Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Salvatore heard the translation of all this, but he kept his gaze fixed on the detective sergeant, who kept her gaze fixed on him as well. Most people, he thought, would drop their eyes at some point or at least shift them to take in the details of his office, such as they were. All she did was finger the dirty shoelace on her red trainer, whose encased foot she held casually on one of her knees. When Marcella had reported all of the sergeant’s words, Salvatore said carefully, “The investigation is still ongoing. And, as you must know, Sergeant, things are done differently here in Italy.”

  “What I know is you’ve got less than circumstantial evidence. You’ve got a string of coincidences that make me wonder why Professor Azhar’s behind bars at all. But let’s not go there for the moment. I’m going to want to see him. You’ll need to arrange that.”

  The order made Salvatore prickly. Really, she was rather incredible, making such a request, considering she was in Italy for the purpose of seeing to the welfare of Hadiyyah Upman. “For what reason do you ask to see him?” he enquired.

  “Because he’s Hadiyyah Upman’s father, and Hadiyyah’s going to want to know where he is, how he is, and what’s going on. That’s only natural, as I expect you know.”

  “His fatherhood is something unproven,” Salvatore pointed out. He was glad to see that his comment made her bristle once she heard Marcella’s translation of it.

  “Right. Yes. Well. Whatever. You score a point on that one, don’t you. But a blood test will sort everything out soon enough. Look, for his part, he’s going to want to know where she is and what’s happening to her, and I want to be able to tell him that. Now you and I know that you c’n arrange it. I’d like you to do so.” She waited while Marcella translated. He was about to reply when she added, “You c’n think of it all as a merciful concession. Because . . . well, let me be frank. You do look like a merciful sort of bloke.” Before he could reply to this astonishing remark, she looked round and said, “D’you smoke, by the way, Inspector? Because I could do with a fag but I don’t want to offend.”

  Salvatore emptied the ashtray he kept on his desk and handed it to her. She said, “Ta,” and began to dig round in a massive shoulder bag she’d set on the floor. She muttered and damned this and bloody helled that—these words he knew—and finally he reached in his jacket for his own cigarettes and handed them to her. “Ecco,” he said. To which she replied, “See? I said you looked like a merciful bloke.” And then she smiled. He was taken aback. She was, as an object of femininity, quite appalling, but she had an extraordinarily lovely smile and, unlike what he’d come to think of as the English predilection for doing nothing to improve the state of their dentition, she also seemed to care about her teeth, which were very straight, very white, and very nice. Before he knew what he was doing, he smiled back. She handed the cigarettes back to him, he took one, offered one to Marcella, and they all lit up.

  She said, “C’n I be honest with you, Chief Inspector Lo Bianco?”

  “Salvatore,” he said. And when she looked surprised, he said in English, “Not so long,” and he smiled.

  “Barbara, then,” she replied. “It’s shorter as well.” She inhaled in a masculine fashion and seemed to let the smoke settle into her blood before she said, “So c’n I be honest, Salvatore?” And when he nodded at Marcella’s translation, “From what I c’n tell, you’re building a case against Taymullah Azhar. But c’n you put E. coli into his hands?”

  “The conference in Berlin—”

  “I know about Berlin. So he was at a conference? What difference does it make?”

  “None at all till you look into the conference and discover that he was on a panel along with a scientist from Heidelberg. Friedrich von Lohmann, he’s called, this man. There, at the university in Heidelberg, he studies E. coli in a laboratory.”

  Barbara Havers nodded, her eyes narrowing behind the smoke from her cigarette. “All right,” she said. “The panel bit? I didn’t know that. But ’f you ask me, it’s just coincidence. You lot can’t go into court with that, can you?”

  “Someone has gone to Germany to interview this man,” Salvatore told her. “And you and I know that it would not be impossible at a conference of this kind for one scientist to ask another for a strain of bacteria to look at for some reason.”

  “Like asking to see his vacation snaps?” she asked with a laugh.

  “No,” he said. “But it would not be difficult for him to create a reason that he needed this bacteria, would it: the project of a graduate student whose work he is supervising, his own shift in interest perhaps. These are merely two examples he could have used with the Heidelberg man.”

  “But bloody hell, Inspector . . . I mean, Salvatore, you can’t think these blokes carry samples round with them! What d’you have? Azhar giving Mr. Heidelberg—What was his name again?”

  “Von Lohmann.”

  “Right. Okay. So d’you see Azhar giving von Lohmann the word in Berlin and von Lohmann fishing the E. coli out of his suitcase?”

  Salvatore felt himself growing hot. She was either deliberately misunderstanding his words, or Marcella was not translating them correctly. He said, “Of course I do not mean Professor von Lohmann had the E. coli with him. But the seed of Professor Azhar’s interest was planted at that conference and once Hadiyyah was kidnapped by means of the London detective, then further plans were laid.”

  Marcella’s translation arrested the sergeant’s cigarette on its way to her mouth. She said, “What’re you saying, exactly?”

