Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

“I can make a phone call,” Greco told her. “But he speaks virtually no English.”

“No problem,” Barbara said. “You c’n go with me, can’t you?”

“ Sì, sì ,” he said. “I could do this. But you must consider that Ispettore Lo Bianco is not likely to speak to you frankly if I am present. And I assume you wish him to speak frankly, no?”

“Right. Of course. But, bloody hell, doesn’t he have to tell you—”

“Things are different here, signora—” He stopped and corrected himself with “ Scusi . Sergeant. Things are different here when an investigation is ongoing.”

“But when there’s an arrest . . .”

“It is much the same.”

“Bloody hell, Mr. Greco, this is circumstantial evidence. Azhar went to a conference, and someone died a month later of a microorganism that he himself doesn’t even study.”

“Someone who had taken his child from him died. Someone who had hidden that child’s whereabouts for many months. This, as you know, does not look good.”

And it would look worse, Barbara reckoned, if Azhar’s part in Hadiyyah’s kidnapping became known. She said, “You can’t convict someone on circumstantial evidence.”

Greco looked astonished. “On the contrary, Sergeant. Here, people are convicted for much less every day.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

It was without surprise that Salvatore Lo Bianco received the news that another representative from New Scotland Yard had appeared in Lucca. He had expected someone from London to show up once he’d arrested Taymullah Azhar. The word would have gone out to the British embassy via Aldo Greco, and the information would have filtered inevitably from the British embassy to the Metropolitan police. This was doubly the case because, once the arrest had been made, an English child was left without an English carer. Someone had to deal with that as she was no relation of Lorenzo Mura’s and Mura was merely sheltering her until other arrangements could be made. So to have a police presence from England on hand did not surprise him. He merely hadn’t expected that person to appear at the questura so quickly.

It wasn’t DI Lynley, which was unfortunate. Not only had Salvatore liked the Englishman, it had also been convenient that Lynley spoke quite decent Italian. Indeed, he found it decidedly odd that the Metropolitan police would send someone to Lucca who didn’t speak Italian. But when Aldo Greco rang him and gave him her name and her details—including her lack of Italian—he agreed to see her. Greco assured him that the officer would bring a translator with her. Her companion—an English cowboy, Greco said—apparently had several contacts in the town, and one of them would see to it that Sergeant Havers was accompanied by a native speaker.

Salvatore hadn’t thought much about what an English woman detective might look like, so he wasn’t prepared for the woman who came into his office some two hours after the phone call from Greco. When he saw her, he reflected on the fact that, perhaps, he’d been too influenced over the years by British television dramas dubbed into Italian. He’d anticipated, perhaps, someone along the lines of one distinguished and titled actress or another, a little hard round the edges but otherwise leggy, fashionably put together, and attractive. What walked into his office, however, was the antithesis of all this, save for the hard-round-the-edges part. She was short, stout, and garbed in desperately wrinkled beige linen trousers, red trainers, and a partially untucked navy-blue tank top that hung from her plump shoulders. Her hair looked as if she’d put herself into the hands of her gardener who’d done double duty while trimming the hedges outside of her house. Her skin was beautiful—the British were served well by their damp climate, he thought—but it was shiny with perspiration.

Accompanied by a bookish-looking woman with very large spectacles and very gelled hair, the English detective strode across the office to his desk with so much confidence and so much un-Italian disregard for her personal appearance that, grudgingly, he had to admire her. She held out a hand, which he discovered was damp. “DS Barbara Havers,” she said. “You don’t speak English. Right. Well. This is Marcella Lapaglia, and I’ll be square with you: Marcella’s the partner of a bloke called Andrea Roselli. He’s a journalist from Pisa, but she’s not going to give him any information unless you say it’s fine by you. She’s here to translate, and I’m paying her for it, and luckily she needs the money more than she needs Andrea’s approval at the moment.”

Salvatore listened to this stream of babble and caught a word here and there. Marcella did a rapid translation. Salvatore didn’t like it one bit that this other woman was the lover of Andrea Roselli, and when he said this directly, Marcella told the English detective. They went back and forth a bit until he said, “ Come? Come? ” impatiently and Marcella paused to translate for him.

“She’s a professional translator” were the English detective’s words via Marcella. “She knows how fast her career goes down the toilet if she spreads information she’s not meant to spread.”

“This had better be the case,” Salvatore said directly to Marcella.

“ Certamente ,” she told him evenly.

“I work with DI Lynley in London,” DS Barbara Havers told him. “So I’m fairly well in the loop of what’s been happening over here. Mostly I’m here to deal with the kid—the professor’s daughter—and it’ll help me do that if I know exactly what you’ve got on Azhar and how likely it is that he’ll go to trial at some point. She’s going to have questions—Hadiyyah, the kid—and I’ll need to work out what to tell her. You c’n help me with that. What d’you have on Azhar—the professor—if you don’t mind my asking? I mean, I know he’s going down for murder—Mr. Greco told me—and I know about his job back in London and the conference in Berlin he attended and what Hadiyyah’s mother died of, as well. But . . . well, let’s be honest, Inspector Lo Bianco, far as I know at the moment unless you’ve got more than you’re saying, what you’ve got on him seems iffy at best, hardly the stuff on which arrests are made and charges drawn. So it seems to me, with your approval, I c’n tell Hadiyyah her dad’s going to be home soon enough. That is, like I say, unless there’s something here I don’t know about yet.”

Salvatore heard the translation of all this, but he kept his gaze fixed on the detective sergeant, who kept her gaze fixed on him as well. Most people, he thought, would drop their eyes at some point or at least shift them to take in the details of his office, such as they were. All she did was finger the dirty shoelace on her red trainer, whose encased foot she held casually on one of her knees. When Marcella had reported all of the sergeant’s words, Salvatore said carefully, “The investigation is still ongoing. And, as you must know, Sergeant, things are done differently here in Italy.”

“What I know is you’ve got less than circumstantial evidence. You’ve got a string of coincidences that make me wonder why Professor Azhar’s behind bars at all. But let’s not go there for the moment. I’m going to want to see him. You’ll need to arrange that.”

The order made Salvatore prickly. Really, she was rather incredible, making such a request, considering she was in Italy for the purpose of seeing to the welfare of Hadiyyah Upman. “For what reason do you ask to see him?” he enquired.

“Because he’s Hadiyyah Upman’s father, and Hadiyyah’s going to want to know where he is, how he is, and what’s going on. That’s only natural, as I expect you know.”