Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  “You know, of course, that there are ways to discern a forgery from a real document,” Salvatore told him. “There are experts in forgery—forensic experts—who spend all day doing such work. They look for special signs, marks of hesitation that the true writer of something would not make in the course of penning a note. You know this, sì?”

  “The professor is not an idiot,” Greco commented. “He has answered your question, Salvatore.”

  Salvatore pointed out the word khushi. “And this?” he said to Azhar.

  Azhar confirmed that it was his pet name for his daughter, something he had called her from the moment of her birth. It meant happiness, he explained.

  “And this name khushi . . . you alone called her that?” And when Azhar confirmed that this was the case, “Just between the two of you?”

  Azhar frowned. “I don’t . . . What exactly do you mean, Inspector?”

  “I mean was this something said in private only?”

  Azhar shook his head. “It was not a secret. Anyone who witnessed us together would know that this is what I call her.”

  “Ah.” Salvatore nodded. It was nice to know in advance what direction Aldo Greco would take if things proceeded as he expected them to proceed. He took the copy of the card from Azhar and returned it to the manila envelope in which he’d carried it to the pensione. “Grazie, Professore,” he said.

  In a movement that was nearly imperceptible, Azhar blew out a long breath. It was over, the expiration said, whatever “it” had been.

  Aldo Greco, however, was not stupid. He said, “What else, Ispettore Lo Bianco?”

  Salvatore smiled in acknowledgement of the attorney’s wisdom in this situation. He said to Azhar, “Now we speak of Berlin.”

  “Berlin?”

  Salvatore watched him closely as he nodded. “You told me there were many microbiologists in Berlin when you were there for your conference last month, vero?”

  “What has Berlin to do with anything?” Greco asked as he translated Salvatore’s words.

  “I think the professore knows very well what Berlin has to do with, Dottore,” Salvatore murmured.

  “I do not,” Azhar said.

  “Certo, you do,” Salvatore said expansively, his voice quite pleasant. “Berlin is your alibi for the moment of your daughter’s abduction, no? You have insisted upon that from the very first, and I will say that everything you claimed about Berlin has proven itself to be God’s own truth.”

  “Then . . . ?” Greco asked with a glance at his watch. Time was of the essence, he was saying. His own time was far too valuable to be spent beating round bushes.

  Salvatore said, “Tell me, Dottore, about the nature of this conference once again.”

  “What has this to do with the matter in hand?” Signor Greco demanded. “If, as you say, the professor’s alibi has been confirmed for the time of his daughter’s kidnapping—”

  “Sì, sì,” Salvatore said. “But now we speak of other things, my friend.” And with a look at Azhar, “Now we speak of the death of Angelina Upman.”

  Azhar was absolute stone. It was as if his mind had begun screaming at once: do nothing, say nothing, wait, wait, wait. And this was good advice that his mind was giving him, Salvatore acknowledged silently. But the vein throbbing in his temple was betraying his body’s reaction to the change of subject.

  An innocent man would have no such reaction, and Salvatore knew this. What he also thus knew was that the London professor was well aware that Angelina Upman’s death was far more than the result of an unfortunate misdiagnosis on the part of her doctors.

  He’d very nearly got away with it. Just a few hours more on the day Salvatore had requested his passport and he’d have been back in London, from where only the lengthy and complicated process of extradition could have wrested him, if it managed to wrest him at all.

  Greco said abruptly, “Say nothing,” to Azhar. Then he turned in his chair and went on to Salvatore with, “I insist that you explain yourself, Ispettore, before I allow my client to reply. What is this you’re now talking about?”

  “I’m talking about murder,” Salvatore told him.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Lynley waited until late in the day to speak to Barbara Havers, two hours after Isabelle Ardery had buttonholed him in her office. She’d wanted to know how his “sorting out” was going, and who could blame her? On her watch, an officer under her command had gone off the rails and was, for all intents and purposes, continuing to do so. Lynley’s brief was to complete the incomplete picture of John Stewart’s reports on Barbara’s activities, but he didn’t know how to do it without sinking Barbara’s entire career.

