I’ve given you DARBA Italia. Ask your Italian journalist mates to take things from there.”

“And give them the story ahead of me? Come on, Barb—”

“It’s the best I can do.” She ended the call and got into the car. She nodded to Salvatore and said, “Let’s go.”

“Andiamo,” he told her with a smile.

“Back at you, mate,” she replied.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Isabelle Ardery’s meeting with the assistant commissioner had lasted two hours. Lynley had this information from the most reliable source: David Hillier’s secretary. It didn’t come to him directly, though. The conduit was the redoubtable Dorothea Harriman. Dorothea cultivated sources of information the way farmers cultivate crops. She had informants within the Met, the Home Office, and the Houses of Parliament. So she knew from Judi MacIntosh the length of the meeting between Hillier and Ardery and she knew it had been tense. She also knew that present at the meeting had been two blokes from CIB. She didn’t know their names—“I did try, Detective Inspector Lynley”—but the only details she had managed to unearth were that the blokes had come from one of the two arms of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, and that arm was CIB1. Lynley received this titbit with a frisson of apprehension. CIB1 dealt with internal complaints. CIB1 dealt with internal discipline.

The superintendent didn’t offer to share the content of her meeting. Lynley tried to learn something useful from her, but her quick and firm “Don’t let’s go there, Tommy” told him that things were in motion and the nature of those things was as serious as he’d earlier concluded they might be when she’d phoned Hillier and asked for a meeting.

So he was deeply thoughtful when he took a surprising and welcome phone call from Daidre Trahair. She’d come to town to look for a flat, she told him. Would he like to meet her for lunch in Marylebone?

He said, “You’ve taken the job? That’s brilliant, Daidre.”

“They’ve a silverback gorilla that’s quite won my heart,” she said. “It’s love on my part, but I can’t say how he feels just yet.”

“Time will tell.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?”

They met in Marylebone High Street, where he found her waiting inside a tiny restaurant at a very small table tucked into a corner. He knew his face lit up when she raised her head from studying the menu and saw him. She smiled in return and lifted a hand in hello.

He kissed her and thought how completely normal it felt to be doing so. He said, “Have Boadicea’s Broads gone into permanent mourning?”

She said, “Let’s say that my stock isn’t very high with them at the moment.”

“The Electric Magic, on the other hand, must be breaking out the bubbly.”

“One can only hope.”

He sat and gazed at her. “It’s very good to see you. I needed a tonic, and it seems you’re it.”

She cocked her head, examined him, and said, “I must say it. You’re a tonic as well.”

“For . . . ?”

“The grim process of looking at flats. Until I sell up in Bristol, I’m beginning to think I’ll be sleeping upright in someone’s broom closet.”

“There are solutions to that,” he told her.

“I wasn’t hinting at your spare room.”

“Ah. My loss.”

“Not entirely, Tommy.”

At that, he felt his heart pound harder a few times, but he said nothing. Instead he smiled, took up the menu, asked what she was having, and gave their orders to a waiter hovering nearby expectantly. He asked her how long she was in town. She said four days and this was the third. He asked her why she hadn’t phoned sooner. She said the business of finding a flat, of meeting people at the zoo, of seeing what was needed to organise her offices and labs, of speaking with the various keepers about problems they were encountering with the animals . . . It had all taken up so much of her time. But how lovely it was to see him now.

This, he thought, would have to suffice. Perhaps it was enough to feel how engaged he became in her presence, as the rest of the day faded into insignificance.

Unfortunately, that engagement in her presence did not last long. As their starters were set before them, his mobile rang. He glanced at it and saw, heart sinking, that it was Havers. He said to Daidre, “I’m sorry. I’ll have to take this call.”

“I need your help” was Havers’s first remark.

“You need more than what I can provide. Isabelle’s had a meeting with two blokes from CIB.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Have you entirely lost your mind?”

“I know you’re cheesed off. But Salvatore and I are onto something over here, and what I need from you is a piece of information. One little piece of information, Inspector.”

“Coming from which side of the law?”

“It’s completely legitimate.”

“Unlike virtually everything else you’ve done.”

“All right. Agreed. I get it, sir. You need to scourge me and the only thing wanting is a pillar. We c’n see to that when I get back. Meantime, like I said, I just need one piece of information.”

“Which is what, exactly?” He glanced at Daidre. She’d tucked into her starter. He rolled his eyes expressively.

“The Upmans are on their way to Italy. They’re coming to fetch Hadiyyah. I need to prevent that. If they get their mitts on her, they’ll keep her from Azhar.”

“Barbara, if you’re heading in the direction of my intercepting—”

“I know you can’t stop them, sir. I just need to know if they’re on their way now to fetch Hadiyyah. I need to know what flight they’re on and which of them is coming. It would also help to know the airport. It might be the parents coming—they’re called Ruth-Jane and Humphrey—or it might be Bathsheba Ward, the sister. If you ring the airlines and check the flight manifests . . . You know you can do this. Or you can get SO12 to do it. That’s it. That’s all I need. And it’s not for my own sake. It’s not even for Azhar’s. It’s for Hadiyyah’s sake. Please.”

He sighed. He knew Havers would not relent. He said, “Winston’s checking into everyone here associated with Angelina Upman, Barbara. He’s looking for any connection that might point from here to Italy among people she knew. So far, there’s nothing.”

“And there won’t be, sir. Mura’s our man. He intended Azhar to ingest the E. coli. Salvatore and I are heading to a place called DARBA Italia to prove it.”

“That’s the incubator company from Azhar’s lab, Barbara. Surely, you can see how this points to—”

“Right. I can see it. And for the record, Salvatore’s made the same point.”

“Salvatore? How exactly are you managing to communicate with him?”

“Lots of hand gestures. Plus he smokes, so I think we’ve bonded. Look, sir, will you sort out the Upmans-on-their-way-to-Italy situation? Will you have SO12 do it? One piece of information. That’s it. Full stop. And it’s not for me. It’s for—”

“Hadiyyah. Yes, yes. I’ve received your point.”

“So . . . ?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He rang off then and looked for a moment not at Daidre but at the wall, where a stylish photograph of cliffs and the sea put him in mind of Cornwall. Daidre, apparently seeing the direction of his gaze, said, “Considering an escape?”

He glanced back at her and thought about the question. He finally said, “From some things, yes. From others, no.” And he reached across the small table for her hand.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

In the best of all worlds, Barbara thought, Lynley would somehow manage to stop the Upmans before they reached the airport or, at least, before they boarded the plane to Italy. But she didn’t live in the best of all worlds, so she reckoned they were on their way, whoever was coming. What was available to her was the knowledge of their whereabouts and her ability to dodge them when they reached Lucca. They would go first to Fattoria di Santa Zita, where they would presume Hadiyyah was still in residence with Lorenzo Mura. He would tell them she’d been fetched by Barbara. He might reckon Barbara was staying where Azhar had stayed. But he might not.

