Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Mura’s family seemed to feel likewise. His sister urged Lorenzo from the grave and their mamma drew him to her sumptuous bosom. He was soon encircled by his relations and they moved as one unified body away from the grave and towards the cemetery’s grand entrance where their cars had been left.

  The Upman family approached Taymullah Azhar. Salvatore’s English was too limited for him to understand all that they said, but he could read their expressions well enough. They hated this man, and they cared little for the child he had produced with the dead woman. They looked upon her as if she was only a curiosity to them. They looked upon him with loathing. At least Angelina’s parents did so. Her sister extended a hand to the child, but Azhar moved Hadiyyah out of her reach.

  “This is how it finishes,” the father of Angelina said to the Pakistani man. “She died as she lived. As will you. And soon, I hope.”

  His wife, the mother, looked at the child. She opened her lips to speak, but before she could do so, the husband had her by the arm and was marching her in the same direction the Muras had taken. The twin sister said, “I’m sorry how it’s ended. You should have given her the only thing she wanted. I expect you know that now,” and she walked off as well.

  Soon enough Salvatore alone remained at the gravesite with Taymullah Azhar and his daughter. He wished that little Hadiyyah did not have to hear what he was going to say. Certainly she had already heard enough for one day, and she didn’t need to know the various ways in which her father was under suspicion.

  “There are some things you need to know, Salvatore” was how Cinzia Ruocco had put it to him as they sat in Piazza San Michele. “In this woman’s gut was something very strange. No one yet wishes to talk about it, but we call it a biofilm.”

  “What is this, then? Is it something that harms?”

  “An aggregate of bacteria,” she said, and she used her hand in a cupping motion as if to demonstrate. “A collection of it that was most unexpected. It was . . . Salvatore, it was highly evolved. It should not have been there in her gut. And I must tell you this, my friend. It is nowhere else. And it should be.”

  He was confused. It should not have been there in her gut. It was not elsewhere, yet it should have been. What kind of medical riddle was this? He said, “She did not die of kidney failure, then?”

  “Sì, sì, she did. But it was triggered.”

  “By this . . . what did you call it?”

  “A biofilm. But no, the biofilm—this thing in her gut—it began the process. But a toxin killed her.”

  “She was poisoned, then.”

  “She was poisoned, sì. Just not in the way her doctors would immediately recognise because, you see, she had already been ill. It was very clever. Someone was either very lucky to kill her in this way, or someone had thought of everything. Because, you see, in the normal course of events, it would be assumed that her death was natural, especially since she had been so ill from the pregnancy. But nothing about this death was natural. It was a chain reaction, as inevitable as knocking dominoes over.”

  Which left Salvatore with the job he had to do now. He approached Taymullah Azhar to do it.

  CHALK FARM

  LONDON

  Barbara kept watch. Once she arrived home at the end of her workday, she went immediately to Azhar’s flat. His intention had been to return to London directly after Angelina’s funeral, bringing Hadiyyah with him, all the better to return the little girl to the environment she’d known for all of her life save for the past few months. But he had not yet arrived.

  She wasn’t concerned at first. The funeral had been scheduled for the morning, but there would have been a reception of some sort afterwards, wouldn’t there? People would want an opportunity to express further condolences and to do what they could to suggest to the bereaved that life would go on. After that, Hadiyyah’s things would need to be packed, if they weren’t already, and the drive to Pisa would have to be made. Then there was the wait at the airport and the flight itself, and of course she shouldn’t have expected them before evening at the earliest.

  But evening came and went and darkness fell, and still Azhar and Hadiyyah did not return. Again and again, Barbara left her bungalow to pace to the front of the building, thinking that they had returned without letting her know for some reason. Finally, at half past nine, she rang Azhar’s mobile.

  “How did it go?” she asked him. “Where are you?”

  “Still in Lucca,” he said. He sounded exhausted as he added, “Hadiyyah is asleep.”

  “Ah. I did wonder . . . I expect it was too much for her, wasn’t it?” Barbara said. “Everything that’s happened and then the funeral and on top of that a flight to London? I didn’t think of that. I won’t keep you, then. You must be all done in as well. When you get back to town, we c’n—”

  “He took my passport, Barbara.”

  A fist gripped her heart. “Who? Azhar, what’s happened?”

  “Chief Inspector Lo Bianco. It was after the . . . her burial.”

  “He was there?” Barbara knew only too well what it meant when the coppers went to the funeral of someone with whom they were not personally involved.

  “Yes. At the church and then at the cemetery. This is where . . . Barbara, Hadiyyah was with me. She did not hear him as he took me aside, but she will wonder why we do not leave in the morning. What am I to tell her?”

  “Why does he want your passport? Never mind. What a bloody stupid question. Let me think.” But she found it was nearly impossible to do so because every thought led her to one place only and that was a place in which Dwayne Doughty had cut a deal with someone to save his own neck and had provided the necessary information pointing to Azhar’s involvement in his daughter’s kidnapping. Or perhaps Di Massimo had done so, although, according to Azhar, he’d never spoken to the man. Or perhaps it was Smythe, with a backup to his backup sent by express to the Italian police. Or . . . God only knew because the real point was that without his passport, Azhar was stuck in Lucca at the mercy of the coppers. “They’ve not questioned you, have they?” she asked him. “Azhar, if they want to ask you questions, you must find a solicitor at once. D’you understand? Don’t say a sodding word to those people without a solicitor sitting next to you.”

