“I see where you’re heading. I won’t lie about it, Barb. Lynley’s a bloody decent angle and he always will be. But the fish I’m frying—”
“Lynley is the story.” Barbara heard her voice rise with impatience and urgency. “Mention Lynley’s name to your higher-ups and you’re on the next plane to Italy.” Which, she added, was where she needed him: pursuing the story there, feeding details to his editor here, whipping up in the UK reading public a frenzy about what was being done to find an appealing little British girl.
“And I will,” Corsico said. “No worries on that score. But first things first, and the first is the kid.”
“That’s what I’m trying to—”
“I don’t mean the kid Hadiyyah,” he cut in. “I mean the other. Sayyid.”
“Mitch, don’t—”
“Thanks for the tip on Lynley, though.” He ended the call.
VICTORIA
LONDON
Barbara cursed and headed for the door. She had to stop Corsico from getting to Azhar’s family in Ilford, and there weren’t a lot of options jumping into her mind on how to do this. She reckoned Nafeeza would remain mute on all matters concerning her husband. But his son, Sayyid, was a wild card in the family deck.
She swung the door open, her mind febrile. She walked directly into Winston Nkata. The black man didn’t pretend he was just passing by. Instead, he jerked his head towards the interior of the ladies’ toilet. In case she was dim on his intentions, he stepped past her, grabbing her arm on the way inside.
She said, “Whoops. You lost? Gents is just down the corridor, Winnie.”
Nkata was not amused. She could tell by the manner in which his enunciation altered from careful Africa-via-the-Caribbean to South-Brixton-on-the-street.
He said in a harsh whisper, “You gone off your nut? Bloody lucky Stewart tole me to follow you, innit. Someone else ’n you back in uniform tomorrow.”
She decided that playing dumb was her best course. She said, “What? Win, what’re you talking about?”
“I’m talkin ’bout your job,” he said. “I’m talkin ’bout losin it. They find out you made yourself a snout for The Source ’n you back in uniform. Worse, you done. You finished, innit. And don’t be so thick to think there i’n’t people in the department’d be happy as hell to see that happen, Barb.”
She went for offended. “A snout?” she hissed. “That’s what you think? I’m a snout for The Source? I’m not a snout. Not theirs and not anyone’s.”
“That so? You just gave them DI Lynley. I heard you, Barb. Now you goin to tell me you gave up Lynley to someone other than that same bloke wrote the story ’bout Hadiyyah? You think I’m stupid enough to go for that? You’re on the phone with Corsico, Barb, and one look at your mobile records’s goin to show that. Not to mention your bank account, innit.”
“What?” Now she was offended. “You think I’m taking money to do this?”
“I don’ know why the hell you’re doin it. I don’t care why the hell you’re doin it. And you bes’ believe me when I say no one else’s goin to care ’bout the why of it either.”
“Look, Winnie. You and I both know that someone’s got to keep this story alive. That’s the only way The Source is going to send a reporter over to Italy. And only a British reporter in Italy is going to keep the pressure on the Met so that Lynley stays in place till this gets resolved. Plus a British reporter raises the stakes for the Italian reporters to keep the pressure on the Italian police. That’s how it works. Pressure gets results and you know that.”
“What I know,” he said, and he was calmer now, so he was back to the gentle Caribbean from his mother that had always so influenced his way of talking, “is that no one’s goin to take your side, Barb. This comes out, and you’re on your own. You got to know that. You got no one here.”
“Oh, thanks very much, Winston. It’s always good to know who one’s friends are.”
“I mean no one with the power to step in,” Winston said.
He meant Lynley, of course. For Lynley was the only officer who would risk stepping onto the pitch if it came down to having to defend the wicket of Barbara’s ill-conceived decision to involve The Source. And he was the only officer to do this not so much because he was devoted to Barbara as because he didn’t need his employment at the Met so he didn’t care about alienating their superiors.
“So you see,” Winston said, apparently reading realisation on Barbara’s face. “You’re walkin on the wrong side in this, Barb. That bloke Corsico? He’d throw your mum under a bus ’f it meant a story. He’d throw his own mum ’f that’d help.”
“That can’t matter,” Barbara told him. “And I c’n handle Corsico, Winston.” She tried to move past him to get to the door. He stopped her easily enough since he towered above her.
“No one ‘handles’ a tabloid, Barb. You don’t know that now, you learn it soon enough.”