In any case, she had only a limited amount of time to get Hadiyyah out of the Pensione Giardino and into a hideaway somewhere. And before she did that, she needed to see what Salvatore managed to uncover at DARBA Italia.

It didn’t take long to reach the manufacturing concern. They did a quarter’s circumnavigation along the boulevard that skirted Lucca’s wall, and then they took a sharp right and headed out of the town. DARBA Italia was some three miles along the road, tucked off a neatly paved driveway and posted with an elaborate metal sign above double glass doors. There were very few trees in the immediate vicinity and lots of asphalt in the car park, so the heat was intense and it rose in visible waves from the ground. Barbara hustled after Salvatore to get inside the place, praying for air conditioning.

Naturally, she couldn’t follow a word of the Italian that passed between Salvatore and the receptionist, who was a gloriously handsome Mediterranean youth of about twenty-two: olive skin, masses of wavy hair, lips like a Renaissance putto, and teeth so white they looked painted. Salvatore showed his police ID, gestured to Barbara, and spoke at great length. The receptionist listened, shot a glance at Barbara that dismissed her as quickly as it acknowledged her presence, nodded, said sì and no and forse and un attimo, of which only sì and no were remotely recognisable. Then he picked up his phone and punched in a number. He turned his back, spoke in a hushed voice, and made some sort of arrangement, since his next action was to rise from his chair and tell them they were to follow him. At least, that was what Barbara worked out from his words since Salvatore trailed him into the bowels of the building.

Things happened far too quickly for Barbara’s liking after that. The receptionist took them to a conference room where a mahogany table in the centre was accompanied by ten leather chairs. He said something to Salvatore about the direttore, which she took to mean that the managing director of DARBA Italia was the person they were going to see. That person showed up perhaps five minutes into their wait. He was beautifully suited and equally well mannered but clearly curious about the police showing up on his professional doorstep.

She caught only his name: Antonio Bruno. She waited for more. There was very little. Salvatore spoke, and she strained to pick up E. coli from among the flood of Italian that came from him. But nothing in Antonio Bruno’s expression indicated he was listening to a tale of anyone’s death by any substance that DARBA Italia might have provided. After an exchange of seven minutes’ length, the managing director nodded and left them.

She said to Salvatore, “What? What’s he doing? What’d you tell him?” although she knew it was useless to expect an answer. But her need to know overrode her ability to reason. She said, “Do they have E. coli? Do they know Lorenzo Mura? This has nothing to do with Azhar, does it?”

To this, Salvatore smiled regretfully and said, “Non La capisco.” Barbara reckoned she knew what that meant.

The return of Antonio Bruno didn’t clarify anything. He came back to the conference room with a manila envelope, which he handed over to Salvatore. Salvatore thanked him and headed for the door. He said, “Andiamo, Barbara,” and to Antonio Bruno with a courtly little bow, “Grazie mille, Signor Bruno.”

Barbara waited till they were outside to say, “That’s it? What’s going on? Why’re we leaving? What’d he give you?”

From all of this, Salvatore seemed to understand the last question, for he handed over the manila envelope, and Barbara opened it. Inside was only a list of employees, organised by each of the company’s departments. Names, addresses, and telephone numbers. There were plenty of them, dozens. Her heart sank when she saw them. She knew, then, that Salvatore Lo Bianco was engaged in the slog of an investigation: He would look into each person listed among the employees of DARBA Italia. But that would take days upon days to accomplish, and they didn’t have days before the Upmans arrived.

Barbara needed results and she needed them now. She began to consider how best to get them.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

For the first time, Salvatore Lo Bianco thought that the woman from London might actually be correct. He could tell when she began a passionate discourse that she had no idea why they were leaving DARBA Italia so abruptly and he certainly didn’t have the English to tell her. But he managed “Pazienza, Barbara,” and it appeared that she understood. Nothing happened quickly in Italy, he wanted to tell her, save the rapidity with which people spoke the language and the speed with which they drove their cars. Everything else was a case of piano, piano.

She was tumbling through words he did not understand. “We don’t have the time, Salvatore. Hadiyyah’s family . . . The Upmans . . . These people . . . If you only understood what they intend to do. They hate Azhar. They’ve always hated him. See, he wouldn’t marry her once he got her pregnant and anyway the fact that he got her pregnant and he’s a Pakistani and they’re . . . God, they’re like something out of the Raj, if you know what I mean. What I’m trying to say is if we—I mean you—have to go through every single one of those names on this list”—she waved the manila folder at him—“by the time we do that, Hadiyyah will be lost to him, to Azhar.”

He recognised, naturally, the repetition of names: Hadiyyah, the Upmans, and Azhar. He recognised, also, her agitation. But all he could say was “Andiamo, Barbara,” with a gesture at the car that was steaming in the day’s heat.

She followed him, but she didn’t give up talking despite the many times he said with much regret, “Non La capisco.” He did wish that he spoke her language better—at least enough to tell her not to worry—but when he said, “Non si deve preoccupare,” he could tell she didn’t understand. They were like two inhabitants of Babel.

He started the car and they were on their way back to the questura when her mobile rang. When she said into it, “Inspector? Thank God,” he reckoned it was Lynley ringing her. From her earlier call to the London detective, he knew she’d asked him about the Upmans. He hoped for her sake that Thomas Lynley had discovered something that would relieve her anxiety.

That was not the case. She cried out like a wounded animal, saying, “Bloody hell, no! Florence? That’s not far from here, is it? Let me send her to you. Please, sir. I’m begging. They’ll find her. I know it. Mura will tell them I took her and they’ll look for me and how the hell hard will it be for them to find me, eh? They’ll take her away and I won’t be able to stop them and it’ll destroy Azhar. It’ll kill him, Inspector, and he’s been through enough and you know it, you know it.”

Salvatore glanced at her. It was odd, he thought, her passion for this case. He’d never encountered a fellow cop with such a fierce determination to prove anything.

She was saying, “Salvatore took us to DARBA Italia like I said. But all he did was get us in to see the managing director and that was it. He picked up a bloody list of employees but he didn’t ask a single question about E. coli and there’s no time to go at things this way. Everything hangs in the balance. You know this, sir. Hadiyyah, Azhar, everyone’s at risk here.”

She listened to something Lynley was saying. Salvatore glanced at her. He saw tears sparkling on the tips of her eyelashes. Her fist pounded lightly on her knee.

She handed him the mobile phone, finally, saying unnecessarily, “It’s Inspector Lynley.”

Lynley’s first words were said on a sigh. “Ciao, Salvatore. Che cosa succede?”

