Just One Evil Act

begin looking at anyone else who might have seen a doctor or ended up in casualty with similar symptoms. But as I said, no one else has been ill. Not before Angelina. Not after Angelina.”

“I still don’t see how that’s such a bad thing. I don’t see why Azhar’s been detained unless . . .” Again that steady gaze upon her. She read the grim nature of it, but she read something else, and she wanted more than anything in her life not to be able to understand that look. She said lightly, “Oh, I see. They’re keeping Azhar in Lucca because they don’t want him to pass it on to someone else, I expect. If he’s got it in him—like dormant or something—and he brings it back to London . . . I mean, he could be a modern-day Typhoid Mary, eh?”

The look on Lynley’s face was unchanging. He said, “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not a virus. It’s a bacteria. It’s—if you will—a microbe. A quite dangerous microbe. You do see where this is leading, don’t you?”

She felt her face going numb. “No. I . . . I don’t, actually.” All the time, however, her brain was pounding inside her skull, a chant of Oh my God, Oh my God.

Lynley said, “If no source can be found at the fattoria itself or in the food supply that Angelina had access to both there and in Lucca and anywhere else she might have gone and if she remains the sole person infected, then where this all leads is to someone putting his hands on a virulent strain of the bacteria and putting it into Angelina’s system. Through her food is the most obvious means.”

“But why would someone . . . ?”

“Because someone wanted her dangerously ill. Someone wanted her dead. You and I both know that’s where all this is leading, Barbara. That’s why Azhar has been asked to turn in his passport.”

“You can’t possibly think that Azhar . . . How the bloody hell was he supposed to do it?”

“I think we also both know the answer to that.”

She pushed away from the table although she wasn’t sure where she was intending to go. She said, “He has to be told. He’s under suspicion. He has to be told.”

“I expect he knows already.”

“Then I’ve got to . . . We’ve got to . . .” She brought her knuckles to her mouth. She considered everything: from the moment Angelina Upman had taken her daughter from London the previous November to where they were now with Angelina dead. She refused to believe what was lying in front of her like a dead dog on the path she was hiking. She said, “No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I have to—”

“Listen to me, Barbara. What you have to do now is to take yourself out of this at once. If you don’t do that, I can’t help you. Frankly, I don’t think I can help you as it is although I’m trying.”

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

Lynley leaned forward. “You can’t think Isabelle is unaware of what’s been going on, of what you’ve been up to, of whom you’ve seen, of where you’ve been. She knows it all, Barbara. And if you don’t begin walking the straight and narrow this very moment—here, now, and right in this room—the jeopardy you’ll be facing could cost you everything. Am I being clear? Do you understand?”

“Azhar didn’t kill her. He had no reason because they’d made peace and they were going to share Hadiyyah and . . .” It was Lynley’s face that cut off her words. Even beyond what she herself knew about Azhar and about what he’d done to bring about his daughter’s kidnapping and to position himself to be there in Italy when she was “found,” it was the compassionate sympathy in Lynley’s face that did her in. All she could say was “Really. He couldn’t.”

“If that’s the case,” Lynley replied, “Salvatore Lo Bianco will sort it all out.”

“And in the meantime . . . What the bloody hell do you suggest I do?”

“I’ve made the suggestion: get back to work.”

“That’s what you would do?”

“Yes,” he said steadily. “In your position, that’s what I would do.”

She knew he was lying when he said it, though. For the one thing Thomas Lynley would never do was desert a friend.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore Lo Bianco received the request for a meeting not from il Pubblico Ministero himself but from Piero Fanucci’s secretary. She rang his mobile and brusquely instructed him to go to the Orto Botanico, where he would find the magistrato waiting for him. “He wishes to have a private word with you, Ispettore,” was how she put it. “Now?” was how Salvatore responded. “Si, adesso,” she replied. Signor Fanucci had arrived at work that morning in something of a state, and a few phone calls both made and received by him had heightened that state. It was her suggestion that Ispettore Lo Bianco leave at once for the botanical gardens.

Salvatore swore but he cooperated. The fact that phone calls had been made by Fanucci and received by him suggested he was on the trail of something. The fact that he had followed these phone calls with a demand for Salvatore’s presence suggested he was on the trail of what Salvatore himself was up to.

The botanical gardens were inside the wall of the old city, on its southeast edge. In the month of May, they were flourishing, and where flowers had been planted, they were gloriously abloom. Very few people were within the garden’s walls, however. At this hour, the Lucchese were themselves at work, while tourists generally stuck to visiting the churches and palazzi.

Salvatore found Fanucci admiring a mass of wisteria, which overhung an ancient stone trough that was filled with water lilies. He turned from the sight of branches dipping low with clusters of purple flowers as Salvatore approached him on the gravel path.

Piero was smoking a thick cigar, newly lit. He regarded Salvatore with an expression that managed to mix personal sorrow with professional anger. The anger, Salvatore thought, was real. The sorrow, he reckoned, was not.

“Talk to me, Topo” comprised Fanucci’s opening remarks. He flicked some ash from his cigar onto the path. He ground it into the sassolini with his foot. “You and the lovely Cinzia Ruocco have been meeting, no? You have an earnest talk with her in Piazza San Michele, and why do I suspect the two of you discuss matters from which you were told to step away? What has this to do with, Salvatore?”

Salvatore said, “Of what importance is Cinzia’s speaking with me? If I wish to meet a friend for a caffe—”

Fanucci held up a minatory finger. “Stai attento,” he snapped.

Salvatore did not appreciate the threat implied in being spoken to in such a way. He’d had quite enough of Fanucci. He felt his temper rise. He sought to control it. He said, “I see the unfortunate death of this woman Angelina Upman as suspicious. My job is to look at things when they seem suspicious. To me, there is a connection here.”

“Between what, may I ask?”

“I think you know.”

“Between the kidnapping of this woman’s child and her own death? Bah. Che sciocchezza! ”

“If that is the case, then the only fool will be me. So what difference does it make that I speak to Cinzia about how this unfortunate woman died? I would think it pleases you anyway, to have her dead.”

Fanucci’s face reddened. His lips moved round the cigar and Salvatore could see his teeth clamp down. He, too, was trying to hold on to his temper. It was, he knew, only a matter of moments before one of them let loose.

“What is that supposed to mean, my friend?” Fanucci asked.

“It means that now this story of her death takes over the headlines. Poor Mamma of Kidnap Girl Dead in Her Sleep. And this turn of events directs the spotlight away from the kidnapping and away from Carlo Casparia at long last. It means that now you can release poor Carlo back into his life, which—as we both know, Piero—you were going to have to do quite soon anyway.”

Fanucci’s eyes narrowed. “I know nothing of the sort.”