Just One Evil Act (28 page)

Barbara girded herself for protest. She wanted to declare that she had no choice, that she had to protect herself, that if she did not do so she would not be able to keep her mother in the secure and caring place of lodging that Mrs. Flo provided because she’d be without a job. But she said, “Yeah. Go on,” and she waited for Mrs. Flo to say what she needed to say.

It was, “Sometimes, my dear, if we tempt fate this way . . . It’s not a good thing, is it? What I’m trying to say is that declaring something like this—a fall, broken bones, an ambulance, casualty—”

Barbara had never taken her mother’s carer to be superstitious, so she said, “You’re saying that wishing makes things so? Well, I’m not wishing. I’m just saying. And if I don’t ‘say’ something, I’m up to my neck . . . Look, a secretary from the Met will ring you, Mrs. Flo. Then a DI called Stewart’ll ring you as well. You just need to tell them both that yes, Mum fell, and yes, an ambulance took her to casualty, and that’s all you know since you rang me and I got onto all the rest.” That would, she thought, buy her time to sort this mess out.

Up above Bedlovers, Doughty was waiting for her, as she’d phoned him and told him that—all things related to the law considered—it was in his best interests to stay put until she and he had a little confab together. She didn’t mention Winston, and she noted with gratification that Doughty blanched slightly when the impressive black detective followed her into the room and blocked any escape from it. She introduced the two men. Winston meaningfully locked his eyeballs on to Doughty. Barbara then got down to business. The business was money transferred from Lucca to London. The business was hiring a Pisan called Michelangelo Di Massimo.

“You hired this bloke in January,” she declared. “So let’s start with how you uncovered the information about a money transfer in the first place.”

“I don’t reveal—”

“Do not attempt that rubbish with me. You’ve been playing fast and loose from the first, and if you’d like to remain a private investigator and not end up in the local nick, then you’re going to talk.”

Doughty was sitting behind his desk. He glanced at Winston, who stood at the door. He glanced at a metal filing cabinet, at the artificial plant covering its top surface. That, Barbara reckoned now, had to be where he had a camera that broadcast whatever went on in his office to his colleague in the other room.

“All right. Another bank account was uncovered,” Doughty finally said.

“Who uncovered it? How? Who’s your blagger? Because that’s how you did it, isn’t it, and I expect it’s your ‘associate’ Ms. Cass who was ringing round credit card companies and banks pretending to be Angelina. Or her sister. She looked like a bird with as many talents as pores, so sweet-talking someone—”

“I’m not saying a word about Emily Cass,” he said. “We use various means at our disposal to uncover information.”

“Computer hacking as well, I expect. That ‘computer expert’ you told us about is someone who breaks and enters computer systems as easily as tumbling locks. And he or she knows someone who knows someone who knows someone else . . . Do you know how much trouble I could put you in, Mr. Doughty?”

“I’m attempting to cooperate,” he said. “I learned there was a bank account here in London, an account held in the name Bathsheba Ward but in a branch nowhere near her home or her work. I found this curious and did a little . . . work on it. In . . . in time, let’s say, I discovered that funds had been wired from another account, this one in Lucca. I needed someone in Italy to trace that account and to see who was at the other end of this wired money.”

“Michelangelo Di Massimo was your man in Italy, then?”

“He was.” Doughty pushed back from his desk. He went to the filing cabinet, made an adjustment to the artificial plant, and opened a drawer. He riffled through some files till he found what he wanted. He handed it over. It was slim enough, but it contained a copy of the report he’d written. Barbara read this quickly to see it contained the information he’d just supplied her, along with the name, the address, and the email of the private investigator in Pisa whom DI Lynley and the Italian chief inspector had interviewed that day.

Barbara closed the file and handed it back. She had a terrible feeling about what she was going to learn if she asked the next question, but she asked it anyway. “What did you do with this information?” she said.

“I gave it to Professor Azhar,” he told her. “Sergeant, I’ve given him everything from the first.”

“But he said . . .” Barbara’s lips felt stiff. What had he said? Had she misinterpreted his words in some way? She tried to remember, but she was feeling turned round, down the rabbit hole, and out of her league. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him.

