Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

“He’s in London, Inspector Lynley. He’s not Italian. He doesn’t know Italy. He doesn’t know where I am. I simply . . . I mean I should have told him something. I should have told him anything. But I simply . . . stopped seeing him.”

“That wouldn’t have prevented him from trying to find you,” Lynley pointed out. “After several years as your lover—”

“It wasn’t serious,” she said hastily. “It was fun, a release, excitement. Between us, there was never any plan to be together permanently.”

“In your head,” Lo Bianco pointed out. “ Ma forse . . . ” This was true. Perhaps in the head of her lover an entirely different idea existed. “He was married?”

“Yes. So he wouldn’t have expected me to hang about in his life and when I left him—”

“It works not in that way,” Lo Bianco told her. “There are men, for them marriage equals not a thing.”

“I do need his name, Angelina,” Lynley told her. “The chief inspector’s right. While your previous lover could be completely uninvolved with what’s happened here in Italy, the fact of him in your life means that he needs to be eliminated from the enquiry. If he’s still in London, Barbara can handle this. But it has to be done.”

“Esteban Castro,” she finally said.

“He’s from Spain?”

“Mexico City,” she said. “His wife is English. Another dancer.”

“You were also . . .” Lo Bianco searched for the word, but Lynley was fairly certain where he was heading, so he cut in, saying, “You were acquainted with her?”

Angelina dropped her gaze again. “She was a friend.”

Before either Lynley or Lo Bianco could comment on these facts or ask further questions, Lorenzo Mura arrived at Fattoria di Santa Zita and entered as the others had done: through the ground-floor door that brought him along the dark passage and into the kitchen. He dropped an athletic bag on the tiles and came to the table. He kissed Angelina and asked what was going on among them. Clearly, he was fully capable of reading the atmosphere in the room. “ Che cos’è successo? ” he demanded.

Neither of the detectives spoke. It was, Lynley felt, for Angelina to tell her current lover—or not to tell him—of the subject they’d been discussing. She said to them, “Lorenzo knows about Esteban Castro. We have no secrets from each other.”

Lynley doubted that. Everyone had secrets. He was beginning to conclude that Angelina’s had deposited her into the position she occupied at the moment: mother of a missing child. He said, “And Taymullah Azhar?”

“What about Hari?” she asked.

“Sometimes relationships are open,” Lynley said. “Did he know about your other lover?”

“Please don’t tell Hari,” she said quickly.

With a grunt, Lorenzo pulled a chair from the table. He sat, grabbed a glass, and poured himself some wine. He tossed it back—no thoughtful sipping and evaluating here—and cut a wedge of cheese and a hunk of bread. He said fiercely, “Why do you protect this man?”

“Because I’ve dropped an explosive into his life and that’s enough . I won’t have him hurt more.”

“ Merda .” Lorenzo shook his head. “This makes no sense, this . . . this care you have for this man.”

“We have a child together,” Angelina said. “When you have a child with someone, it changes things between you. That’s how things are.”

“ Così dici .” Mura’s voice was gentler when he said this, but still he didn’t appear to be convinced that having had a child by Taymullah Azhar was significant enough a reason for Angelina to wish not to devastate the man further. And perhaps, Lynley thought, it was not enough reason. Perhaps had Azhar ended his marriage instead of merely leaving his wife, things would have been much different for Angelina Upman. And, perhaps, Lorenzo Mura knew this. No matter the situation at present or in the future, a connection existed and would always exist between Angelina and the Pakistani man. And Mura would have to come to terms with that.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

It was later than usual when Salvatore made his evening climb to the top of the tower. Mamma had had what she’d decided was an altercation in the macelleria while doing her shopping for this night’s dinner, and that altercation—apparently with a tourist woman who did not understand that when Signora Lo Bianco entered the shop, everyone else stepped back out of respect for her age—had to be discussed from every angle.

“ Sì, sì ,” Salvatore murmured throughout this recitation of the woes of Mamma’s day. He shook his head and looked appropriately outraged, and at the first opportunity, he climbed to the roof to enjoy his nightly caffè corretto , the sight of evening falling upon his city with its citizens taking their daily passeggiata arm in arm in the streets, and, most important, the silence that went with all of this, high above everything.

The silence did not last long, however. Into it, his mobile phone rang. He took it from his pocket, saw the caller, and cursed. If this involved another drive to Barga, he would refuse.

“So?” the magistrato barked at Salvatore’s pronto . “ Mi dica, Topo .”

Salvatore knew what Fanucci wished to be told: everything that had occurred with this police detective from England. He told the public minister what he felt was sufficient to satisfy him. He added the new intriguing detail of Signora Upman’s additional lover in London: Esteban Castro. She either liked them foreign or she liked them hot-blooded, he told Fanucci.

“ Puttana ” was Fanucci’s evaluation of her.

Well, times have changed, was what Salvatore wanted to say to Fanucci. Women were not necessarily loose because they took lovers. But, indeed, were he to say this to Fanucci, the truth was that he’d be doing so only to arouse the man’s ire. For he himself did not believe that it was the way of the world today for women to string along more than one lover at a time, married or otherwise. That Angelina Upman, perhaps, made a habit of doing so was a curious new bit of information about her. Salvatore was more than willing to share this information with Fanucci because, if nothing else, it spared him from having to go in the direction of Michelangelo Di Massimo and his bleached yellow hair.

“So, he chases her? This Esteban Castro?” Fanucci said. “He follows her to Lucca. He plans his revenge. She leaves him for another and he does not accept this and he plans how to show her suffering equal to what she has caused him, vero ?”

The idea was ludicrous, but what difference did that make? At least it wasn’t additional nonsense about the Casparia youth. Salvatore murmured, “ Forse, forse, Piero .” But they must move with caution, he said. They would see soon enough because this English detective would phone London and see about tracking down this lover of Angelina Upman. He would be useful that way, Ispettore Lynley.

There was silence as Fanucci evaluated this. Salvatore heard in the background someone speaking to Fanucci. A woman’s voice. It would not be his wife but rather the long-suffering housekeeper. Vai , Fanucci barked at her, his way of lovingly telling her that her performance between the sheets of his bed would not be necessary on this evening.

Then, into the phone, the magistrato announced the main reason for his call to Salvatore: a special report for the telegiornale had been arranged. He, Fanucci, had made these arrangements. They would film this report at the home of the missing girl’s mother, and it would end with an appeal from this child’s parents: We love our precious little one and we want her back. Please, please return her to us.