Just One Evil Act (10 page)

There, they saw that Sayyid hadn’t gone to his room. He was in the lounge, on the edge of the sofa, elbows on his thighs and hands dangling between his knees. Above him on the wall a large picture featured thousands of people on pilgrimage to Mecca. There were no other pictures or decorations aside from two small school photographs in frames on a table. Azhar went to these and picked them up. His gaze upon them was hungry. Nafeeza crossed the room and removed them from his hand. She placed them facedown on the table.

She said to him, “There is no child here, aside from mine.”

“I want to look,” Angelina said.

“You must tell her that I speak the truth, husband,” Nafeeza said. “You must explain to her that I have no reason to lie about this. Whatever has happened, it is nothing to do with me or with my children.”

“So
she’s
the one?” Sayyid put in. “She’s the whore?”

“Sayyid,” his mother said.

“I am sorry, Nafeeza,” Azhar said to her. “For this. For what it was. For who I was.”

“
Sorry?
” This from Sayyid. “You c’n bloody talk to Mum about
sorry
? You’re a piece of shit and don’t think
we
think anything else. If you plan to—”

“Enough!” his mother said. “You will wait in your room, Sayyid.”

“While this one”—with a sneer towards Angelina—“goes through our house looking for her bastard brat?”

Azhar looked at his son. “You may not say—”

“You, wanker, don’t tell me what to do.” And with that, he leapt to his feet, pushed his way through all of them, and left the room. His footsteps did not go up the stairs, however, but rather into the corridor, where they could hear him making a telephone call. He spoke in Urdu. This seemed to mean something to both Azhar and Nafeeza, Barbara saw, because Azhar’s wife said to him, “It will not be long,” and he said again, “I am so sorry.”

“You do not know sorrow.” Nafeeza then spoke to the rest of them, her gaze going from one face to the other. Her voice contained perfect dignity. “The only children in this house are the children from my own body, got off this man and abandoned by him.”

Barbara said to Azhar in a low voice, “Who’s the kid ringing?”

“My father,” Azhar told her.

What she thought at this was, Hot bloody hell. What she knew was that things were about to get worse. She said to Angelina, “We’re wasting time. You can see Hadiyyah isn’t here. You can tell, for God’s sake. Can’t you see these people wouldn’t do him a favour any more than your family would do you one?”

“You’re in love with him,” Angelina snapped. “You’ve been from the first. I no more trust you than I’d trust a snake.” Then she said to Lorenzo, “You check above and I’ll—”

Sayyid was back in the room in a flash. He threw himself at Lorenzo, shouting, “Get out of our house! Get out! Get out!”

Lorenzo batted him away like a fly. Azhar took a step forward. Barbara grabbed his arm. Things were going in a very bad direction, and the last thing they needed was one of these people making a call to the local cops.

“You listen to me,” she said, her tone sharp. “You have a choice here, Angelina. Either you believe what Nafeeza’s telling you, or you conduct a search and explain yourself to the cops when they get here. Because if I was Nafeeza, I’d be on the blower the minute Mr. Universe here put his big toe on the stairs. You’re wasting time. We’re wasting time. So for God’s sake think
.
Azhar was in Germany. He’s shown you that. He wasn’t in Italy and he had no idea that
you
were. So you can continue to raise holy hell, or we can all get on a plane and get back to Italy and lean on the cops there to find Hadiyyah. I suggest you decide.
Now
.”

“I won’t believe till—”

“For God’s bloody sake! What’s wrong
with you?”

“You may search.” Nafeeza spoke quietly. She indicated Barbara. “Only you,” she said.

“Is that good enough for you?” Barbara asked Angelina.

“How do I know that you aren’t part of this? That you and he together haven’t—”

“Because I’m a bloody cop, because I love your daughter, because if you can’t see that the last thing either of us would do—me
or
Azhar—is what you’ve done to him by hiding her away somewhere and denying her access to one of her own parents, because if that’s what you really think has happened . . . He’s not
like
you, all right? I’m not like you. And you goddamn know that. So if you don’t stay in this room while I look through the house to prove Hadiyyah isn’t here, I’m going to ring the cops myself and have them out here on a domestic disturbance. Am I being clear enough for you?”

Lorenzo murmured to Angelina in Italian. He put his hand gently on the back of her neck. “All right,” she said.

Barbara made for the stairs. It was not a major project to search the house because there was so little of it. Three floors comprised its interior, with bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, little else. Barbara startled Azhar’s other daughter in the midst of her school prep, but she was the only living creature above stairs.

