Just One Evil Act (7 page)

They were leaving for the day, Doughty told Barbara. He did wish she’d rung first for an appointment. As it was, he needed to be off and so did Em.

Barbara said, “Yeah. Sorry. Should have but I was in the area and thought I’d take a chance. Just five minutes of your time?”

They both looked supremely doubtful about all of it: from being in the area to five minutes of their time. One wasn’t generally in the area of the Roman Road, and nothing they did took only five minutes unless it was to endorse a client’s cheque, which could be accomplished in far less time.

“Five minutes?” Barbara repeated. “I swear.” She brought out her chequebook. A dead moth fell out of it. Not a good sign, but Doughty overlooked this. “I’ll pay, of course.”

“This is about . . . ?”

“Same as before.”

They exchanged another look. Barbara wondered again. Private eyes were notorious for all sorts of skulduggery. They were also known for providing the fruits of their labour to various tabloids round the capital. If Doughty or his assistant had been into this game, Barbara wondered was there something they didn’t want her to know.

Doughty sighed and said, “Five minutes.” He opened the office and ushered her inside.

Barbara said, “What about . . . ?” in reference to his employee.

“Triathlon training is triathlon training,” he told her. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

“What’s she do for you exactly?” Barbara followed him into his office as Emily Cass powered down the stairs.

“Emily? This and that with the computer. Research. Phone calls. Tying loose ends. The occasional interview.”

“What about blagging?”

He looked cagey enough at this to suggest that Emily Cass had talents extending beyond those related to swimming, biking, and running marathons.

Barbara said, “Look. I’ve talked to Azhar. I know what you told him. No trace left. Completely disappeared. But no one disappears without leaving some sort of trail, and I don’t see how Angelina Upman managed to do it.”

“Nor do I,” he said frankly. “But such is the case. It happens.”

“Her alone maybe. All right. On a stretch. She takes off with no one noticing or, for that matter, no one much caring. But that’s not the situation here. Someone cares. And she’s not alone. She’s got a nine-year-old with her—and this is a kid who’s bloody close to her dad, by the way—so even if Angelina doesn’t want to be found, at some point Hadiyyah’s going to start talking about Dad and where he is and why they’re not sending him a bloody postcard.”

Doughty nodded but then he said, “Children are told all sorts of things about their parents in this kind of situation. I expect you know that.”

“Such as?”

“Such as ‘Dad and I are divorcing’ or ‘Dad’s dropped dead in his office this morning’ or anything for that matter. Point is, she’s done a successful runner, I’ve told the professor as much, and if there’s more to be done, I don’t know what it is and he’ll need someone else to do it.”

“He told me you managed the last name. Angelina’s mother. Ruth-Jane Squire.”

“Hardly a difficult feat. He probably could have managed that much himself.”

“In possession of that and other details—addresses, birthdates, and whatnot—you and I both know that a blagger can go miles: banks, credit cards, postal boxes, mobile phone records, landline records, passports, driving licences. But you still say there was no trail?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Doughty told her. “I might not like it, the professor certainly doesn’t like it, and you might not like it, but that’s how it is.”

“Who’s Bryan, then?”

“Who?”

“I heard Emily mention Bryan. Is he your blagger?”

“Miss . . . Havers, is it?”

“Excellent memory, mate.”

“Bryan is my tech expert. He did the more detailed work on the laptop from the little girl’s room.”

“And?”

“The result’s the same. The child used it. The mother did not. Which is to say there was nothing on it that could have been deemed remotely suspicious.”

“Then why did someone wipe it clean?”

“Perhaps to muddy the waters, to make it look as if there was something on it that needed to be removed. But there wasn’t. Now.” Doughty had been sitting but he got to his feet and his intention was clear: Farewells were in order and hers was the job of making them. “You’ve had your five minutes. I’ve a wife at home and a dinner to eat, and if you’ve a wish for a longer natter with me, it’s going to have to take place at another time.”

Barbara eyed him. There had
to be something else, if not here then elsewhere. But aside from sliding burning slivers of bamboo beneath Dwayne Doughty’s fingernails, she reckoned she’d got all she could from the man. She took a Biro from her bag and opened her chequebook.

