Just One Evil Act

“I don’t really know,” she said. “A desire not to repeat the past? A step into adulthood?” She looked down at the blanket that covered her, fingering the well-worn satin that edged it. She said, “Before, I was always searching for something that was out of my reach. Now, I think my reach and my grasp have become the same.”

“What were you reaching for?”

She considered this, her delicate eyebrows drawn together. “A way to be my own person. And I kept expecting this distinct form of me to arrive in the hands of a man. When it didn’t—for how could it possibly?—I found another man. And then another. Two before Hari. Then Hari himself, along with Esteban, and, yes, even Renzo.” She looked at him. “I’ve hurt many people through the years, especially Hari. It’s not something I’m proud of. But it’s who I was.”

“And now?”

“I’m making a life with Renzo. We’re becoming a family. He wants to marry and I want that as well. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am.”

Lynley considered this: Angelina’s initial uncertainty about Mura and what that uncertainty could have meant to the man and what the man might have done to alter things. He said, “At what point did you become sure of him?”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“I suppose I mean: Was there a single moment when everything altered for you, when it became clear to you that what you have with Signor Mura was, perhaps, more important than seeking out other men to build—as you’ve said—an identity for you?”

She shook her head slowly, but when she spoke, Lynley saw that she was adept at connecting the dots among his questions. She said, “Renzo loves Hadiyyah and he loves me. And you can’t sit there thinking that he might have arranged something . . . something horrible like this so that he could prove to me . . . or make me certain about him . . . And that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Inspector? How could you think it? How could you begin to believe that he would do something to devastate me like this?”

Because it was possible and it was his job, Lynley thought. But more than that, because it would so obviously work to engage her entirely in Mura’s life if Hadiyyah should end up permanently absent.

VILLA RIVELLI

TUSCANY

Sister Domenica Giustina allowed Carina into the giardino. The day was hotter than normal, and the fountains in the garden were enticing to the child. Had she not embraced God’s punishment for her sin of fornication, Sister Domenica Giustina might even have joined the little girl. For with her green cotton trousers rolled up to her knees, Carina was thoroughly enjoying herself. She waded in the largest of the pools, dodged laughing beneath the spray from its fountain, and splashed water in the air to form rainbows all round them. She called out to Sister Domenica Giustina, “Venga! Fa troppo caldo oggi.” But although the day was too hot, Sister Domenica Giustina knew that her suffering could not be lessened even for five minutes in the cool, pleasant water.

Forty days of punishment were necessary for what she and her cousin Roberto had done. During this period she would wear the same garments—rank though they were with the smell of him, of her, and of their mating— and she would remove them only to add thorns to the swaddling in which she wrapped her body. Nightly she would examine the wounds, for they had begun to suppurate. But this was good as the leaking pus said that her reparation was acceptable to God. God would inform her when she had done enough, and until He did so through the means of the pus’s disappearance, she must continue on the path she’d chosen to illustrate the depth of her sorrow for her sins against Him.

“Suor Domenica!” the little girl cried, falling to her knees in the water so that it rose up to her waist. “Deve venire! Possiamo pescare. Vuole pescare? Le piace pescare? Venga!”

There were no fish in the water of this fountain, and she was being far too loud. Sister Domenica Giustina recognised this, but she could hardly bear to stifle the child’s pleasure. Still, she understood it was necessary so she said, “Carina, fai troppo rumore,” and held a finger to her lips. She looked towards the great villa to the east of the sunken giardino and this look was to tell the little girl that her noise must not reach the villa’s inhabitants. There were dangers everywhere.

She’d been told from the first to keep the child inside the great stone barn, and she’d disobeyed. When she’d taken him to the villa’s cellar to see the little girl, he’d smiled and spoken kindly to Carina, but Sister Domenica Giustina knew him better than he knew himself and she could see round his eyes that he hadn’t been pleased.

He’d made this clear to her before he left. “What stupid game are you playing at?” he’d hissed. “Keep her inside till I tell you otherwise. Can you get that into your thick skull, Domenica?” And he’d poked at her head sharply to indicate just how thick her skull was. He’d added, “God’s grace, after what you’ve done to me, I would think . . . Cristo, I should leave you to rot.”

She’d tried to explain. The sun and the air were good for children. Carina needed to be out of the damp, dank rooms above the barn, and had she been told to stay inside, she wouldn’t have done so. No child would. Besides, there was no one about in this remote place and even if there had been someone, wasn’t it time they told the world that Carina was theirs?

“Sciocca, sciocca!” had been his reply. He cupped her chin in his hand. His fingers increased the pressure till her whole jaw ached, and finally he threw her to one side. “She stays inside. Do you understand me? No vegetable garden, no cellar, no fish pond, no lawn. She stays inside.”

Domenica said that she understood. But the day was hot and the fountains at the villa were so inviting and the child was so young. It could not hurt, Sister Domenica Giustina decided, to give her an hour to enjoy herself.

Still, she looked about nervously. She decided it would be best to stand guard from above at the edge of the peschiera, so she climbed the stone steps from the sunken garden to the fish pond and she made certain that she and Carina were still alone.

She walked to the spot from which the hillside fell to expose through the trees and the shrubbery the road that twisted into the hills from the valley below. Thus, she saw him. As before he raced up the road in his bright red car. She could hear, even at this distance, the roar from its engine as he changed down gears. He was going too fast, as he always did. There was a distant squeal from his tyres as he took one of the hairpin turns too sharply. He needed to slow, but he never would. He liked the speed.

Between where she stood and where he drove, the air seemed to shimmer in the heat. It made her feel indolent, and although she knew she had to get Carina out of the sunken garden, up to the rooms above the barn, and into dry clothes before his arrival, somehow she couldn’t make herself move.

So it was that she saw it all when it happened. He missed a sudden hairpin turn in the road. Engine roaring and gears changing frantically, he shot through the insubstantial crash barrier. He hung there in the sky for a moment. Then the car disappeared as it dropped and dropped down the side of a cliff into whatever lay below: boulders, gnarled trees, a dried riverbed, another villa tucked away from sight. She did not know. She only saw that he was there one moment, charging into the hills, and then in the next moment he was gone.

She stood there unmoving, waiting for what would come next: perhaps the sound of impact or a fireball shooting into the sky. But nothing happened. It was as if the hand of God had struck her cousin down in an instant, his soul being called into the presence of the Almighty to account, finally, for his sin.

She returned to the sunken garden, standing above it and watching the child below. The sunlight glinted off her lovely hair, and through the spray from the fountain, she looked like someone behind a veil. Seeing her thus, joyful and open and trusting, it was difficult to believe that she, too, bore the stain of sin. But so she did and so that sin had to be dealt with.

27 April

VICTORIA

LONDON