Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

sweat an hour’s drive on an April evening to get to him, that was simply how things were.
    At least
il Pubblico Ministero
didn’t live in the old part of Barga. Getting to him, then, would have meant a climb up endless stairs and a negotiation of the maze of passageways that led in the direction of the Duomo, high on the top of the hill. Instead, thank God, Fanucci lived along the road from Gallicano. It was a dangerous series of switchbacks climbing at a hair-raising angle from a village in the valley, but at least one could get there by car.
    When Salvatore arrived, he knew that
il Pubblico Ministero
would be alone. His wife would be travelling to the home of one of their six children, which was how she had navigated her marriage to Fanucci since those children had become old enough to marry and to purchase homes of their own. His occasional lover—a long-suffering woman from Gallicano who cleaned and cooked and obeyed a single word from Fanucci,
resta
, by taking herself to his bedroom once she’d finished her solitary dinner in his kitchen and had done the washing up after his solitary dinner in the dining room—would also have departed. Fanucci would be with his only true love, among the cymbidiums he tenderly babied in a manner he might have applied, but did not, to his family. Salvatore would be meant to admire whichever of the orchids was currently in bloom. Until he had done so, and at a length and with the level of sincerity
il Pubblico Ministero
required, he would not be told the reason that he had been summoned to Barga.
    Salvatore parked in front of Fanucci’s house, a stout and square terracotta-coloured villa that stood in a plot of expensively maintained gardens behind a wrought-iron gate. This was, as always, locked, but a code admitted him.
    He didn’t bother with the house. Instead, he walked around to the back of the villa where a terrace overlooked a steep drop to the valley and the hillsides opposite, into which dozens of Tuscan villages were tucked. Lights were coming on in those villages now. In another hour, they would provide a scattering of sequins on the cape of night.
    At the far corner of the terrace rose the roof of the orchid house, which stood on the lawn below. Steps led down to this lawn, and a gravel path edged it. Salvatore followed this to the grape arbour that provided shade for a seating area. A table and chairs stood here, on the table a bottle of grappa, two glasses, and a plate of the kind of
biscotti
that Fanucci favoured.
Il Pubblico Ministero
himself was not seated here, however. As Salvatore had anticipated, he was within the orchid house awaiting compliments. Salvatore mentally readied himself and entered.
    Fanucci was in the midst of spraying the leaves of a dozen or more of his plants. These stood on a potting shelf that ran along one side of the orchid house. They were spindly in that way of orchids, tied to thin bamboo poles to keep them upright, each offering a single spine of blooms that Fanucci was tenderly keeping away from the spray. He had his spectacles on the tip of his nose and a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips. His gut hung over the
cintura
that cinched his trousers.
    Fanucci didn’t look up from what he was doing. He didn’t speak. This gave Salvatore time to evaluate his superior in an effort to know what to expect from him during their encounter. For Fanucci was notoriously volatile,
il drago
to some and
il vulcano
to others.
    He was also the ugliest man Salvatore had ever seen, deeply swarthy like the
contadini
in Basilicata, the land of his birth; cursed with warts that exploded from his face like something only San Rocco could cure; in possession of a sixth finger on his right hand which he waved about in conversation, all the better to read upon the faces of those to whom he spoke the level of their aversion for him. His appearance had been a torment in his impoverished youth, but he’d learned to use it. At an age and of a level of success at which he now could have done something to normalise his looks, he refused to do so. They served him well.
    Salvatore said, “Beautiful as always,
Magistrato
. What do you call this one?” and he gestured to a bloom whose fuchsia petals bore flecks of yellow that eased into the interior of the flower like spots of sunlight banishing the night.
    Fanucci glanced briefly at the orchid. He dislodged ash from his cigarette down the front of a white shirt already spotted by olive oil and tomato