Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

investigate the death of Angelina Upman to his heart’s content.
    Bene
, he thought. It very nearly made the beating worthwhile.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    He could barely get his key in the lock. Luckily his mamma heard the scraping of metal against metal. She came to the door, demanding to know who was there, and when she heard his weak voice, she threw the door open. He tumbled directly into her arms.
    She screamed. Then she wept. Then she cursed the monster who had laid his brutal hands upon her only son. Then she wept some more. Finally, she helped him into a chair only three feet from the doorway. He was to sit, sit, sit, she told him. She was going to phone for
un’ ambulanza
. And then she was going to phone the police.
    “I am the police,” he reminded her feebly. He added, “
Non ho bisogno di un’ambulanza. Non la chiamare, Mamma
.”
    What? she demanded. He didn’t need an ambulance? He couldn’t walk, he could barely talk, his jaw looked broken, his eyes were blacked, his mouth was bleeding, his lips were cut, his nose could be broken, and inside his body God alone knew what damage had been done. She wept anew. “Who did this to you?” she demanded. “Where did this happen?”
    He was too embarrassed to tell his mamma that
il Pubblico Ministero
—a man more than twenty years his senior—had beaten him so. He said, “
Non è importante, Mamma. Ma puoi aiutarmi?
”
    She took a step back from him.
What
was he asking? she demanded, a hand at her breast. Did he think his own mamma might not help him? Would she not give her life for him? He was her blood. All of her children and their children were her reason for living in the first place.
    So she bustled round and began to see to his injuries. She was accomplished at this, a woman who was mother to three and
nonna
to ten. She’d bound more wounds than she could remember. He was to put himself into her hands.
    She did it well. She still wept as she worked, but she was tenderness itself. When she had finished her ministrations, she helped him carefully to a
divano
. He was to lie there, she told him, and he was to rest. She would call his two sisters. They would want to know what had happened. They would want to visit. And she herself would make his favourite
farro
soup. He would sleep while she worked upon this, and—
    “
No, grazie, Mamma
,” Salvatore told her. He would rest a quarter of an hour and then he would return to work.
    “
Dio mio!
” was her response to this idea. They went back and forth on the subject of his continuing his day as if nothing untoward had occurred. She would not hear of it, she would bar the door, she would cut off her hair and pour ashes on her head if he so much as put one toe outside of Torre Lo Bianco,
chiaro
?
    He smiled weakly at her drama. Half an hour, he compromised. He would rest that long and that was all.
    She threw her hands up. At least he would take a fortifying glass of wine, no? An ounce or two of
limoncello
?
    He would take the
limoncello
, he told her. He knew that she was going to be relentless till he agreed with at least one of her suggestions.
    At the half-hour mark, he eased himself off the
divano
. A wave of dizziness passed over him, followed by a surge of nausea, and he wondered if he’d been concussed. He made his way to a mirror near the entry to the tower and had a look at his reflection to assess the damage.
    He thought wryly that at least the scars on his face from adolescent acne were now unremarkable since his features were at present so much more interesting than the remains of what those eruptions on his face had done to his skin. His eyes were swollen, his lips looked lumpy as if injected with a foreign substance, his nose was indeed possibly broken—its position seeming somewhat different from what he remembered—and already the bruising from Piero’s fists was starting to appear. He felt additionally bruised on every part of his body, as well. Cracked ribs were likely. Even his wrists hurt.
    Salvatore had not known that Piero Fanucci was such a fighter. But on consideration, he had to admit that it made sense. Ugly beyond all possibility of self-reconciliation to this fact, possessing that unsettling adventitious finger upon his hand, springing from poverty and familial ignorance, exposed to the derision of others . . . Who could doubt that, given the alternative between life as a victim and life as an aggressor, Piero Fanucci had made the better choice? Reluctantly, Salvatore