Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

Barbara rang the Yard in advance of what she presumed was Superintendent Ardery’s normal arrival time. She left a carefully crafted message. She was on her way to Bow for a final word with Dwayne Doughty, she told Dorothea Harriman. There were a few more details that needed to be hammered down, sewed up, or whatever, with regard to the private investigator’s place in the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, and once she’d accomplished this, she’d be able to write the report that the superintendent was anticipating. Harriman asked if Detective Sergeant Havers wished her to fetch the guv so that she could give her the message personally. “She’s only just arrived,” the departmental secretary revealed. “Gone off to the ladies’. I c’n fetch her in a tick, if you’d like to speak with her yourself, Detective Sergeant.”

  Speaking with Isabelle Ardery was not high on the list of things Barbara wanted to do. She replied with an airy, “No need for that, Dee,” but added that she’d be grateful if Dorothea would let DI Lynley know what she was up to when he showed his face in Victoria Street. Barbara knew quite well that she was on uneven ground with Lynley as it was. She also knew she’d go under entirely if she didn’t keep him in the loop of what she was up to. More or less.

  The detective inspector was already there as well, Dee Harriman told her. So she’d give him the word as soon as they rang off. The poor man had been cornered by DI Stewart for some sort of ear bending when last she’d seen him. She’d pop round and rescue him by means of passing along the detective sergeant’s message. “Any message from you for Detective Inspector Stewart?” Harriman asked impishly.

  “Very amusing, Dee,” Barbara told her. And she thought how far, far better a thing it was that Lynley and not herself be on the receiving end of one of Stewart’s diatribes.

  She fetched Azhar from the ground-floor flat at the front of the big house in Eton Villas as soon as her phone call was completed. They set off, but not for Bow. Their destination was South Hackney and Bryan Smythe.

  They’d been up till after two in the morning developing a strategy for dealing with Bryan Smythe. They had a separate strategy for dealing with Dwayne Doughty. But one would not function without the other.

  During all of their discussing and planning, Barbara had tried to keep her mind on both Azhar and Hadiyyah and away from where she was placing herself in dealing with this situation. Azhar had been desperate, she told herself. Azhar had a right to his child. To this she added that little Hadiyyah deserved a loving father in her life. All of these facts she’d repeated to herself like a mantra. She massaged her brain with them. It was the only thing she could bear to think of.

  What she hadn’t dared consider was how far she was sliding off the rails in this personal spate of employment in which she was engaged. There would be time for that later. Now, however, there was only coming up with a way to mitigate the jeopardy into which Azhar had placed himself in the cause of finding the daughter he loved.

  When he opened the door to her persistent knocking, Bryan Smythe did not seem wildly chuffed to see Barbara standing on his doorstep with an unidentified dark-skinned man at her side. She couldn’t blame him for this. In his line of work, he probably didn’t much like unexpected visitors. He probably also didn’t much like attention being drawn to his house. She was betting on this latter assumption as the best means of gaining entrance to his lair should he not be ready to roll out the red carpet for them.

  She said, “You were right, Bryan. Honours to you. Doughty had everything backed up on film.”

  He said, “What’re you doing here? I told you what you wanted to know, and I said he’d have a fail-safe position. He had one, so the story ends there.” He glanced right and left as if with the concern that his neighbours—such as they were in this street—were behind the dismal, sagging curtains at their filthy windows taking snapshots of his tête-à-tête with a rozzer. A car turned at the corner and began rolling in their direction, its driver cruising slowly as if hunting for the proper address. Bryan gave a curse and jerked his head towards the inside of his house.

  Barbara inclined her head to Azhar. She gave mental thanks that Smythe’s sense of caution tended to make him both jumpy and suspicious. They needed Bryan Smythe in their corner. If they couldn’t manoeuvre him there in the coming minutes, the game was over.

