Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Il Pubblico Ministero said nothing about Salvatore’s appearance. His face was still bruised but improving daily. Soon all evidence of their encounter in the botanical gardens would be gone, but Salvatore was glad that his skin was still marred. In this situation, he hoped that a reminder of their encounter would be helpful.

  He said, “Piero, it appears that you have been right all along in the approach you have taken. I wish you to know that I see it now.”

  Fanucci’s eyes narrowed. They moved from Salvatore’s face to the folders he had in his hand. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded brusquely and indicated with a wave of his six-fingered hand that Salvatore could continue.

  Salvatore presented him with the first folder. This contained all of the information that Dwayne Doughty had sent to Lucca from London: receipts, statements, and reports. Since they suggested a landscape of guilt that tied Taymullah Azhar to Michelangelo Di Massimo and pinned culpability on both men for the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, it looked, superficially of course, as if Salvatore was mocking the magistrato with his affirmation of the correctness of Piero’s approach. Piero—nobody’s fool when it came to matters touching upon himself—flared his nostrils. He said, “Che cos’è?” and waited for elucidation.

  Elucidation came in the form of the earlier material Salvatore had gleaned. This comprised the bank statements and phone records of the dead Roberto Squali and the same of Michelangelo Di Massimo. Set alongside the new material provided by Signor Doughty, it was only too apparent that the London private investigator, for reasons unknown and of his own, was manipulating information to make it appear that Taymullah Azhar had arranged for Di Massimo to kidnap his daughter. See how the money travels from Signor Azhar’s account to Di Massimo’s to Squali’s? For the earlier documents showed a Doughty–Di Massimo–Squali path, and these were documents he—Salvatore—had obtained soon into the investigation. While these most recent documents sent from London, Piero . . . ? They have been amended to alter one’s perception of guilt.

  “This man Signor Doughty is involved to his armpits,” Salvatore told the magistrate. “Michelangelo Di Massimo has been telling the truth. It was a plan from London all along, engineered by this private investigator and carried out by Michelangelo and Roberto Squali.”

  “And why have you not given this material to Nicodemo?” Piero asked. His voice was meditative, and Salvatore hoped this meant he was taking the information on board.

  He said, “Indeed I will, Piero, but I first wanted to apologise to you. Holding Carlo Casparia as long as you have done . . . ? This built in Michelangelo a false assurance that all was well and he was safe from discovery. Had you released Carlo as I was insisting, chances are that Michelangelo would have fled the area once Roberto’s body was found. He would have known we were hours from making a connection between himself and Roberto Squali, but because you had Carlo named as principal suspect, he thought he was safe.”

  Fanucci nodded. He still didn’t look entirely convinced by Salvatore’s performance, so Salvatore repeated his apology as he gathered the material from the magistrato’s desk. He said, “This I will give to Nicodemo now. So that he—and you—can put a period to the investigation.”

  “The extradition of Doughty,” Piero murmured. “This will not be an easy business.”

  “But you will manage it, no?” Salvatore said. “You are more than a match for the British legal system, my friend.”

  “Vedremo,” Fanucci said with a shrug.

  Salvatore smiled. Certo, he thought, they certainly would see. And in the meantime, Taymullah Azhar was off the magistrato’s radar. Out of sight and out of mind, which made him available in every possible way to Salvatore. Which was what he wanted.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Lynley knew he couldn’t put off a meeting with Isabelle. He was out of time. He could attempt to avoid her for a few more days of “I’m on it, guv, but there’s one more thing . . .” But as she was not a fool, she wouldn’t accept that. So he was down to outright lying to her about what Barbara was up to since the only information John Stewart had been able to provide was where she’d been and not what she’d done there, or he could tell Isabelle the truth.

  He regretted knowing a single thing about what Barbara Havers had been doing. He’d given her warning, but that had amounted to nothing. She hadn’t backed away from the mad course she was travelling because she was driven by love. But while the expression “love is blind” had applications to overlooking the faults of another person, it had no application to the responsibilities held—and sworn to—by a member of the police force when it came to a crime.

