Just One Evil Act il-18 Read online

  Having her Salvatore at home meant she’d been right, and his mamma loved being right more than she loved being content or even being in a state of grace. She’d worn black since the day he’d brought home the Swedish girl he’d met eighteen years earlier in Piazza Grande, and to this maddening choice of telegraphing her displeasure—she’d even worn black to their wedding—she had now taken to carrying rosary beads every moment of the day, and she’d been fingering them piously since the evening he’d revealed that he and Birgit were divorcing. He was supposed to think that his mamma was praying for Birgit to come to her senses and ask her husband to return to the family home in Borgo Giannotti, just beyond the city wall. But the truth of the matter was that she was fulfilling her promise to the Virgin: Bring an end to this blasphemous marriage of my son to quella puttana straniera, and I will spend the rest of my life honouring you with a daily rosary. Or five. Or six. Salvatore didn’t know how many rosaries were actually involved, but he imagined there were plenty of them. He wanted to point out to her that the Catholic Church didn’t recognise divorce, but there was a part of him—good son that he was—that simply didn’t want to spoil her fun.

  Salvatore took his caffè to one side of the tower garden and spent a moment inspecting his tomato plants. Already they were showing their fruit, which would ripen beautifully here so high above the city. He looked from them in the direction of Borgo Giannotti. He had things on his mind and one of them was Birgit.

  His mother had been right, of course. Birgit had been a mistake on every front. Opposites might indeed attract, but their kind of opposite was of the magnetic variety: Positive and negative, they repelled each other. He should have known early on that this was going to be the case when he’d brought her home to meet his mamma and her reaction to his mamma’s devotion to him—she’d only that day washed, starched, and perfectly ironed his fifteen dress shirts—had been along the lines of “So you have a penis. So what, Salvatore?” instead of understanding the importance of the male child in an Italian family where extending the family line and name was paramount to everyone in it. He’d thought this amusing at first, Birgit’s lack of understanding about this element of his culture. He’d thought the clashes of Italian and Swedish traditions and beliefs would become minimal over time. He’d been wrong. At least she hadn’t decamped to Stockholm with their two children once he and she had parted, and for this Salvatore was grateful.

  Second on his mind was the matter of this missing child. This missing British child. It was bad enough that she was foreign. That she was British made it worse. Shades of Perugia and Portugal were all over the situation. Salvatore knew not a soul would blame him for not wanting this circumstance in Lucca to turn in a direction similar to those. Tabloid reporters everywhere, international tabloid reporters at that, television news encampments right outside the questura, hysterical parents, official demands, embassy phone calls, jurisdictional jockeying among the various police forces. Things hadn’t got to that point yet, but Salvatore knew that they could.

  He was mightily worried. Three days after the girl’s disappearance and the only leads they’d come up with were from a half-drunk accordion player who performed on market days near Porta San Jacopo and a well-known young drug addict who on these same days knelt directly in the pathway of the shoppers entering the mercato with a sign on his chest reading, Ho fame, as if with the hope that this declaration of hunger would delude passersby who might otherwise rightly suspect he intended to use whatever euros he managed to collect to purchase whatever it was he was actually intending to ingest. From the accordion player, Salvatore had learned that the child in question was present every market Saturday to listen to him play. La Bella Piccola, as he called her, always gave him two euros. But on this day, she had given him seven. First she had given him the coin. Then she had placed a five-euro note into his basket. He thought this note had been handed to her by someone standing near her. Who was this? the accordion player had been asked. He didn’t know. In the crowd, he explained, there were always many people. Along with his dancing poodle, he smiled and nodded and did his best to entertain them. But the only ones he truly noticed were those who give him a little money for his music. Which was why, of course, he knew la Bella Piccola by appearance if not by name. Because, as he had already said, she always gives me money, Ispettore. He said this last with an expression indicating he knew quite well that Salvatore Lo Bianco would rather part with a finger than drop a coin into someone’s basket.

