Just One Evil Act il-18

by Elizabeth George

  “And that would be?” she asked, although her lips were barely working at this point.

  “A fail-safe position, a backup plan, whatever you want to call it,” he told her. “Dwayne’s not stupid and he’s going to have one.”

  “And you know this because . . .”

  “Because he always does.”

  BOW

  LONDON

  Dwayne Doughty was not surprised to see her. Barbara was herself not surprised to discover that this was the case. The Doughty-Cass-Smythe operation had been up and running for quite some time. They might give each other up like third-rate burglars hoping to strike a deal with the cops, but they would also let each other know that they had done so. She readied herself to do battle with the man. She readied herself to see what the private investigator’s fail-safe position was going to be.

  He said to her, “Very good time from South Hackney,” just in case she needed the full score on exactly whose loyalties were going to lie where. He looked at his watch. “Quarter of an hour. Did you hit all the lights green or did you use a siren?”

  “I think this is about the jig being up,” Barbara told him. “And as there’s no music, we’re not talking about dancing.”

  “Your way with metaphors continues to astound,” Doughty said. “But one of the reasons Bryan Smythe has at one time or another been in my employ has to do with his talent at wiping away any sign that he’s actually been in my employ.”

  “Does this mean you’re assuming the Met doesn’t employ blokes whose talents match the redoubtable Bryan’s?” Barbara asked him. “Does it mean you’ve somehow jumped to the conclusion that the Met has no way to contact the cops in Italy who will come up with equally talented blokes who c’n deal with Michelangelo Di Massimo’s records? You seem to believe that no stone has been left unturned by Bryan’s magical power to erase your past manoeuvres, mate, but here’s what I’ve learned from years of dealing with villains of every make and variety: No one thinks of everything and the thing about stones and turning them over . . . ? There’s always a pebble nearby that goes unnoticed.”

  He gave a little salute. “Once more with the metaphor. You do amaze.” He leaned back in his chair. It was the sort that gave way when pressure was put upon its back, and Barbara sent a fleeting prayer heavenward that he’d lean too far, fall over, and bash himself senseless on the floor. No such luck. But what he did was roll the chair over to a filing cabinet and slide open its bottom drawer. From this he took a memory stick. He said, “You can go that route with the cops in Italy, the tech experts at the Met, and the tech experts in Italy. But it isn’t something that I’d advise. To attempt your own skill at metaphor: That’s a road I wouldn’t drive a donkey cart on.”

  When Barbara saw the memory stick, she reckoned they were at the fail-safe that Bryan Smythe had mentioned. There was nothing for it but to see what Doughty had on it, and she knew that all she had to do was wait for the revelation.

  He gestured affably for her to sit. He offered coffee, tea, a chocolate digestive in an irritatingly specious display of manners. Her response to this was “Get to the bloody point,” and she remained standing.

  “As you will,” he said, and he plugged the memory stick into his computer.

  He was well prepared. It took him a two-breath moment to find what he wanted. He tapped three or four keys, turned the monitor in her direction, and said, “Enjoy the show.”

  It was a film in which the stars were Dwayne himself and Taymullah Azhar. Its setting was here in Doughty’s office. Its dialogue comprised Doughty revealing every bit of information on Hadiyyah’s whereabouts in Italy as discovered by Michelangelo Di Massimo. Fattoria di Santa Zita came first, in the hills above a town called Lucca, in the home of one Lorenzo Mura, whose apparent idiocy in the arena of wiring money from Lucca to London so that Angelina would be able to finance her escape from Azhar had left a trail not of breadcrumbs but of veritable pieces of foccacia. A secondary bank account this was, as Dwayne explained to Azhar, in the name not of Angelina but of her sister Bathsheba, on whose passport Angelina departed the country on the fifteenth of November.

  Barbara heard her heart pounding in her ears. But she said casually, “And your point is what, Dwayne? Way I recall things, we know all this. So you want me to know you told Azhar when I wasn’t present? Am I supposed to be impressed?”

  Doughty paused the film, freezing it on a single image.