“Because I was working for him, not for you,” Doughty said, not unreasonably. “And when I began working for you, what you asked me to uncover had to do with the professor’s trip to Berlin and nothing else.” He put the folder back and shut the drawer. He turned back to them, but he did not sit. He extended his hands in the universal gesture of look-at-me-I-have-nothing-to-hide. “Sergeant,” he said and then added Winston in his remarks by saying, “Sergeants. I’ve told you the absolute truth at this point, and if you’d care to look through my phone records and my computer files and, yes, even my hard drive, you’re more than welcome to do so. I’ve nothing to hide from you, and I’ve no interest in anything other than getting home to my wife and my dinner. Are we finished here?”

They were, Barbara said. What she didn’t say, however, was that she knew how easily Doughty could have cleared his records, his hard drive, his entire life of suspicion if any of this was in the possession of a computer tech expert with inside contacts at various institutions. And there was virtually nothing she could do about it.

She and Winston left him. They descended the stairs and went into the street, where a short distance away the Roman Café was making the seductive offer of kebabs. She said to her colleague, “At least let me buy you dinner, Winnie.”

He nodded and walked thoughtfully at her side. He was deep into something, and she didn’t ask him what it was because she had a feeling she already knew. He confirmed this as they took a table by the window and considered the menu. He looked at it briefly and then spoke to her.

“Got to ask, Barb.”

“What?”

“How well you know him.”

“Doughty? ’Course he could be lying and he probably is because he’s lied already and—”

“Don’t mean Doughty,” Winston told her. “’Spect you know that, eh?”

She did. To her sorrow and misery, she absolutely did. He was asking how well she knew Taymullah Azhar. She’d been asking herself the very same question.

BOW

LONDON

Doughty waited patiently. He knew it wouldn’t be long, and it wasn’t. Em Cass burst into his office not one minute after the cops’ departure. He could tell how much of a lather she was in from the fact that she’d removed both her waistcoat and her tie.

“From the first,” she began. “Goddamn it, Dwayne, from the—”

“It’ll all be over soon,” he cut in. “There’s nothing to worry about. Everyone will go home happy, and you and I will fade into the sunset, ride off on our ponies, whatever.”

“I think you’ve gone mad.” She paced from one side of the office to another. She slapped one hand into the palm of the other.

“Emily,” he said, “go home. Have a change of clothes and go out clubbing. Pull a new man. You’ll feel much better.”

“How can you even suggest . . . You’re an idiot! Now it’s two cops—from the Met, no less—sifting through our unwashed laundry, and you’re suggesting I entertain myself with anonymous sex?”

“It’ll take your mind off whatever your mind’s on. Which, by the way, is an unnecessary bundle of speculations taking you nowhere. We’re clean on this and we’ve been that way since Bryan diddled our computers and phone records.”

“We’re going to gaol,” she said. “If you’re depending on Bryan to hold out once the cops pay a call on him . . . especially that black bloke. Did you see how big he is? Did you bloody see that scar on his face? I know a scar from a knife fight when I see one and so do you. We’ll be in gaol five minutes after that bloke fixes his stare on Bryan Smythe.”

“They don’t know any details about Bryan, and unless you decide to tell them yourself, they won’t ever know any details about Bryan. Because I’m certainly not going to tell them. So it’ll all be down to you.”

“What’re you saying? That I can’t be trusted?”

Doughty looked at her meaningfully. It was his experience that no one could be trusted, but he did like to think otherwise of Emily. Still, he could tell she needed to be mollified in some way because, in her present state, one trip to the nick to spend an hour or so in the company of officers intent upon wringing the truth from her, and she might well crack.

He said carefully, “I trust you with my life, Em. I hope you trust me with yours as well. I hope you trust me enough to listen carefully to what I’m about to say.”

“Which is?”

“It’ll be over soon.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Things are in motion in Italy. The crime is about to be solved, and we’ll be opening the champagne soon enough.”

