Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

“Nor do I, at the moment. But I’ve found over time that people do extraordinary things when their passions are deeply involved. Love, lust, jealousy, hate, the need for revenge. People do extraordinary things.”

Azhar looked into the town beneath them. He was quiet, as if in prayer. He said simply, “I just want my daughter. The rest of this . . . I no longer care.”

Lynley believed the first. He wasn’t sure about the second.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

The television appeal made the story enormous. Missing children were always news in any of the Italian provinces. Missing attractive children were significant news. But missing attractive foreign children whose disappearances brought to the doorstep of the Italian police representatives from New Scotland Yard . . . This was enough to attract the attention of journalists from far and wide. Shortly after the television appeal, they set up shop in what for them was the most logical location, as close to the questura as they could get since the action in the case was most likely to occur there. They blocked traffic on the way to the train station; they blocked the pavements on both sides of the street; they generally made a nuisance of themselves.

The “action in the case” was mostly defined by the police questioning of suspects. Guided by the public minister, Prima Voce had made its selection of prime suspect. The other newspapers were going along, and the hapless Carlo Casparia was finally where Piero Fanucci wanted someone—anyone—to be: under the journalistic microscope. Prima Voce was going as far as to ask the telling question: When will someone step forward as witness and name a certain drug addict in this case of the disappeared bella bambina ?

Soon enough someone did just that. An Albanian scarf vendor in the mercato experienced a jog to his memory, effected by both the television appeal with its photographs of the missing child and by Fanucci’s fiery sermon during that television appeal. This individual had, thus, phoned the questura with what he hoped was information relevant to the child’s disappearance: He had seen her pass by on her way out of the mercato , and he was certain that he had seen Carlo Casparia rise from his kneeling Ho fame position and follow the girl.

Salvatore Lo Bianco was completely unconvinced that the scarf vendor had seen anything at all, but after thinking about it for a moment, he did see how this new piece of information might be useful. So he dutifully reported it to Fanucci. Il Pubblico Ministero declared his intention to interview Carlo Casparia personally, as Salvatore had hoped he would. By the time several officers had rounded up the young man and herded him into the questura , Fanucci was waiting to grill him like the martyred St. Lawrence, and representatives from seven newspapers and three television channels were gathered in the street. They already knew Casparia was inside the questura , which told Salvatore that someone was feeding them information. He was fairly sure it was Fanucci himself since massaging his reputation for quickly bringing criminal matters to a conclusion was dear to the magistrato ’s heart.

Salvatore almost hated to put the drug-addled Casparia through another interrogation. But it bought him time by keeping Fanucci occupied. And il Pubblico Ministero was very well occupied handling this new interrogation of the addict, as things turned out. He roared, he paced, he breathed garlic into Casparia’s face, he announced that the young man had been seen following this child from the mercato and it was time he told the police what he’d done with her.

Carlo, of course, denied everything. He looked at Fanucci with eyes so bright that he seemed to have light bulbs inside his head. They gave the instantaneous impression that Casparia was extraordinarily alert. The truth was he was high. It was anyone’s guess if he even remembered what child Fanucci was talking about. He asked the magistrato what he would possibly want with a little girl? Fanucci pointed out that it was not what he might have wanted with her but what he actually did with her that was the question they wanted answered.

“You handed her over to someone for money. Where? Who was this person? How was this arrangement made?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” brought a slap on the back of the head from Fanucci as he paced behind Casparia’s chair.

“You’ve stopped begging in the mercato . Why?” was where he went next.

“Because I can’t make a move without the police pouncing on me” was Casparia’s explanation, after which he put his head in his arms and said, “Let me sleep, man. I was trying to sleep when you—”

Fanucci pulled the youth upright by his filthy bronze-coloured hair and said, “ Bugiardo! Bugiardo! You no longer go to the mercato because you have no need of money. You got what you needed when you passed the girl on to another. Where is she? It’s in your interests to tell me now because the police will be going over every inch of those stables where you live. You didn’t know that, did you? Let me tell you this, you miserable stronzo , when we come up with evidence that she was held there—one of her hairs, one of her fingerprints, a shred of a garment, a hair ribbon, anything—your trouble will be bigger than anything you’ve ever imagined in that thick head of yours.”

“I didn’t take her.”

“Then why did you follow her?”

“I didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe I was just leaving the mercato .”

“Earlier than usual? Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even remember if I left at all. Maybe I was going to take a piss.”

“Maybe you were going to grab this pretty one by the arm and march her over to—”

“In your dreams, man.”

Fanucci pounded the table in front of the young man. “You’ll sit here till you tell me the truth,” he roared.

Salvatore used this moment to slip out of the room. He could see that Fanucci would be entertained for hours. He found himself oddly grateful to poor Carlo. He himself could now get something done while Fanucci concentrated on getting “the truth” out of him.

The reality was that they’d had more than one call after the television appeal. They’d had dozens of calls and dozens of putative sightings of little Hadiyyah. Now that Fanucci was absorbed with his questioning of Carlo Casparia, the police could, in peace, sort through the information that was coming in. Something within it might be worth pursuing.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Something indeed turned up one hour into Fanucci’s interrogation of the drug addict. An officer tracked down Salvatore as he was waiting for a stained Moka to finish brewing its viscous caffè over the gas flame in the coffee room. There’d been a sighting of a flashy red car in the hills above Pomezzana, he reported to Salvatore. This sighting had been memorable to the caller for several reasons.

“ Perché? ” Salvatore listened to the Moka’s final burbling. He reached for a marginally clean cup on the shelf above the sink, gave it a quick rinse and quick wipe, and poured the coffee. Perfetto , he thought. Bitter and coal-coloured. Just the way he liked it.

First, he was told, the convertible top on the car was down. The caller—this was a man who identified himself as Mario Germano, on his way to see his mamma in the village of Fornovolasco—saw the vehicle parked beneath some chestnut trees in a lay-by, and his first thought was that it was foolish to leave a car like that parked with its top down where anyone could come along and play mischief with it. So he’d given the car a second look as he drove by, and that brought them to the second reason Signor Germano remembered the car.