Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

“And anyway isn’t it time that Piero was taught his lesson? I suggest you allow him to trumpet to the newspapers as much as he would like: ‘Di Massimo’s our man! We have the evidence! Put the
stronzo
on trial!’ And then, of course, a copy of this card sent on the sly to Di Massimo’s attorney . . . ? You owe Piero nothing. And, as you say, murder is a larger issue than abduction.” She smiled at him. “I tell you: Do your worst, Salvatore. Solve this murder
and
the abduction and send Fanucci directly to hell.”
    He smiled in turn and winced just a bit at the pain. “You see? This is why I fell in love with you,” he told her.
    “Had it only lasted” was her reply.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Back in his office, at the centre of his desk, Salvatore found a stack of photographs along with a note from the resourceful Ottavia Schwartz. She had managed to have them printed on the sly, and they featured everyone who had attended the funeral and the burial of Angelina Upman.
    “Bruno was there, Salvatore.”
    He looked up. She’d seen him and slipped into his office, closing the door behind her. She blanched at the sight of his face. She said shrewdly, “
Il drago?
” and made a colourful suggestion as to what
il Pubblico Ministero
could do to himself. Then she joined Salvatore at the desk and pointed out Daniele Bruno, with his bulbous ears, standing among a group of men consoling Lorenzo Mura. Ottavia unearthed another picture of him, head bent to Lorenzo as they spoke by the gravesite. But the import of this? Salvatore asked her. How could it mean anything more than all of the other mourners who spoke to Lorenzo Mura that day? Like Mura, Bruno was on the city’s
squadra di calcio
. Was Ottavia suggesting that he alone of the team members had gone to the funeral of Lorenzo Mura’s beloved?
    That had not been the case, of course. The other team members had been there. So had the parents of the children whom Lorenzo Mura coached in private sessions. So had other individuals from the community. So had the Mura and the Upman families.
    It was this last group upon whom Salvatore focused. He brought a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and he gazed upon the face of Angelina Upman’s sister. He’d never seen twins who bore such a remarkable likeness to each other. There was usually something—some tiny detail—that differentiated them, but in the case of Bathsheba Ward, he could not tell what it was. She might have been Angelina Upman sprung to life once more. It was quite astounding, he thought.
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    The fact that the wife of one Daniele Bruno was a flight attendant on the regular route between Pisa and London turned out to be a nonstarter, as Lynley had thought it might when he checked into it for Salvatore Lo Bianco. She flew into and out of Gatwick several times a day, but that was an end to it. She never had cause to spend the night. She would do, on the off chance that an extreme flight delay resulted in aircraft being held overnight. But when that occurred—which it had not done in the past twelve months—she stayed with the rest of the flight crew at an airport hotel and left the next morning.
    Lynley reported all this to Salvatore, who agreed that the matter of Daniele Bruno was turning into an unmistakable dead end. He’d seen all the photos of the funeral, he said. Bruno was there,
certo
, but so was everyone else. “I think he has nothing to do with nothing,” Salvatore said in English.
    Lynley didn’t point out that the double negative resulted in Daniele Bruno being guilty of
something
, if only of being part of a fantasy from the fractured mind of a drug addict. For they had only the word of Carlo Casparia that Bruno had met Lorenzo Mura alone at the football practice field in the first place. And this word had come after being held without a solicitor’s involvement, after days of interrupted sleep and very little food. Daniele Bruno was a nonstarter, he reckoned, just like his wife.
    But there had to be someone, somewhere, with access to something . . .
    They both knew who that someone probably was.
    St. James’s arrival at New Scotland Yard added little to the mix they had. Lynley met his friend in Reception, and they spoke to each other over morning coffee on the fourth floor.
    It had been easy enough for St. James to visit Azhar’s lab. By virtue of his university background and his reputation as a forensic scientist and expert witness, he had colleagues everywhere.