ILFORD
GREATER LONDON
There were not a lot of avenues available to Barbara when it came to the chess game of managing what Mitchell Corsico wrote about. But in the case of his intention to talk to the boy Sayyid there appeared to be only one. She phoned Azhar. She reached him on a bad connection in the hills of Tuscany. They did not speak long. From him she learned what she already knew: that Lynley had arrived and that he and the inspector had spoken prior to Azhar’s making his way into the hills to continue posting pictures of Hadiyyah in the villages to the north of Lucca.
“Sayyid’s comprehensive?” Azhar said when she asked the name of the school. “Why do you need this, Barbara?”
She hated to tell him, but she didn’t see the alternative: The Source was considering the boy as just that, a source for the kind of “human interest” story so beloved to its readers.
Azhar gave her the name of the school at once. “For his own sake . . .” His voice was urgent. “You know what the tabloid will make of him, Barbara.”
She knew well. She knew because she read the bloody rag herself. It was like mental candyfloss and she’d been addicted to the stuff for years. She thanked Azhar and told him she would keep him in the picture of what happened with his son.
The more difficult project was getting away from the Met. She couldn’t risk waiting for the end of her workday. Knowing Corsico, by the time that arrived, he would already have buttonholed the boy and given him the outlet he was looking for to unload his grievances against his father. She had to leave Victoria, and she had to do it now. She merely needed a decent excuse. Her mum provided it.
Barbara went to DI Stewart. On the whiteboard, he was jotting brief notations about the day’s actions. She didn’t bother to look for her own. She knew Stewart. No matter her expertise in anything, he’d keep her there in the building and under his thumb transcribing reports, just to drive her as mad as possible.
“Sir,” she said, although the word felt like a rock on her tongue. “I’ve just had a call from Greenford.” She tried to sound anxiety-ridden about it, which wasn’t too far from the truth. She was anxious. Just not about her mum.
Stewart didn’t look away from the whiteboard. He was, it appeared, giving crucial attention to the legibility of his cursive. “Have you indeed?” he said in a tone that demonstrated the extent of his ennui when it came to all things Barbara Havers. She wanted to bite his ears off.
“My mum’s taken a fall. She’s in casualty, sir. I’m going to need to—”
“Where, exactly?”
“In the home where she—”
“I mean casualty, Sergeant. Which hospital? Where is she?”
Barbara knew the game on that one. If she named a hospital, he’d ring the casualty department and make sure her mother was there. She said, “Don’t know yet, sir. I was planning to ring from the car.”
“Ring whom?”
“Lady who runs the home. She phoned me after nine-nine-nine. She didn’t know yet where they were going to take her.”
DI Stewart seemed to measur
e this on his potential-for-bollocks meter. He looked at her. “I’ll want to know,” he said. “The department will, of course, wish to send flowers.”
“Let you know soon ’s I find out,” she told him. She grabbed her shoulder bag, said, “Ta, sir,” and avoided looking at Winston Nkata. He avoided looking at her as well. He didn’t need a potential-for-bollocks meter. But at least he said nothing. He would be her friend in this one matter.
It was a long drive to Ilford, but she made it before the end of the school day. She found the secondary comprehensive, and she had a quick look round the immediate area to make sure Mitchell Corsico wasn’t hiding in a wheelie bin ready to spring out the moment he saw her. The coast appeared relatively clear aside from an ancient woman pushing a nicked shopping trolley along the pavement, so Barbara sprinted inside the building. Her Metropolitan Police ID got her into the head teacher’s office with virtually no delay.
She told the head teacher—a woman with the unfortunate name of Mrs. Ida Croak, if her desk’s nameplate was to be believed—the truth. A tabloid journalist was on his way to attempt an interview with one of her pupils on the topic of his father’s desertion of the family for another woman. She gave Sayyid’s name. She added, “It’s a smear piece that this bloke has in mind. You know what I mean, I expect: something pretending to be a human interest story while all the time dragging everyone through the mud. I want to stop it from happening, for Sayyid’s own sake, for his mum’s sake, and for the family’s sake.”
The head teacher looked appropriately concerned but also, it had to be admitted, appropriately confused by Barbara’s advent to her office. She asked the reasonable question. “Why are the Metropolitan police involved?”
That was, of course, the crux of the matter. Certainly, the Met had no love for The Source, but sending officers out to stop stories from being gathered was hardly within its purview. She said, “It’s a personal favour to the family. You c’n ring Sayyid’s mum and ask her if she’d like me to carry the boy past the journalist and bring him home to keep him from getting accosted.”
