Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

perfectly square rooftop garden he drank in peace and watched the sunset. He enjoyed sunsets and how they caressed the ancient buildings of his city. But more than sunsets, he enjoyed the time away from his mamma. At seventy-six years old and in possession of a very bad hip, she no longer climbed to the top of Torre Lo Bianco, the tower that had been his family home for generations. The last two flights of stairs were narrow and metal, and a misstep on them would finish her off. Salvatore didn’t want to endanger his mamma even though he hated living with her as much as she loved having him at home once again.
    Having her Salvatore at home meant she’d been right, and his mamma loved being right more than she loved being content or even being in a state of grace. She’d worn black since the day he’d brought home the Swedish girl he’d met eighteen years earlier in Piazza Grande, and to this maddening choice of telegraphing her displeasure—she’d even worn black to their wedding—she had now taken to carrying rosary beads every moment of the day, and she’d been fingering them piously since the evening he’d revealed that he and Birgit were divorcing. He was supposed to think that his mamma was praying for Birgit to come to her senses and ask her husband to return to the family home in Borgo Giannotti, just beyond the city wall. But the truth of the matter was that she was fulfilling her promise to the Virgin: Bring an end to this blasphemous marriage of my son to
quella
puttana straniera
, and I will spend the rest of my life honouring you with a daily rosary. Or five. Or six. Salvatore didn’t know how many rosaries were actually involved, but he imagined there were plenty of them. He wanted to point out to her that the Catholic Church didn’t recognise divorce, but there was a part of him—good son that he was—that simply didn’t want to spoil her fun.
    Salvatore took his
caffè
to one side of the tower garden and spent a moment inspecting his tomato plants. Already they were showing their fruit, which would ripen beautifully here so high above the city. He looked from them in the direction of Borgo Giannotti. He had things on his mind and one of them was Birgit.
    His mother had been right, of course. Birgit had been a mistake on every front. Opposites might indeed attract, but their kind of opposite was of the magnetic variety: Positive and negative, they repelled each other. He should have known early on that this was going to be the case when he’d brought her home to meet his mamma and her reaction to his mamma’s devotion to him—she’d only that day washed, starched, and perfectly ironed his fifteen dress shirts—had been along the lines of “So you have a penis. So what, Salvatore?” instead of understanding the importance of the male child in an Italian family where extending the family line and name was paramount to everyone in it. He’d thought this amusing at first, Birgit’s lack of understanding about this element of his culture. He’d thought the clashes of Italian and Swedish traditions and beliefs would become minimal over time. He’d been wrong. At least she hadn’t decamped to Stockholm with their two children once he and she had parted, and for this Salvatore was grateful.
    Second on his mind was the matter of this missing child. This missing
British
child. It was bad enough that she was foreign. That she was British made it worse. Shades of Perugia and Portugal were all over the situation. Salvatore knew not a soul would blame him for not wanting this circumstance in Lucca to turn in a direction similar to those. Tabloid reporters everywhere, international tabloid reporters at that, television news encampments right outside the
questura
, hysterical parents, official demands, embassy phone calls, jurisdictional jockeying among the various police forces. Things hadn’t got to that point yet, but Salvatore knew that they could.
    He was mightily worried. Three days after the girl’s disappearance and the only leads they’d come up with were from a half-drunk accordion player who performed on market days near Porta San Jacopo and a well-known young drug addict who on these same days knelt directly in the pathway of the shoppers entering the
mercato
with a sign on his chest reading,
Ho fame
, as if with the hope that this declaration of hunger would delude passersby who might otherwise rightly suspect he intended to use whatever euros he managed to collect to purchase