Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

want to.”
    Nafeeza slapped him so hard his head snapped to one side. He began to shout. “I’ll talk to anyone I want! I’ll tell the truth. About her. About him. About what they do when they’re alone because I know, I know, I know what he’s like and what she’s like and—”
    His grandfather punched him. He began to roar in Urdu. Over his roaring, Nafeeza cried out and grabbed onto him. He shook her off and hit Sayyid again. Blood spurted from the boy’s nose to speckle the front of his neat white shirt.
    “Bloody hell,” Barbara said. She dashed forward to free the teenager from his grandfather’s clutches.
    Dog’s dinner was what she thought about the mess. What Corsico thought she reckoned she’d be seeing sooner or later on the front page of
The Source
.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Lynley went to the
questura
once he and Taymullah Azhar parted at Pensione Giardino. This police building sat outside the city wall, not far from Porta San Pietro, an easy walk from anywhere within the medieval centre of the town. The colour of apricots, it was an imposing Romanesque building given to sobriety and solidity, located a short distance from the train station. Police and other judicial officials came and went from it, and while Lynley’s entrance garnered him curious looks, he was taken quickly enough to Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco’s office.
    Salvatore Lo Bianco had been brought fully into the picture about Lynley’s assignment to the case, he discovered. Clearly, the Italian wasn’t pleased about this. A stiff smile of welcome indicated where he stood on the matter of a Scotland Yard copper showing up on his patch, but he was far too polite to let anything other than perfectly—and rather cool—good manners indicate his displeasure.
    He was quite a small man, Lynley topping him by at least ten inches. His salt-and-pepper hair was thinning at the crown, and he was swarthy of complexion with the scars of adolescent acne pitting his cheeks. But he was a man who’d obviously learned to make the most of his physical assets, for he was trim, athletic-looking, and beautifully suited. His hands looked as if they were manicured weekly.
    “
Piacere
,” he said to Lynley, although Lynley doubted the other man was at all pleased to make his acquaintance and he couldn’t blame him. “
Parla italiano, sì?
”
    Lynley said yes, as long as the person speaking to him didn’t talk like someone describing the action at a horse race. To this, Lo Bianco smiled. He gestured to a chair.
    He offered
caffè . . . macchiato? americano?
Lynley demurred. He then offered
tè caldo
. After all, Lynley was a mad Englishman,
no?
, and everyone knew the English drank tea by the gallon. Lynley smiled and said he required nothing. He went on to tell Lo Bianco he’d met Taymullah Azhar at the
pensione
where they both were staying. He had yet to meet with the missing girl’s mother. He hoped the chief inspector would facilitate that.
    Lo Bianco nodded. He eyed Lynley and seemed to take the measure of him. Lynley hadn’t failed to note that while he was seated, Lo Bianco had remained standing. He wasn’t bothered by this. He was in foreign territory in more ways than one, and both of them knew it.
    “This thing that you do,” Lo Bianco said in Italian from in front of a filing cabinet where he had positioned himself. “This liaison with the family. It suggests to us—especially to the public minister, I must tell you—that the British police think we do not work well here in Italy. As police, I mean.”
    Lynley hastened to reassure the chief inspector. His presence, he told him, was largely a political move on the part of the Met. The UK tabloids had begun to cover the story of the little girl’s disappearance. In particular, a rather base tabloid—if the chief inspector knew what he meant—was giving the Met a proper caning about the matter. Tabloids in general were not so much interested in the regulations of policing between countries as they were in stirring up trouble. To avoid this, he had been sent to Italy, but it was not his intention to get in Chief Inspector Lo Bianco’s way. If he could be of assistance, of course, he would be happy to offer himself in the investigation. But the chief inspector should be assured that his sole purpose was to serve the family in whatever way he could.
    “As it happens, I’m acquainted with the child’s father,” he said. He didn’t add that one of his colleagues was more