  “You’ll get no aggro from me on that front,” Barbara told him as she passed over the threshold. “That’s not why we’re here.” She introduced him to Azhar. She watched as Bryan took in the other man and made whatever mental adjustments were necessary to align the reality of the Pakistani he was looking at to whatever mental image he’d had of him. “So be hospitable, eh? Make us a cuppa, toast us a teacake, and we’ll tell you what we need.”

  “Need?” Bryan said incredulously. He shut the door smartly and locked it for good measure. “As I see it, you’re not in the position to be needing anything. At least nothing more than I’ve already given you.”

  Barbara nodded thoughtfully. “I c’n see why you reckon that. But I think you’re forgetting a salient point.”

  “What would that be?”

  “That I’m the only one of you lot who’s clean. You watch every one of Dwayne’s films—’cause I bet he’s got dozens, if not hundreds—and you look through every record you c’n find on me out there in cyberland, and there’s nothing that connects me to this Italian business because I wasn’t connected to this Italian business. Whereas the lot of you . . . ? You’re all hanging from the precipice by broken fingernails, Bryan.”

  “Including your friend here.” He jerked his head at Azhar.

  “No one’s saying otherwise, mate. Now, how about that cuppa? I like mine with the works. Azhar goes with sugar. Do you lead the way or do I?”

  He had little choice but to see what she was up to, so he went through to the other half of his house. There, the enormous flat screen television had been muted but was showing a chat show in which five badly dressed women appeared to be measuring the size of their bums against a life-size poster featuring the bony arse of a catwalk model. Bryan had apparently been enthralled with this when they’d knocked on his door, for on a coffee table in front of a fine leather sofa with a superb view of the telly, breakfast for one was still laid out. Eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, the works. Barbara’s stomach rumbled. She nearly regretted her single Pop-Tart and cup of coffee.

  Bryan took himself to the kitchen end of the huge room, where he filled a stainless steel electric kettle. It was sleek and modern like the kitchen itself, and it matched the handles on the cabinets as well as the lighting fixtures. From an impressive fridge—also of pristine stainless steel—he brought out milk and sloshed some into a jug. Barbara told him they’d wait in the garden.

  “Gorgeous day,” she said. “Out in nature. Fresh air and all the et ceteras. Don’t see gardens like this in our neighbourhood, do we, Azhar?” She led him out.

  Midway between the pool with its lily pads and its sparkling fountain, there was a seating area fashioned from bluestone benches. Behind it grew a plethora of brilliant flowers artfully planted to look unarranged. Here, Barbara sat and gestured for Azhar to do the same. In the garden, Barbara reckoned, Bryan wouldn’t have a system to record whatever was said between them. For he did his business in the house itself, and she didn’t think it likely that he invited anyone who employed him to enjoy the fruits of his labours beyond the windows. Indeed, she thought it was probable that those who employed him never came to his house anyway. But better safe than sorry was how she looked at it.

  She sat with Azhar next to her. When Bryan joined them with tea on a tray—the thoughtful bloke had actually provided the teacakes as requested, she saw—he sat opposite them. The tray he placed on the stone bench next to him. Barbara reckoned his hospitality didn’t extend to being mother, so she did the honours and she also scored a teacake for herself. It was tasty and the butter was real. There was nothing second-rate about the bloke.

  Exc
ept perhaps his manners since he said, “You have your tea. Now what do you want? I’ve work to do.”

  “Didn’t look that way from the telly.”

  “I don’t care what it looked like. What do you want?”

  “To employ you.”

  “You can’t afford me.”

  “Let’s say Azhar and I are pooling our resources, Bryan. Let’s also say that, all things considered, we reckon you’ll give us something of a cut-rate price.”

  “What things?”

  “What ‘what things’?”

  “You said ‘all things considered.’”