  He said, “I’m saying that what I have in my possession is proof from London that the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman was engineered there, not here. This detective in London who sends me the information? He would like me to think that a man called Michelangelo Di Massimo developed the scheme in Pisa, with the solitary assistance of Taymullah Azhar.”

  “Hang on right there. There’s no bloody way—”

  “But I have documents here that prove otherwise. Many records that—compared to the earlier records which I also have—have been altered. My point is this. Things are not simple and I am not stupid. Professor Azhar has been charged with murder. But I suspect this is not all he will be charged with.”

  The sergeant twirled her cigarette, using her thumb and her index and middle fingers in a way that suggested she’d smoked for decades. She held her cigarette like a man, as well. Salvatore wondered vaguely if she was a lesbian. Then he wondered if he was stereotyping lesbians. Then he wondered why he was wondering anything at all about the curious detective.

  She said, “Want to share what’s taking your head in that direction? It’s a bloody strange one, you ask me.”

  Salvatore was careful with what he told her. He had banking information that contradicted earlier banking information, he explained. This information made things look as if someone somewhere was fixing evidence.

  She said, “Sounds like nothing’s traceable to Professor Azhar, far as I can tell.”

  “It’s true that a forensic computer specialist will have to sort through it all to follow the trails. But this can be done, and it will be, eventually.”

  “‘Eventually’?” She thought about this, drawing her heavy eyebrows together. “Ah. You’re not on that case any longer, are you? Someone gave me that info.”

  He waited while Marcella struggled with info. When she had it straightened out in her mind and the translation came, he said, “Murder is, I think you will agree, a more pressing issue to be dealt with now that the child is safe and several arrests have been made for her kidnapping. Everything will happen in due time. It is how we do things in Italy.”

  She crushed out her cigarette. She did this vigorously, however, and some of the ashes spilled onto her trousers. She tried to rub them off, which made things worse. She said, “Bloody hell” and “Oh well,” which she followed with, “As to seeing Azhar. I’d like a few words with him. You c’
n arrange that, right?”

  He nodded. He would do that for her, he decided, as it was only right that the professor see the police liaison from his own country. But he had a feeling that this Sergeant Havers knew more about Taymullah Azhar than she was telling him. He reckoned Lynley would be able to help him out with the questions he had about this strange woman.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  The truth of the matter was that Lynley not only didn’t know if anything could save Barbara Havers, but he also didn’t know if he wanted to go to the effort even to forestall what was looking more and more like the inevitable conclusion to this business.

  He told himself initially that the maddening woman didn’t really belong in police work anyway. She couldn’t cope with authority. She had a chip on her shoulder the size of a military tank. She had appalling personal habits. She was often dazzlingly unprofessional and not only in her manner of dress. She had a good mind, but half the time she didn’t use it. And half of the half when she did use her mind, it led her completely astray. As it had done now.

  And yet. When she was on, she was on and she gave the job her life’s blood. She was fearless when it came to challenging an opinion with which she didn’t agree, and she never put the possibility of promotion ahead of her commitment to a case. She might argue and she might bite into a theory that she believed in like a pit bull with its jaws locked on a piece of meat. But her ability to confront the sorts of people she shouldn’t begin to be able to confront set her apart from every other officer he’d worked with. She didn’t pull a forelock in anyone’s presence. That was the sort of officer one wanted on one’s team.

  And then, there was the not small matter of her having saved his life. That act of hers would always hang between them. She never brought it up and he knew she never would. But he also knew he would never forget it.

  So he ended up deciding that he had no real choice. He had to give it a go and try to save the bloody woman from herself. The only way he saw to do this was to prove she was right about everything regarding Angelina Upman’s death.

  It would be tough going, and he brought Winston Nkata in on the process. Nkata would check into everyone associated with Angelina Upman in London: their whereabouts during the time of her illness and death in Tuscany as well as their associates in London and the unlikely possibility of their getting their hands on E. coli. He was to start with Esteban Castro—Angelina’s erstwhile lover—and he was to include the man’s wife, along with Angelina’s own relatives: Bathsheba Ward and her parents and Hugo Ward as well. No matter what name he came up with, Lynley told him, he was to follow that name and to look for connections. In the meantime, he himself would head to Azhar’s lab at University College in order to double-check St. James’s work.

  Winston looked doubtful about the entire procedure, but he said he would get on it. “But you don’ think any of this lot’s involved, do you?” he asked. “Seems to me the E. coli bit’s asking for a specialist.”

  “Or someone who knows a specialist,” Lynley told him. He sighed and added, “God knows, Winston. We’re flying in the dark by our trouser seats.”

  Nkata smiled. “You sound like Barb.”

  “God forbid,” Lynley said. He went on his way. He was in the car heading to Bloomsbury when Salvatore Lo Bianco rang him from Lucca. The inspector’s opening remark of “Who is this extraordinary woman that Scotland Yard has sent over, Ispettore?” did nothing to assure him that Barbara was at least behaving herself in Italy. There was a small mercy in the fact that Lo Bianco did not wait for an immediate answer. Instead he gave Lynley the information he needed to fashion a response that didn’t condemn Barbara at once.