But instead of telling the London man about their visit to DARBA Italia, Salvatore sought some clarification. He said, “Something tells me, my friend, that you have not been completely honest with me about this woman Barbara and her relationship to the professor and his daughter. Why is this, Tommaso?”

Lynley said nothing for a moment. Salvatore wondered where he was: at work, at home, out questioning someone? The London man finally said, “Mi dispiace, Salvatore.” He went on to explain that Taymullah Azhar and his daughter Hadiyyah were neighbours of Barbara Havers, in London. He said that she was quite fond of them both.

Salvatore narrowed his eyes. “What means this fond?”

“She’s close to them.”

“Are they lovers, Barbara and the professor?”

“Good God, no. It isn’t that. She’s jumped off into some deep water, Salvatore, and I should have told you when she showed up over there, when you first rang me about her.”

“What has she done? To be in this deep water, I mean.”

“What hasn’t she done?” Lynley said. “Just now she’s gone to Italy without leave from the Met to do so. She’s determined to save Azhar in order to save Hadiyyah. That’s it in a nutshell.”

Salvatore glanced at Barbara Havers. She was watching him, a fist pressed to her mouth, her eyes—such a nice blue they were—fixed on him like a frightened animal. He said to Lynley, “Her greater interest is the child, you are saying?”

“Yes and no,” Lynley told him.

“Meaning what, Tommaso?”

“Meaning that she’s telling herself her greater interest is the child. As to the reality? That I don’t know. To be honest, my fear is that she’s blinded herself.”

“Ah. Mine is that she sees things too clearly.”

“Meaning?”

“She may have proved me as lacking as Piero Fanucci when it comes to seeing the truth, my friend. I have spoken to the managing director of DARBA Italia. He is called Antonio Bruno.”

“Good God. Is he indeed?”

“He is indeed. I’m on my way to discuss this with Ottavia Schwartz. If I hand this phone back to Barbara Havers, will you tell her please that things are well in hand?”

“I will do. But, Salvatore, Hadiyyah’s grandparents have landed in Florence. They’ll be on their way to Lucca to fetch her. The child doesn’t know them. But she does know Barbara.”

“Ah,” Salvatore said. “I see.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

All he said to her was “Barbara, you can trust Salvatore,” but she wasn’t prepared to trust a soul. What she needed to know was how long it might take for the Upmans to get from Florence to Lucca. Would they come by train? Would they hire a car? Would they arrange for an Italian driver? No matter how they did it, she needed to get to the pensione in Piazza Anfiteatro in advance of them, so she told Salvatore to take her there. She told him in English, but he seemed to understand from pensione, Piazza Anfiteatro, and the repetition of Hadiyyah’s name.

Once inside the pensione itself, she took a few breaths. It was essential, she thought, not to panic Hadiyyah. It was also essential to work out where the bloody hell she was going to take her. Out of Lucca seemed best, some obscure hotel on the edge of town. She’d seen plenty of them on her route in from the airport as well as on her route to and from DARBA Italia. She’d have to rely on Mitch Corsico to help her out with this manoeuvre, though. She didn’t want to do it as she was loath to give him access to Hadiyyah, but there wasn’t much choice.

She ran up the stairs. Signora Vallera, she saw, was cleaning one of the bedrooms. She said, “Hadiyyah?” to the woman, who gestured to the bedroom that Barbara and the child were sharing. Inside, Hadiyyah was sitting at the small table by the window. She looked completely forlorn. Barbara’s determination hardened. She would get both Hadiyyah and her father back to London.

“Hey, kiddo,” she said as brightly as she could. “We’re going to need a change of scenery, you and me. Are you up for that?”

“You were gone a long time,” Hadiyyah told her. “I didn’t know where you went. Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? Barbara, where’s my dad? Why doesn’t he come? ’Cause it’s like . . .” Her lips trembled. She finally said, “Barbara, did something happen to my dad?”

“God, no. Absolutely not. Like I said, kiddo, and I cross my heart on this one, he’s gone out of Lucca on some business for Inspector Lo Bianco. I came over from London because he asked me to, to make sure you didn’t worry about where he went.” It was, even without a stretch, the basic truth about what was going on.

“C’n we meet him somewhere, then?”

“Absolutely. Just not quite yet. Just now, we need to pack our things and skedaddle.”

“Why? ’Cause if we leave, how’ll Dad find us?”

Barbara dug out her mobile and held it up. “Won’t be a problem,” she said.

She wasn’t as confident as she sounded. She’d hoped the trip out to DARBA Italia would have put the nails in someone’s coffin. But it hadn’t done, and now she was faced with the big What Next? Corsico was going to have to be appeased, and in the meantime she was going to have to find a place for herself and Hadiyyah that would allow her access to what was going on with the case at the same time as it protected them from the tabloid journalist’s discovery as well as the discovery of Hadiyyah’s maternal grandparents. She thought about all this as she gathered up her things and shoved them higgledy-piggledy into her duffel. After making sure that Hadiyyah was packed up as well, she clattered down the stairs with the little girl following. At the foot of them, she found Salvatore waiting.

Her first thought was that he intended to stop her. But she soon discovered that she was wrong. Instead, he negotiated payment with Signora Vallera, picked up Hadiyyah’s suitcase and Barbara’s duffel, and nodded towards the door. He said, “Seguitemi, Barbara e Hadiyyah,” and he walked outside. He didn’t take them to his car, however. Instead, he headed out of the amphitheatre on foot and wound his way through the narrow medieval streets. These led into the occasional unexpected piazza ruled over by one of the city’s ubiquitous churches, past shuttered buildings where the occasional opened double doors gave glimpses of hidden courtyards and gardens, and along the fronts of businesses just reopening after the day’s break for lunch and rest.

Barbara knew there was no point in asking where they were going, and it was some way along the route before it occurred to her that Hadiyyah’s youthful Italian would probably serve the purpose perfectly. She was about to ask the little girl to make the enquiry of Salvatore Lo Bianco, when he stopped at a narrow structure many floors tall and set down the duffel and the suitcase.

He said to them, “Torre Lo Bianco,” and fished in his pocket to produce a key ring. Barbara got the Lo Bianco part, but it wasn’t until he opened the door with the key and called out, “Mamma? Mamma, ci sei?” that she twigged this was his mother’s home. Before she could clarify this or protest or say anything at all, an elderly woman with well-coiffed grey hair appeared from an inner room. She wore a heavy apron over a black linen dress, she was drying her hands on a towel, and she was saying, “Salvatore,” in greeting and then in a different tone, “Chi sono?” as her dark eyes took in Barbara first and then Hadiyyah, partially hidden behind her. She smiled at Hadiyyah, which Barbara took for a good sign. She said, “Che bambina carina,” and bending to put her hands on her knees, “Dimmi, come ti chiami?”