  Yet . . . hadn’t he wished to protect his own brother several years in the past when Peter’s proclivity for involving himself with unsavoury sorts from the underbelly of London’s drug culture had resulted in his being suspected of murder? Yes. He had wished so. No matter the evidence to the contrary, he had refused to believe that Peter was involved, and as things turned out, he wasn’t. So that could indeed be the case just now between Barbara Havers and Taymullah Azhar. Except they wouldn’t learn if Azhar was indeed innocent of all things should she suppress evidence, would they? Which was what it had come down to with Peter. Only by forcing Peter through the process of being a suspect had he been entirely cleared. It had nearly destroyed his own relationship with Peter to keep his hands off what was going on, but he had done so. And this was what Barbara needed to do.

  Lynley chose not to wait like a coward for Isabelle to call him to account. When he saw her coming towards him in the corridor, he inclined his head towards her office. Did she have a moment? Yes, she did.

  She closed the door. She put distance between them by means of her desk. He accepted this as a declaration of the difference in their positions. He drew a chair up, and he told her what he knew.

  He didn’t spare her any of the details he’d managed to uncover about Dwayne Doughty, Bryan Smythe, Taymullah Azhar, the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, the death of Angelina Upman, and Barbara Havers. Isabelle listened. She didn’t make notes and she didn’t ask questions. It was only when he got to the plane tickets to Pakistan and Barbara’s knowledge of them that she gave any reaction at all. And then, her reaction was to go pale.

  She said only, “And you’re certain of the dates? The purchase date and the flight date, Tommy?” Before he could reply, she went on. “Never mind. Of course you’re certain. John Stewart wouldn’t have known about those tickets, of course. If Barbara discovered them in-house—through SO12—he’d have no reason to wonder what she was doing in talking to those blokes. She hadn’t left the building, after all. She might even just have phoned up SO12 and called in a favour from someone, mightn’t she?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. “And as she was working on a case, more or less, they wouldn’t question her needing to know something from them, especially since they’d already cleared Azhar of all terrorist concerns.”

  “What a bloody mess.” Isabelle sat there thoughtfully, looking not at him but not at anything else either. Her eyes seemed fixed on something in the distance. He reckoned what she was looking at was her own future. She said, “She’s met with the reporter again.”

  “Corsico?”

  “They met in Leicester Square. He’s in Italy now, so we can assume he’s on Barbara’s business.”

  “How do you know? Not the Leicester Square part, but the rest?”

  She nodded towards the closed door, towards what lay beyond it in the building. “John, of course. He’s not given up. He has her leaking information to the press, disobeying direct orders, conducting her own mini-investigation on matters occurring in another country. Where’s that place along the river, Tommy, the spot that pirates got hanged and the tide washed over them?”

  “Execution Dock?” he said. “There’s probably more legend to that than reality.”

  “No matter. That’s
where John would like to see her. Figuratively or otherwise. He won’t stop till it happens.”

  Lynley could sense the despair that the superintendent was feeling. He felt it himself but in far less measure. She’d managed to hold DI Stewart at bay by telling him she was taking on board every detail that he provided her. But if she didn’t act upon those details soon, he would go above her head to the assistant commissioner. Sir David Hillier wouldn’t look with kindness upon the facts as presented by Stewart. When he turned from those facts to assign to someone responsibility for how they were handled, that person was going to be Isabelle herself. She had to act and soon.

  He said, “Where’s Barbara now?”

  “She’s asked to go to Italy. I denied the request. I told her to get back to work. I’ve still not received her final report on this Dwayne Doughty person, whatever that report is going to look like. Obviously, I can’t put her back on John’s team and Philip Hale doesn’t need her at the moment. Did you not see her when you came in?”

  He shook his head.