She returned to the others. She said, “Nothing. All right? Let’s leave. Now.”

Angelina’s eyes grew bright with tears, and it came to Barbara how deeply she’d been hoping that—despite the ludicrous nature of what she’d decided had happened to her child—Hadiyyah would indeed be in the house. For a moment, Barbara felt sympathy for her. But she stamped on the feeling. Azhar was who mattered. And he was minutes away from a confrontation with his father. She knew they had to get him out of the neighbourhood before that occurred.

They had no luck. They were leaving the house when two men in traditional dress came storming down the street from the direction of Green Lane. One of them carried a shovel and the other a hoe. It wasn’t a case for Sherlock to read their intentions.

“Get in the car,” she said to Azhar. “Do it.
Now
.”

He didn’t budge. The men were shouting in Urdu as they tore towards them. The taller had to be Azhar’s father, Barbara figured, because his face was transfixed by rage. The other—his companion—was much the same age, perhaps a partner in administering retribution.

“
La macchina, la macchina
.” This from Lorenzo to Angelina. He opened the car door and bundled her inside. Barbara half expected him to follow her and lock the doors, but he didn’t do so. He seemed to be a bloke who liked to mix things up. He might have had no love for Azhar. But when it came to a street fight?
No
problema
.

Between the Urdu being shouted by the older men and the Italian being shouted by Lorenzo, Barbara had no idea who was accusing whom of what. But the target of the Pakistani men was clearly Azhar, and she didn’t intend him to get hurt. The older men came in swinging their tools. She pushed Azhar out of the way. She yelled, “Police!” at the top of her lungs. This didn’t impress. Lorenzo swung.

She reckoned he was swearing in Italian. He didn’t sound pleasant as he chose his words. He was good with his fists and better with his feet and, farm implements or not, the potential assailants were on the ground before they knew what had hit them. But they didn’t remain there. They threw themselves back into the fray as Sayyid came roaring out of the house. Then an older woman and two other men debouched from the house next door as Sayyid barreled into his father and drove his fist into Azhar’s throat.

Someone screamed. Barbara thought it might have been herself except she had her mobile phone in her hand and was punching in the nines to bring the local rozzers. Clearly, her declaration of identity wasn’t going to stop this lot.

Azhar’s father got to him. He pulled Sayyid off and fell upon him himself. Lorenzo went after the man only to be jumped by the former hoe wielder. The older woman pounced upon Azhar and his father, screaming what sounded to Barbara like a name as she pulled and dragged and did what she could to put an end to things. Barbara did the same to the bloke on Lorenzo. Nafeeza came out of the house and grabbed Sayyid. But three more teenage boys came into the street with cricket bats and two women began to shout imprecations from the pavement on the opposite side.

It took the police to break everything up. Two panda cars and four uniformed constables handled things. It was down to Barbara that no one ended up arrested, although all of them ended up explaining themselves in the local nick. She offered her identification once they got there. She said it was a family dispute. Azhar’s father spat, “He is not family,” but the cops brought in an officer who spoke good Urdu and he gave everyone a chance to say what needed to be said on the matter. The end of it all was time wasted, anguish caused, horrors visited upon everyone, and nothing learned. They rode back to Chalk Farm in near silence.

Azhar didn’t speak. Angelina only wept.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Y
ou’ve gone quite mad” was how Isabelle Ardery dealt with Barbara’s request. She added to this, “Get back to work, Sergeant, and let’s not talk of this again.”

“You know they need a liaison officer” was how Barbara countered her superior officer’s command.

“I know nothing of the sort,” Ardery told her. “And I have no intention of sending you or anyone else barging into a foreign investigation.”

She’d been finishing up with someone on the phone when Barbara had entered her office. Planning an extended celebration, no doubt. The announcement had descended from on high thirty minutes earlier in the person of Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier gracing their side of New Scotland Yard’s two tower blocks with his florid-faced presence. He’d imparted upon the assembly of officers the news that
Acting
had been dropped—permanently—from the
Detective Superintendent
that until that precise moment had preceded Isabelle Ardery’s name. Kudos all around and let flow the champers. Whatever hoops she’d needed to jump through for the past nine months, Isabelle Ardery had apparently managed to catapult herself through them.

Azhar had left early that morning, accompanying Angelina Upman and Lorenzo Mura to Lucca, Italy. Barbara had been determined to follow hard upon their heels. She had it all worked out—how this would happen—and she had just concluded presenting the matter to the superintendent.