“The journalist’s here?” She said it as if the Grim Reaper was waiting outside the front doors, scythe at the ready.
“He will be. I didn’t see him on my way in, but I expect he’ll show up at any moment. He knows I mean to stop him if I can.”
Mrs. Croak hadn’t climbed to her position as head teacher for nothing. She said, “I’ll need to phone,” and she asked Barbara to wait outside her office.
Barbara knew that this could also mean Mrs. Croak was phoning the Met as well, checking up on the validity of her warrant card as if she’d come with the intention of snatching Sayyid in order to have her way with him. She could only pray this wasn’t the case. All she needed was Mrs. Croak being rung through to John Stewart or, worse, to Superintendent Ardery. Her nerves were on edge till the head teacher emerged from her office and motioned Barbara to rejoin her within.
“The mother’s on her way,” she said. “She doesn’t drive, so she’s bringing the boy’s grandfather. They’ll take him home at once.”
Barbara’s head filled with a mental Oh no!, like the thought balloon of the cartoon character she felt she was fast becoming. Her intention had been to warn Sayyid not to talk to the tabloids—to any tabloids—but after her previous encounter with Azhar’s father, she knew very well that he might turn out to be a most cooperative interviewee only too happy to rubbish Azhar from London to Lahore and back again. She was going to have to reason with him as best she could. That, she knew, was going to be dicey since the last time she’d encountered the man was in the midst of a brawl in front of his own home.
Barbara said, “D’you mind if I wait, then? I’d like a word . . .”
Of course, the sergeant could do as she wished, Mrs. Croak told her. If she wouldn’t mind waiting elsewhere, however . . . as one’s schedule was quite busy . . . as one would want to have a private word with Sayyid’s mother upon her arrival . . .
Barbara minded not in the least. Her intention was to grab Nafeeza and paint a proper picture for her about Mitch Corsico’s intentions just in case Mrs. Croak hadn’t done so. She had to be made to understand that, no matter how appealing it might sound to unburden oneself and one’s grievances in a public forum, The Source could not that forum be. “No tabloid journalist is your friend,” she would say.
So she waited outside. Thus she was in position when Nafeeza and Azhar’s father showed up. Thus she was in position when Mitch Corsico showed up as well.
Luckily Nafeeza arrived at the school first. She and Azhar’s father came hustling towards the main doors, and they saw Barbara simultaneously. Nafeeza said with great dignity, “Thank you, Sergeant. We are in your debt,” and Azhar’s father nodded at her.
“Don’t let anyone get to him,” Barbara said as they went inside. “It’ll turn out bad. Try to explain this to him.”
“We understand. We will.”
Then they were gone. Then Corsico arrived.
Barbara saw him take up a lurking position across the street from the school at a newsagent’s shop. He clocked her at once, cocked his ridiculous Stetson at her, and crossed his arms on his chest beneath the digital camera that hung round his neck. His expression said that she’d checked his king but shouldn’t feel exactly triumphant about it.
Barbara looked away from him. All she needed to do was to get Sayyid, his mum, and his granddad to their car. All she needed to do was to have a word with the boy in order to underscore the dangers he faced if he gave in to his inclination to abuse his dad in the press. The fact that Sayyid wouldn’t see the opportunity as dangerous had to be dealt with. Barbara doubted that it was going to be enough for his mum and his grandfather merely to instruct him to hold his tongue.
After ten minutes of waiting, the main door to the comprehensive opened once again. Barbara had been lingering near the pavement, at the side of an urn planted with a sad-looking holly bush. She came forward as the three others approached. In her peripheral vision, she saw Corsico take a step into the quiet street.
She said quickly, “Nafeeza, the reporter’s just there in the cowboy get-up. He’s got a camera. Sayyid, that’s who you need to keep clear of. He means to—”
“You!” Sayyid snarled. And to his mother, “You didn’t say that his whore . . . You didn’t tell me that his whore was the one—”
“Sayyid!” his mother said. “This woman is not your father’s—”
“You’re so bloody stupid! Both of you are stupid!”
His grandfather grabbed onto him and said something in Urdu. He began to strong-arm him towards a battered Golf.
“I’ll talk to whoever I want to talk to!” Sayyid declared. “You,” to Barbara, “you fucking whore. You keep away from me. Keep away from us. Go back to my father’s bed and suck his cock like you 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 stati
on. 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.
Just One Evil Act il-18 Page 18