  When asked if there was anything at all unusual that he noticed about the girl that day, the accordion player first said there was nothing. But after a pause for thought he admitted that a dark-haired man might have given her the five-euro note, as such a man had been standing behind her. But, for that matter, an ageing woman with crepe-skinned breasts that hung to her waist might have done so as well. She’d been standing right next to the girl. In either case, all he could tell the ispettore by way of description was dark hair for the one and pendulous breasts for the other, which applied to eighty percent of the population. Indeed, the woman could have been Salvatore’s own mother.

  The kneeling young drug addict added a bit to this. From this man—a hapless youth called Carlo Casparia, the disgrace of his long-suffering Padovan family—Salvatore had learned that the girl had passed right by him. Although he was facing outward—away from Porta San Jacopo so that he could greet the entering shoppers with his spurious declaration of hunger—Carlo knew it was the same child whose picture was now posted on walls and doors and in windows round the town. For she’d paused and looked around as if she’d been seeking someone, and when she saw Ho fame on his sign, she’d skipped back to him and had given him the banana she had been carrying. Then she’d walked on. From there, she’d simply vanished. Into thin air, as things turned out. There were no other leads.

  Once the mother of the child had made it apparent through various means of hysteria that the child wasn’t a runaway, that she wasn’t playing with friends somewhere, that they—the mamma and her lover—had searched the area, that every corner had been poked and every loose stone had been overturned, Salvatore had rounded up the usual suspects. He’d ordered them brought to the questura, and there on Viale Cavour, he’d grilled eight sex offenders, six suspected paedophiles, a recidivist thief awaiting trial, and a priest about whom Salvatore had had suspicions for years. Nothing had come of this, but the local paper had the story now. It wasn’t big yet—it had not, thank God, gone either provincial or national—but it would if he didn’t come up with this child soon.

  He took a final sip of his caffè corretto. He turned from the sight of the sunset and headed for the rooftop opening that would take him back down to his mamma. His mobile rang, and he glanced at the number. He groaned when he saw it and considered what to do.

  He could let the call go to voice mail, but he knew there was little point to that. The caller would continue to ring him four times an hour all through the night. He gave a moment’s thought to tossing the mobile over the tower’s edge to break in the narrow street below, but instead he answered.

  “Pronto,” he sighed.

  He heard what he expected to hear. “Come to Barga, Topo. It’s time you and I had a little talk.”

  BARGA

  TUSCANY

  It was only natural that Piero Fanucci could not possibly live in a town convenient to Lucca. That would have made everyone’s life easier, and il Pubblico Ministero was not a man interested in making anyone’s life easier, least of all the policemen who did his bidding. He liked to live in the Tuscan hills. Thus he lived in the Tuscan hills. If someone he wished to converse with concerning an investigation had to sweat an hour’s drive on an April evening to get to him, that was simply how things were.

  At least il Pubblico Ministero didn’t live in the old part of Barga. Getting to him, then, would have meant a climb up endless stairs and a negotiation of the maze of passageways that led in the direction of the Duomo, high on the top of the hil
l. Instead, thank God, Fanucci lived along the road from Gallicano. It was a dangerous series of switchbacks climbing at a hair-raising angle from a village in the valley, but at least one could get there by car.

  When Salvatore arrived, he knew that il Pubblico Ministero would be alone. His wife would be travelling to the home of one of their six children, which was how she had navigated her marriage to Fanucci since those children had become old enough to marry and to purchase homes of their own. His occasional lover—a long-suffering woman from Gallicano who cleaned and cooked and obeyed a single word from Fanucci, resta, by taking herself to his bedroom once she’d finished her solitary dinner in his kitchen and had done the washing up after his solitary dinner in the dining room—would also have departed. Fanucci would be with his only true love, among the cymbidiums he tenderly babied in a manner he might have applied, but did not, to his family. Salvatore would be meant to admire whichever of the orchids was currently in bloom. Until he had done so, and at a length and with the level of sincerity il Pubblico Ministero required, he would not be told the reason that he had been summoned to Barga.