“Do I have to remind you that we’re not in Italy? Do I have to point out that if you’re depending on this Di Massimo bloke—a man you’ve never even bloody met, for God’s sake—to carry this off without anyone being the wiser . . .” She threw up her hands. “This is more than an Italian situation, Dwayne. It became more than an Italian situation the moment the Met got involved. Which, may I remind you, was the very first instant that woman stepped into your office with the Pakistani, pretending to be an ordinary, ill-dressed heap of a female just here to support her extraordinarily intelligent, well-spoken, nice-looking, and neatly attired male friend. God, I should have known the moment I clapped eyes on them both that the very fact they were even together—”

“You did know, as I recall,” he said mildly. “You told me she was a cop and you turned out to be correct. But none of that matters just now. Things are in hand. The girl will be found. And no crime was committed by you or by me. Which, I might add, is something you should hold close to your heart.”

“Di Massimo gave them your name,” she protested. “What’s to stop him from giving them everything else?”

He shrugged. There was some truth in what she said, but he was holding on to his confidence in money being not only the root of all evil but also the oil that kept machines rolling on. He said, “
Plausible deniability
, Em. That’s our watchword.”

“
Plausible deniability
,” she repeated. “That’s two words, Dwayne.”

“Merely an insignificant detail,” he said.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

P
rima Voce
had what went for the full story, Salvatore saw. That morning’s paper carried a feature on page one, complete with a photograph of Carlo Casparia—his face and bright, tangled hair covered by a jacket—being escorted between two grim-faced uniformed policemen. They would take him from the
questura
to the prison where he would be held in preventive detention during the rest of the investigation. A second photograph featured Piero Fanucci, triumphantly announcing that they at last had their confession from the malefactor, and he was now
indagato
: formally named as principal suspect. The whereabouts of the child would be forthcoming, he had told the tabloid confidently.

No journalist questioned any of this. No one asked if the unfortunate Carlo had requested or been given an
avvocato
to sit at his side and advise him of his limited legal rights. Especially nothing was asked about the confession that Fanucci had prised from the homeless man or about the means by which Fanucci had got that confession. Neither the newspapers nor the
telegiornale
brought up anything other than the coup of a case having been resolved. They all knew quite well that to do anything else would put them in danger of being accused of
diffamazione a mezzo stampa
,
and it was up to
il Pubblico Ministero
himself to decide if such defamation by the press had occurred.

Lo Bianco explained all this to DI Lynley when the Englishman appeared in his office. Obviously, he was going to have to speak to the parents of the little girl as soon as possible, and he wanted to have his facts in order. He’d brought with him a copy of
Prima Voce
. He’d also brought the question about why he hadn’t been rung immediately once a confession was in hand. He sounded doubtful about the entire subject of Carlo Casparia and his guilt, however. Lo Bianco wasn’t surprised by this. Detective Inspector Lynley did not appear to be a fool.

Lynley indicated the tabloid when he said, “Is this information reliable, Chief Inspector? The parents might well have seen it, and they’ll have questions. First and foremost will be what this bloke’s said about Hadiyyah: where he took her and where she is. May I ask how”—he hesitated tellingly—“this confession came about?”

Salvatore had to be careful with what he said. Fanucci had ears and eyes in every corner of the
questura
,
and any explanation he gave the Scotland Yard DI about either
il Pubblico Ministero
or the Italian laws governing both the press and criminal investigations could be misinterpreted and used against him if he didn’t proceed with maximum caution. For this reason, he took Lynley from the
questura
altogether, and together they walked the distance to the Lucca train station not far away. Across the street from the station was a café. He led the other officer to its bar, ordered two
cappuccini
and two
dolci
. He waited till they were set in front of them before he faced Lynley and, leaning against the bar with a look round the café to make sure there were no other officials present, he began to talk.

Twenty hours without rest or a lawyer present, with no food and only occasional water, had been enough to convince Carlo Casparia that his interests would best be served by telling the truth, he explained to Lynley. And if there were gaps within his memory of the events surrounding the child’s disappearance, that was no real problem. For after twenty hours with
il Pubblico Ministero
and other hand-picked interrogators, exhaustion and hunger crept into one’s mind, stimulating one to imagine—aloud, of course—what could adequately fill the blanks in one’s memory. From this combination of imagination and reality, then, a complete story of the crime’s commission emerged. That it was small part fact and large part fantasy was of no concern to
il Pubblico Ministero
. A confession was what mattered to him since only a confession mattered to the press.

