Just One Evil Act

saw nothing.”

“As of yet,” Ardery said. “They can’t all have been talked to at this point. How long has the child been gone?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I wouldn’t think I’d need to explain that to you.”

“Bloody hell, you know the first twenty-four hours are crucial. And now it’s been more than forty-eight.”

“And I assure you, the Italian police know that as well.”

“They’re telling Angelina—”

“Sergeant.” Isabelle’s voice had been firm but not unsympathetic despite her words. Now, however, it had an edge. “I’ve told you the facts. You seem to think I have power in this matter when I don’t. When a foreign country—”

“What part of this don’t you bloody understand?” Barbara cut in. “She’s been snatched in public. She might be dead by now.”

“She might well be. And if that’s the case—”

“Listen to yourself!” Barbara shrieked. “This is a kid we’re talking about. A kid I know. And you’re declaring ‘she might well be’ like you’re talking about a cake left too long in the oven. It might well be burnt. The cheese might well be mouldy. The milk might well be sour.”

Isabelle surged to her feet. “You damn well control yourself,” she said. “You’re too involved by half. Even if the embassy rang up and said the Met’s presence was wanted at once, you’d be the last officer I’d consider sending. You’ve no objectivity at all, and if you don’t understand that objectivity above everything else is crucial when it comes to a crime, then you need to get back to wherever you learned your policing skills and learn them again.”

“And what if something like this happened to one of your boys?” Barbara demanded. “Just how objective would you manage to be?”

“You’ve gone quite mad” was the conclusion to it all, plus the order to get back to work.

Barbara stormed from Ardery’s office. For the moment, she couldn’t even recall what the work was that she was supposed to get back to. She flung herself in the direction of her desk, where her computer’s screen attempted to remind her, but she could think of nothing and would be good for nothing unless and until she got herself to Italy.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco had an evening ritual that he adhered to as often as he was able to be at home for dinner. With a cup of caffe corretto in his hand, he climbed to the very top of the tower in which he and his mamma lived, and there in the perfectly square rooftop garden he drank in peace and watched the sunset. He enjoyed sunsets and how they caressed the ancient buildings of his city. But more than sunsets, he enjoyed the time away from his mamma. At seventy-six years old and in possession of a very bad hip, she no longer climbed to the top of Torre Lo Bianco, the tower that had been his family home for generations. The last two flights of stairs were narrow and metal, and a misstep on them would finish her off. Salvatore didn’t want to endanger his mamma even though he hated living with her as much as she loved having him at home once again.

Having her Salvatore at home meant she’d been right, and his mamma loved being right more than she loved being content or even being in a state of grace. She’d worn black since the day he’d brought home the Swedish girl he’d met eighteen years earlier in Piazza Grande, and to this maddening choice of telegraphing her displeasure—she’d even worn black to their wedding—she had now taken to carrying rosary beads every moment of the day, and she’d been fingering them piously since the evening he’d revealed that he and Birgit were divorcing. He was supposed to think that his mamma was praying for Birgit to come to her senses and ask her husband to return to the family home in Borgo Giannotti, just beyond the city wall. But the truth of the matter was that she was fulfilling her promise to the Virgin: Bring an end to this blasphemous marriage of my son to quella puttana straniera, and I will spend the rest of my life honouring you with a daily rosary. Or five. Or six. Salvatore didn’t know how many rosaries were actually involved, but he imagined there were plenty of them. He wanted to point out to her that the Catholic Church didn’t recognise divorce, but there was a part of him—good son that he was—that simply didn’t want to spoil her fun.

Salvatore took his caffe to one side of the tower garden and spent a moment inspecting his tomato plants. Already they were showing their fruit, which would ripen beautifully here so high above the city. He looked from them in the direction of Borgo Giannotti. He had things on his mind and one of them was Birgit.

His mother had been right, of course. Birgit had been a mistake on every front. Opposites might indeed attract, but their kind of opposite was of the magnetic variety: Positive and negative, they repelled each other. He should have known early on that this was going to be the case when he’d brought her home to meet his mamma and her reaction to his mamma’s devotion to him—she’d only that day washed, starched, and perfectly ironed his fifteen dress shirts—had been along the lines of “So you have a penis. So what, Salvatore?” instead of understanding the importance of the male child in an Italian family where extending the family line and name was paramount to everyone in it. He’d thought this amusing at first, Birgit’s lack of understanding about this element of his culture. He’d thought the clashes of Italian and Swedish traditions and beliefs would become minimal over time. He’d been wrong. At least she hadn’t decamped to Stockholm with their two children once he and she had parted, and for this Salvatore was grateful.

Second on his mind was the matter of this missing child. This missing British child. It was bad enough that she was foreign. That she was British made it worse. Shades of Perugia and Portugal were all over the situation. Salvatore knew not a soul would blame him for not wanting this circumstance in Lucca to turn in a direction similar to those. Tabloid reporters everywhere, international tabloid reporters at that, television news encampments right outside the questura, hysterical parents, official demands, embassy phone calls, jurisdictional jockeying among the various police forces. Things hadn’t got to that point yet, but Salvatore knew that they could.

He was mightily worried. Three days after the girl’s disappearance and the only leads they’d come up with were from a half-drunk accordion player who performed on market days near Porta San Jacopo and a well-known young drug addict who on these same days knelt directly in the pathway of the shoppers entering the mercato with a sign on his chest reading, Ho fame, as if with the hope that this declaration of hunger would delude passersby who might otherwise rightly suspect he intended to use whatever euros he managed to collect to purchase whatever it was he was actually intending to ingest. From the accordion player, Salvatore had learned that the child in question was present every market Saturday to listen to him play. La Bella Piccola, as he called her, always gave him two euros. But on this day, she had given him seven. First she had given him the coin. Then she had placed a five-euro note into his basket. He thought this note had been handed to her by someone standing near her. Who was this? the accordion player had been asked. He didn’t know. In the crowd, he explained, there were always many people. Along with his dancing poodle, he smiled and nodded and did his best to entertain them. But the only ones he truly noticed were those who give him a little money for his music. Which was why, of course, he knew la Bella Piccola by appearance if not by name. Because, as he had already said, she always gives me money, Ispettore. He said this last with an expression indicating he knew quite well that Salvatore Lo Bianco would rather part with a finger than drop a coin into someone’s basket.

When asked if there was anything at all unusual that he noticed about the girl that day, the accordion player first said there was nothing. But after a pause for thought he admitted that a dark-haired man might have given her the five-euro note, as such a man had been standing behind her. But, for that matter, an ageing woman with crepe-skinned breasts that hung to her waist might have done so as well. She’d been standing right next to the girl. In either case, all he could tell the ispettore by way of description was dark hair for the one and pendulous breasts for the other, which applied to eighty percent of the population. Indeed, the woman could have been Salvatore’s own mother.

The kneeling young drug addict added a bit to this. From this man—a hapless youth called Carlo Casparia,