Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

out of the UK, and I never thought I’d ever be standing in Italy. But I’ll say this: If someone or something drags one out of one’s local chippy and into a foreign country, Lucca’s not a bad spot to end up.” She hoisted her glass to him and to the place. “Bloody beautiful,” she said.
    He said, “Bloody right.”
    She chuckled at this. “
Bene
, mate. I think you could learn to speak the lingo without that much trouble.”
    “Sod it,” he said happily.
    She laughed.

18 May
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    T he ringing of her mobile phone awakened Barbara. She grabbed it up quickly and glanced at the other bed in the room. Hadiyyah was sleeping peacefully, her hair tumbling on the pillow around her. Barbara gave a look at the incoming number and sighed.
    “Mitchell,” she said by way of greeting.
    “Why’re you whispering?” was his hello.
    “Because I don’t want to wake Hadiyyah, and what the bloody hell time is it?”
    “Early.”
    “I twigged.”
    “I knew you were quick. Get outside. We’ve things to discuss.”
    “Where the hell are you?”
    “Where I always am: across the piazza at the café, which, by the way, is not yet open and I could do with a coffee. So if Signora Vallera wouldn’t be crushed by the thought of your stealing out into the dawn with a cup for me—”
    “We’re not in the
pensione
, Mitchell.”
    “
What?
Barb, if you’ve scarpered, there’s going to be hell—”
    “Untwist them. We’re still in Lucca. But really, you can’t think I’d still be at the
pensione
with Hadiyyah’s grandparents about to show their mugs in town.”
    “Well, they’re here. Tucked up in the San Luca Palace Hotel, by the way.”
    “How d’you know?”
    “It’s my job to know. Fact is, it’s my job to know all sorts of things, which is one of the many reasons I suggest you trot over here to the piazza . . . No, better yet. I need a coffee. I’ll meet you in Piazza del Carmine in twenty minutes. That should give you enough time to perform your morning toilette.”
    “Mitchell, I have no clue where Piazza whatever-you-called-it is.”
    “Del Carmine, Barb. And isn’t that why you’re a cop? To suss things out? Well, do a little sussing.”
    “And if I don’t wish to accommodate you?”
    “Then I just hit send.”
    Barbara felt the grip of pain in her stomach. She said, “All right.”
    “Wise decision.” He ended the call.
    She dressed in a hurry. She looked at the time. Not even six in the morning but there was mercy in that. No one in Torre Lo Bianco appeared to be stirring.
    Shoes in hand, she began a slow descent of the stairs. She worried that there might be something complicated about getting out of the tower, but it turned out to be a straightforward affair. Major key in the lock, but it rotated without a sound. She was out in the narrow street soon enough, wondering what direction she should take to find Piazza del Carmine.
    She set off arbitrarily, just seeking another human presence in the cool early morning. She found it in the persons of an unshaven father-and-son duo trundling two large wooden carts of vegetables along a narrow path between a church and a walled garden. She said to them, lifting her shoulders quizzically and looking hopeful, “Piazza del Carmine?”
    They looked at each other. “
Mi segua
,” the older one of them said. He gave the jerk of the head that Barbara was beginning to recognise as the Italian nonverbal for
come along with me
. She followed them. She wished she’d thought of breadcrumbs to find her way back to the tower at the end of whatever happened with Mitch Corsico, but there was no help for that now.
    It wasn’t long before she found herself in the assigned meeting place, a less-than-scenic piazza that accommodated a disreputable-looking restaurant, an unopened supermarket, and a large mildewed white building of indeterminate age with
Mercato Centrale
across the front of it. This was where Barbara’s companions were themselves heading and after tossing “Piazza del Carmine,” over his shoulder, the younger of the men trundled his cart of vegetable boxes inside the place, followed by his companion, followed by Barbara.
    She found Mitch Corsico without any trouble. She just tracked the scent of coffee to the far side of the space and there he was, leaning on a narrow counter built into a wall, a few feet away from an enterprising African adolescent selling takeaway coffee from a shopping trolley.
    Corsico saluted her with his