Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

Catholic funeral and an impressive burial at Cimitero Urbano di Lucca. Salvatore went to the funeral out of respect for the Muras in general and to show Lorenzo in particular that he was indeed looking into the untimely death of the woman he loved and the child she carried. He went to the burial for another reason entirely: to observe the behaviour of every person there. At a great distance from the gravesite, Ottavia Schwartz observed as well. She was tasked with surreptitiously taking photos of everyone present.
    There were three camps of people: the Muras and their friends and associates, the Upmans, and Taymullah Azhar. The Mura contingent was vast, in keeping with the extraordinary size of their family and the length of time they’d held influence in Lucca. The Upmans were a party of four consisting of Angelina’s parents, her sister—an astonishing identical twin of the dead woman—and this sister’s spouse. Taymullah Azhar was a party of two: himself and his daughter. This poor child’s confusion was total, her understanding of what had happened to her mother imperfect. She clung to her father’s waist at the gravesite. Her face was a study in incomprehension. As far as she had known, her mummy had had an upset tummy when she’d lain on a chaise longue on the loggia. She’d drifted into sleep and had not awakened. Then she was dead.
    Salvatore thought of his own Bianca, nearly the same age as Hadiyyah. He prayed as he looked upon this little girl: God forbid that anything should happen to Birgit. How does a nine-year-old child recover from such a loss? he asked himself. And this poor child . . . kidnapped from the
mercato
, then taken to reside at Villa Rivelli with the half-mad Domenica Medici, and now this . . .
    But that chain of thought led him ineluctably to the Pakistani professor. Salvatore observed Taymullah Azhar’s solemn face. He considered the way in which everything had come about to result in this moment of his daughter clinging to his waist. She was returned into his sole care, her remaining parent. There would be no sharing of her required, no to-ing and fro-ing from London for visits that would end all too soon. Was this present situation the terrible synchronicity of random and apparently unrelated events, or was this what it appeared to be: a convenient conclusion to the dispute over possession of a child?
    Lorenzo Mura clearly thought the latter, and he had to be restrained from a graveside confrontation with Azhar. His sister and her husband held him back. “
Stronzo!
” he cried. “You wanted her dead and now you have it! For God’s sake, someone do something about him!”
    It was an unseemly graveside display, but one not out of keeping with Mura’s nature. He was passionate in the first place. And now as a man who has suddenly lost the woman he loves and the child she carries . . . their future planned out together and then gone in an instant . . . ? The English present at the funeral and gravesite would always practise their stiff upper lips faced with a tragedy such as this. But an Italian? No. A release of grief, a reaction to grief . . . These things were natural. Reticence in the face of these things was what was inhuman. Salvatore only wished that the child of Angelina Upman did not have to witness it or hear what Lorenzo was shouting across the grave at her father.
    Mura’s family seemed to feel likewise. His sister urged Lorenzo from the grave and their mamma drew him to her sumptuous bosom. He was soon encircled by his relations and they moved as one unified body away from the grave and towards the cemetery’s grand entrance where their cars had been left.
    The Upman family approached Taymullah Azhar. Salvatore’s English was too limited for him to understand all that they said, but he could read their expressions well enough. They hated this man, and they cared little for the child he had produced with the dead woman. They looked upon her as if she was only a curiosity to them. They looked upon him with loathing. At least Angelina’s parents did so. Her sister extended a hand to the child, but Azhar moved Hadiyyah out of her reach.
    “This is how it finishes,” the father of Angelina said to the Pakistani man. “She died as she lived. As will you. And soon, I hope.”
    His wife, the mother, looked at the child. She opened her lips to speak, but before she could do so, the husband had her by the arm and was marching her in the same direction the Muras had