Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

see and as I saw the moment you told me there
was
a Carlo, he wished to sell the child to fund his drug habit. And this is exactly what he did.”
    “To make sure I understand,
Magistrato
,” Salvatore said carefully. “You mean that you believe Carlo sold the little girl to Roberto Squali?”
    “
Certo
. And Squali is the direction you are to head in: to find the point in the chain where the link exists leading you from him to Carlo.”
    “But Piero, what you suggest . . . A simple comparison with the tourist’s photographs shows that Carlo is not likely to be involved at all.”
    Fanucci’s eyes narrowed but his smile did not falter. “And your reason is . . . ?”
    “My reason is that one of the photos shows this man Squali with a card that, in a picture that follows, appears to be in the hand of the girl. Does this not suggest that he and not Carlo followed her from the
mercato
on the day she went missing?”
    “Bah!” was Fanucci’s reply. “This man Squali . . . He is in the
mercato
how often, Topo? This one time? While Carlo and the girl are there weekly,
sì
? So what I’m telling you is that Carlo knew this man, Carlo knew what he wanted, Carlo saw this girl, and Carlo laid his plan, based on the girl’s movements that he and not Roberto Squali had studied. So we will talk to Carlo again, my friend. And from him we will learn this Squali’s intentions. Prior to this he has not mentioned the name Roberto Squali to me. But when instead I say it to him . . . ?
Aspetta, aspetta
.”
    Salvatore could see how it would play out, now that Fanucci had a name to use in another interrogation of Casparia. He’d pull him out of custody and back into an interview room for another eighteen or twenty or twenty-five hours without food or drink, just enough time for Carlo to begin “imagining” how he and Roberto Squali came to be best friends, intent upon kidnapping a nine-year-old girl for reasons that would be invented on the spot.
    “Piero, for God’s sake,” Salvatore said. “You
know
in your heart that Carlo is not involved in this. And what I’m telling you now, with these details about Roberto Squali—”
    “Salvatore,”
il Pubblico Ministero
said in a pleasant tone, “I know in my heart nothing of the sort. Carlo Casparia has confessed. He has signed his confession without coercion. This, I assure you, people do not do if they are innocent. And Carlo is not an innocent man.”
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    Barbara Havers sat through the morning’s meeting in the incident room with her mind in turmoil, although she managed to keep her expression attentive to DI John Stewart’s endless droning. She also kept her wits about her when he required from her an oral presentation of what she’d gleaned from her three interviews on the previous day. Never mind that she’d been at the Yard past ten o’clock at night, dutifully putting her reports in order for the man’s perusal. Stewart was obviously still on his mission to trip her in her tracks.
    Sorry to disappoint you, mate, was Barbara’s thought as she made her report. Still, it gave her little enough satisfaction to prove the DI wrong about her. For most of her was in a decided twist over what she’d heard from Dwayne Doughty when she’d spoken to him at the Bow Road nick.
    Khushi
had given her a very bad night.
Khushi
had insisted that she ring Taymullah Azhar in Italy and demand a few answers. What stopped her from doing this was a basic tenet about police work: You don’t give away the game when you’re in the middle of it, and you sure as bloody hell do not clue in a suspect that he
is
a suspect when he doesn’t think he’s a suspect at all.
    Yet the idea of Azhar
as
a suspect felt like a hot coal lodged in her throat even now, in the midst of the morning meeting. Azhar was, after all, her friend. Azhar was, after all, a man whom Barbara thought she knew well. The idea of Azhar being in reality someone who could orchestrate the kidnap of his own daughter was unthinkable. For no matter how she looked at the matter, the same facts that she’d delivered to Dwayne Doughty remained at the core of what the private detective was alleging about Azhar: His work and his life were in London, so even if he had somehow arranged the snatching of his daughter, how the hell was he supposed to have put his mitts on her passport, eh? And even if he’d somehow managed to produce another passport for her, he would have then returned with her to London and