“Hadiyyah,” Hadiyyah said, and when the woman said, “Ah! Parli italiano?” Hadiyyah nodded. Her “un po’” produced another smile from the woman.

“Ma la donna, no,” Salvatore told her. “Parla solo inglese.”

“Hadiyyah può tradurre, no?” Salvatore’s mother replied. She spied the duffel and the suitcase, which Salvatore had left on the doorstep. “Allora, sono ospiti?” she said to her son. And when he nodded, she held out her hand to Hadiyyah. She said, “Vieni, Hadiyyah. Faremo della pasta insieme. D’accordo?” She began to lead Hadiyyah farther into the house.

Barbara said, “Hang on. What’s going on, Hadiyyah?”

Hadiyyah said, “We’re staying here with Salvatore’s mum.”

“Ah. As to the rest?”

“She’s going to show me how to make pasta.”

Barbara said to Salvatore, “Ta. I mean grazie. I c’n at least say grazie.”

He said, “Niente,” and went on a bit, gesturing towards a stone stairway that climbed up what was clearly a tower as well as being the family home.

Barbara said to Hadiyyah, “What’s he saying, kiddo?”

Hadiyyah said over her shoulder to Barbara, “He lives here, too.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

In the way of all things Italian, they had to eat first. Barbara wanted to deal at once with the list of employees Salvatore had brought with him from DARBA Italia, but he seemed as intent upon having a meal as his mother was intent upon serving one. He did make a phone call, however, speaking to someone called Ottavia. Barbara heard DARBA Italia mentioned and then the name Antonio Bruno several times. From this she took hope that someone at the questura was checking into something. This made her doubly eager to get out of Torre Lo Bianco, but she learned that no one put Salvatore and his mamma off their food. It was simple enough: roasted red and yellow peppers, cheese, several kinds of meat, bread, and olives, along with red wine and, afterwards, more Italian coffee and a plate of biscuits.

Then Salvatore’s mamma began bringing forth the ingredients for Hadiyyah’s experience in homemade pasta, and Salvatore and Barbara left the tower. Once outside, she saw that the building was indeed a bona fide tower. There were others in the town whose shape she’d clocked without really taking in what they were as they’d long ago been converted to shops and other businesses that disguised their original purpose. This one, though, was unmistakable, a perfect square soaring into the air, with some kind of greenery draping over the edges of the roof.

Salvatore led the way back to the car. In very short order, they returned to the questura. He parked, said, “Venga, Barbara,” and Barbara congratulated herself on her budding understanding of the language. She went with him.

They didn’t get far. Mitchell Corsico was leaning against a wall directly across the street from the questura, and he did not look like a happy cowpoke. Barbara saw him the same moment that he saw her. He came in their direction. She walked more quickly, in the hope of getting into the building before he reached them, but he wasn’t about to be played for a fool a second time. He cut her off, which in effect cut Salvatore off as well.

“Just what the bloody hell is going on?” he demanded hotly. “D’you know how long I’ve been waiting for you? And why aren’t you answering your mobile? I’ve rung you four times.”

Salvatore looked from her to Mitchell Corsico. His solemn gaze took in the journalist’s Stetson, the Western shirt, the bolo tie, the jeans, the boots. He seemed confused, and who could blame him? This bloke was either dressed for a costume party or he was an evacuee from the American Wild West via time machine.

Salvatore frowned. He said, “Chi è, Barbara?”

She ignored him for the moment, saying to Mitch as pleasantly as she could, “You’re going to cock things up if you don’t leave immediately.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “The leaving part, I mean. I don’t think I’ll be leaving. Not without a story.”

“I gave you a story. And you’ve had your bloody picture of Hadiyyah.” Barbara shot a glance at Salvatore. For the first time she was thankful that he spoke practically no English. No one would conclude that Mitchell Corsico—dressed as he was—was a journalist. She needed to keep things that way.

Corsico said, “That pony isn’t about to gallop. Rod wasn’t chuffed by the winsome photo. He’s running the story but only because it’s our lucky day and no politician got caught in a car behind King’s Cross Station last night.”

“There’s nothing more, Mitch. Not just now. And there’s not going to be more if my companion here”—she didn’t dare use Salvatore’s name and clue him in that he was part of the discussion—“works out who you are and what your living is.”

Mitch grabbed her arm. “Are you threatening me? I’m not playing games with you.”

Salvatore said quickly, “Ha bisogno d’aiuto, Barbara?” And he clutched onto Corsico’s hand tightly. “Chi è quest’uomo? Il Suo amante?”

“What the bloody hell . . . ?” Corsico said. He winced at the strength of Salvatore’s grip.

“I don’t know what he’s saying,” Barbara said. “But my guess is that if you don’t back away, you’re going to find yourself in the nick.”

“I helped you,” he said tersely. “I got you the bloody television film. I want what you know and you’re double-crossing me and there’s no way in hell—”

Salvatore twisted Mitch’s hand sharply away from Barbara’s arm, bending the fingers back so far that Corsico yelped. He said, “Jesus. Call Spartacus off, all right?” He took a step back, massaged his fingers, and glared at her.

She said quietly, “Look, Mitchell. All I know is we went to a place where they make equipment for scientists. He talked to the managing director there for less than five minutes, and a list of employees is what we came up with. He’s carrying the list in that envelope he’s holding. And that’s all I know.”

“Am I supposed to get a story out of that?”

“Christ, I’m telling you what I know. When there’s a story, I’ll give it to you but there isn’t a story yet. Now you’ve got to leave and I’ve got to think of some bloody way to explain who you are because, believe me, once he and I”—with a jerk of her head at Salvatore—“walk into the questura, he’s going to fetch a translator and give me a proper grilling and if he twigs that you’re a you-know-what, we are cooked. Both of us. Do you understand what happens then? No breaking story at all, and how’s your mate Rodney going to feel about that?”

Finally, Mitchell Corsico hesitated. His gaze flicked to Salvatore, who was watching with an expression that combined distrust with calculation. Barbara didn’t know what the Italian was thinking, but whatever he was thinking, his face seemed to support what she was claiming. Corsico said to Barbara in an altered tone, “Barb, this better not be bollocks.”

“Would I be that stupid?”

“Oh, I expect you would.” But he backed off, showing upheld empty hands to Salvatore. He said to Barbara, “You answer your mobile when I ring you, mate.”

“If I can, I will.”

He turned on his booted heel and left them, striding towards the café near the railway station. Barbara knew he’d wait there for some sort of word. He owed his editor a Big Story in exchange for this jaunt to Italy, and he wasn’t going to rest until he had one.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore watched the cowboy walk off, his long strides made seemingly longer by the straight-legged jeans and the boots he wore. They made an odd couple, this man and Barbara Havers, Salvatore thought. But the nature of attraction had always been something of a mystery to him. He could understand why the cowboy might be attracted to Barbara Havers with her expressive face and fine blue eyes. He couldn’t, on the other hand, understand at all what would attract Barbara Havers to him. This would be the Englishman who had first accompanied her to see Aldo Greco, however. The avvocato had spoken of him, using the term her English companion or something very like. Salvatore wondered what that term really meant.

