Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

finally said, “
Sono pronta a cominciare
,” to indicate her readiness to begin. But obviously, nothing was going to happen until Fanucci gave his nod of approval.
    While they were waiting for this to happen, Angelina Upman came out of the winery. Lorenzo Mura was with her, speaking quietly. Taymullah Azhar followed, keeping his distance. Lorenzo seated Angelina at the table with Fanucci, and he bent to her and continued speaking. She looked much more fragile than on the previous day, and Lynley wondered if she was managing to eat or to sleep at all. He wondered the same about Azhar, who didn’t look much better than the mother of his child.
    Fanucci didn’t speak to either one of them. Nor did he speak to Mura. His interests apparently lay only in the filming of the report for the nightly newscast. Anything that needed to be communicated from the police to the parents could come, apparently, from Lo Bianco or from Lynley. It seemed this included sympathy for their situation.
    After Fanucci examined himself in the makeup artist’s mirror, they were given his approval to begin. The
telecronista
did her part first, reciting the salient details of Hadiyyah’s disappearance in the rapid-fire Italian that everyone on television in the country seemed to employ. She did so with one of the olive groves as her background. It was wisely chosen, serving as a nice contrast to the rust-coloured suit she wore.
    Lynley didn’t try to follow her reportage, aside from listening for names. Instead, he watched the interactions among Lorenzo, Angelina, and Azhar.
    Men were by nature territorial, Lynley thought, and Angelina was the territory upon which each of these men had staked a claim. It was interesting to Lynley to see how each of them demonstrated this: Lorenzo by standing behind Angelina’s chair, his hands on her shoulders, and Azhar by ignoring the other man entirely and folding a handkerchief into Angelina’s hands should she need it when the time arrived for them to make their appeal to the television viewers.
    When the
telecronista
had completed her introduction to the piece, the scene shifted. The cameraman moved to the winery, where lights had already been set up. After a few words with the
telecronista
, he focused his lens on Fanucci.
    Fanucci’s was, it seemed, the fire-and-brimstone section of the report. His speech was as rapid-fire as had been the
telecronista
’s, but Lynley caught enough to know that it was filled with threats and imprecations. The malefactor
would
be found and when he was . . . They had a person of interest to whom they were speaking and he
would
reveal . . .
Anyone
who was found to know
anything
that they had not yet transmitted to the police . . . The law did not sleep . . . The police did not sleep . . . If anything
further
happened to this child . . .
    Next to him, Lynley heard Lo Bianco sigh. He took a packet of chewing gum from his jacket pocket, offering it first to Lynley, who demurred. With a piece for himself, Lo Bianco walked away. Fanucci in action, it seemed, was more than he could bear to watch.
    When the public minister had completed his remarks, he jerked his head to indicate that the story was now to move to Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar. He rose from the table and walked to position himself behind the cameraman. There he stood like a prophet of doom.
    The first movement came from Lorenzo Mura, who took himself out of the picture. There was no need to confuse the viewing public. It was enough for people to know that in front of them on their television screens were the parents of the missing girl. To throw in the complications of Angelina Upman’s private life here in Italy seemed unnecessary. On the other hand, thought Lynley, seeing Lorenzo Mura on the screen might jog another kind of memory in the mind of a viewer. He walked over to Lo Bianco to suggest this to the chief inspector. Lo Bianco heard him out and didn’t disagree.
    Taymullah Azhar and Angelina Upman made their appeal. They did so in English—Azhar, of course, having no Italian—and it would be translated with a voice-over recording in advance of the night’s broadcast. What they said was simple. It was what any parent in the same situation would have said: Please give our daughter back to us. Please don’t hurt her. We love her. We will do anything to have her returned unharmed.
    Lynley saw Fanucci snort at the
we will do anything
, which—although spoken in English—he evidently