It had seemed perfectly logical to her. A British national had disappeared upon foreign soil. A British national may well have been kidnapped. When a crime such as this occurred, a liaison officer was generally assigned to breach the cultural, linguistic, investigatory, and legal gaps between the two countries involved. Barbara wished to be that officer. She knew the family, and all that was needed was Detective Superintendent Ardery’s okay on the matter, and off she could go.

Ardery didn’t see things that way. She heard Barbara out, taking in the entire subject, beginning with Hadiyyah’s November disappearance in the company of her mother and ending with her current disappearance from a crowded market in Italy. She listened without asking questions other than to clarify names, locations, and relationships, and when Barbara concluded and waited for the logical “of course you must go to Tuscany at once” that she believed would be coming on the verbal wings of a hundred angels, Ardery pointed out what she called “a few salient details that the sergeant had apparently overlooked.”

First among them was the fact that the British embassy was not involved in this matter. No one had rung them or paid a call upon them or sent them a telegram, email, fax, or smoke signal, and without the involvement of the embassy—diplomats pouring oil on potentially troubled waters in advance of the Met’s incursion into someone else’s patch—they did not barge round like bulls among the Belleek attempting an investigation where they were not wanted.

Second, the superintendent pointed out, the purpose of the liaison officer was to liaise, which, as they both knew, meant to keep the family in the UK apprised of everything relative to the investigation that was occurring on foreign soil. But the parents of the child were in Italy, no? Or at least on their way to Italy, according to the sergeant’s own words. Indeed, the mother of the child
lived
in Italy, no? Somewhere in Lucca? Outside of Lucca? In the vicinity of Lucca? And with an Italian national, yes? So she had no reason to request a liaison officer. Hence, there was no case to present as to the need of sending Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers into Tuscany to be of assistance in whatever was going on.

“What’s going on,” Barbara said, “is the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl. A nine-year-old
British
girl. No one saw it happen, and
whatever
it was that happened, it happened in the middle of a market. A crowded market with hundreds of witnesses who apparently saw nothing.”

“As of yet,” Ardery said. “They can’t all have been talked to at this point. How long has the child been gone?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I wouldn’t think I’d need to explain that to you.”

“Bloody hell, you know
the first twenty-four hours are crucial. And now it’s been more than forty-eight.”

“And I assure you, the Italian police know that as well.”

“They’re telling Angelina—”

“Sergeant.” Isabelle’s voice had been firm but not unsympathetic despite her words. Now, however, it had an edge. “I’ve told you the facts. You seem to think I have power in this matter when I don’t. When a foreign country—”

“What part of this don’t you bloody understand?” Barbara cut in. “She’s been snatched in public. She might be dead by now.”

“She might well be. And if that’s the case—”

“Listen to yourself!” Barbara shrieked. “This is a kid we’re talking about. A kid I know. And you’re declaring ‘she might well be’ like you’re talking about a cake left too long in the oven. It might well be burnt. The cheese might well be mouldy. The milk might well be sour.”

Isabelle surged to her feet. “You damn well control yourself,” she said. “You’re too involved by half. Even
if
the embassy rang up and said the Met’s presence was wanted at once, you’d be the last officer I’d consider sending. You’ve no objectivity at all, and if you don’t understand that objectivity above everything else is crucial when it comes to a crime, then you need to get back to wherever you learned your policing skills and learn them again.”

“And what if something like this happened to one of your boys?” Barbara demanded. “Just how objective would you manage to be?”

“You’ve gone quite mad” was the conclusion to it all, plus the order to get back to work.

Barbara stormed from Ardery’s office. For the moment, she couldn’t even recall what the work was that she was supposed to get back to. She flung herself in the direction of her desk, where her computer’s screen attempted to remind her, but she could think of nothing and would be good for nothing unless and until she got herself to Italy.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco had an evening ritual that he adhered to as often as he was able to be at home for dinner. With a cup of
caffè corretto
in his hand, he climbed to the very top of the tower in which he and his mamma lived, and there in the perfectly square rooftop garden he drank in peace and watched the sunset. He enjoyed sunsets and how they caressed the ancient buildings of his city. But more than sunsets, he enjoyed the time away from his mamma. At seventy-six years old and in possession of a very bad hip, she no longer climbed to the top of Torre Lo Bianco, the tower that had been his family home for generations. The last two flights of stairs were narrow and metal, and a misstep on them would finish her off. Salvatore didn’t want to endanger his mamma even though he hated living with her as much as she loved having him at home once again.

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.