  “Ah.” She chowed down on more of the teacake. It had very nice currants in it, not at all dried out. Lovely, she thought. The thing had to have come from a bakery. No way did one score such a delicacy from the local Tesco. “In that, we go back to your line of work,” she said, “and what happens to it if I give the word to the blokes in Victoria Street who look into Internet crimes. We’ve been through this before, mate, so let’s not beat the horse while it’s lying in the dust. You’ve wiped all the records to make Doughty clean, and now you’re going to do something similar for Azhar. It’ll be trickier, but I reckon you’re the bloke to do it. We’ve got air tickets to Pakistan that need to be altered in the records at the Met. No worries that there’s terrorism involved. There isn’t. Just a detail on the tickets that needs changing in a file on someone who’s been investigated and vetted and is in the clear. That’s Azhar, by the way. He look like a terrorist to you?”

  “Who bloody knows what a terrorist looks like these days?” Bryan said. “They’re jumping out of rubbish bins. And it’s impossible to do what you ask. Hacking into that system . . . ? D’you know how long that would take? D’you have any idea how many backups exist? I’m not talking about backups just at the Met, either. I’m talking about backups at the airline, on their main databases, on their alternative databases. I’m talking about backups on tape that you can alter only if you have the tape itself. Plus, there’re computer applications that’ve been written by hundreds of people over dozens of years and—”

  “If we needed all that,” she cut in, “I c’n see it’d be something of a headache for you. But as it happens, we want the airline ticket altered, like I said, and it only needs to be altered in the Met’s system. The date of purchase needs to be changed, and it needs to be roundtrip instead of one-way. That’s it. There’s one in Azhar’s name and one in the name of Hadiyyah Upman.”

  “And if I can’t get into the Met’s system . . . Which department are we talking about? Who’s got the records?”

  “SO12.”

  “Completely impossible. Laughable even to suggest it.”

  “Not for you, and you and I know it. But to give you a little practice in advance—a bit of a way to exercise your typing skills, let’s say—we also need you to take care of a few bank records. Not a big deal for a bloke with your talents, and it’s an alteration again, not an erasure. Azhar here needs to have paid Doughty less: just enough to cover his services up to the point where the trail Angelina Upman left—such as it was—went dead as a corpse. That’s it, Bryan. Airline tickets and payments to Doughty and we’re out of your life, more or less.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I want you to hand over your fail-safe position. Just for an hour or two and you’ll have it back, but I’m going to need to take it with me. Today.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Barbara hooted. She said to Azhar, “You’re not to mind that he thinks we’re idiots. Computer nerds and their attitude problems? Hand in glove, if you know what I mean.” And then to Smythe, “Bryan, the one thing you’re not is stupid. You’ve backed up all of the information you removed from Doughty’s records. Wherever you have it—and I expect it’s right here in the house in a very nice safe with a very secure combination on it—I want it. Like I said, I need it for an hour or two and then you’ll have it back. And stop denying that you have it because you’re the sort of bloke who knows how to put the full stops where they belong.”

  He said nothing at first. His expression was hard, his eyes flinty. He looked from Barbara to Azhar to Barbara and he said to her, “How many more of you are there?”

  Azhar stirred next to her, but Barbara put her hand on his arm. She said, “Bryan, we’re not here to discuss—”

  “No. I want to know. How many more dirty cops’re going to crawl out of the woodwork if I cooperate with you? And don’t please tell me you’re the only one. Your sort doesn’t exist alone.”

  Barbara felt Azhar glance in her direction. For her part, she was surprised at how Smythe’s words stung. It wasn’t the first time he’d accused her of being dirty, but the fact was that this time, he was speaking the truth. That she was dirtying herself in the cause of a larger good, however, was not something she wished to debate with the man. So she said to him, “This is a one-time operation. It’s about Azhar, it’s about his daughter, and after that, it’s about us being gone from your life.”

  “I’m expected to believe that?”

  “I don’t see that you have a choice.” She waited as he thought things over. Birds were chirping pleasantly from the ornamental cherry trees in the garden, and within the pool a goldfish surfaced in the hope of feeding time’s approach. She said, “My grip’s better than yours is, mate. Face up to it and we’re out of here and you c’n go back to your breakfast and those ladies’ arses.”