  “Has she not phoned you?”

  “She hasn’t,” he said.

  Isabelle was thoughtful for a moment before she asked, “Has she a passport, Tommy?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “God. What a cock-up.” She looked at him as she reached for the phone. She punched in a number and waited for an answer. When it came she said, “Judi, I need to arrange a word with Sir David. Is he in today?” Hillier’s secretary said something on her end of the line, and in a moment Isabelle looked at the diary on her desk. “I’ll be up then,” she told the other woman. She thanked her, rang off, and stared at the phone.

  Lynley said, “There’s more than one way to end this, Isabelle.”

  “Don’t, for God’s sake, tell me how to do my job,” she replied.

  CHALK FARM

  LONDON

  Who the higher-ups were that Bryan Smythe was referring to, Barbara didn’t know. But when she left his house in South Hackney and strode to her car at the end of the street, she learned. Where before she’d been too caught up in her plans, her next steps, and her machinations to be both aware and wary, now she had her eyes open for anything out of place, and she saw it easily enough.

  Clive Cratty, newly minted as a detective constable and eager to prove himself to his immediate supervisor, tried to dodge out of sight behind a white Ford Transit some ten houses along the terrace on the opposite side of the street. But Barbara clocked him and she instantly knew that John Stewart had placed someone on her tail.

  She was furious about this, but she had no time to deal with Stewart or his minions. He was going to do what he was going to do. She had to get herself to Italy.

  Her passport was at home, she needed to throw a few things into a duffel, and she needed a ticket. For this last, she could phone and beg the mercy of an airline, or she could grab her things, head to one of the airports, and hope for the best.

  Since it was still working hours, there was plenty of parking when she reached her home. Even the driveway of the big house was empty, so she made use of it and charged to the back of the old villa to her bungalow. She hustled inside, threw her shoulder bag on what went for the kitchen table, and began to tear her clean knickers from a line above the sink. She balled them up, then turned to go to the wardrobe. That was when she saw Lynley sitting in the armchair next to her daybed. She shrieked and dropped her knickers to the floor.

  “Bloody goddamn hell!” she cried. “How’d you get in?”

  He held up the extra key to her front door. “You need to be more creative with your emergency key,” he said. “That is, if you don’t want to come home sometime and find someone less friendly than I sitting here waiting for you.”

  She gathered her thoughts and her wits along with her knickers, which she scooped from the floor. She said, “I reckoned that under the doormat was too obvious to be obvious. Who would really expect to find a key there?”

  “I don’t think your everyday housebreaker goes in for reverse psychology, Barbara.”

  “You obviously didn’t.” She kept her voice light as she crossed the room.

  “Isabelle knows everything,” he said. “Smythe, Doughty, what you were up to, what they were up to, intimate talks between you and Mitchell Corsico. Everything, Barbara. She rang Hillier before I left her office. She made an appointment to see him. She knows about the tickets to Pakistan as well, so she’s ending this. There was nothing I could do to stop her. I’m sorry.”

  Barbara opened the wardrobe. Stuffed high on a shelf was her duffel, and she pulled this out. She grabbed up clothing without much thought as to the Italian climate, the appropriateness of her choices, or anything else save the haste she needed to employ to get out of England and into Italy as soon as she could. She could feel Lynley watching her, and she waited for him to tell her she was giving in to a foolhardy madness.

  But all he said was, “Don’t do this. Listen to me. Everything you’ve attempted in this business of Hadiyyah’s kidnapping and Angelina’s death has fallen apart. Smythe has admitted it all to me.”

  “There was nothing for that bloke to admit.” But she didn’t feel as confident as she tried to sound.

  “Barbara.” Lynley rose from the chair. He was quite a tall man, over six feet by several inches, and he seemed in that moment to fill the room.

