Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

report—he
didn’t
have in great size between his legs.
    “
Sì, sì
,” Salvatore said. He knew Cinzia lived with a man, but he had to wonder how the fellow put up with her general disdain for males of all species. He rang off and considered a map he’d posted on the wall of his office. There was so much in the Apuan Alps. It would take a century to work out where the dead man had been heading, if, indeed, where he’d been heading was relevant to the case.
    Salvatore had come up with a photo of Squali in better days, which was any day prior to the day on which they’d found his body. He was a handsome man, and with the picture in his possession, it was a small matter for Salvatore to reboot the tourist photographs he’d loaded onto his laptop and to verify that it was indeed Squali standing there in the crowd behind Hadiyyah, holding the card with a yellow happy face on it. Seeing this, Salvatore considered his next options.
    They had everything to do with Piero Fanucci.
Il Pubblico Ministero
was not going to be pleased when Salvatore revealed to him that he might be wrong about his prime suspect. In the past two days, Fanucci had invested a great deal into Carlo Casparia’s ostensible guilt, allowing more and more details of the drug addict’s “confession” to be leaked to the press. He’d even given an interview about the investigation to
Prima Voce
. This interview had ended up on the tabloid’s front page as well as its website, which meant it would soon enough be translated by the British media, members of which group had started to show up in Lucca. They’d made short work of figuring out that the café down the street from the
questura
was the best spot to pick up gossip about the case, and like their Italian counterparts, they were dogged when it came to buttonholing police officials for direct questioning.
    Because of this latter fact, when it came down to it, there was really no decision to make about whether to tell
il Pubblico Ministero
about the discovery of Roberto Squali, Salvatore realised. Should he not tell him, a reporter would, or—what was worse—Piero would read about it in
Prima Voce
. There would be hell for Salvatore to pay if that occurred. So there was nothing for it but to pay a call upon Fanucci.
    Salvatore gave the
magistrato
every one of the details he’d so far withheld: the red convertible, the previous sighting of a man and a girl heading into the woods, the American tourist’s photos of a man in possession of a card that—so it appeared—he seemed to have given to the missing girl, and now the accident site with that same man’s dead body forty-eight hours in the out-of-doors.
    Fanucci listened to Salvatore’s recitation from the other side of his vast walnut desk, twirling a pen in his fingers and keeping his eyes fixed upon Salvatore’s lips. At the conclusion of Salvatore’s remarks,
il Pubblico Ministero
abruptly shoved his chair back, surged to his feet, and walked to his bookcases. Salvatore steeled himself for Fanucci’s rage, possibly to include the hurling of legal volumes in his direction.
    What came, however, was something else.
    “
Così
. . . ,” Fanucci murmured. “
Così, Topo
. . .”
    Salvatore waited for more. He did not have to wait long.
    “
Ora capisco com’è successo
,” Fanucci said thoughtfully. He did not sound the least bit concerned about the information he’d just been given.
    “
Daverro?
” Salvatore sought clarification. “
Allora, Piero
. . . ?
” If Fanucci
did
indeed see how the kidnapping and everything related to it had happened, he—Salvatore—would be only too welcoming of the magistrate’s conclusions.
    Fanucci turned back to him with one of his inauthentic and paternal smiles, in itself a sign of worse things to come. “
Questo
. . . ,” he said. “You have the link you have sought. This we must now celebrate.”
    “The link,” Salvatore repeated.
    “Between our Carlo and what he did with the girl. Now it all fits together, Topo.
Bravo.
Hai fatto bene
.” Fanucci returned to his desk and sat. He continued expansively with “I well know what you will say next. ‘So far,’ you will say, ‘there is no link to join these men Squali and Carlo Casparia,
Magistrato.
’ But that is because you have not yet found it. You will, however, and it will show you that Carlo’s intentions were what I have declared them to be. He did not wish this child for himself. Have I not told you that? As you can now