Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

in both the smile and those glances something that told him much about the man. “You haven’t told Signor Fanucci this, have you?” he said. “Why not?”
    “Because the
magistrato
would have him dragged from Pisa to our
questura
. He would grill him for six or seven hours, a day, three days, four. He would threaten him, not feed him, give him no water, give him no sleep, and then ask him to ‘imagine, if he would’ how this abduction of the child occurred. And then he would charge him based on what it was he ‘imagined.’”
    “Charge him with what?” Lynley asked.
    “
Chissà?
” he said. Who knows. “Anything to keep the journalists supplied with details showing the case is well in hand. Despite his words to you, this is often his way.” He began walking towards the police car and he said over his shoulder to Lynley, “Would you like to have a look at this man, this Michelangelo Di Massimo,
Ispettore
?”
    “I would indeed,” Lynley told him.
    PISA
    TUSCANY
    Lynley hadn’t known that catching a glimpse of Michelangelo Di Massimo was going to involve a lengthy drive to Pisa. When it became obvious by their entrance onto the
autostrada
that this was the case, he wondered about Lo Bianco’s motives.
    Lo Bianco took them to a playing field on the north side of
il centro
. There, a training session of football was going on. At least three dozen men were on the field, engaged in dribbling towards a goal.
    At the edge of the field, Lo Bianco stopped the police car. He got out, as did Lynley, but he did not approach the players. Instead, he leaned against the car and removed from his jacket pocket a packet of cigarettes. He offered one to Lynley, to which Lynley demurred. He took one himself, keeping his gaze fixed on the players on the field as he lit up. He watched the action, but said nothing at all. Clearly, he was waiting for some sort of reaction from Lynley, something that would indicate that the English policeman had passed a test which had nothing at all to do with his knowledge of the rules of football.
    Lynley gave his own attention to the field and the players upon it. In the way of many things Italian, on the surface the practice session appeared to be a largely disorganised affair. But as he watched, matters began to take on more clarity, especially when he noted a single individual who appeared to be attempting to direct a lot of the action.
    This man was difficult not to notice. For his hair was bleached to a colour somewhere on the spectrum between yellow and orange, and it presented a stark contrast to the rest of him, upon which black hair grew like a pelt. Chest, back, arms, and legs. A five o’clock shadow that doubtless appeared at one in the afternoon. Given this and the general swarthiness of his complexion, it was hardly credible that he’d bleached the hair on his head, but this fact certainly went a long way to explain why several hotels and
pensioni
had remembered him as the person who’d come asking about Hadiyyah and her mother.
    Lynley said, “Ah. I see. Michelangelo Di Massimo, no?”
    “
Ecco l’uomo
,” Lo Bianco acknowledged. This said, he jerked his head at the police car. They began the journey back to Lucca.
    Lynley wondered why the chief inspector had gone to this trouble of driving all the way to Pisa. Surely, a brief search on a computer at the
questura
would have produced an adequate photo of Di Massimo. That Lo Bianco had chosen not to use the Internet for this purpose suggested that there was more than one reason he wished Lynley to see Di Massimo in person and that reason had only partly to do with having an opportunity to observe the startling contrast between the hair on his body and the hair on his head.
    Things became clear when their route back to Lucca did not take them at once to the
questura
but rather to the boulevard that followed the course of Lucca’s great wall on the outside of it. From this
viale
, they accessed another street that led out of the town and, as it turned out, gave them access to a lane leading into the Parco Fluviale. This was a long but rather narrow community park—a place for walking, running, cycling—that followed the course of the River Serchio. Perhaps a quarter of a mile along the way, an area of gravel offered parking for no more than three cars, with two picnic tables sitting beneath great holm oaks and a tiny skateboard park just beyond. There was an open space of grass as well, largely triangular in shape