“I was afraid of that,” Lynley admitted. “With due respect, it
is
a decidedly odd way to proceed. In my country—”

“
Sì, sì. Lo so
,” Salvatore said. “Your prosecutors do not involve themselves in an investigation. But you are in my country now, and so you will learn that often we must allow certain things to play out so that other things—unknown to the
magistrato
—can play out as well.”

Salvatore waited to see if Lynley would follow what he was hinting at. Lynley observed him for a long moment as a group of tourists entered the café. They were loud and aggressive, and Salvatore winced at the hardness of their language. Two of them went to the bar and ordered in English. Americans, he thought with resignation. They always believed the entire world spoke their language.

Lynley said, “What, then, actually comprised the confession of Carlo Casparia? The parents will want to know this, and for that matter, I’d like to know it as well.”

Salvatore told him how Fanucci envisioned the crime, based upon the drug addict’s words, dutifully committed to paper. It was simple enough, according to
il Pubblico Ministero
: Carlo is at the
mercato
in his usual position with
Ho fame
hanging round his neck. The little girl sees this, and she gives him her banana. He
sees her innocence, and in her innocence, he also sees an opportunity. He follows her as she leaves the
mercato
, heading in the direction of Viale Agostino Marti.

“But why would she be heading there?” Lynley asked.

Salvatore waved off the question. “A mere detail that does not interest Piero Fanucci, my friend.”

He went on with the rest of the crime as Fanucci envisioned it: Carlo snatches the little girl somewhere along the route. He stashes her at some stables where he has slept rough since first coming to Lucca when his parents tossed him out of their Padova home. There he holds her until he can find someone to whom he can hand her off for money. This money he uses to feed his drug habit. You will note he stopped begging at the
mercato
after her disappearance,
no
?
Certo
, he has no need for drug money at the moment and now we know why. Mark my words well. When this monster runs out of money, he will turn to begging at the
mercato
once again.

As far as
il Pubblico Ministero
was concerned, Salvatore explained, everything was neatly in place to mark Carlo Casparia as culpable: His motive was and would always be the acquisition of money for drugs. Everyone knew that
Ho fame
indicated the vagrant’s hunger for cocaine, marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, or whatever other substance he was shoving regularly into his system. His means were as obvious as being able to rise to his feet and follow the little girl once she generously and innocently handed over her banana to assuage his supposed hunger. The
mercato
itself was his opportunity. It was, as always, crowded with both shoppers and tourists. Just as no one had noticed the child being snatched from the vicinity of the accordion player—which, of course, we now know didn’t happen anyway—so also no one had noticed Casparia taking her by the arm and guiding her away.

To all of this, the Englishman remained silent, but his face was sombre. He stirred his
cappuccino
. So far, he’d not tasted it, so intently had he been listening to Salvatore’s tale. Now, he drank it straight down, and he broke his
dolce
into two pieces although he ate neither. “Forgive me for not entirely understanding how you proceed when this sort of conclusion is arrived at,” he said. “Has the public minister
any evidence that supports this man’s confession or his own picture of the crime? Does he need any evidence?”

“
Sì, sì, sì
,” Salvatore told him. The
magistrato
’s instructions—coming fast on the heels of Casparia’s confession—were now being followed.

“And they are?” Lynley enquired politely.

The stables where Carlo Casparia had been living rough for so long were now being sorted out by a group of scenes-of-crime officers. They would be looking for evidence of the child’s being held there for whatever period was necessary before Carlo decided what to do with her.

“Where are these stables, exactly?” Lynley asked.

They were in the Parco Fluviale, Salvatore told him. He had been intending to head there when Lynley arrived at the
questura
. Would the Englishman like to accompany him to see the scene?

He would indeed, Lynley told him.

It was only a brief ride round the enormous city wall to reach the
quartiere
of Borgo Giannotti. There, from beyond its main street with its line of busy shops, one ultimately gained access to the
parco
. During this ride, Lynley asked the questions that Salvatore had been anticipating as he told the tale of Carlo Casparia’s recent confession.