  Part of him was shouting that it bloody well deserved to be sunk. Her connection to Mitchell Corsico alone was enough to put her back in uniform. When one took into account everything else—from withholding information to outright lying about details relevant to a case—she was finished in police work. He knew this intellectually. It was emotionally that he couldn’t accept that there were consequences involved and that Barbara Havers had to face them. His heart was arguing that she’d had very good reasons for betraying every tenet of their profession and, in time, everyone would accept that.

  That was, of course, the lie. Not only would everyone not accept it, it was a form of insanity on his part to expect them to do so. He himself couldn’t accept what she’d done. He wouldn’t, he knew, be in so much turmoil if he wholeheartedly embraced how Barbara had behaved.

  He chose the Met’s library for his meeting with Barbara. Any other place and they would be seen. At this time of day, so late in the afternoon, it was unlikely that anyone else would be on the thirteenth floor. So he asked her to join him there, and there he waited. She came in reeking of cigarette smoke. She’d had a fag in one of the stairwells, another infraction but it mattered little set beside everything else that had been going on.

  They walked to one of the windows. From here, the London Eye dominated the skyline, with each of its capsules crowded with spectators, and the spires of Parliament poked hopefully upward, towards a sky that today was the colour of old pewter. It exactly matched his mood, Lynley thought.

  “Been there?” Havers said to him.

  For a moment he didn’t know what she meant till he glanced at her and saw that she was looking upon the enormous Ferris wheel. He shook his head and told her he hadn’t. She nodded, said, “Neither have I. It’s the glass cars or whatever they are. I don’t think I’d fancy being inside with a crowd of tourists jostling each other to get a snap of Big Ben.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  And then nothing. He turned from the view and took from his jacket pocket the copy of the greeting card that Salvatore Lo Bianco had sent to him. He handed it over to Barbara. She said, “What’s—” but her words faded as she read what was on it.

  Lynley said to her, “Earlier, you told me that khushi was unfamiliar to you. This was found where Hadiyyah was kept hidden. Azhar has confirmed, by the way, that this khushi was his pet name for Hadiyyah. You’ve known the two of them how long, Barbara?”

  “Who?” she asked, although she seemed to have some trouble with the word.

  “Barbara . . .”

  “All right. Two years this month. But you know that, don’t you, so why’re you asking?”

  “Because I find it impossible to believe that in that time you never heard her father call her khushi. And yet that’s precisely what you asked me to believe. That and other things as well.”

  “Anyone could have known—”

  “Who, exactly?” Lynley felt the first piercings of an anger he’d been holding at bay since this entire miserable affair had begun. “Do you want to argue that Angelina Upman arranged for the kidnapping of her own daughter? Or Lorenzo Mura? Or . . . who else is there who ‘might have known,’ as you say, that her father call
ed her khushi? An unidentified schoolmate, Barbara? A fellow nine-year-old with kidnap on his mind?”

  “Bathsheba Ward would have known,” Barbara said. “If she posed as Azhar in emails to Hadiyyah, she would have called her khushi.”

  “And then what, for God’s sake?”

  “And then kidnapped her to hurt Angelina. Or to hurt Azhar. Or to . . . Bloody hell, I don’t know.”

  “And she managed to duplicate his handwriting as well? Is that part of what you wish to argue? I’d like to hear the full story of how it all played out, from the moment that child went missing in Lucca to the moment her mother ended up in a grave.”

  “He didn’t kill her!”

  In frustration, Lynley walked away from her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He wanted to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to break one of the thirteenth-floor windows. Anything other than to have to continue this conversation with a woman so deliberately blind to what was before her. “For the love of God,” he tried a final time, “Barbara, can’t you see—”

  “Those tickets to Pakistan,” she cut in. He could see that her upper lip had begun to sweat, and he reckoned she had her hands so tightly fisted in order to keep them from shaking. “They tell you that. Because why the bloody hell would Azhar purchase one-way tickets to Pakistan if he knew Angelina was going to be dead and Hadiyyah would be returned to him permanently?”