  “You don’t look thick,” he said, “but I’m getting the impression that your eyesight is failing. Look at the date of the film.”

  And there it was. The seventeenth of December. Barbara said nothing, although what she felt was alarm. It shot through her arms and down into her fingers. She tried to keep her face impassive although she knew if she tried to raise her arms, she’d display the degree to which her hands were shaking.

  Doughty flipped back through a diary on his desk, a large one that displayed every hour of the workday and every individual he’d seen. “You’re a busy bird, I reckon, with a social calendar that would slay an It girl, so let me help you. Our final meeting—this would be you, the professor, and yours truly here—took place on November thirtieth. If you need the math on it, this meeting you’ve just watched between that lofty bloke and me happened seventeen days later. To be additionally helpful—since that’s the kind of individual I am—let me jog your memory about one minor detail of that final meeting the three of us had. I handed the professor my card. I invited him to get in touch if there was any other way I could be helpful to him. For his part? The professor got the message.”

  “Bollocks,” Barbara said. “What message?”

  “I had a feeling about our professor, Sergeant. Desperate times, measures, and you know the rest. I thought I could be of further assistance to him. If he was interested, that is. It turned out he was.” Dwayne leaned into the keyboard and made a few adjustments with the mouse as well. “Here’s how he expressed himself . . . and his interest, as it happened, two days later.”

  The setting and the characters were the same. The dialogue, though, was entirely different. In the world of critical exegesis of cinema, it would have been breathlessly described as “electrifying dialogue.” In the world of reality, it was damning evidence. Barbara watched in gut-wrenching silence as Taymullah Azhar broached the subject of kidnapping his own daughter. Could it be done? Could this previously mentioned Michelangelo Di Massimo somehow arrange it? Could the Italian get to know the movements of Lorenzo Mura, Angelina, and Hadiyyah well? If he could, was there a way to take Hadiyyah from her mother with a promise that she would be returned to her father?

  And on and on went the discussion between Azhar and Dwayne Doughty. On the film, Doughty listened sympathetically: fingers steepled at his chin, nodding when nodding was called for. The bloke was the very image of caution as, no doubt, in his head the till was ringing up how much money he was going to make if he got involved in an international kidnapping scheme.

  Doughty said on film in what bordered on religious tones, “I can only put you in touch with Mr. Di Massimo, Professor Azhar. What you and he decide between you . . . ? Obviously, my work for you is finished and I would be no part of anything from this point forward.”

  Oh, too bloody right, Barbara scoffed. When the film was over, she said, “This is a load of bollocks.”

  Dwayne wasn’t affected by this. He said pleasantly, “Alas. It is what it is. My point is this: You take me down, I take him down, Barbara. May I call you Barbara? I have a feeling we’re growing closer here.”

  She had a feeling violence was in the offing and it would be demonstrated by her jumping over the bloke’s desk and throttling him. She said, “The whole kidnap idea is rubbish on toast. Once Hadiyyah was found by this Di Massimo bloke, all Azhar had to do was show up on Angelina’s doorstep unexpectedly and demand his rights as her father. With Hadiyyah thrilled to bits to see him, with Azhar standing on her front porch or whatever the hell they have over there, what was Angelina
Upman going to do then? Run from one fattoria—whatever that is—to another for the rest of her life?”

  “That would have been sensible,” Doughty admitted graciously. “But haven’t you noticed—and I would think you have, in your line of work—that when passions become inflamed, good sense tends to fly right out the window?”

  “Kidnapping Hadiyyah would have gained Azhar nothing.”