  “They have not even asked to question me. But, Barbara, I fear that perhaps Mr. Doughty . . . or one of his associates . . . Someone must have told the inspector something to make him begin to think that I . . .” He was silent for a moment and then, quietly, “Oh God, I should have let it all go.”

  “Let what go? Let your own daughter go? How the bloody hell were you supposed to do that, eh? Angelina took her. She disappeared. You did what you had to do to find her.”

  “It fell apart, Barbara. This is what I fear.”

  She couldn’t tell him his fears were unreasonable. Yet unless the Italians had sent someone from Italy to talk to Doughty or unless Smythe somehow had contacted them, the only person who could have told them anything would have been Di Massimo. And according to Azhar, he’d engaged in no communication with the Italian detective at all, all of that being done by Doughty with every trail removed by Bryan Smythe. So it was likely that the Italian cops had something more, something different beyond information they would have gleaned from an interrogation of Di Massimo. She had to find out what that was. Until she discovered it, they could plan no further.

  She said to Azhar, “You listen to me. First thing tomorrow, you ring the embassy. Then you ring for a solicitor.”

  “But if he asks me to come to the questura . . . and what of Hadiyyah? Barbara, what of Hadiyyah? I am not innocent in this matter. Had I not arranged to have her taken—”

  “Just stay where you are and wait till you hear from me.”

  “What will you do? From London, Barbara, what can you do?”

  “I c’n get the information we need. Without that, we’re wanderi
ng in the dark.”

  “If you could have seen how they looked upon us,” he murmured. “Not only upon me but upon Hadiyyah.”

  “Who? The coppers?”

  “The Upmans. That I am worse than nothing to these people is something I can bear. It is as it has always been. But Hadiyyah . . . They looked at her as if she carried a disease, some deformity of body . . . She is a child. She is innocent. And these people—”

  “Set them aside, Azhar,” Barbara cut in. “Don’t think about them. Promise me that. I’ll be in touch.”

  They rang off. Barbara spent the rest of the evening and far into the night sitting at the table in her tiny kitchen, smoking one fag after another, and trying to work out what she could do that did not involve anyone other than herself. She knew this was a pointless activity, but she engaged in it anyway till she had to admit there was only one action she could take next.

  12 May

  BELGRAVIA

  LONDON

  The fact that Isabelle Ardery had made no move to deal with Barbara Havers suggested to Lynley that she was either giving him the time he had asked for to try to sort out what Barbara had been up to or she was herself building a case against Barbara that would give her the result she’d been looking for since first encountering the sergeant as a difficult member of her team. Isabelle was someone who wanted things to run smoothly, and it couldn’t be argued that Barbara lent to the machinery of a police investigation the constant oil of her cooperation.

  Isabelle had, of course, asked for a report from him. He told her of his conversation with Bryan Smythe, but he made no mention of either the airline tickets to Lahore or what Barbara Havers had asked Smythe to do. He left out the information that she had gone to see Smythe in the company of Azhar as well. This proved to be a misstep on his part.

  Isabelle slid the report across her desk to him. He put on his glasses, opened it, and read.

  John Stewart had been on top of the call upon Bryan Smythe made by Havers and Azhar. He’d merely not had a chance to hand it over to Isabelle when Lynley and she had met earlier with the sergeant. When Lynley asked the superintendent why she had not yet turned Barbara over to CIB, her steady reply of “I’m waiting to see how far this reaches” told him that his own actions would be scrutinised as well.

  “Isabelle, I admit that I’m trying to find excuses for her” was what he told the superintendent.

  “Looking for reasons is understandable, Tommy. Looking for excuses is not. I expect you see the difference between the two.”

  He returned Stewart’s report to her, saying, “And as for John . . . his reasons? His excuses? What are you planning to do about him?”

  “John’s well in hand. You’re not to concern yourself with John.”

  He could hardly believe what she was saying since it had to mean she’d actually set DI Stewart to the task of watching Havers closely and noting her movements. If that was the case, Isabelle was giving Barbara rope. She also was telling him not to wrest that rope from Barbara’s grasp only to wrap it round his own neck.

  All that was wanted to finish Barbara off was Lynley’s own report on the full contents of the conversation he’d had with Bryan Smythe. For although Stewart knew where Barbara had gone and when she’d gone there and with whom, what he had not known from the first was what she was up to. Only Lynley himself—and Barbara—knew that.

  Early in the morning, he went into the garden behind his house. His place was laid for breakfast, his newspapers were on the dining room table precisely angled from his fork, and the scent of bread toasting under Charlie Denton’s watchful eye was emanating from the kitchen. But he walked to the window, looked out on the bright spring day, and saw how beautifully the roses were blooming. He went outside to look them over, aware that in the time since Helen’s death, he’d not once ventured out into the garden she’d loved. Nor, he realised, had anyone else.