At this, Doughty held up his hand. “Please. It’s on the house,” he said.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

H
e decided that the encounter between them could happen most easily in a
mercato
. There were enough of them in and around Lucca, and the best took place inside the colossal wall that encircled the oldest part of the town. Piazza San Michele’s
mercato
was a now-and-then occurrence, mad with Lucchese
from neighbourhoods beyond the wall who wandered in through one of the great gates for a day of browsing through stalls selling everything from scarves to wheels of cheese. But Piazza San Michele was also the central point of the walled city, making an escape from the place fraught with problems. That left him with a choice between either the
mercato
in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi not more than a stone’s throw from escape through Porta San Pietro, or the decided insanity of the
mercato
that stretched the distance from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo.

When he thought about these latter two
mercati
, his final decision had to do with the atmosphere and with what sort of people tended to frequent each of them. Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi attracted tourists, along with a more well-heeled kind of shopper, and its offerings appealed to those with ready cash to hand over for its delicacies. Because of this, he found that the family did not shop often in this place. So he was left with the other.

This other
mercato
stretched along the narrow, curving lane of Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane, which backed right up to the looming mass of the city’s wall. Frequenters of the place had to elbow between one another, and in doing so they had to avoid stepping on barking dogs and encountering beggars at the same time as they attempted to make their demands of
lo venderebbe a meno?
heard above the din of conversations, arguments, musicians playing for a handout, and people shouting into their mobile phones. Indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that this
mercato
in Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane was actually perfect. Anything could happen unnoticed in the place, and it had the additional advantage of being quite close to the home on Via Santa Gemma Galgani, where every Saturday the family met for lunch. On nice days, such as this one, that lunch was served in the garden just a portion of which he’d been able to glimpse from the street.

It was to this place—to this house and garden—that everyone would assume at first that the child had gone. It was a natural conclusion for people to reach, and he could easily imagine how things would play out. Papà would turn round and see she wasn’t immediately within sight, but he would actually think nothing of it. For the house was close, and in that house standing within its beautiful garden lived a boy just the age of the child. She called him Cugino Gugli, which she pronounced
Goo-lee
because her Italian was limited and she could not yet say Guglielmo. But the boy did not seem to mind since he could not pronounce her name either, and anyway their bond was of
calcio
only. And one did not need a real language for bonding over
calcio
. One only needed the willingness to kick a football towards a goal.

She wouldn’t fear him when he approached her. She didn’t know him, but she would have been taught that the strangers to fear were the ones with lost animals in need of finding, the ones with kittens in a box—just behind that parked car,
cara bambina
—the ones who gave off the stench of lust and longing, the ill-dressed, the foul-breathed, the unbathed, the ones with something to show you or give you or a special place to take you where a very special treat was waiting for you . . . But he was none of this, and he had none of this. What he did have was his looks—
la faccia d’un angelo
, as his mamma liked to say—along with a message. Plus, he was to say a single word and that word was going to seal the deal. It was a word he’d never heard before in any of the three languages he spoke, but he’d been told it would convince the child of the veracity of the tale he would tell her. Hearing it, she would understand him perfectly. This was why he—and not someone else—had been chosen for the job at hand.

Because he was good at his job, he’d taken time to gather the information he needed to carry off the assignment. Most families, he knew, kept to routines. It made life easier for them. So a month of careful watching, surreptitious following, and copious note-taking had told him what was required of him. Once he’d been given the date for action, he was ready.

They would park their Lancia outside the city wall, in the
parcheggio
near Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. From there, they would part ways for two hours. Mamma would head towards Via della Cittadella, where the yoga studio was. Papà and Bambina would stroll towards and through Porta Elisa. Mamma’s walk was the longer one, but she carried only her yoga mat and she liked the exercise. Papà and Bambina each carried one
borsa della spesa
, indicating that at the end of their time in the
mercato
, they’d be burdened with their purchases within those bags.

At this point, he knew them all so well that he could have described the likely clothes that Mamma would wear and he could have named the colours of the
borse
that Papà and Bambina
would carry. His would be green and made of webbing. Hers would be orange and of solid material. They were nothing if not creatures of habit.

On the day set for everything to happen, he established himself in the
parcheggio
early. This was his eighth time following the family, and he was assured that nothing was going to disrupt their normal routine. He was in no hurry. For when the job was done, it had to be done perfectly and in such a way that several hours would pass before anyone had the slightest idea that something might be wrong.

