Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

was with the car below had in their possession the man’s identification. Salvatore nodded and rose, thankful that he was not going to have to go through the corpse’s pockets. He indicated that the body could be taken off for postmortem examination. Then, with Lynley, he approached the edge of the bluff.
    Far below them was the red convertible. Two uniformed officers were with it, while two others were smoking up above them where an area of ground at the base of a boulder some eighty metres higher than the car was marked to indicate the position of the corpse. He had obviously been thrown from the vehicle as it crashed down the bluff. Wearing a seatbelt or not, he would not have survived the car’s rolling
sotto sopra
as it soared from the road to its resting place. The miracle involved was that the vehicle had not burst into flames. This led to the possibility of evidence. Salvatore hoped it was evidence of life, however, and not evidence of a second individual in the convertible when it took its fatal plunge, and hence not evidence of a second body still undiscovered in the area.
    Carefully, he and Lynley worked their way down to the point where the man’s body had lain. He gave the officers there terse instructions: “
Cercate se ce n’è un altro.
” If there was another body nearby, they were to find it.
    They didn’t look happy about this turn of events but when he added, “
Una bambina
.
Cercate subito
,” their expressions altered and they set off. If a little girl’s body was somewhere nearby, it probably wasn’t going to be far.
    At the car, Salvatore repeated his question about the man’s identification. An evidence bag was passed to him by one of the two officers at the vehicle. Inside was a black
portafoglio
. It had been tucked inside the glove box of the car, the car itself a wreck of mangled metal with one wheel missing, three others flattened, and a door ripped off. While Salvatore opened the evidence bag and removed the wallet within it, Lynley moved to look more closely at the vehicle.
    The man was one Roberto Squali, Salvatore saw from his identity card. He felt a rush of excitement to see that the man was a Lucchese. This had to take them, he believed, another step closer to the missing child. Pray God she hadn’t ended up here, he thought as he looked round at the wilderness. His hope lay in the fact that at least ten days separated the girl’s vanishing at the
mercato
from the moment when this accident had occurred. How likely was it that she would have been in the car with this man so long after her kidnapping in Lucca?
    Within Squali’s wallet, Salvatore also found the man’s driving licence, two credit cards, and five business cards. Three of these were from boutiques in Lucca, one was from a restaurant in the town, and the fifth was the link he had prayed to see: something that tied this man to Michelangelo Di Massimo. It was the private investigator’s card and on it was his name, the number of his mobile, and the address of his questionable centre of operations in Pisa.
    “
Guardi qui
,” Salvatore said to Lynley. He handed the card to him, waited while the other man put on his reading spectacles, and met his gaze when Lynley looked up quickly. “
Sì
,” Salvatore said with a smile. “
Addesso abbiamo la prova che sono connessi.
”
    “
Penso proprio di sì
,” Lynley said in agreement. They had their tie between the two men. “
E la bambina?
” he continued. “
Che pensa?
”
    Salvatore looked round them and then up at the mountains that surrounded them on every side. The little girl had been with this man, he thought. He was sure of that. But not at the moment when he’d gone over the cliff. He told Lynley this and the London man nodded. Salvatore returned to his inspection of the car, however, and soon enough he had what he was looking for.
    It was a hair caught up in the mechanics of the seatbelt. It was long. It was dark. A test would tell them if it was Hadiyyah’s. Dusting the vehicle for prints would also tell them if the child had ridden in the car. The only piece of information that the car couldn’t give them was what had happened to her and where she was now.
    Both men knew the hard reality of the situation with which they were faced, however: If Roberto Squali had indeed taken Hadiyyah from the
mercato
in Lucca, if he indeed had been the man seen leading a little girl into the woods somewhere along this road from which his car had toppled,