  Among the rose bushes he found a pail. Within it pruned branches from the plants leaned. Hooked over the pail’s side was a small pair of secateurs, rusty now from being exposed to the weather for more than a year. The bushes themselves told the tale of why the pail, its contents, and the secateurs had been left out here for so long. Helen had been in the midst of pruning them when she’d been murdered.

  Lynley thought of how he’d watched her once from the window of his library above stairs. He’d gone to join her in the garden and even now her words came to him, spoken in her typical self-deprecating, droll fashion. Tommy darling, I do think this might be the only useful activity I could possibly become adept at. There’s something so satisfying about grubbing round in the dirt. I think it takes one back to one’s roots. And then she thought about what she’d said and laughed. What a terrible pun. It was completely unintentional.

  He’d offered to help her, but she wouldn’t let him. Don’t please rob me of my one opportunity to excel at something.

  He smiled now at the thought of her. Then he was struck by how the thought of Helen had for the first time not been accompanied by searing pain.

  A door opened behind him. He turned to see Denton opening it for Barbara Havers. Seeing her, Lynley glanced at his watch. It was seven twenty-eight in the morning. What on earth was she doing in Belgravia? he wondered.

  She crossed the lawn to him. She looked horrible. Not only was she more thrown together than usual, but she also seemed to have spent an entire night without sleep. She said to him, “They have Azhar.”

  He blinked. “Who?”

  “The cops in Lucca. They’ve taken his passport. He’s being detained. He doesn’t know why.”

  “Is he being questioned about something?”

  “Not yet. He just can’t leave Italy. He doesn’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. So how do I help him? I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t speak Italian. I don’t know their game. I don’t know what’s happened.” She took three paces along the flowerbeds before she swung round and said abruptly, “C’n you ring them, sir? C’n you find out what’s happening?”

  “If they’re detaining him, it’s obviously because they’ve got questions about—”

  “Look. Right. Whatever. I know. For what it’s worth, I’ve told him to ring the embassy. And to get a solicitor, just in case. I’ve told him that. But there must be something more I c’n do. And you know these blokes and you c’n speak Italian and you c’n at least . . .” She punched a fist into her palm. “Please, sir. Please. It’s why I’ve come from Chalk Farm. It’s why I couldn’t wait till you got to work. Please.”

  He said, “Come with me,” and took her to the house. Inside the dining room, he saw that Denton was already laying another place for breakfast. Lynley thanked him, poured two cups of coffee, and told Barbara to serve herself some eggs and bacon from the sideboard.

  “Already eaten,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Chocolate Pop-Tart and a fag.” She cocked her head at the sideboard and added, “Anything nutritious’ll probably put my system into shock.”

  “Humour me,” he told her. “I don’t wish to eat alone.”

  “Sir, please . . . I need you to . . .”

  “I’m completely aware of that, Barbara,” he said steadily.

  Reluctantly, she spooned herself some scrambled eggs. She added to this two rashers of bacon. She got into the spirit of things with four mushrooms and a piece of toast. He followed her lead and then joined her at the table.

  She said with a nod to his newspapers, “How d’you read three bloody broadsheets every morning, for God’s sake?”

  “I take the news from The Times and the editorials from The Guardian and The Independent.”

  “Seeking balance in life?”

  “I find it’s wise to do so. The overuse of adverbs in journalism these days is becoming something of a distraction, though. I don’t like to be told what
to think, even surreptitiously.”

  They locked eyes at this. She broke away first, scooping up some of her scrambled eggs and piling them up on a portion torn from her toast. She chewed quite a bit. Swallowing, however, did not appear easy for her.

  Lynley said, “Before I make the call to Inspector Lo Bianco, Barbara . . . ?” He waited for her gaze to meet his. “Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything I need to know?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re certain?” he said.

  “Far ’s I know,” she told him.

  So be it, he thought.

  BELGRAVIA

  LONDON

  For the first time in her life, Barbara Havers cursed the fact that she had no language other than English. While it was true that she’d had moments of desire to learn a foreign tongue—most of them having to do with understanding what the cook at her local curry house was really yelling about the lamb rogan josh before he slopped it into a takeaway container—for the great majority of her life she’d had no need of one. She had a passport, but she’d never used it to go anywhere a foreign tongue was spoken. She’d never used it at all, in fact. She only had it on the off chance that a heretofore unknown Prince Charming might show up unexpectedly in her life and wish to take her on a luxury Mediterranean holiday in the sun.

  But now, watching Lynley as he spoke to Chief Inspector Lo Bianco in Lucca, she tried to pick up anything she could. She listened hard for words she might recognise. She tried to read his face. From the words, she only picked up names: Azhar, Lorenzo Mura, Santa Zita—whoever the hell that was—and Fanucci. She thought she also heard Michelangelo Di Massimo mentioned as well as information, hospital, and factory, for some reason. Most of what she learned came from Lynley’s face, which grew graver as the conversation continued.

  He finally said, “Chiaro, Salvatore. Grazie mille. Ciao,” which told her the conversation was ending.