  “In the normal garden kidnapping, how true. But let’s suppose—you and I, Barbara—that this wasn’t a garden kidnapping at all. Let’s suppose the professor’s brainchild was to have Hadiyyah kidnapped because he knew very well that the first thing her mummy would do in that case was exactly what her mummy did: come to London with the boyfriend in tow, hot in her demands to have her child back.” Doughty raised his hands to his mouth in mock horror. “But when she gets to London, it is only to find that the professor has not the slightest idea that the child is missing. My God, she’s been kidnapped? the professor says. Search my house, search my office, search my lab, search my life, search where you like because I did not do this . . . and all the rest. While all along the plan is in motion for Michelangelo Di Massimo to snatch the kid, to stow her some place very safe and very out of sight, and then—when the time is right—to release her in an equally very safe location where she can be ‘found’ by someone who has seen the news of her scurrilous kidnapping. Meantime, her dad is off to Italy to assist in the search, demonstrating his anguish by putting handbills up in every village and town, establishing himself as bereft beyond measure, having previously established an ironclad alibi for the time of her disappearance through means of a conference he was long scheduled to attend in Berlin. When the child is found, the reunion is emotional, blessed, sanctified, and all the rest. And Azhar has access to his daughter once again, this access blessed by Angelina.”

  “Ridiculous,” Barbara said. “Why go to all this trouble, Dwayne? If you’d found Hadiyyah, why would Azhar want her kidnapped? Why would he terrify her or put her at risk or do anything at all besides show up one day and demand access to her as her father? He knows where she is. He knows from whatever he’s found out about Mura that she’s not going anywhere.”

  “You’ve made that point already,” Doughty admitted. “But there’s one small thing you’re forgetting here.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “The larger picture.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “Pakistan.”

  “What? Is your claim actually going to be that Azhar’s plan—”

  “I’m claiming nothing here. I’m merely asking you to follow the dance steps because you know the music. You aren’t stupid, despite what you might feel towards our brooding professor. He had her snatched, and when the time was right, he was going to take her to Pakistan and disappear.”

  “He’s a bloody professor of—”

  “And bloody professors don’t commit crimes? Is that what you want to tell me? Dear sergeant, you and I both know that crimes are not the especial province of the unwashed masses. And you and I both know that if this particular professor took his daughter to Pakistan, the door of possibility of Mummy’s getting her back would be slammed for years, locked with a key, and Angelina would be left banging on it till her fists were bloody. Trying to get a kid from the kid’s father in Pakistan? The kid’s Pakistani father? The kid’s Muslim father? Exactly how many rights do you think a mere Englishwoman would have, if she was even able to find him in the first place?”

  Barbara felt the persuasive truth of all this, but accepting that truth . . . ? She knew there was another explanation. She also knew that to sit in the office and to argue the cause of that explanation to Doughty was a useless endeavour. Only a conversation with Azhar was going to shed light on everything. Doughty was as dirty as the inside of a Hoover. That was the truth that she had to cling to.

  It was as if he’d read her mind, though, when Doughty next spoke. “The professor is dirty, Sergeant Havers,” he said. He pushed away from his desk and returned the memory stick to his filing cabinet, which he then locked. He turned back to Barbara and held out his wrists in mock surrender. “Now . . . You can cart me off to the nick, and I can go through this all again for whoever’s interested in listening. Or you can start building a case where it’s meant to be built: right in the professor’s front garden.”

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Lynley arrived in London by early afternoon, weathering a crowded flight from Pisa in which he’d suffered his six-foot-two-inch frame being jackknifed into the middle seat with a rosary-saying nun on one side of him and an overweight businessman with a very large newspaper on the other. Prior to leaving the vicinity of Lucca, he’d had a final word with Angelina Upman. She confirmed every detail of Azhar’s story on the subject of their parting on the previous night. Forgiveness was the theme of what had passed between them, as were future arrangements for Hadiyyah so that she could continue to be part of the London life of the father she adored. Only Lorenzo Mura was opposed to these plans. He didn’t like Azhar, he didn’t trust Azhar, and Angelina was a fool to consider allowing Azhar access to her daughter.

  “Darling, she’s Hari’s daughter as well” did not soothe Mura. He stormed from the room breathing the fire of angry Italian into the air. Angelina sighed. “It’s not going to be easy,” she told Lynley, “but I want to do what’s right for us all.”

