Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

He stopped briefly at the questura to fetch the laptop upon which were loaded all of the photographs taken by the American tourist and her daughter who had been in the mercato when the child disappeared. Then he and Lynley took themselves to the prison in which the hapless young man was being held. For once a confession was obtained from a suspect or once he was formally charged with a crime, he was whisked to prison, where he remained unless the Tribunal of Reexamination determined he could be released pending trial. Since Carlo’s release depended upon having a suitable place to go—and clearly the abandoned stables in the Parco Fluviale would not qualify—his home would be the prison cell in which he currently languished. All of this Salvatore explained to Lynley as they drove to see the young man. When they arrived at the prison, however, it was to learn that Carlo was in the hospital ward. As it turned out, he wasn’t taking well to the sudden absence of drugs from his system. He was taking the cure in the worst possible way, and no particular sympathy was being extended in his direction.

Thus Salvatore and Lynley found the young man in a cheerless place of narrow beds. There the patients either were restrained by one ankle to the iron footboards or were too ill to care about attempting to effect an escape by overcoming the male nurses and single doctor who were on duty.

Carlo Casparia was of this latter group, a figure huddled into the foetal position beneath a white sheet topped with a thin blue blanket. He was shivering and staring sightlessly at nothing. His lips were raw, his face was unshaven, and his ginger hair had been shorn from his head. A rank smell came from him.

“ Non so, Ispettore ,” Lynley murmured uncertainly.

Salvatore agreed. He, too, didn’t know what possible good this was going to do or even if Carlo would be able to hear them and respond. But it was an avenue, and it needed to be explored.

“ Ciao , Carlo.” He drew a straight-backed steel chair over to the bed as Lynley fetched another. Salvatore eased a hospital tray over and set up his laptop on it. “ Ti voglio far vedere alcune foto, amico ,”he said. “ Gli dai uno sguardo? ”

In bed, Carlo was wordless. If he heard what Salvatore had said about the photos, he gave no indication. His eyes were fixed on something beyond Salvatore’s shoulder and, when Salvatore turned, he saw it was a clock on the wall. The poor fool was watching time pass, it seemed, counting the moments till the worst of his suffering ended.

Salvatore exchanged a glance with Lynley. The Englishman, he saw, looked as doubtful as Salvatore felt.

“ Voglio aiutarti ,” Salvatore said to Carlo. “ Non credo che tu abbia rapito la bambina, amico .” He brought the first of the tourist photographs onto the screen of his laptop. “ Prova ,” he murmured. “ Prova, prova a guardarle. ”

If Carlo would only try, he himself could do the rest. Just look at the pictures, he silently told the young man. Just move your gaze to the computer screen.

He went through the entire set in vain. Then he told the addict they would try again. Did he want water? Did he need food? Would another blanket help him through this terrible time?

“ Niente ” was the first thing the young man said. Nothing would help him in the state he was in.

“ Per favore ,” Salvatore murmured. “ Non sono un procuratore. Ti voglio aiutare, Carlo .”

This was what finally got through to him: I am not a prosecutor, Carlo. I want to help you. To this, Salvatore added that nothing the young man said at this point was being taken down and nothing he said would go into a statement that he would be forced to sign while he was in extremis. They—he and this other officer from London sitting next to your bed, Carlo—were looking for the man who’d kidnapped this child and they did not think Carlo was that man. He had nothing to fear from them. Things could not get worse if he spoke to them now.

Carlo shifted his gaze. It came to Salvatore that the addict’s pain made movement difficult, and he changed the position of the laptop, holding it on a level with the young man’s face and slowly going through the pictures again. But Carlo said nothing as he looked at them, merely shaking his head as Salvatore paused each one in front of his gaze and asked if there was anyone he recognised as having been with the little girl.

Again and again, the addict’s lips formed the word No . But finally his expression altered. It was a marginal change, to be true, but his eyebrows made a movement towards each other and his tongue—the colour of it nearly white—touched his scaly upper lip. Salvatore and Lynley saw this simultaneously, and both of them leaned forward to see what picture was on the screen. It was the photograph of the pig’s head at the bancarella selling meats to the citizens of Lucca. It was the photograph in which Lorenzo Mura was making a purchase just beyond the pig’s head.

“ Conosci quest’ uomo? ” Salvatore asked.

Carlo shook his head. He didn’t know him, he said, but he had seen him.

“ Dove? ” Salvatore asked, his hope stirring. He glanced at Lynley, and he could see that the London man was watching Carlo closely.

“ Nel parco ,” Carlo whispered. “ Con un altro uomo .”

Salvatore asked if Carlo would recognise the other man he spoke of seeing with Lorenzo Mura in the park. He showed the addict an enlargement of the picture of the dark-haired man behind Hadiyyah in the crowd of people. But Carlo shook his head. It wasn’t that man. A few more questions took them to the fact that it also wasn’t Michelangelo Di Massimo with his head of bleached hair. It was someone else, but Carlo didn’t know who. Just that Lorenzo and this other, unnamed man had met, and when they met, the children whom Lorenzo coached in private to improve their football skills were not present. They had been earlier, running about the field, but when this man showed up, all the children were gone.

VICTORIA

LONDON

The next time Mitchell Corsico got in touch, it was by phone. This was a case of thank-God-for-very-small-favours, though, because the tune he was singing when Barbara took the call was the same tune he’d been singing the last time she’d spoken to him. Things were ramped up at this point, though. The Sun , the Mirror , and the Daily Mail had begun investing some rather significant money in following the kidnapping tale by means of placing boots on the ground in Tuscany. There was competition to get new angles every day, and Mitchell Corsico wanted his own.

Tiresomely, though, he was back to Met Officer Involved with Love Rat Dad , Barbara discovered. He was also back to making threats. He wanted his bloody exclusive interviews with Azhar and Nafeeza, and Barbara was the means to get them for him. If she didn’t manage this feat, she could expect to see her mug on the front page of The Source , entangled with the son and the father of Azhar in a street imbroglio.

There was no point in telling him that the angle to pursue was Mother of Kidnapped Girl in Hospital . The Daily Mail was already onto that. For its part, the Mirror was having fun speculating on what had put Angelina Upman into a hospital bed in the first place. They appeared to like the idea of a suicide attempt— Distraught Mother Ends Up in Hospital —which they were able to hint at since no one in Italy was telling their reporter a single thing.

Barbara tried to reason with Corsico. “The story’s in Italy,” she told him. “What the bloody hell are you still doing in London trying to follow it, Mitchell?”