Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

brought them from his room and handed one to Lynley. Mostly it comprised a large and very good picture of the little girl, with her name and the word
MISSING
written in Italian, German, English, and French beneath the photo along with a phone number that Lynley took to be that of the police.
    Lynley was struck by the innocence of Hadiyyah’s expression in the handbill’s photograph and by how much of a child she still was. In the way of the modern world, children were growing up at a younger and younger age, so Hadiyyah could have looked like a miniature Bollywood film star despite her age. Instead, though, the photo showed a little girl with plaited hair tied off in small bows. She wore a crisp school uniform, and she had lively brown eyes and an impish grin. She looked quite small for a nine-year-old, which Azhar confirmed that indeed she was. This meant, of course, that she could have been mistaken for a younger child. Excellent pickings for a paedophile, Lynley thought grimly.
    “This immediate area is not so difficult to canvass with the pictures,” Azhar said as Lynley gave the handbill back to him. “But as I move farther away from Lucca and as the towns rise up into the hills . . . Things are more difficult then.”
    From his room’s chest of drawers, he took a map. He explained that he was about to set out for the rest of the day to continue canvassing the area with Hadiyyah’s picture. If Inspector Lynley had the time, he would show him where he had gone so far. Lynley nodded and they descended the stairs. They went out into the piazza, where, across from the
pensione
, a café offered a handful of small tables and, more important, shade. There they sat and ordered Coca-Cola, after which Azhar opened his map.
    Lynley saw that he’d circled the towns he’d so far visited, and although he himself was familiar with the Tuscan landscape, he allowed Azhar to explain the difficulties he was encountering just going from one point to another in the nearby hills. Lynley could tell Azhar’s mere act of speaking about what he was doing acted to assuage what had to be tremendous anxiety, so he nodded, looked over the map with him, and noted how assiduous Azhar was being in his search for his daughter.
    Finally, though, the London professor ran out of words. So he said what he no doubt had been trying to avoid saying from the first. “It’s been a week, Inspector.” And when Lynley said nothing but merely nodded, Azhar went on. “What do you think? Please tell me the truth. I know how reluctant you might be, but I wish to hear it.”
    Lynley did Azhar the honour of believing that he meant what he said. He looked away from him for a moment, seeing the students at work on their drawings around the piazza, noting the ubiquitous green, shuttered windows protecting interiors of Italian apartments from the sun. A dog barked from somewhere within one of these apartments. From another the sound of piano music drifted. Lynley thought of how to approach the truth. There seemed no other way but to tell it directly.
    “This is different from the kidnapping of a very small child,” he said quietly to Hadiyyah’s father. “A toddler snatched from a pushchair or a baby from its pram? That kind of kidnapping with no request for ransom suggests an intention to keep the child or to pass her along for a purpose that doesn’t involve harming her. An illegal ‘adoption’ perhaps, effected by money. Or just handing the child over to relatives desperate for a little one of their own. But to take a child Hadiyyah’s age—nine years old—suggests something else.”
    Azhar asked no questions. His hands, folded on his map, gripped each other tightly. “There has,” he said quietly, “been no sign of . . . There has been no indication . . .”
    No body
was what he meant. “Which is a very good sign.” Lynley did not add how easily hidden in the Tuscan hills or in the Apuan Alps beyond them a body could be. Instead he said, “From this, we can conclude she’s well. Perhaps frightened, but well. We can also conclude that if someone’s intention is to pass Hadiyyah along to someone else, she would have to be hidden away for a time first.”
    “Why is this?”
    Lynley sipped his Coke and poured more from the can into the glass where three ice cubes did their limited best to keep it cold. He said, “It’s not likely a nine-year-old is going to forget her parents, is it? So she has to be held for a period of time until