  In her presence, Lynley had given thought to the toll this entire affair had taken upon Angelina. He reckoned she was normally a beautiful woman, but the circumstances she’d been caught in had temporarily robbed her of her looks, leaving her gaunt, lank-haired, and hollow-eyed. She needed to recover and she needed to do so as quickly as possible to safeguard the life she carried within her. He wanted to tell her this, but she would know it already. So he said to her, merely, “Be well,” and he departed.

  In London, he went directly to the Yard. There, he met with Isabelle Ardery to make his report to her. It was a good result, culminating in the safe return of Hadiyyah Upman to her mother. The affair was in the hands of the Italian police now, and on the Lucca end of things, there was nothing more to be done as the public minister would determine what to do with the evidence uncovered by Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco and whoever followed him as head of the case.

  “The investigation was taken away from him yesterday,” Lynley explained. “He and the public minister didn’t see eye to eye on things, as it happened.”

  Isabelle picked up a phone, saying to him, “Let’s have Barbara’s report, then,” and she summoned Barbara to join them.

  Lynley sighed and shook his head inwardly when he saw the sergeant’s appearance. Her hair was still a chopped-up mess, and she’d returned to a manner of dress certain to set Isabelle’s teeth on edge. At least on this day, she’d eschewed a slogan-embossed tee-shirt in favour of a jersey. Its zigzag horizontal pattern of neon colours, however, did nothing to enhance her charms. Her trousers—baggy at the seat and the knees—looked like something her grandmother had discarded.

  He glanced at Isabelle. She looked at Havers, looked at him, and admirably controlled herself. She said, “Sergeant,” and indicated a seat.

  Barbara shot Lynley a look that he couldn’t read, although she seemed to think she was being called onto the carpet for something. He couldn’t blame her for that. Rarely was she summoned into a superior’s office for any other thing. He said, “I’ve just brought the guv up-to-date on Italy,” and Isabelle said, “As to the London end of things, Sergeant . . . ?”

  Havers looked relieved. She said by way of introduction, “Way I see it, guv, things’re going to come down to one slimy bloke’s word against another slimy bloke’s word.” She balanced the ankle of a red-trainer-shod foot on her knee and displayed a length of white sock printed with cupcakes. Lynley heard Isabelle’s sigh. Havers went on. Doughty, she told them, did not deny employing one Pisan called Michelangelo Di Massimo in an attempt to trace Hadiyyah and h
er mother. He claimed he had done so on behalf of Azhar, and that was the extent of what he’d done. He said that whatever money flowed from a London bank to an Italian bank—into the account of Di Massimo—was merely in payment for this service. But it proved to be a service that had gained him nothing, according to Doughty. Di Massimo had declared that the trail went dead early on. Havers said, “I reckon we have to decide which one of these blokes is the real liar. Since Di Massimo’s got the Italian cops on his back, could be we should just wait and see what comes of that.”

  Isabelle hadn’t won her position as detective superintendent by failing to see where the net of an investigation had one or two gaping holes. She said, “At what point did Taymullah Azhar learn the name of this Italian private investigator, Sergeant?”

  To which Havers’s reply was, “Never, guv, as far as I know. At least not before the inspector here sussed things out with the Italian coppers. And that’s really the crux of the matter, isn’t it?” Before Isabelle could answer, Havers continued with “SO12’s been onto Azhar, by the way. He’s clean.”

  “SO12?” Lynley and Isabelle said simultaneously. Isabelle continued. “What have SO12 to do with things, Sergeant?”

  Havers explained that she’d been intent on exploring every single avenue and—“Let’s admit it, guv, since you just brought him up, one of those avenues was Azhar”—she’d had a talk with Chief Inspector Harry Streener to see if his team had been looking into Azhar for any reason. Azhar had been in Berlin at the time of the kidnapping, and that didn’t look good, so she had figured if there was anything questionable going on, SO12 would have found it. “Azhar’s a microbiologist, guv. Azhar’s Muslim. Azhar’s Pakistani. To the SO12 blokes . . . You know how they are. I reckoned if there was anything to be turned up about him, they would have done the spadework.”

  But there had been nothing, Havers said. Her conclusion was the same as DI Lynley’s. This entire mess was better left in the hands of the Italian police.