Bah, he thought. He had no time for these considerations, and of what import were they? He had work to do, and it wasn’t for him to work out the details of a couple’s interaction on the street. Enough that the cowboy had taken himself elsewhere so that he could put Barbara Havers into the picture of what was going on.

He knew she was confused. Everything that had happened at DARBA Italia was a source of anxiety for her. She’d expected him to make a clear move that would take them in the direction she wanted to go: an arrest of someone who was not Taymullah Azhar. He was doing that, but he lacked the words to tell her that things were moving along.

Ottavia Schwartz had seen to that. While he was helping Barbara move Hadiyyah and her belongings from the pensione to his mamma’s house, while he and Barbara and the child had been eating their little meal with his mamma, Ottavia had been fulfilling his orders. In a police car, she’d gone with Giorgio Simione to DARBA Italia. She’d returned to the questura with the director of marketing. He was waiting for them now in an interview room, where he’d been—Salvatore consulted his watch—for the last one hundred minutes. A few more wouldn’t hurt.

He took Barbara Havers to his office. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk, and he pulled another over and joined her there. He swept a few articles on the desk to one side, and he laid out the list of employees provided to him by the managing director of DARBA Italia.

She said, “Right. But what’s this doing to help us sort out—”

“Aspetti,” he told her. He pulled from a pen and pencil holder a highlighting marker. He used it to draw her attention to the name of every department head on the list of employees. Bernardo. Roberto. Daniele. Alessandro. Antonio. She frowned at the highlighted names and said, “So? I mean, I see that these blokes run the show and yeah, okay, their last names are all the same so they must be related, but I don’t get why we aren’t—”

He used a red pen to draw a square round the first initial of each name. Then he wrote them out on a sticky pad. Then he unscrambled them into DARBA. “Fratelli,” he said, to which she said, “Brother.” This word he knew and he said, holding up his hand to illustrate what he meant: “Sì. Sono fratelli. Con i nomi del padre e dei nonni e zii. Ma aspetti un attimo, Barbara.”

He went to the other side of his desk, where upon a corner lay a stack of files comprising some of the materials he’d amassed on the death of Angelina Upman. From these he pulled out the photographs from the Englishwoman’s funeral and burial. He leafed through them quickly and found the two he wanted.

These he placed on top of the list of employees. “Daniele Bruno,” he told Barbara Havers.

Those fine blue eyes widened as they took in the pictures. In one of them Daniele Bruno was speaking earnestly to Lorenzo Mura, one hand on his shoulder and their heads bent together. In the other, he was merely a member of the squadra di calcio who had attended the funeral to show their support to a fellow player. Barbara Havers gazed at these pictures, then she set them to one side. As Salvatore had assumed she would, she took up the employee list and found Daniele Bruno’s name. He was the director of marketing. Like his brothers, he doubtless came and went from his family’s business with no one wondering where he was going or why.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Barbara Havers cried. She soared to her feet. “You’re a bloody genius, Salvatore! You found the link! This is it! This is how!” And she grabbed his face and kissed him squarely on the mouth.

She seemed as startled as he was that she had done this because an instant afterwards, she backed away. She said, “Christ. Sorry, mate. Sorry, Salvatore. But thank you, thank you. What d’we do next?”

He recognised sorry but nothing else. He said, “Venga,” and indicated the door.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Daniele Bruno was stowed in the interview room closest to Salvatore’s office. During the time he’d been waiting, he’d managed to fill the space with enough cigarette smoke to asphyxiate a cow.

Salvatore said, “Basta!” as he and Barbara Havers entered. He strode to the table and removed from it a packet of cigarettes and an overfull ashtray. He placed them outside the door. Then he opened a tiny window high on the wall, which did little to remove the fug of smoke but at least acted as mild reassurance that their respiration could continue for a few more minutes without one of them keeling over.

Bruno was in a corner of the room. He seemed to have been pacing the place. He began jabbering about wanting his lawyer the moment Salvatore and Barbara entered. Salvatore saw from the Englishwoman’s face that she hadn’t the first idea what Daniele Bruno was saying.

He considered the request for an avvocato. The presence of a lawyer could actually help them, he decided. But first Signor Bruno needed to be a little more shaken than he was.

“DARBA Italia, signore,” he said to Bruno. He motioned to a chair and sat himself. Barbara Havers did likewise and her gaze went from him to Daniele Bruno to him again. He heard her swallow and he wanted to reassure her. Everything, my friend, is well in hand, he would have said.

Bruno made his request for his lawyer again. He stated that Salvatore could not hold him. He demanded to be allowed to go. Salvatore told him that this would happen soon. He wasn’t under arrest, after all. At least not yet.

Bruno’s eyes danced in his face. He took in Barbara Havers and clearly wondered who she was and why she was there. Barbara Havers helpfully added to his paranoia by taking a notebook and a pencil from her capacious shoulder bag. She settled into her chair, rested her right ankle on her left knee in a way that would have made an Italian woman pray for her sartorial salvation, and jotted down something, a perfect nonexpression expression on her face. Bruno demanded to know who she was. “Non importa” was Salvatore’s reply. Except . . . Well . . . She was here on a matter of murder, signore.

Bruno said nothing although his gaze skittered from Salvatore to Barbara to Salvatore. Interesting that he did not ask the victim, Salvatore thought.

“Tell me about your employment with DARBA Italia,” Salvatore said to Bruno in a friendly fashion. “This is a company your family owns, no?” And when Bruno gave a head jerk of a nod, Salvatore said, “For which you, Daniele, are director of marketing, no?” A shrug in reply. Bruno’s fingers suggested he wanted to light another cigarette. That was good, Salvatore thought. Anxiety was always useful. “This company manufactures equipments that are used in medicine and in scientific research, I understand.” Another nod. A glance at Barbara. She was busily writing something, although God alone knew what since she wouldn’t have the first clue what he was asking the other man. “And I would suppose that whatever is sold must also be tested to ensure its quality.” Bruno licked his lips. “This is true, yes?” Salvatore asked. “There is testing, yes? Because I see from my list of employees—your brother Antonio gave this to us just”—he looked at his watch elaborately—“some three hours ago—that you have a quality control department that your brother Alessandro heads. Would Alessandro tell me that his job is to oversee the testing of the equipments you make at DARBA Italia, signore? Should I call him to ask him this question or do you know the answer yourself?”