  Salvatore parked in front of Fanucci’s house, a stout and square terracotta-coloured villa that stood in a plot of expensively maintained gardens behind a wrought-iron gate. This was, as always, locked, but a code admitted him.

  He didn’t bother with the house. Instead, he walked around to the back of the villa where a terrace overlooked a steep drop to the valley and the hillsides opposite, into which dozens of Tuscan villages were tucked. Lights were coming on in those villages now. In another hour, they would provide a scattering of sequins on the cape of night.

  At the far corner of the terrace rose the roof of the orchid house, which stood on the lawn below. Steps led down to this lawn, and a gravel path edged it. Salvatore followed this to the grape arbour that provided shade for a seating area. A table and chairs stood here, on the table a bottle of grappa, two glasses, and a plate of the kind of biscotti that Fanucci favoured. Il Pubblico Ministero himself was not seated here, however. As Salvatore had anticipated, he was within the orchid house awaiting compliments. Salvatore mentally readied himself and entered.

  Fanucci was in the midst of spraying the leaves of a dozen or more of his plants. These stood on a potting shelf that ran along one side of the orchid house. They were spindly in that way of orchids, tied to thin bamboo poles to keep them upright, each offering a single spine of blooms that Fanucci was tenderly keeping away from the spray. He had his spectacles on the tip of his nose and a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips. His gut hung over the cintura that cinched his trousers.

  Fanucci didn’t look up from what he was doing. He didn’t speak. This gave Salvatore time to evaluate his superior in an effort to know what to expect from him during their encounter. For Fanucci was notoriously volatile, il drago to some and il vulcano to others.

  He was also the ugliest man Salvatore had ever seen, deeply swarthy like the contadini in Basilicata, the land of his birth; cursed with warts that exploded from his face like something only San Rocco could cure; in possession of a sixth finger on his right hand which he waved about in conversation, all the better to read upon the faces of those to whom he spoke the level of their aversion for him. His appearance had been a torment in his impoverished youth, but he’d learned to use it. At an age and of a level of success at which he now could have done something to normalise his looks, he refused to do so. They served him well.

  Salvatore said, “Beautiful as always, Magistrato. What do you call this one?” and he gestured to a bloom whose fuchsia petals bore flecks of yellow that eased into the interior of the flower like spots of sunlight banishing the night.

  Fanucci glanced briefly at the orchid. He dislodged ash from his cigarette down the front of a white shirt already spotted by olive oil and tomato sauce, no concern to Fanucci who would not, of course, have to wash the garment. He said, “It does nothing, that. One flower a season. It belongs in the garbage. You know nothing of flowers, Topo. I keep thinking you will learn, but you’re hopeless.” He set down his sprayer. He drew in on his cigarette and coughed. It was a deep and wet cough and his breath wheezed in his chest. Smoking was suicide for the man, but he persisted. There were many officers in both the polizia di stato and the carabinieri who hoped he would succeed in his efforts. “How’s your mamma?” Fanucci asked him.

  “Same as always,” Salvatore said.

  “That woman’s a saint.”

  “So she would have me believe.”

  Salvatore strolled to the end of the potting shelf, admiring the flowers as he went. The air inside the orchid house was fragrant with the scent of fine potting soil. Salvatore thought how he would have liked to feel it—rich, loamy, and crumbling—within his hands. There was an honesty about this soil that he liked. It was what it was, and it did what it did.

  Fanucci finished his nightly babying of his orchids and stepped out of the orchid house. Salvatore followed. At the table, he poured two glasses of grappa. Salvatore would have preferred San Pellegrino, but he accepted the grappa as he was meant to do. He said no to the offer of the biscotti, however. He slapped his hands on his stomach and made noises to suggest his mamma’s fine cooking was doing him in, although he was, as always, scrupulously careful about his weight.