  “Because he knew very well that when it came down to it, when everything finally met the light of day, you’d be standing there doing exactly what you’re doing: refusing to see what’s in front of your eyes. And you have to ask yourself why you’re doing that, Barbara, why you’re throwing away your career on the off chance that the rest of us won’t eventually hunt down every single detail that proves Taymullah Azhar was involved in each aspect of what’s happened to his daughter and what happened to Angelina Upman.”

  At that, for a moment, he believed he’d got through to her. He believed that she would make a clean breast of everything she knew and everything she was hiding. She would do it, he thought, because she’d worked at his side for years, because she’d borne witness to what had led to the death of his wife and to what had followed, because she trusted him to have her best interests at heart, because she knew what was demanded of anyone who carried a warrant card and had a place at the Met.

  She went back to the window and her fist pounded lightly on its sill. She said, “Those tickets to Pakistan suggest things. I see that, sir. As far as the kidnapping goes, those tickets and when they were bought and the fact that they are one-way only . . . They make things . . . difficult for Azhar. But you have to see they also eliminate him as a suspect for Angelina’s murder. Because with Angelina dead, he’d have no need to run to Pakistan with Hadiyyah. She’d been given back to him.”

  “Which was his intention all along. And into Pakistan he could disappear with her if Angelina’s death was discovered as not an unfortunate and unexpected termination to a trying time but instead a carefully planned murder.”

  He saw her swallow. She squinted against sunlight that was not there, to improve her vision which was already perfect. She said, “That’s not how it was. That’s not how it is.”

  “You’re in love with him. Love causes people—”

  “I am not. I. Am. Not.”

  “Loves causes people,” he went determinedly on, “to lose their objectivity. You’re not the first person this has happened to, and God knows you won’t be the last. I want to help you, Barbara, but without a clean breast of everything on your part—”

  “He’s innocent. She was taken from him, and he tried to find her, and he failed to find her, and then she was kidnapped, and only then did he know where she had been because Angelina showed up, accusing him like she always did, hating him like she always did, manipulating and scheming and leaving grief and chaos behind her and . . .” Her voice broke. “He did nothing. He did not do a bloody goddamn thing.”

  “Barbara. Please.”

  She shook her head. She swung away from him and left the room.

  MARLBOROUGH

  WILTSHIRE

  They found a location that was central to both of them in Wiltshire, at an inn just east of the town. In a copse of beech trees, it sat well off the road, half-timbered and brick with a sloping, ancient slate roof. In its car park Lynley waited for forty-five minutes until Daidre Trahair managed to get there from Bristol.

  By the time she arrived, the car park was crowded, so she left her car in the remaining bay, which was farthest from the inn’s front door. He was out of the Healey Elliott and at her car door before she had switched off the ignition. As she glanced up at him, he realised that he had been quite desperate to see her. She was, indeed, the only person he’d even wished to see at the end of his conversation with Barbara Havers.

  He said simply, “Thank you,” as he and she opened the car door together.

  She said as she got out, “Of course, Thomas. It was no trouble at all.”

  “I expect you’ve left a commitment behind in Bristol.”

  She smiled. “The Broads will practise quite well without me tonight.”

  They hugged. He took in the scent of her hair and the vague and subtle perfume of her skin. He said, “You’ve not dined, have you?” And when she shook her head, “Shall we, then? I’ve no idea what the food will be like, but the atmosphere looks promising.”

  They entered the place. It was ages old, with a sloping floor of oak and small diamond-paned windows. A panelled dining room opened off Reception. A teetering stairway led to rooms up above. Although the restaurant was nearly full, they had luck. Someone had just cancelled a booking, so if they didn’t mind sitting near the fireplace . . . ? No fire at this time of year, however.

