Just One Evil Act

“I set everything in motion as requested. But the plan went foul somewhere and I don’t know where.”

“How in God’s name can you not know where?”

There was a silence. Doughty listened intently. For a moment, he thought he’d lost the connection and he nearly rang off to redial the number. But then the other said, “I couldn’t risk it. Not the way you wanted it done. Using the mercato? I’d have been remembered.”

“The mercato came from you, not from me, you sodding fool. It didn’t need to be the mercato. It could have been anywhere: the school, a park, on an outing, at the farm.”

“None of that matters. What you do not understand is . . .” A pause and then, “No, you will not blame me. You wished her found, and I found her. I gave you the name. I gave you the place and its location. It was your idea to snatch her, not mine. Had you told me in advance that this was your intention, I never would have come . . . how do you say? . . . onto the train with you.”

“You liked the idea of money well enough when I first found you, you bastard.”

“You will think what you will think, my friend. But the fact that the police have not made progress in finding her tells me my plan was right. Giusto, we say.”

Doughty felt a cold wind dive into his underwear when he heard my plan. There was supposed to be only one plan. His plan. Get the girl, stow her, and wait for his word to move her. That there was another plan which he’d not been told about made it nearly impossible for Doughty to speak. But he managed, “You’re after the Muras’ money, aren’t you? That’s been your scheme from the first.”

“Pazzo” was the reply. “You listen like a jealous housewife.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means the cops have found me, sciocco. It means that had I not developed a plan different from yours, I would now be sitting in a gaol cell waiting for il Pubblico Ministero to decide how to deal with me. I am not in a gaol cell for the very reason you wish to berate me: I had a plan. You wished her taken. I arranged her taken. Capisce?”

Doughty twigged the man’s meaning. “Someone else . . . ? Are you mad? Who took her? What did he do with her? Is it even a he or did you use some poor Italian grandmother in need of cash? How about an Albanian immigrant? Or an African? Or a bloody Romanian gypsy, for that matter? Did you even know who you were tagging to do this job? Or was it someone you picked up off the street?”

“These insults of yours . . . They get us nowhere.”

“I want that kid!”

“I, too, am of the same mind, although I suspect for different reasons. I put things in motion as I told you. Something has happened, and I do not know what. She was being fetched to put an end to this matter, but the . . . the messenger sent to fetch her . . . This is what I do not know.”

“What? Exactly what don’t you know?”

“It was a . . . come si dice? A caution,” he said. “No. A precaution. It seemed wise for me not to know where she was being kept, so that if the police traced me—which, as I’ve told you, they did—I could give them nothing of substance no matter how long they decided to question me.”

“So for all you know,” Doughty said, “she could be dead. This . . . this messenger of yours might have snatched her and killed her. She might have not been a cooperative victim of your garden kidnapping on the street, and she might well have raised a ruckus. He could have stuffed her into the boot of his car for all you know and she might have suffocated and there he was with a dead body on his hands.”

“This did not happen. It would not have happened.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“My selection of . . . this messenger, let us call him . . . was carefully done. He has known from the first that complete payment for his services depends entirely on the condition of the child and on her safety at all times.”

“So where is he? Where is she? What’s happened?”

“This is what I’m now attempting to discover. I’ve telephoned, but so far I have heard not a word.”

“Which means something’s gone wrong. You know that, don’t you?”

“Si. Sono d’accordo,” the other murmured. “I ask you to believe that I am attempting to discover exactly what this is. But even in this, I must proceed with caution because the police will be watching me.”

“I don’t care if the bloody Swiss Guards are watching you,” Doughty said. “I want that kid found. I want her found today.”

“I doubt that will be possible,” he admitted. “Until I find the messenger sent to fetch her, I will know nothing more than you.”

“Then goddamn bloody find the messenger!” Doughty roared. “Because if I have to come to Italy myself, you aren’t going to be happy about it.”

That said, he snapped the mobile phone in half. He was on the bridge that carried Gunmakers Lane over the Hertford Union Canal. He cursed and threw the broken pieces of the mobile into the murky water there. He watched them sink and hoped against hope that they weren’t a metaphor for what was going on in his life.

28 April

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore Lo Bianco made the requisite offer of help to his mamma. As usual she refused. No one, she told him—also as usual—would ever wash and polish the marble cover of his father’s grave during what remained of the lifetime of his devoted wife. No, no, no, figlio mio, this chore will take no longer than is required for my old body to hobble round the plot itself, wielding soap and water and rags and marble polish and more rags till the stone reflects this ancient, sorrowing face of mine as well as the sky with its glorious clouds above me. You may watch, however, figlio mio, so that you will learn how to care for this stone where my poor corpse will lie with your father’s after my earthly days are done.

Salvatore told her that perhaps he would walk, instead. He would follow the path round the perimeter of this part of the cemetery. He needed to think a bit. She could call out to him if she needed help. He would not be far away.

Mamma gave a quintessential Italian mamma shrug. He could, of course, please himself in this matter. Sons so often did just that, didn’t they? And then she turned and said, “Ciao, Giuseppe, marito carissimo,” and told the dead man how deeply she missed him, how every moment of every day brought her closer to joining him in the ground. After this, she began her work upon the grave.

Salvatore watched her and stifled a chuckle. There were certain moments in their life together, he thought, when his mamma was not his real mamma at all but rather a caricature of an Italian mamma. This was one of them. For the truth of the matter was that Teresa Lo Bianco had spent what Salvatore knew of her married life absolutely furious with his father. She’d been one of those breathtaking Italian beauties who married young and lost her looks to childbearing and a lifetime of household drudgery, and she’d never forgiven or forgotten that fact. Except, of course, when she came to the Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Then, the instant that Salvatore parked in front of the great gates to the place, his mamma’s face transformed from its habitual look of pinched irritation to an expression that mixed grief and piety so superbly that had anyone other than Salvatore seen her, she would appear as a recent widow whose loss would never be assuaged.

He smiled. He folded a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, and he began to walk. He was halfway round his first circumambulation of the quadrangle of graves decorated with saints and the Virgin and her Son when his mobile rang. He glanced at the number of whoever was placing the call.

The Englishman, he thought. He liked this man Lynley. He’d thought the Londoner would be an irritating interloper into the Italian investigation, but this hadn’t proved to be the case.