What about the red car? the detective enquired. What did
il Pubblico Ministero
think about it? And was it the
magistrato
’s opinion that Casparia had given Hadiyyah over to the owner of the car, who then took Hadiyyah into the hills? And if the date on which this red car, the man, and the child had been sighted was the actual day on which Hadiyyah had gone missing . . . didn’t it then follow that Carlo Casparia would have had to know all along to whom he was going to deliver the child? Didn’t this suggest quite a degree of planning on his part? Did Signor
Fanucci envision Casparia as capable of this? Did Salvatore himself envision this?

“As to the red convertible car,” Salvatore said with an approving glance at Lynley, “the
magistrato
knows nothing of this car. Even as you and I go to the
parco
to ensure his will is being carried out, one of my officers is driving into the Alps with the man who saw that car. They will attempt to identify the point at which he saw it. A search will then be conducted of the immediate area of the lay-by where the car was parked. If nothing is found, every lay-by between the village where the mother of our witness lives and the start of that road into the Alps will be searched.”

“Without the magistrate’s knowledge?”

“Sometimes,” Salvatore said, “Piero doesn’t know what’s good for Piero. I must help him realise this in the best way I can.”

LUCCA

TUSCANY

The stables in the Parco Fluviale stood perhaps a mile along the lane that skirted the springtime rush of the River Serchio and coursed through the southern section of the park. They comprised a derelict set of buildings, long unused for their intended purpose, and out in front of them a faded sign giving the costs of horse hiring had been the victim of ill-talented graffiti artists and hunters looking to practise their shooting on its surface.

A crime scene van was parked on a narrow gravel access road into the stable area, and Lo Bianco pulled next to the police tape that marked the site as inaccessible to the few journalists who had already received word that some kind of action was happening in the
parco
. Lo Bianco muttered when he saw them. He ignored their demands of “
Che cosa succede?
” and took Lynley into the immediate vicinity of Carlo Casparia’s home away from home.

At the moment, the activity was centred on a single stable backed by a tree-studded berm. This was situated behind a line of tangled shrubbery, most of which appeared to be wild roses coming into bloom, and it comprised a line of some dozen stalls with tall doors hanging open to display the disreputable contents within. Obviously, the entire place had been used as a dosshouse for ages by any number of people, and contained within it was so much rubbish that sorting through it all for a sign of a particular little girl’s presence was going to take weeks. Filthy mattresses lay everywhere. Used hypodermic needles, limp condoms, and discarded takeaway food containers were scattered on the ground. Plastic cartons, old clothing, and mildewed blankets formed mounds in corners, while carrier bags filled with rotting food sent into the air a foul miasma, which had attracted vast clouds of flies and gnats.

Within all of this detritus moved two crime scene officers. “
Come va?
” Lo Bianco called out.

One lowered his mask and answered, “
Merda!
” The other said nothing but shook his head. It seemed, thought Lynley, that they knew their occupation was going to be a useless one.

Lo Bianco said to Lynley, “Come with me,
Ispettore
. There is something more to see in this place,” and he walked to the back of the stables, where a faint trail through the tall wild grass and wildflowers led up the berm and between two chestnut trees.

Here, Lynley saw, a path had been created by dog walkers, cyclists, runners, and, perhaps, families out for a
passeggiata
on long summer evenings. It was well worn, and it followed along the top of the berm in both directions, mimicking the route of the lane through the
parco
as well as the course of the river. Lo Bianco began to walk along it. In less than one hundred yards, he broke to the left, descended another berm, crossed a wooded area thick with sycamores, alders, and beeches, and came out on the edge of a playing field.

Lynley saw at once where they were. Across the field lay a patch of gravel suitable as a small car park. To the right of this two picnic tables rested beneath the trees. In front of them and across a path was the playing field, divided by more concrete paths along which saplings grew. Far to the west of all this stood a café in which, he assumed, the parents of the children who came to this place to be coached by Lorenzo Mura might wait, enjoying refreshments as they watched their budding football players undertaking another session with the man in order to improve their skills.

Lynley looked at Lo Bianco. The chief inspector, he saw, was not the fool of Piero Fanucci, no matter what the
magistrato
might think in the matter.

“I wonder,” Lynley said, indicating the playing field, “if Signor Casparia might be able to ‘imagine’ something more, Chief Inspector?”