  “Grip,” he repeated.

  “On the whatsies. We’re all hanging on to each other’s, let’s face it. But just now I’ve got the better hold. You know it. I know it. Let’s have your fail-safe data so Azhar and I c’n get on with things.”

  “You’re heading for Doughty next,” he said.

  “Bob’s definitely your uncle, mate.”

  BOW

  LONDON

  “This is too much, Barbara” were Azhar’s first words. He’d said nothing at all during their encounter with Bryan Smythe, but once they were in Barbara’s car and heading over to Doughty’s office, he pressed fingers to his forehead as if trying to contain the pain in his head. “I am so sorry,” he said. “And now this. I cannot—”

  “Hang on.” She lit a fag and handed him the packet. “We’re in it now, so it’s not the time to lose your nerve.”

  “This is not a matter of nerve.” He took a cigarette and lit it, but after one drag on it, he threw it out of the window in disgust. “This is a matter of what you are doing because of me. Because of my decisions. And I . . . Silent like a miserable statue in that man’s garden. I despise myself.”

  “Let’s stick with the facts as we know them. Angelina took Hadiyyah. You wanted her back. The wrong involved here started with her.”

  “Do you think that matters? Do you think that will matter should the details of this morning excursion of ours come to light?”

  “Details won’t come to light. Everyone’s at risk. That’s our guarantee.”

  “I should not have . . . I cannot . . . I must stand like a man and tell the truth and—”

  “And what? Go to gaol? Spend some time in a prison learning how to say ‘Touch me there and I’ll cut off your hand’ in Italian?”

  “They would have to extradite me first and then—”

  “Oh, too right, mate. And while you’re waiting to be extradited, Angelina is going to be doing what? Sending Hadiyyah for pleasant, extended visits with the man who arranged her kidnapping and—oh, by the way—also bought one-way tickets to Pakistan for himself and her?”

  He was silent, and she glanced at him. His face was anguished. “All of this is down to me,” he said. “No matter how Angelina has behaved in the past, the first sin was mine. I wanted her.”

  At first, Barbara thought he was talking about the daughter he and Angelina had created. But when he went on, she saw that was not what
he meant at all.

  “How wrong could it be, I asked myself, to want a lovely young woman in my bed? Just once. Or twice. Three times, perhaps. Because, after all, Nafeeza is heavy with child and wishes to be left in peace until she delivers and as a man, I have my needs and there she is, so lovely, so fragile, so . . . so English.”

  “You’re human,” Barbara said, although the words did not come easily to her.

  “I saw her at that table at University College, and I thought, What a particularly lovely English girl she is. But I also thought what Middle Eastern men—men like me—are schooled to think of particularly lovely English girls, of all English girls: They are not like our women, their clothing alone illustrates how easy they are with their chastity, and these things that rob them of their virtue mean very little to them. So I sat with her. I asked her if I could join her at her table, and as I did so, I knew exactly what I wanted from her. What I did not think was that the wanting would increase, the ‘must have’ would dominate, and I would bring ruin upon my world. And now I am set upon the same course, but the world to be ruined is going to be yours. How, then, do I live with that?”

  “You live with that by knowing that this is my decision,” she told him. “We have another half hour to live through, and then we’re through it, all right? We have Bryan where we want him and all that’s left is putting Doughty into line behind him. But that’s only going to happen if you believe it’s possible because if you don’t—if you go into that office broadcasting on your face that the only end reachable is the one with you sitting in the dock in a Lucca courtroom—we’re finished, Azhar. We, not you. We. And I’d like to hold on to my job.”

  She pulled to the kerb and let the Mini idle. They were round the corner from Doughty’s office, parked near a primary school where the happy noise of children running about a schoolyard came to them through the open windows of the car. They listened to this in silence for a moment. Barbara shut off the Mini’s ignition and said, “Are we on the same page, Azhar?”