Bruno seemed to evaluate all possibilities attendant to giving a verbal reply. His jug ears reddened, like overlarge rose petals attached to his skull. He finally affirmed that the products made by DARBA Italia were indeed tested by the department overseen by Alessandro Bruno. But when Salvatore asked him how they were tested, he claimed that he did not know.

“Then we will use our imaginations,” Salvatore told him. “Let us start first with your incubators. DARBA Italia makes incubators, no? I mean the sort of equipments used to grow things inside. Things that need a steady temperature and a sterile environment. DARBA Italia makes these, no?”

Here Bruno asked once again for his avvocato to be summoned. Salvatore said, “But why is there this need, my friend? Let me bring you a caffè instead. Or some water? A San Pellegrino perhaps? Or a Coca-Cola? Perhaps a glass of milk? You were given lunch, no? A panino from the lunch trolley would have been correct . . . You want nothing? Not even a caffè?”

Next to him, Barbara stirred on her chair. He heard her murmur, “Venga, venga,” and he stopped his lips from curving into a smile at her use of his language, however she meant it.

“No?” he said to Bruno. “So we proceed for now. It is only information we need from you, signore. There is, as I told you, a small matter of murder.”

“Non ho fatto niente,” Daniele Bruno said.

“Certo,” Salvatore assured him. No one, after all, was accusing him of doing anything. His answers to their questions were all that was sought. Certainly, he could answer questions about DARBA Italia, no?

Daniele didn’t ask why he—of all the brothers Bruno—had been brought to the questura to answer questions. It was always the small mistakes like these, Salvatore thought, that ultimately gave away the game.

“Let us suppose a bacteria is used to test the worth of an incubator. This is a possibility, no?” And when Bruno nodded, Salvatore said, “So this bacteria would be right there in Alessandro’s quality control department.” Bruno nodded. He glanced at Barbara. “I see,” Salvatore said. He made a great show of thinking about this. He got up, walked from one side of the room to the other. Then he opened the door and called out for Ottavia Schwartz. Could she bring him, he asked, all of the materials from his desktop, per favore, as he seemed to have left them behind. He closed the door and returned to the table. He sat, thought, nodded as if reaching a profound conclusion, and said, “A family business, no? This DARBA Italia.”

Sì, he had already confirmed this. It was a family business. His great-grandfather Antonio Bruno had started it in the day when medical equipment was confined to centrifuges and microscopes. His grandfather Alessandro Bruno had expanded it. His father Roberto had made it the jewel in his paternal crown, the inheritance of the brothers Bruno.

“Providing employment for all of you,” Salvatore said. “Va bene, Daniele. How nice this must be. To work among the members of your family. To see them daily. To stop by with an invitation to dinner. To chat about the nieces and nephews. This must be a very welcome kind of work.”

Daniele said this was so. Family, after all, was everything.

“I have two sisters. I know what you mean,” Salvatore told him. “La famiglia è tutto. You talk often with these brothers of yours? At home, at work, over caffè, over vino.” When Daniele said again this was so, Salvatore said, “At work and at play, eh? The brothers Bruno, everyone knows you at DARBA Italia. Everyone sees you and calls you by name.”

Daniele said that this was the case, but he pointed out that the company was not large and that most employees knew everyone there.

“Certo, certo,” Salvatore said. “You come, you go, they call out, ‘Ciao, Daniele. Come stanno Sua moglie e i Suoi figli?’ And you do the same. They are used to you. You are used to them. You are . . . Let us say you are a fixture there, like a piece of medical equipment yourself. You pop in to talk to Antonio one day, to Bernardo another, to Alessandro a third. On some days you pop in to talk to every one of your brothers.”

He loved his brothers, Daniele asserted. He did not think there was a crime in this.

“No, no,” Salvatore told him. “Love for one’s brothers . . . this is a gift.”

The door opened. All of them turned as Ottavia Schwartz came into the room. She passed the requested manila folders to Salvatore. She nodded, shot a glance at Daniele Bruno and another at Barbara Havers—particularly at her shoes—and left them. With much ceremony Salvatore set the folders on the table, but he did not open them. Bruno’s gaze flicked to them and then away.

“Allora,” Salvatore said expansively, “another question if you please. Back to this testing we were speaking of. I would assume that dangerous substances—of the sort that cause illness, death, disease?—are kept under close watch at DARBA Italia. Under lock and key perhaps? But safely away from anyone who might use them for mischief. Would that be true, my friend?” Bruno nodded. “And in order to test these equipments you make, I would assume more than one dangerous substance is used, eh? Because incubators . . . they differ, no? Some are used for this, some are used for that, and you at DARBA Italia make them all.”

Bruno’s gaze went to the folders again. He couldn’t control it, nerves not allowing him this small amount of discipline. He was, after all, not a bad man, Salvatore reasoned. He’d done something stupid, but stupidity was not a crime.

“Alessandro knows all these bacteria that are part of the testing of the equipments, vero? And you have no need to answer this, Signor Bruno, because my colleague has already ascertained this. He named all the bacteria for her. He was curious, naturally, about our questions. He said there are many controls in place that guard these substances so that they cannot be abused. Do you know what he means by that, signore? Me, I think it means that employees cannot put their hands upon these substances. Nor would they want to, eh? They are too dangerous, what is contained in the testing area. Exposed to them, someone could fall ill. At the extreme, someone could even die.”

Bruno’s forehead had begun to shine, and his lips had begun to dry. Salvatore imagined how thirsty he must be. Once again he offered something to drink. Bruno shook his head, one shake like a tremor seizing his brain.

“But one of the Bruno brothers . . . He comes and goes, and if he carefully takes some of the more dangerous bacteria, there is no one to notice. Perhaps he does it after hours. Perhaps early in the morning. And even if he is seen in Alessandro Bruno’s department, no one thinks about it because he is often there. The brothers live in and out of each other’s pockets, eh? So no one would think about his appearance in a place where he does not belong because he does belong there, because he belongs everywhere, because that is how things are at DARBA Italia. So for him to take this bacteria—and let us say his choice was . . . well, let us say E. coli—no one would notice. And he would be wise and not take all of it. And since it is in the incubator to reproduce itself, no?, whatever he takes will soon enough be replaced.”

Bruno lifted a hand to his mouth and squeezed his lips between thumb and fingers.

Salvatore said, “It was meant to look like a natural death. Indeed, he could not be sure death would even be the consequence although he was willing to try nearly anything, I expect. When there is so much hate—”

“He did not hate her,” Bruno said. “He loved her. She was . . . She did not die as you think she died. She had not been well. There were such difficulties with her pregnancy. She had been in hospital. She had been—”

“And yet the autopsy does not lie, signore. And a single terrible case like this one . . . ? A single case of E. coli does not happen, unless of course, it is deliberate.”

“He loved her! I did not know . . .”

“No? What did he tell you he needed this bacteria for?”

