Just One Evil Act

“Verra,” she said. He would be coming. She added, “Sta giocando a calcio,” with a sad little smile. Obviously, Angelina Upman knew how it looked that her lover was off at a football match instead of at her side. She added, “Lo aiuta,” as if to clarify.

Salvatore wondered at this. It didn’t seem likely that football—either played or watched or coached—would do much to help anyone in the situation, as she claimed. But perhaps an hour or two of the sport took Mura’s mind off things. Or perhaps it merely got him away from his partner’s understandable, unceasing, and probably frenzied worry about her daughter.

She did not, however, appear frenzied now. She appeared deadened. She looked quite ill. The girl’s father—the Pakistani from London—did not look much better. Both of them were raw nerve endings and twisted stomachs. And who could blame them?

He noted how the professor held out a chair for the signora before taking a seat himself. He noted how the signora’s hands shook when she put the zucchero into her espresso. He noted how the professor offered her the plate of biscotti although Salvatore had gently pushed it in his own direction. He noted the signora’s use of Hari in speaking to the father of her child. He noted the father wince when he heard her use this name.

Every detail of every interaction between these two people was important to Salvatore. He had not spent twenty years of his life as a policeman only to escape knowing that family came under suspicion first when tragedy fell upon a member of it.

Using a combination of his wretched English and the signora’s moderately decent Italian, Salvatore brought them as up-to-date as he wished them to be. The airports had all been checked, he told them. So had the train stations. So had the buses. The net of their search for the child had been cast and was still in place: not only in Lucca but outward into the surrounding towns. So far, purtroppo, there was nothing to report.

He waited for the signora to make a slow translation for the father of her child. Her serviceable Italian got the main points across to the dark-skinned man.

“None of this is as . . . as simple as it used to be,” he said when she was finished. “Before EU, the borders were, of course, a different thing. Now?” He made a what-you-will gesture, not to show indifference but rather to indicate the difficulties they faced. “It has been a good thing for criminals, this lack of strong borders. Here in Italy”—with an apologetic smile—“with EU we gain a system of money that is no longer mad, eh? But as for everything else, as for policing . . . tracing movements is much more difficult now. And if the motorway is used to access the border . . . These things can be checked, but it takes much time.”

“And the ports?” The child’s father asked the question. The mother translated, unnecessarily in this case.

“Ports are being checked.” He didn’t tell them what anyone with a basic knowledge of geography knew. How many ports and accessible beaches were there in a narrow country with a coastline of thousands of kilometres? If someone had smuggled the child out of Italy via the sea, she was lost to them. “But there is a chance—every chance—that your Hadiyyah is still in Italy,” he told them. “Possibly she is still in the province. This is how you must think, please.”

The signora’s eyes shone with tears, but she blinked quickly and did not shed them. She said, “How many days is it usually, Inspector, before . . . something . . . some kind of clue? . . . is found.” She did not, of course, wish to say “before a body is found.” None of them wished to say that despite all of them probably thinking it.

He explained to her as best he could the complexity of the area in which they lived. Not only were the Tuscan hills nearby, but beyond them the Apuan Alps rose like threats. Within both these places were hundreds of villages, hamlets, villas, farms, cottages, retreats, caves, churches, convents, monasteries, and grottoes. The child could be literally anywhere, he told them. Until they had a sighting, a clue, a memory shaken from someone’s busy life, they were playing a waiting game.

Angelina Upman’s tears fell then. She accompanied them with not the slightest drama. They merely leaked out of her eyes and down her cheeks, and she did nothing to blot them away. The professor moved his chair closer to hers. He put his hand on her arm.

Salvatore told them about Carlo Casparia to give them a small hope to hold on to. The drug addict had been questioned and would be questioned again, he said. They were still trying to excavate something from the wasteland that was his brain. At first he had seemed a possible candidate to have orchestrated an abduction, Salvatore explained. But as there was no ransom demanded by anyone . . . ? He paused questioningly.

“Si, no ransom,” Angelina Upman affirmed in a whisper.

. . . Then they had to assume he was not involved. He could, of course, have taken the child and handed her over to someone else for payment. But this suggested a degree of planning and an ability to go unnoticed in the mercato that did not seem possible for Carlo. He was as well known as the accordion player to whom their daughter had given money. Had he led the child off somewhere, one of the venditori would have seen this.

Into this explanation that Salvatore was giving, Lorenzo Mura finally arrived. He deposited an athletic bag on the floor and brought a chair to the table. His eyes took in the proximity of the London professor to the signora. His glance lingered on the other man’s hand, still on the signora’s arm. Taymullah Azhar removed it, but he did not change the position of his chair. Mura said, “Cara,” to Angelina Upman and kissed the top of her head.

Salvatore did not like the fact that Mura’s practice, coaching, or game of calcio had taken precedence over this meeting. Thus, he merely went on. Should Lorenzo Mura wish to be updated at this point, someone else was going to have to do it. He said, “So this, you see, would have been out of character in Carlo. We seek someone for whom the taking of a child is in character. This has led us to the paedophiles we have under surveillance and to those we suspect of being paedophiles.”

“So?” Lorenzo was the one to ask the question. He did it abruptly, the way one would expect of someone from such a distinguished family. They would assume the police would jump to their bidding in the manner in which the police had done during the years of their immense wealth. Salvatore did not like this, but he understood it. Nonetheless, he did not intend to be cowed.

He ignored Mura’s question and said to the parents of the missing girl, “As it happens, my daughter is acquainted with your Hadiyyah, although I did not know this until my Bianca saw the posters in town. They attend the Dante Alighieri school together. They have, it seems, spoken many times since your daughter joined Bianca’s class. She told me something that has caused me to wonder if perhaps it is not an abduction that we are looking upon.”

The parents said nothing. Mura frowned. They were, clearly, all thinking the same thing. If the police weren’t considering the child’s disappearance an abduction, then the police were considering it a runaway. Or a murder. There was no other alternative.

“Your little one told my Bianca much about you,” Salvatore said, this time to the professor alone. He waited patiently for the signora to translate. “She said that you had written in emails that you would visit her at Christmas and then at Easter.”

The professor’s strangled cry stopped Salvatore from going on. The signora raised a hand to her mouth. Mura looked from his lover to the father of her child, his eyes narrowing in speculation, as the professor said, “I did not . . . Emails?” and the situation became immediately more complex.

Salvatore said, “Si. You wrote no emails to Hadiyyah?”

The professor, stricken, said, “I did not know . . . When Angelina left me, there was no word where they had gone. I had no way to . . . Her laptop was left behind. I had no idea . . .” He spoke with such difficulty that Salvatore knew every word he said was the absolute truth. “Angelina . . .” The professor looked at her. “Angelina . . .” It seemed the only thing he could say.

“I had to.” She breathed the words rather than said them. “Hari. You would have . . . I didn’t know how else . . . If she’d had no word from you, she would have wanted . . . She would have wondered. She adores you and it was the only way . . .”

Salvatore sat back in his chair and examined the signora. His English was just good enough to pick up the gist. He examined the professor. He looked at Mura. He could see that Mura was in the dark about this matter, but he—Salvatore—was quickly putting together pieces that he did not like. “There were no real emails,” he clarified. “These emails that Hadiyyah received . . . You wrote them, Signora?”