Just One Evil Act

Barbara, “D’you get to come home as well?”

Barbara told her that indeed she did, and in very short order, they’d taken their bags to where Salvatore had left his car and they were on their way to the questura. At every moment, Barbara looked for some sign that Mitch Corsico’s page-one story had somehow broken in Italy. She also looked for the Upmans on every street corner and behind every bush as they coursed the route along the viale outside the town wall.

At the questura, things moved rapidly and Barbara was immensely grateful for this. Passports were returned to Azhar, Hadiyyah was left in the company of Ottavia Schwartz, and the buxom translator was called in so that Azhar might hear Salvatore’s explanation of how Angelina Upman had come to die of ingesting a devastating strain of E. coli. He covered his mouth with his hand as he listened, and the pain in his eyes was evident. He pointed out that, had he been the one to drink the affected wine, it was likely he would have survived the subsequent illness. But because it had been Angelina who’d drunk it, Angelina who was already unwell with her pregnancy, things had been misinterpreted by her doctors until it was far too late. “I wished her no ill,” he concluded. “I would have you know that, Inspector.”

“Plenty of ill was wished towards you, Azhar,” Barbara put in. “And I wager you wouldn’t have gone to hospital had you got ill. You would’ve thought you’d picked up a bug: on the flight, in the water, whatever, eh? You’d’ve got over the first bout with this stuff, but then the next step would’ve been a worse bout and losing your kidneys and probably dying as well. Lorenzo might not have known all that, but it wasn’t important to him. Making you suffer was what he had in mind, with the hope that making you suffer would lead to making you gone from Angelina’s life.”

Salvatore listened to the translation of all this. Barbara cast a look in his direction, saw once again the solemnity of his expression, but also read the great kindness in his eyes. She knew that there was one more thing that had to be said in advance of Corsico’s damning kidnapping story breaking in the Italian papers.

She said to Azhar, “C’n you give me a moment with . . .” And she nodded in Salvatore’s direction.

He said of course, that he would go to Hadiyyah, that they would be waiting, and he left her alone with Salvatore and the translator to whom Barbara said, “Please tell him I’m sorry. Tell him, please, it was nothing personal, anything I did. It wasn’t meant as a betrayal or as using him or anything like that, although I bloody well know it looked that way. Tell him . . . See, I have this London journalist on my back—he’s the cowboy bloke Salvatore saw?—and he was here to help me help Azhar. See, Azhar’s my neighbour back in London and when Angelina took Hadiyyah from him, he was . . . Salvatore, he was so broken. And I couldn’t leave him like that, broken. Hadiyyah’s really all he has left in England in the way of family so I had to help him. And all of this . . . everything that’s gone on? Can you tell him it was all part of helping Azhar? That’s all, really. Because, see, this journalist has another story that he’s running and . . . that’s all that I can say, really. That’s all. That and I hope he understands.”

Salvatore listened to the translation, which came nearly as rapidly as Barbara herself was speaking. He didn’t look at the translator, though. He remained as he had been before, with his gaze on Barbara’s face.

At the end, there was silence. Barbara found that she couldn’t blame him for not replying and, indeed, that she didn’t actually want him to reply. For he was going to want to hunt her down and strangle her when he finally discovered what her next move had been, so to have his forgiveness in advance of betraying him another time . . . ? She didn’t know how she could contend with that anyway.

She said, “So I’ll say thanks and good-bye. We c’n take a taxi to the airport or—”

Salvatore interrupted. He spoke quietly and with what sounded like either kindness or resignation. She waited until he had finished and then said to the translator, “What?”

“The ispettore says that it has been a pleasure to know you,” the translator replied.

“He said more than that. He went on a bit. What else did he say?”

“He said that he will arrange your transport to the airport.”

She nodded. But then she felt compelled to add, “That’s it, then?”

The translator looked at Salvatore and then back at Barbara. A soft smile curved her lips. “No. Ispettore Lo Bianco has said that any man on earth would find himself lucky to have had in his life such a friend as you.”

Barbara wasn’t prepared. She felt the claw of emotion at her throat. She finally was able to say, “Ta. Thank you. Grazie, Salvatore. Grazie and ciao.”

“Niente,” Salvatore said. “Arrivederci, Barbara Havers.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore waited, patiently as always, in the anteroom of Piero Fanucci’s office. This time, though, it was not because Piero was forcing him to wait or because someone was being berated by il Pubblico Ministero inside his inner sanctum. Rather, it was because Piero had not yet returned from his lunch. He’d taken it later than usual, Salvatore had discovered, because of a lengthy meeting with three avvocati representing the family of Carlo Casparia. They had come on the not small matter of false arrest, false imprisonment, interrogations without an avvocato present, coerced confessions, and dragging the family name through the mud. Unless these issues were resolved to the satisfaction of la famiglia Casparia, il Pubblico Ministero was going to face an investigation into his investigation and have no doubt about that.

Il drago had evidently done his usual bit upon hearing this unveiled threat. He’d breathed the roaring flames of segreto investigativo at the placid lawyers. He was under no obligation to tell them anything, he declared. Judicial secrecy ruled the day, not their pitiful claims on behalf of the Casparias.

At this, the avvocati were not impressed. If that was how he wished to proceed, they informed the magistrato, so be it. They left the rest of their remarks hanging in the air. He would be hearing again from them soon.

All of this Salvatore had from Piero’s secretary. She’d been present to take notes, which she was more than happy to share with him. It was her intention to outlive Piero in her position as secretary. Her hope had long been that outliving Piero meant watching him be summarily dismissed from his job. That looked highly probable now.

Salvatore evaluated all the information as he waited. He put it onto the scales in which he had been weighing his next move since the departure of Barbara Havers and her London neighbours. He had felt unaccountably sad to see the dishevelled British woman depart. He knew he should have remained furious at her, but he’d found that fury was not among the feelings he had. Instead, he’d felt compelled to take her part. So when the Upmans arrived at the questura later that morning, he’d dealt with them by not dealing with them at all. Their granddaughter was with her father, he told them through the translator. As far as he knew, they both were now gone from Italy. He could be of no help to the signore and the signora. He could not assist them in wresting Hadiyyah from the custody of her father. “Mi dispiace e ciao,” he said to them. If they cared to know more—especially in regards to their daughter Angelina—they might wish to speak to Aldo Greco, whose English was superb. Or, if they had no wish to learn the truth about Angelina’s death, then they, too, could return to London. There, and not here, they could take up the matter of who would have custody of little Hadiyyah.

Signor Upman’s subsequent mouth-frothing had done little to move Salvatore. He left the man standing alongside his wife in Reception, where Salvatore had met them.

Then had come the phone call from the telegiornalista who had supplied Barbara Havers and the cowboy from London with the film taken on the day that Lorenzo Mura had placed the tainted glass of wine in front of Taymullah Azhar. This man spoke of a story breaking this very morning in a London giornale, one that had come to him firsthand from the reporter whose work it was in a tabloid called The Source. It involved the careful plan to kidnap Hadiyyah, one that had her father as its engineer. Names, dates, exchanges of money, alibis created, individuals hired . . . Was Ispettore Lo Bianco going to pursue this? the telegiornalista enquired.