Bruno said, “You have proof of nothing. And I say nothing more to you.”

“This is, of course, your choice.” Salvatore opened the folders he’d asked for. He showed Daniele Bruno the photos of himself in earnest conversation with Lorenzo Mura. He showed him the autopsy report. He showed him the pictures of Angelina’s dead body. He said, “You must ask yourself if a woman who carries a child should die a painful death for any reason.”

“He loved her,” Daniele Bruno repeated. “And this—what you have—is evidence of nothing.”

“Just circumstances, sì. This I know,” Salvatore said. “Without a confession from someone, all I can lay before the magistrato is a set of circumstances that look suspicious but prove nothing. And yet, the magistrato is not a man who quails in the face of mere circumstances. You may not know this about Piero Fanucci, but you will.”

“I want my lawyer here,” Daniele Bruno said. “I say nothing more to you without my lawyer.”

Which, as it happened, was fine with Salvatore. He had Daniele Bruno where he wanted him. For the first time Piero Fanucci’s reputation for prosecuting based on virtually no evidence was actually a boon.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Daniele Bruno’s solicitor spoke English. He spoke, in fact, exactly like an American and with an American accent as well. He was called Rocco Garibaldi, and he’d learned the language from watching old American films. He’d only been in the US once, he told Barbara, laying over in Los Angeles for two days en route to Australia. He’d gone to Hollywood, he’d seen the imprints in cement of the hands and feet of long-dead movie stars, he’d read the names on the Walk of Fame . . . But mostly he had practised his language in order to see how well he’d done learning it.

Perfectly well, Barbara reckoned. The man sounded like a mixture of Henry Fonda and Humphrey Bogart. Obviously, he favoured the old black-and-whites.

After an interminable exchange of Italian between Garibaldi and Lo Bianco in the reception area of the questura, they all decamped to Lo Bianco’s office. Salvatore indicated that Barbara was to accompany them and she did so, although she hadn’t the first clue what was going on and Rocco Garibaldi, his perfect English notwithstanding, did not enlighten her. Once inside the office, the unimaginable happened in very short order. Salvatore showed Bruno’s lawyer the television film, followed by the list of employees from DARBA Italia, followed by what appeared to be a report that she highly suspected was the autopsy information from Angelina Upman’s death. What else could it be since Garibaldi read it, frowning and nodding meditatively?

All of this Barbara watched in a welter of nerves. She’d never seen a cop play his hand in this manner. She said, “Chief Inspector . . .” quietly and in appeal, then, “Salvatore . . .” then, “Chief Inspector,” although she didn’t know how the hell she could stop him aside from physically backing him into a corner, tying him to his desk chair, and gagging him.

She hadn’t the first clue about what had passed between Salvatore and Bruno in the interview room. She’d picked out various words among the Italian being flung about, but she hadn’t been able to put together much. She’d heard DARBA Italia over and over, as well as E. coli and the word incubatrice. She’d seen Daniele Bruno’s growing agitation, so she had some hopes that Salvatore was putting the thumbscrews to him. But throughout the interview, Salvatore had looked like a man in need of an afternoon siesta. The bloke was casual to the point of virtual unconsciousness. Something had to be going on beneath those hooded eyes of his, Barbara thought, but she had no idea what it was.

At the end of his reading, Garibaldi spoke again to Salvatore. This time, he brought Barbara into their conversation by saying, “I am asking the ispettore to allow me to see my client, Detective Sergeant Havers.” This, Barbara thought, was what a UK solicitor would have done in the first place, and just when she’d got to the point of accepting that things were different in Italy when it came to police work, they became more different still.

Salvatore made no move to take Garibaldi to his client in the interview room. Instead, he had Daniele Bruno brought to them. This was irregular but she was willing to wait to see how things would proceed from there. She got no comfort at all when within less than five minutes Garibaldi gave a formal little from-the-waist dip to Salvatore, said, “Grazie mille,” put his hand on Bruno’s arm, and led him from the premises. It happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to react other than to swing round to Salvatore and cry, “What the bloody hell?” to which he smiled and gave that Italian shrug of his.

She cried, “Why did you let him go? Why did you show him that TV film? Why did you tell him about DARBA Italia? Why did you give him . . . Oh, I know he would’ve got to see everything eventually, at least I think he would’ve because God knows I haven’t a clue what goes in this country, but for God’s sake you could have pretended . . . you could have suggested . . . But now he knows your hand—which, let’s face it, is bloody empty—and all he has to do is to tell Bruno to keep his mug plugged from now till the end of time because all we have is supposition anyway and unless you blokes practise some very strange form of justice over here no one is going to gaol based on supposition, and that includes Daniele Bruno. Oh, bloody hell why don’t you speak English, Salvatore?”

To all of this Salvatore nodded sympathetically. For a moment, Barbara thought he actually understood, if not from her words then from her tone. But then, maddeningly, he said, “Aspetti, Barbara.” And with a smile, “Vorrebbe un caffè?”

“No, I do not want a cup of bloody coffee!” she fairly shouted at him.

He smiled at this. “Lei capisce!” he cried. “Va bene!”

To which she said with sagging shoulders, “Just tell me why you let him go, for God’s sake. All he has to do is ring up Lorenzo Mura and we’re cooked. You see that, don’t you?”

He gazed at her, as if some kind of understanding would come from a close reading of her eyes. She found herself getting hot under his scrutiny. Finally, she said, “Oh, sod it,” and dug her packet of Players from her shoulder bag. She took one of the fags and offered the packet to him.

“Sod . . . it,” he repeated softly.

Their cigarettes lit, he nodded towards the window of his office. She thought he intended them to blow the smoke from it into the afternoon air. But instead he said, “Guardi,” and he indicated the pavement below them. There she saw Garibaldi and Bruno had emerged from the questura and were strolling along without a care.

“And this is supposed to reassure me?” she demanded.

He said, “Un attimo, Barbara.” And then, “Eccolo.” She followed the direction of his hooded gaze to see a man in an orange baseball cap following some thirty yards behind them. “Giorgio Simione,” Salvatore murmured. “Giorgio mi dirà dovunque andranno.”

Barbara felt only a small measure of relief at the sight of Giorgio following the other two men since all they needed to do was get into a car and that was that when it came to Bruno disappearing or getting in touch with Lorenzo Mura. But Salvatore seemed absolutely and preternaturally bloody assured of everything going along according to some sort of inner plan he had. Barbara finally decided there was nothing for it but to trust the man, although she hated to do so.

They spent a half hour waiting. Salvatore made a few unintelligible phone calls: one to mamma, another to someone called Birgit, and a third to someone called Cinzia. Real ladies’ man, she reckoned. It probably had to do with those hooded eyes of his.