He’d left his own vehicle in the
parcheggio
in Viale Guglielmo Marconi. He’d arrived several hours before the
mercato
opened in order to capture a parking bay that gave him quick access to the exit. He’d bought a large piece of
focaccia alle cipolle
on his way to Piazzale Don Aldo Mei. After he ate, he chewed on breath mints to rid his mouth of the scent of the onions. He took a
pianta stradale
from the shoulder bag he carried, and he unfolded this on the boot of a car, ostensibly looking for a route. He would be just another tourist in Lucca to anyone who saw him.

The family arrived ten minutes behind schedule, but he didn’t consider this a problem. They parted as always just inside the gate, with Mamma walking off to her yoga experience and Papà and Bambina
heading inside the tourist office where there was a WC. They were innately practical people as well as being utterly consistent. First things first and besides, there were no toilets once one began to wander through the
mercato
.

He lingered outside, across the street, waiting for them. It was a glorious day, sunny but not yet blazing hot the way it would be in three months’ time. Trees on the top of the great wall behind him bore new, freshly unfurling leaves, and these were shading the
mercato
at the moment, rustling in a soft breeze as well. As the morning continued, the sun would fall brightly on the stalls
that lined the lane. As the day grew older, the bright light would move from the merchants onto the ancient buildings across from them.

He lit a cigarette and smoked with great pleasure. He’d nearly finished when Papà and Bambina left the tourist office and set off into the
mercato
.

He followed them. In the times he’d spent tailing them from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo, he’d come to know where and when they would stop, and he’d been careful about selecting the point at which he knew the time would have arrived for him to act. For just within the city wall at Porta San Jacopo, the far end of the
mercato
—a musician played. Here Bambina
always stopped to listen, with a two-euro coin in her hand to offer the man at some point during his performance. She waited for Papà to join her there. But today that was not going to happen. She would be gone when Papà finally arrived.

The
mercato
was, as always, crowded. He remained unnoticed. Where Papà and Bambina
stopped, he stopped, too. They bought fruit
and a selection of vegetables. Then, Papà bought fresh pasta
while Bambina
danced over to the kitchen goods and sang out, “She wanted a potato peeler.” He himself chose a cheese grater and then it was on to the scarves. They were cheap but colourful, and Bambina
always tried new ways of tying one round her pretty little neck. On and on it went, with an extended stay at Tutti per 1 Euro, where everything from buckets to hair ornaments was sold. An examination of shoes
neatly arranged in rows and available for trying on if one’s feet were clean led to intimate apparel for
le donne
and from that to sunglasses and leather
cinture
. Papà tried on one of these, weaving it into the loops of his faded blue jeans. He shook his head and handed it back. By the time he had done so, Bambina
had already gone on ahead.

It was where the severed head of a pig announced the stall of the
macellaio
and his display of meats that Bambina
skipped onward towards Porta San Jacopo. At this point, he knew, things would follow an unbreaking pattern, so he removed the five-euro note that he had folded carefully into his pocket.

The musician was where he always stood, some twenty yards from Porta San Jacopo. The man was, as usual, gathering a crowd as he played Italian folksongs on his accordion. He had a dancing poodle as a companion, and he accompanied his music and the dog by singing into a microphone clipped onto the collar of his blue shirt. It was the same shirt he wore every week, tattered along the cuffs.

He waited through two songs. Then he saw his moment. Bambina
dodged forward to put her customary two-euro coin in the collection basket, and he moved forward for the moment when she would return to the other listeners.

“
Scusa
,” he said to her once she’d rejoined the crowd and stood in front of him. “
Per favore, glielo puoi dare . . . ?
” He nodded at his hand. The five-euro note was folded neatly in half. It lay across a greeting card that he had removed from his jacket pocket.

She frowned. A tiny part of her lip was sucked into her mouth. She looked up at him.

He indicated the collection basket with a tilt of his head. “
Per favore
,” he repeated with a smile. And then, “
Anche . . .
leggi questo. Non importa ma . . .
” He let the rest hang there, with another smile. The card he handed her had no envelope. It would be easy enough to open and to read the message within, as he’d asked her to do.

And then he added what he knew would convince her. It was a single word and her eyes widened in surprise. At that point he went on in English, the words formed in such a way that their derivation was something she would not fail to recognise:

“I shall be happy to wait on the other side of Porta San Jacopo. You have absolutely nothing to fear.”