Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

discover. I’ve telephoned, but so far I have heard not a word.”
    “Which means something’s gone wrong. You know that, don’t you?”
    “
Sì
.
Sono d’accordo
,” the other murmured. “I ask you to believe that I am attempting to discover exactly what this is. But even in this, I must proceed with caution because the police will be watching me.”
    “I don’t care if the bloody Swiss Guards are watching you,” Doughty said. “I want that kid found. I want her found today.”
    “I doubt that will be possible,” he admitted. “Until I find the messenger sent to fetch her, I will know nothing more than you.”
    “Then goddamn bloody find the messenger!” Doughty roared. “Because if I have to come to Italy myself, you aren’t going to be happy about it.”
    That said, he snapped the mobile phone in half. He was on the bridge that carried Gunmakers Lane over the Hertford Union Canal. He cursed and threw the broken pieces of the mobile into the murky water there. He watched them sink and hoped against hope that they weren’t a metaphor for what was going on in his life.

28 April
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    S alvatore Lo Bianco made the requisite offer of help to his mamma. As usual she refused. No one, she told him—also as usual—would ever wash and polish the marble cover of his father’s grave during what remained of the lifetime of his devoted wife. No, no, no,
figlio mio
, this chore will take no longer than is required for my old body to hobble round the plot itself, wielding soap and water and rags and marble polish and more rags till the stone reflects this ancient, sorrowing face of mine as well as the sky with its glorious clouds above me. You may watch, however,
figlio mio
, so that you will learn how to care for this stone where my poor corpse will lie with your father’s after my earthly days are done.
    Salvatore told her that perhaps he would walk, instead. He would follow the path round the perimeter of this part of the cemetery. He needed to think a bit. She could call out to him if she needed help. He would not be far away.
    Mamma gave a quintessential Italian mamma shrug. He could, of course, please himself in this matter. Sons so often did just that, didn’t they? And then she turned and said, “
Ciao, Giuseppe, marito carissimo,
” and told the dead man how deeply she missed him, how every moment of every day brought her closer to joining him in the ground. After this, she began her work upon the grave.
    Salvatore watched her and stifled a chuckle. There were certain moments in their life together, he thought, when his mamma was not his real mamma at all but rather a caricature of an Italian mamma. This was one of them. For the truth of the matter was that Teresa Lo Bianco had spent what Salvatore knew of her married life absolutely furious with his father. She’d been one of those breathtaking Italian beauties who married young and lost her looks to childbearing and a lifetime of household drudgery, and she’d never forgiven or forgotten that fact. Except, of course, when she came to the Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Then, the instant that Salvatore parked in front of the great gates to the place, his mamma’s face transformed from its habitual look of pinched irritation to an expression that mixed grief and piety so superbly that had anyone other than Salvatore seen her, she would appear as a recent widow whose loss would never be assuaged.
    He smiled. He folded a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, and he began to walk. He was halfway round his first circumambulation of the quadrangle of graves decorated with saints and the Virgin and her Son when his mobile rang. He glanced at the number of whoever was placing the call.
    The Englishman, he thought. He liked this man Lynley. He’d thought the Londoner would be an irritating interloper into the Italian investigation, but this hadn’t proved to be the case.
    His
pronto
was answered in the other detective’s careful Italian. Lynley was ringing to tell him that the mother of the kidnapped girl was in hospital. “I wasn’t sure if you’d know this,” Lynley told him. He went on to say that when he’d seen her two days earlier at the
fattoria
, she’d been very weak and yesterday she had grown even weaker. “Signor Mura insisted she go to hospital, for a check-over at least,” Lynley said. “I didn’t disagree.”
    Lynley told him, then, of his conversations with both Lorenzo Mura and Angelina Upman. He spoke of a man