  Lynley would have sat on one of the stair treads. He looked at Daidre and she nodded at him with a smile. She had a smudge on her spectacles, which he found endearing. Her sandy hair was somewhat in disarray. She’d come on the run. He wanted to thank her again for her kindness, but instead he followed the maitre d’ into the dining room.

  A drink?

  Yes.

  Sparkling water?

  That as well.

  The night’s specials?

  Indeed.

  Menus?

  Please.

  Then followed the business of ordering. He wasn’t hungry, but she was. Doubtless, she’d been wrestling large animals for most of the day. A rhino with piles, a kangaroo with a swollen ankle, a hippo with kidney stones. God knew. So he ordered a meal he would only pick at so that she would feel free to order in a similar fashion. She did so, and the waiter disappeared, and then they were alone with each other. She looked at him expectantly. Obviously, an explanation was in order.

  “Terrible day,” he said to her. “You’re the antidote for it.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “To which part?”

  “The terrible day part. I’m rather pleased to be its antidote, I think.”

  “Think but not know?”

  She cocked her head at him. She removed her spectacles and cleaned them of their smudges on her linen napkin. She said when she returned them to her nose, “Ah. I can see you now.”

  “And your reply?”

  She fingered her cutlery, straightening it unnecessarily. She was, as he was learning about her, as always carefully considering her answer. “That’s just the problem. The think-but-not-know part. At any rate, it’s lovely to see you. C’n I help in some way? I mean, with the day?”

  He found of a sudden that he didn’t want their evening to be about Barbara Havers and what she’d been up to. He found that he wished to let that sleeping dog lie, if only for the hours he had to spend with Daidre. So instead he asked her about the job she’d been offered at London Zoo. Had she reached a decision about transplanting herself, uprooting her life, and aband
oning Boadicea’s Broads for the Electric Magic?

  She said, “A lot depends on what Mark says about the contract. I’ve not heard from him yet.”

  “How might Mark feel about your leaving Bristol if you’re leaning in that direction?”

  “Well, obviously, there are thousands of solicitors in London waiting for someone like me to come along and hire them for the messy bits of life.”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I meant.”

  Their sparkling water arrived at the table, along with a bottle of wine. The ceremony of opening this, presenting the cork, tasting, and nodding approval was gone through. The wine was poured for both of them before Daidre replied.

  “What’re you asking, Thomas?”

  He rolled the stem of his wineglass in his fingers. “I suppose I’m asking if there’s any point to my seeing you . . . aside from our conversations which I do enjoy.”

  She looked at her wine as she began her answer. It took a moment as she was not glib and did not pretend to be. “When it comes to you, I’m at war with my better judgement.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “That my better judgement has been insisting that my life is better kept in order through devotion to mammals who can’t speak. I became a veterinarian for a reason, you see.”

  He took this in and evaluated it, turning it this way and that for every meaning he could wrest from it. He settled on saying, “But you can’t expect to go through life untouched by your fellow man, can you? You can’t want that.”

  Their starters arrived: freshly smoked Irish salmon for her, a Caprese salad for him. It was far too large. What had he been thinking in ordering it?

  She said, “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I can want that. Anyone can want it. There’s part of me, Tommy—”

  “You’ve just called me Tommy.”

  “Thomas.”

  “I prefer the other.”

  “I know. And please, it was inadvertent. You’re not meant to think—”

  “Daidre, nothing is inadvertent.”

  Her head lowered as, perhaps, she took this in. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts. She finally looked up, and her eyes were bright. Candlelight, he thought. It was only the candles. She said, “Let’s leave that for another discussion. What I was intending to say is that there’s a part of me that always fails within a relationship. Failure myself to thrive, failure to provide what the other person needs to thrive as well. It’s always come down to that in the end for me, and it probably always will, if my personal history is anything to go by. There’s a part of me that can’t be touched, you see, and that means defeat for anyone who tries to get at the heart of who I am.”