family met for lunch. On nice days, such as this one, that lunch was served in the garden just a portion of which he’d been able to glimpse from the street.
It was to this place—to this house and garden—that everyone would assume at first that the child had gone. It was a natural conclusion for people to reach, and he could easily imagine how things would play out. Papa would turn round and see she wasn’t immediately within sight, but he would actually think nothing of it. For the house was close, and in that house standing within its beautiful garden lived a boy just the age of the child. She called him Cugino Gugli, which she pronounced Goo-lee because her Italian was limited and she could not yet say Guglielmo. But the boy did not seem to mind since he could not pronounce her name either, and anyway their bond was of calcio only. And one did not need a real language for bonding over calcio. One only needed the willingness to kick a football towards a goal.
She wouldn’t fear him when he approached her. She didn’t know him, but she would have been taught that the strangers to fear were the ones with lost animals in need of finding, the ones with kittens in a box—just behind that parked car, cara bambina—the ones who gave off the stench of lust and longing, the ill-dressed, the foul-breathed, the unbathed, the ones with something to show you or give you or a special place to take you where a very special treat was waiting for you . . . But he was none of this, and he had none of this. What he did have was his looks—la faccia d’un angelo, as his mamma liked to say —along with a message. Plus, he was to say a single word and that word was going to seal the deal. It was a word he’d never heard before in any of the three languages he spoke, but he’d been told it would convince the child of the veracity of the tale he would tell her. Hearing it, she would understand him perfectly. This was why he—and not someone else—had been chosen for the job at hand.
Because he was good at his job, he’d taken time to gather the information he needed to carry off the assignment. Most families, he knew, kept to routines. It made life easier for them. So a month of careful watching, surreptitious following, and copious note-taking had told him what was required of him. Once he’d been given the date for action, he was ready.
They would park their Lancia outside the city wall, in the parcheggio near Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. From there, they would part ways for two hours. Mamma would head towards Via della Cittadella, where the yoga studio was. Papa and Bambina would stroll towards and through Porta Elisa. Mamma’s walk was the longer one, but she carried only her yoga mat and she liked the exercise. Papa and Bambina each carried one borsa della spesa, indicating that at the end of their time in the mercato, they’d be burdened with their purchases within those bags.
At this point, he knew them all so well that he could have described the likely clothes that Mamma would wear and he could have named the colours of the borse that Papa and Bambina would carry. His would be green and made of webbing. Hers would be orange and of solid material. They were nothing if not creatures of habit.
On the day set for everything to happen, he established himself in the parcheggio early. This was his eighth time following the family, and he was assured that nothing was going to disrupt their normal routine. He was in no hurry. For when the job was done, it had to be done perfectly and in such a way that several hours would pass before anyone had the slightest idea that something might be wrong.
He’d left his own vehicle in the parcheggio in Viale Guglielmo Marconi. He’d arrived several hours before the mercato opened in order to capture a parking bay that gave him quick access to the exit. He’d bought a large piece of focaccia alle cipolle on his way to Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. After he ate, he chewed on breath mints to rid his mouth of the scent of the onions. He took a pianta stradale from the shoulder bag he carried, and he unfolded this on the boot of a car, ostensibly looking for a route. He would be just another tourist in Lucca to anyone who saw him.
The family arrived ten minutes behind schedule, but he didn’t consider this a problem. They parted as always just inside the gate, with Mamma walking off to her yoga experience and Papa and Bambina heading inside the tourist office where there was a WC. They were innately practical people as well as being utterly consistent. First things first and besides, there were no toilets once one began to wander through the mercato.
He lingered outside, across the street, waiting for them. It was a glorious day, sunny but not yet blazing hot the way it would be in three months’ time. Trees on the top of the great wall behind him bore new, freshly unfurling leaves, and these were shading the mercato at the moment, rustling in a soft breeze as well. As the morning continued, the sun would fall brightly on the stalls that lined the lane. As the day grew older, the bright light would move from the merchants onto the ancient buildings across from them.
He lit a cigarette and smoked with great pleasure. He’d nearly finished when Papa and Bambina left the tourist office and set off into the mercato.
He followed them. In the times he’d spent tailing them from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo, he’d come to know where and when they would stop, and he’d been careful about selecting the point at which he knew the time would have arrived for him to act. For just within the city wall at Porta San Jacopo, the far end of the mercato—a musician played. Here Bambina always stopped to listen, with a two-euro coin in her hand to offer the man at some point during his performance. She waited for Papa to join her there. But today that was not going to happen. She would be gone when Papa finally arrived.
The mercato was, as always, crowded. He remained unnoticed. Where Papa and Bambina stopped, he stopped, too. They bought fruit and a selection of vegetables. Then, Papa bought fresh pasta while Bambina danced over to the kitchen goods and sang out, “She wanted a potato peeler.” He himself chose a cheese grater and then it was on to the scarves. They were cheap but colourful, and Bambina always tried new ways of tying one round her pretty little neck. On and on it went, with an extended stay at Tutti per 1 Euro, where everything from buckets to hair ornaments was sold. An examination of shoes neatly arranged in rows and available for trying on if one’s feet were clean led to intimate apparel for le donne and from that to sunglasses and leather cinture. Papa tried on one of these, weaving it into the loops of his faded blue jeans. He shook his head and handed it back. By the time he had done so, Bambina had already gone on ahead.
It was where the severed head of a pig announced the stall of the macellaio and his display of meats that Bambina skipped onward towards Porta San Jacopo. At this point, he knew, things would follow an unbreaking pattern, so he removed the five-euro note that he had folded carefully into his pocket.
The musician was where he always stood, some twenty yards from Porta San Jacopo. The man was, as usual, gathering a crowd as he played Italian folksongs on his accordion. He had a dancing poodle as a companion, and he accompanied his music and the dog by singing into a microphone clipped onto the collar of his blue shirt. It was the same shirt he wore every week, tattered along the cuffs.
He waited through two songs. Then he saw his moment. Bambina dodged forward to put her customary two-euro coin in the collection basket, and he moved forward for the moment when she would return to the other listeners.
“Scusa,” he said to her once she’d rejoined the crowd and stood in front of him. “Per favore, glielo puoi dare . . . ?” He nodded at his hand. The five-euro note was folded neatly in half. It lay across a greeting card that he had removed from his jacket pocket.
She frowned. A tiny part of her lip was sucked into her mouth. She looked up at him.
He indicated the collection basket with a tilt of his head. “Per favore,” he repeated with a smile. And then, “Anche . . . leggi questo. Non importa ma . . .” He let the rest hang there, with another smile. The card he handed her had no envelope. It would be easy enough to open and to read the message within, as he’d asked her to do.
And then he added what he knew would convince her. It was a single word and her eyes widened in surprise. At that point he went on in English, the words formed in such a way that their derivation was something she would not fail to recognise:
“I shall be happy to wait on the other side of Porta San Jacopo. You have absolutely nothing to fear.”
