Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

The
avvocato
had spoken of him, using the term
her English companion
or something very like. Salvatore wondered what that term really meant.
    Bah, he thought. He had no time for these considerations, and of what import were they? He had work to do, and it wasn’t for him to work out the details of a couple’s interaction on the street. Enough that the cowboy had taken himself elsewhere so that he could put Barbara Havers into the picture of what was going on.
    He knew she was confused. Everything that had happened at DARBA Italia was a source of anxiety for her. She’d expected him to make a clear move that would take them in the direction she wanted to go: an arrest of someone who was not Taymullah Azhar. He was doing that, but he lacked the words to tell her that things were moving along.
    Ottavia Schwartz had seen to that. While he was helping Barbara move Hadiyyah and her belongings from the
pensione
to his mamma’s house, while he and Barbara and the child had been eating their little meal with his mamma, Ottavia had been fulfilling his orders. In a police car, she’d gone with Giorgio Simione to DARBA Italia. She’d returned to the
questura
with the director of marketing. He was waiting for them now in an interview room, where he’d been—Salvatore consulted his watch—for the last one hundred minutes. A few more wouldn’t hurt.
    He took Barbara Havers to his office. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk, and he pulled another over and joined her there. He swept a few articles on the desk to one side, and he laid out the list of employees provided to him by the managing director of DARBA Italia.
    She said, “Right. But what’s this doing to help us sort out—”
    “
Aspetti
,” he told her. He pulled from a pen and pencil holder a highlighting marker. He used it to draw her attention to the name of every department head on the list of employees. Bernardo. Roberto. Daniele. Alessandro. Antonio. She frowned at the highlighted names and said, “So? I mean, I see that these blokes run the show and yeah, okay, their last names are all the same so they must be related, but I don’t get why we aren’t—”
    He used a red pen to draw a square round the first initial of each name. Then he wrote them out on a sticky pad. Then he unscrambled them into DARBA. “
Fratelli
,” he said, to which she said, “Brother.” This word he knew and he said, holding up his hand to illustrate what he meant: “
Sì.
Sono fratelli
.
Con i nomi del padre e dei nonni e zii. Ma aspetti un attimo, Barbara
.”
    He went to the other side of his desk, where upon a corner lay a stack of files comprising some of the materials he’d amassed on the death of Angelina Upman. From these he pulled out the photographs from the Englishwoman’s funeral and burial. He leafed through them quickly and found the two he wanted.
    These he placed on top of the list of employees. “Daniele Bruno,” he told Barbara Havers.
    Those fine blue eyes widened as they took in the pictures. In one of them Daniele Bruno was speaking earnestly to Lorenzo Mura, one hand on his shoulder and their heads bent together. In the other, he was merely a member of the
squadra di calcio
who had attended the funeral to show their support to a fellow player. Barbara Havers gazed at these pictures, then she set them to one side. As Salvatore had assumed she would, she took up the employee list and found Daniele Bruno’s name. He was the director of marketing. Like his brothers, he doubtless came and went from his family’s business with no one wondering where he was going or why.
    “Yes, yes, yes!” Barbara Havers cried. She soared to her feet. “You’re a bloody genius, Salvatore! You found the link! This is it! This is how!” And she grabbed his face and kissed him squarely on the mouth.
    She seemed as startled as he was that she had done this because an instant afterwards, she backed away. She said, “Christ. Sorry, mate.
Sorry
, Salvatore. But thank you, thank you. What d’we do next?”
    He recognised
sorry
but nothing else. He said, “
Venga
,” and indicated the door.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Daniele Bruno was stowed in the interview room closest to Salvatore’s office. During the time he’d been waiting, he’d managed to fill the space with enough cigarette smoke to asphyxiate a cow.
    Salvatore said, “
Basta!
” as he and Barbara Havers entered. He strode to the table and removed from it a packet of cigarettes and an overfull ashtray. He