When Rocco Garibaldi appeared at the doorway to Salvatore’s office, Barbara was both relieved and surprised. He came alone, which caused her some serious consternation, but this time when he spoke to Salvatore, he showed some degree of mercy by telling Barbara what he was saying.

His client Daniele Bruno was back in the interview room. He was now ready and willing to tell Ispettore Lo Bianco everything he knew about this matter under investigation because he was deeply grieved by the death of an innocent woman who was carrying a child. That he now wished to speak had nothing at all to do with any fear he had for his own neck, and he had insisted that Garibaldi make this clear to the polizia. He would tell everything he knew and everything he had done because what he did not know at any time was how Lorenzo Mura intended to use the E. coli that he gave to him. As long as Ispettore Lo Bianco could promise to be satisfied on this one point, they could proceed. But it would be information in exchange for release: total immunity for Signor Bruno.

Salvatore appeared to think about this at great length, as far as Barbara could tell. He jotted a few notes on a legal pad, and he paced to the window where he made a phone call from his mobile in a very hushed voice. For all Barbara could tell he was ringing somewhere for takeaway Chinese, and when he at last finished the call, she had a suspicion she wasn’t far from the truth.

More Italian ensued during which she caught E. coli mentioned and the word magistrato dozens of times. So was Lorenzo Mura’s name. So was Bruno’s and Angelina Upman’s.

From this, all Barbara could work out was that a deal was being reached. Garibaldi said to her, “We have an understanding, Detective Sergeant,” at which point he stood and shook Lo Bianco’s hand. But what the understanding was remained a mystery until Salvatore made yet another phone call, followed by their return to the interview room where Daniele Bruno sat expressionlessly at the table, clearly waiting to hear about whatever deal had been struck between Garibaldi and Lo Bianco.

The deal became apparent very soon. A knock on the door heralded a police technician, and he carried with him a large plastic container of equipment, which turned out to be of an electronic nature. This he began to unpack upon the table as the rest of them watched.

He began a lengthy explanation to Bruno of what comprised all the items on the table, but in this instance, Barbara required no translation. She recognised them well enough along with the deal that Lo Bianco and Garibaldi had worked out.

Daniele Bruno would tell them everything. That much was certain. But he would also meet with Lorenzo Mura, and when he did so, he would wear a wire.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

The clatter of feet on a stone floor and cries of “Papà! Papà!” greeted them when they returned to Torre Lo Bianco that evening. A little girl was running from the direction of the kitchen, and she was followed by a boy not much older, and both of them were followed by Hadiyyah. The little girl—whom Salvatore called Bianca—began chattering excitedly, and it came to Barbara that she was speaking about her. She concluded whatever she was saying by speaking to Barbara directly with “Mi piacciono le Sue scarpe rosse,” to which Salvatore fondly told her that “La signora non parla italiano, Bianca.”

Bianca giggled, covered her mouth with her hands, and said to Barbara, “I like the shoes red of you.”

Hadiyyah laughed at this and corrected her with “No! It’s ‘I like your red shoes,’” after which she said to Barbara, “Her mummy speaks English, but sometimes Bianca mixes the words up ’cause she also speaks Swedish.”

“No problem, kiddo,” Barbara told her. “Her English is bloody good compared to my Italian.” And to Salvatore she added, “That’s right, eh?”

He smiled and said, “Certo,” and gestured her towards the kitchen. There he greeted his mother who was in the midst of making dinner. It looked as if she was expecting a horde of foot soldiers. There were large trays of drying pasta on the worktops, a huge vat bubbling with sauce on the stove, the aroma of some kind of roasting meat coming from the oven, an enormous salad standing in the middle of the table, and green beans sitting in a large stone sink. Salvatore kissed his mother hello, saying, “Buonasera, Mamma,” which she waved off with a scowl. But the look she cast him was one of fondness, and she said to Barbara, “Spero che abbia fame.” She nodded at the food.

Barbara thought, Fame? Famous? No. That couldn’t be right. Then she twigged. Famished. She said, “Too bloody right.”

Salvatore repeated, “‘Too bloody right,’” and then to his mother, “Sì, Barbara ha fame. E anch’io, Mamma.”

Mamma nodded vigorously. All was right with her world, it seemed, as long as anyone entering her kitchen was hungry.

Salvatore took Barbara’s arm then and indicated she should come with him. The children stayed behind with Mamma in the kitchen as Barbara followed Salvatore up the stairs, where a sitting room comprised the floor above them. At one side of the room, an old sideboard tilted on the uneven stone floor. There, Salvatore poured himself a drink: Campari and soda. He offered Barbara the same.

She was strictly an ale or lager girl, but that didn’t appear to be on offer. So she went for the Campari and soda and hoped for the best.

He indicated the stairs and began to climb. She followed as before. On the next floor was his mamma’s bedroom along with a bathroom making a bulbous extension out from the ancient tower. The next floor held his own room, the floor above it the room she shared with Hadiyyah. It came to Barbara at this point that she and Hadiyyah were sharing the room belonging to Salvatore’s two children, and she said to him, “Sod it, Salvatore. We’re sleeping in your kids’ room, aren’t we? Where does that leave them?” He nodded and smiled at this. He said, “Sod it, sì,” and continued upward. She said, “It would help if you spoke better English, mate,” and he said, “English, sì,” and still he climbed.

They came out at last upon a rooftop. Here Salvatore said, “Il mio posto preferito, Barbara,” and indicated with a sweeping gesture the entirety of the place. It was a rooftop garden with a tree at its centre, surrounded on all sides by an ancient stone bench and shrubbery. At the edge of the roof, a parapet ran along all four sides of the tower, and to this parapet Salvatore walked, his drink in his hand. Barbara joined him there.

The sun was setting, and it cast a golden glow upon the rooftops of Lucca. He pointed out various areas to her, various buildings that he quietly identified by name as he turned her here and there. She understood not a thing he said, only that he spoke of his love for this place. And there was, she admitted, a lot to love. From the top of the tower, she could see the twisted, cobbled medieval streets of the town, the hidden gardens that were barely visible, the ovoid shape of the repurposed amphitheatre, the dozens of churches that dominated the individual tiny neighbourhoods. And always the wall, the amazing wall. In the evening, with a cool breeze now blowing across the great alluvial plain, it was, she had to admit it, like a slice of paradise.

She said to him, “It’s gorgeous. I’ve never even been out of the UK, and I never thought I’d ever be standing in Italy. But I’ll say this: If someone or something drags one out of one’s local chippy and into a foreign country, Lucca’s not a bad spot to end up.” She hoisted her glass to him and to the place. “Bloody beautiful,” she said.

He said, “Bloody right.”

She chuckled at this. “Bene, mate. I think you could learn to speak the lingo without that much trouble.”

“Sod it,” he said happily.

She laughed.