Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

Greco phone you at once.”
    Barbara wasn’t sure what
at once
meant when it came to Italy, so after she gave her number and rang off, she began to pace the room. She opened the shutters on the windows, then the windows themselves. Across the piazza, she saw Mitch Corsico seated at a café table beneath an umbrella, enjoying a drink of some kind. He seemed perfectly relaxed and perfectly content. He knew something, she reckoned, and he was waiting for her to learn it for herself.
    This she did in short order. Her mobile rang and she snatched it up, barking into it. It was Greco.
    Taymullah Azhar had been arrested, he told her, for the crime of murder. He’d been at the
questura
for the past two days, in and out and off and on, with the arrest coming at half past nine this morning.
    God in heaven, Barbara thought. “Where’s Hadiyyah?” she demanded. “What’s happened to Hadiyyah?”
    In answer, Aldo Greco said that he would meet her at his office in forty-five minutes.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    She had no choice. She had to take Corsico. He knew his way round Lucca, and even if she set off without him, he would only follow her. So when she left Pensione Giardino, she crossed the piazza to him, sat, picked up his glass, and drained it. The drink was something very sweet poured over two cubes of ice.
Limoncello
and soda, he said. “Go easy with that, Barb.”
    Advice given too late. It hit her directly between the eyes. Her vision felt impaired by a sudden haze. She said, “Bloody hell. No wonder the
vita
is so
dolce
in this country.
That’s
what they do for elevenses?”
    “’Course not,” he said. “They’re easier about life, but they’re not insane. I take it you got the word about Azhar?”
    She felt her eyes narrow. “You
knew
?”
    He lifted his shoulders in mock regret.
    “Goddamn it, I thought we were working together.”
    “So did I,” he said. “But then . . . when it came down to it . . . on the matter of interviews . . .”
    “Christ. All right. So where’s Hadiyyah, then? Do you know that as well?”
    He shook his head. “But it’s not like there’re dozens of possibilities. They’ve got rules to follow, and I expect none of them say nine-year-olds are left on their own to book themselves into the Ritz when their daddies get charged with murder. We need to find her, though. The sooner the better as I’ve a deadline to meet.”
    Barbara flinched at the callous nature of the remark. Hadiyyah was nothing to Corsico, just another angle to the story he planned to write. She got to her feet, experienced a moment of dizziness from the drink, and waited for it to pass. She scored a handful of crisps from a basket on the table and said, “We’re heading to Via San Giorgio. Know where that is?”
    He threw some coins into the otherwise empty ashtray and got to his feet. “Not far,” he told her. “This is Lucca.”
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Aldo Greco turned out to be a courtly-looking man along the lines of his fellow Lucchese Giacomo Puccini but without the moustache. He had the same soulful eyes and the same thick dark hair touched at the temples with silver strands. His olive skin bore not a single crease. He could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty. He looked like a film star.
    Barbara could tell he thought that she and Mitch Corsico were a very odd match, but he was too polite to make any comment aside from
Piacere
—whatever the hell that meant—when she introduced herself and her companion to the solicitor.
    Greco asked them to sit and offered them refreshments. Barbara demurred. Mitch said a coffee wouldn’t go down half bad. Greco nodded and asked his secretary to see to this, which she did efficiently. Mitchell was presented with a thimble of liquid so black it might have been used motor oil. He was apparently familiar with this, Barbara thought, because he put a sugar cube between his teeth and tossed the mess back.
    Greco was guarded with them once they’d covered the bases of general courtesy. He had no real idea who Barbara was, after all. She could have been anyone—to whit, she could have been a journalist—claiming to know Azhar. Azhar had not mentioned her to the solicitor, and this presented a problem for Greco, who was bound by ethics and probably otherwise loath to give out even the most superficial detail associated with his client’s arrest.
    She showed him her police ID. This impressed him only marginally. She mentioned DI Lynley, who’d preceded her to