  She tried to ignore him but that was impossible. Still, she continued her chaotic packing. She went to the bathroom and grabbed up everything she thought she might need, from shampoo to deodorant and all points in between. She had no sponge bag for these goodies, so she wrapped them in a well-used hand towel and tried to get by Lynley and back into the other room where the duffel awaited her.

  He was in the doorway, however. He said again, “Don’t do this. Smythe talked to me and he’ll talk to others. He’s admitted eliminating some pieces of evidence entirely and doctoring other pieces of evidence. He’s told me about the documents he’s created. He’s told me about the calls you paid upon him. He’s given up Doughty as well as the woman. He’s finished, Barbara, and his only hope is going to be emigration in advance of a lengthy and complicated police investigation that will land him in gaol for God knows how many years. That’s how it is. What you have to ask yourself is which side you’d like to be on in what’s investigated.”

  Barbara pushed past him. “You don’t understand. You’ve never understood.”

  “What I understand is that you want to protect Azhar. But what you must understand is that whatever Smythe has done, it can only be done in the most superficial way. Do you see that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She shoved the toweled items into the duffel and looked round the room distractedly. He was making it impossible to think. What else did she need? Her passport, of course. That eternally unused document, which had always been intended to mark a change of direction in her life. Something new, exciting, different, edgy. Sunbathing on a Greek island beach, walking along the Great Wall of China, going nose to nose with a tortoise in the Galápagos. Who the bloody hell cared as long as it was different from the dismal life she led now?

  Lynley said, “Then you need to hear the truth. To do what he does, Smythe has to know people who know people who know people. That’s how it works. Someone inside whatever institution he wants to hack into slips him a password or slips someone else a password who then slips it to him. Things get doctored but not in the Gordian knot of backup systems that the institution employs. All of this gets sorted out. Arrests are made. People then talk, and all along the truth itself is buried in a backup system that no one can crack without a court order. That backup system shows everything. And you and I both know what that everything is.”

  She swung round to face him. “He didn’t do anything! You know that as well as I do. Someone wants him to take a fall. Doughty wants him to go down for a kidnapping that he himself arra
nged, and someone else wants him to go down for murder.”

  “For God’s sake, Barbara, who?”

  “I don’t know! Don’t you see that’s why I have to go over there? Maybe it’s Lorenzo Mura. Maybe it’s Castro, her earlier lover. Or her own dad, for disappointing his dreams. Or her sister, who’s hated her forever. I don’t bloody know. But what I do know is that none of us is going to turn over a stone and find the truth if we’re all sitting in London trying to do everything by the sodding book.”

  She dashed to the table next to the daybed. In its only drawer she kept her passport. She pulled the drawer open and flipped its contents onto the bed. The passport was gone.

  That did it for her. Something she couldn’t begin to identify broke inside of her, and she flung herself across the room upon Lynley. She shrieked, “Give it to me! Goddamn you to hell, give me my passport!” And to her horror, she began to cry. She sounded like a madwoman, she knew, but there was nothing left inside of her that could possibly explain to her longtime partner why she was doing what she was doing, so like a fishwife out of a Victorian novel, she cursed him and then she beat on his chest. He caught her arms and he shouted her name, but he wouldn’t stop her, she swore to herself. If she had to kill him to get to Italy, that was what she was going to do.

  “You have a life beyond this!” she cried. “I have nothing. Do you understand? Will you understand?”

  “Barbara, for the love of God—”

  “Whatever you think will happen, it doesn’t matter to me. Do you get that? What matters is her. I’m not leaving Hadiyyah in the hands of the Italian authorities if something happens to Azhar. I won’t do that and I don’t care about anything else.”

  She was left sobbing. He let go of her arms. He watched her and she felt the humiliation sweep through her. That he, of all people, should see her like this. Reduced in this way to the disintegrating substance of what comprised her: loneliness that he had never known, misery that he had seldom felt, a future stretching out in front of her that contained her job and nothing else. She hated him in that moment for what he’d brought her to. Her anger finally superseded her tears.