“Sod it,” he said happily.
She laughed.
18 May
LUCCA
TUSCANY
The ringing of her mobile phone awakened Barbara. She grabbed it up quickly and glanced at the other bed in the room. Hadiyyah was sleeping peacefully, her hair tumbling on the pillow around her. Barbara gave a look at the incoming number and sighed.
“Mitchell,” she said by way of greeting.
“Why’re you whispering?” was his hello.
“Because I don’t want to wake Hadiyyah, and what the bloody hell time is it?”
“Early.”
“I twigged.”
“I knew you were quick. Get outside. We’ve things to discuss.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Where I always am: across the piazza at the cafe, which, by the way, is not yet open and I could do with a coffee. So if Signora Vallera wouldn’t be crushed by the thought of your stealing out into the dawn with a cup for me—”
“We’re not in the
“
“Untwist them. We’re still in Lucca. But really, you can’t think I’d still be at the
“Well, they’re here. Tucked up in the San Luca Palace Hotel, by the way.”
“How d’you know?”
“It’s my job to know. Fact is, it’s my job to know all sorts of things, which is one of the many reasons I suggest you trot over here to the piazza . . . No, better yet. I need a coffee. I’ll meet you in Piazza del Carmine in twenty minutes. That should give you enough time to perform your morning toilette.”
“Mitchell, I have no clue where Piazza whatever-you-called-it is.”
“Del Carmine, Barb. And isn’t that why you’re a cop? To suss things out? Well, do a little sussing.”
“And if I don’t wish to accommodate you?”
“Then I just hit send.”
Barbara felt the grip of pain in her stomach. She said, “All right.”
“Wise decision.” He ended the call.
She dressed in a hurry. She looked at the time. Not even six in the morning but there was mercy in that. No one in Torre Lo Bianco appeared to be stirring.
Shoes in hand, she began a slow descent of the stairs. She worried that there might be something complicated about getting out of the tower, but it turned out to be a straightforward affair. Major key in the lock, but it rotated without a sound. She was out in the narrow street soon enough, wondering what direction she should take to find Piazza del Carmine.
She set off arbitrarily, just seeking another human presence in the cool early morning. She found it in the persons of an unshaven father-and-son duo trundling two large wooden carts of vegetables along a narrow path between a church and a walled garden. She said to them, lifting her shoulders quizzically and looking hopeful, “Piazza del Carmine?”
They looked at each other. “
It wasn’t long before she found herself in the assigned meeting place, a less-than-scenic piazza that accommodated a disreputable-looking restaurant, an unopened supermarket, and a large mildewed white building of indeterminate age with
She found Mitch Corsico without any trouble. She just tracked the scent of coffee to the far side of the space and there he was, leaning on a narrow counter built into a wall, a few feet away from an enterprising African adolescent selling takeaway coffee from a shopping trolley.
Corsico saluted her with his cardboard cup, saying, “I knew you had the right stuff.”
She scowled and went for some coffee herself. It teetered just north of utterly undrinkable, but times were desperate. She took it to where Corsico was standing, after throwing a few coins into the African’s palm and hoping they would do.
“And . . . ?” she said to Corsico.
“And the question is why didn’t you phone?”
Barbara thought for a moment, wondering how far she could push this. She said, “Look, Mitchell. When there’s something to phone you about, I’ll phone you.”
He evaluated the expression on her face, but he didn’t go for it, fondly shaking his head at her. “Doesn’t work that way,” he said and slurped his coffee. He turned his laptop so that she could see the screen.
“How the hell did you get them to talk?” she asked him, the only thing she could think of as her mind raced with possible ways to appease him.
“Had a chinwag with Lorenzo at the
“Lucky,” she said.
“It had nothing to do with luck. So where did Lo Bianco stow you?”
She narrowed her eyes in response but said nothing.
He took this on board. He gave a martyred sigh. He said, “You shouldn’t have let him settle your account with Signora Vallera. She gets up early, by the way. A knock on the door and there she was, and
“All right, all right,” she told him. “Yes, it was
“Name, Barb.”
“Not yet, Mitch.”