  “She is odd for a liaison officer,” Salvatore told him, “as she speaks no Italian. Why did they not send you again?”

  Lynley went with the liaison officer part. Unfortunately, he’d not been available this time round, he explained. He wasn’t, in fact, in the loop as to what Sergeant Havers was doing in Tuscany. Could Salvatore bring him into the picture?

  Thus he learned that Havers was presenting herself as having been sent to Italy to deal with Hadiyyah Upman’s situation. Thus he also learned that Taymullah Azhar not only was indagato but also was being held in prison while under investigation for murder. Things were moving rapidly.

  Salvatore told him about the conflict between the information he’d received from London and his own information. On the one hand, he said, he was in possession of an early set of Michelangelo Di Massimo’s bank records, and on the other hand, London had sent him masses of data that, upon examination and comparison to Michelangelo’s bank records a second, later time, showed that someone had doctored the Pisan’s account.

  “They’ve got someone over here hacking into accounts and creating documents,” Lynley told him. “Everything is suspect at this point, Salvatore. Your best course is to have a computer expert at your end work out how they’re diddling with things. We could, naturally, try for a court order here to get the banks and the phone companies to delve into their backup systems in order to get our hands on the original records. But that will take time, and it’s iffy anyway.”

  “Why, my friend?”

  “An Italian crime would be the reason for our request for a court order. Frankly, that would be difficult to get a judge to move on. I think it might be easier to break one of the principals over here. I’ve spoken to one of them—a bloke called Bryan Smythe. I can speak to the other, Doughty, if you’d like.”

  He would welcome that, Salvatore told him. Now as to this unusual officer from the Met . . . ?

  “She’s a good cop,” Lynley said truthfully.

  “She wishes access to the professor.” Lo Bianco explained Havers’s reasoning behind her request.

  “It makes sense,” Lynley said, “unless it’s your wish to increase the pressure on Azhar by keeping him in the dark about his daughter: where she is, how she is, and what she’s doing.”

  Lo Bianco was silent for a moment. He finally said, “It would be useful, sì. But while a confession based on pressure would be acceptable in some quarters—”

  “To il Pubblico Ministero, you mean,” Lynley said.

  “It is how he operates, vero. And while he would accept a confession that grew from a man’s desperation, I feel . . . somewhat reluctant. I cannot say why.”

  Probably because of Havers, Lynley thought. She had a way of skittering between bullying people and manoeuvring people that he occasionally admired. He said nothing but made understanding noises at his end.

  Lo Bianco said, “There is something . . . When she spoke to me, there is a feeling I had.”

  “What sort of feeling?”

  “She comes as a liaison officer to see to the welfare of the child, but she asks many questions and offers opinions about the case against Taymullah Azhar.”

  “Ah,” Lynley said. “That’s standard procedure for Barbara Havers, Salvatore. There isn’t a topic on earth that she wouldn’t have an opinion about.”

  “I see. This helps me, my friend. Because her questions and her comments were suggesting to me more than merely professional interest.”

  Dangerous ground, Lynley thought. He said untruthfully, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Nor am I, exactly. But there is an intensity about her . . . She wanted to argue certain points relating to the professor’s arrest. Coincidences, she called them. Circumstantial evidence at best, she said. Now, it is not that her declarations have influenced me, my friend. But I find the intensity of her interest unusual in someone who is here in Italy only to see to the care of a child.”

  This was the juncture at which, Lynley knew, he ought to be telling Salvatore Lo Bianco about Barbara’s relationship with Azhar and his daughter, not to mention about the unauthorised nature of her jaunt to Italy. But he understood that, if he did so, the Italian would prevent her access to
the Pakistani man. It was likely that he also would deny her any contact with Hadiyyah. That seemed unfair, especially to a child who was no doubt feeling both frightened and abandoned. So he told Lo Bianco that Barbara’s intensity of interest in the case he was building probably had to do with her inquisitive nature. He’d worked with Barbara many times, he reported to the Italian. Her habit of arguing, playing devil’s advocate, seeking other routes, looking at matters from all directions . . . ? This was merely who she was as an officer of the Met.

  In a shift of topic, he quickly went on to tell Salvatore that he would pay a call upon Dwayne Doughty. “Perhaps I can sew up one part of the kidnapping investigation, at least,” he said.

  “Piero Fanucci will not like anything that detracts from how he sees that case,” Salvatore told him.

  “Why do I expect that will give you a lot of pleasure?” Lynley asked.

  Salvatore laughed. They rang off. Lynley continued on his way to Bloomsbury.

  At Taymullah Azhar’s laboratory, he showed his identification to a white-coated research technician who introduced himself with the bicultural name of Bhaskar Goldbloom, clearly the offspring of a Hindi mother and a Jewish father. The technician had been seated at a computer when Lynley entered the lab, one of eight people who were at present working in the complex of rooms. None of the researchers had been informed about the arrest in Italy of their laboratory’s leading professor, Lynley found. He brought Goldbloom slowly into the picture by means of introducing the reason for his unexpected call at the lab.