  He waited for Fanucci to get around to the purpose of this evening’s command appearance in Barga. He knew better than to suggest that il Pubblico Ministero might want to reveal the significance of this encounter and not waste his time with social niceties or anything else. Fanucci would play out this meeting in whatever way he’d decided to play it out. There was no point to pushing the man. He was as immovable as a boulder. So Salvatore asked after the man’s wife, after his children, after his grandchildren. They talked of the wet spring they’d had and the promise of a long and hot summer. They spoke about a ridiculous dispute among thevigili urbani and the polizia postale. They considered how to manage the crowds for an upcoming battle of the bands that would occur in Lucca’s Piazza Grande.

  Finally, when Salvatore was beginning to despair of getting away from il Pubblico Ministero before midnight, Fanucci brought forth the reason for his request of Salvatore’s presence. He removed from the seat of one of the other chairs a folded newspaper. He said, “And now we must talk of this, Topo,” and he unfolded it to reveal the headline.

  With sinking spirits, Salvatore saw that Fanucci had got his hands on an early copy of tomorrow’s edition of Prima Voce, the leading newspaper that covered the entire province. Da Tre Giorni Scomparsa introduced the subject of the number-one story, and below it was a picture of the British girl. She was a pretty creature, which gave the story its importance. What promised more coverage in the days to come, however, was her connection to the Mura family.

  Seeing this, Salvatore understood at once why he had been called to Barga. When he’d informed il Pubblico Ministero about the situation with the missing English girl, he hadn’t mentioned the Muras. He’d known that, just like the paper, Fanucci would have been all over this, putting his fingers where Salvatore didn’t want them. For the Muras were an ancient Lucchese family, silk merchants and landowners of old, whose influence had begun two centuries before Napoleon’s unfortunate sister was given control of the town. As such, the Muras could cause trouble for any investigation. They hadn’t done so yet, but their silence in this matter was something upon which no wise man would want to depend.

  “You made no mention of the Mura family, Topo,” Fanucci said. His voice was friendly—mere idle curiosity this was—but Salvatore was not deceived by its tone. “Why is this so, my friend?”

  “I did not think to, Magistrato,” Salvatore told him. “This child is not a Mura, nor is her mamma. Mamma and one of the Mura sons are lovers, certo—”

  “And you think this means . . . what, Topo? That he wishes the child not be found? That he hired someone to kidnap her and get her out of the way of his life with her mamma?”

  “Not at al
l. But I have until this moment been concentrating my efforts on those likely to have abducted the girl. As Mura himself was not one of my suspects—”

  “And your others have told you what, Salvatore? Do you keep other things from me as you have kept the Mura family’s involvement with this child a secret?”

  “It was not a secret, as I have said.”

  “And when they phone me demanding answers—these Muras—asking for updates, wanting names of suspects and details of the investigation and I do not even know their connection to this girl . . . what then, Topo?”

  Salvatore had no answer for this. His objective had been to keep il Pubblico Ministero as much at a distance from this case as he could. Fanucci was an inveterate meddler. Knowing what to tell him and when to tell him was an art that Salvatore had still not perfected. He said, “Mi dispiace, Piero. I was not thinking. This sort of lapse”—he indicated the copy of Prima Voce—“it will not happen again.”

  “To make sure of this, Topo . . . ,” Fanucci said and then made a pretence of considering his disciplinary options when Salvatore knew quite well that he had chosen one and planned it out in advance. “You shall give me daily reports, I think.”

  Salvatore had to protest. “But so often there is nothing new to tell. And then other days, there is so little time in which to fashion a report.”

  “Ah, but you will manage it, won’t you? Because, Salvatore, I do not wish to learn anything more about this investigation by dipping my nose into Prima Voce. Capisci, Topo?”

  What choice did he have? None at all. “Capisco, Magistrato,” he said.

  “Bene. Now. We go over this case together, you and I. You tell me everything. Every detail.”

  “Now, Piero?” Salvatore asked, for truly the hour was growing late.

  “Now, my friend. For now that your wife has left you, what else have you to do, eh?”