Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  “For the love of God, Barbara.”

  “It has nothing to do with God. Or with love. It has to do with what’s right.”

  She cut off the call. She found her eyes were stinging. She found her palms were wet. Christ, she thought, she had to get herself sorted. She went to the breakfast room, downed a glass of orange juice still on the sideboard, sardonically thought, Whoops! Must be careful. Someone could’ve put E. coli in there. And she wanted to weep. But she had to think and what she thought first was that she would ring Simon and Deborah St. James. She would ask them. Or p’rhaps Winston. He lived with his parents, right? They could mind Hadiyyah, couldn’t they? Or a girlfriend of his could do the minding. He had to have dozens. Or Mrs. Silver back in Chalk Farm who minded Hadiyyah during school holidays. Except of course Chalk Farm would be the first place anyone would look for her, inside one of the other flats in the converted Edwardian house.

  Something, something, something, she thought. She herself could take the child back to London, but that left Azhar to his fate and she couldn’t have that. No matter what anyone said or anyone believed, she knew the truth of who the man was.

  She went in search of Hadiyyah. For now she would keep the little girl with her. It was the best she could do. Come hell or whatever, she had no intention of allowing her to fall into the hands of the Upmans.

  Hadiyyah was still in the family area. Signora Vallera had joined her to watch the DVD, which looked to Barbara as if it was on its third or fourth time through the interview.

  She sat in a straight-backed chair to watch along with the others as Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar talked about their missing child. The camera showed Angelina’s exhausted face. The camera showed Azhar. The camera dollied back to show where they sat at the table beneath the arbour in the company of the man with the wart-infested face. He talked with such velocity and such passion that it was difficult to notice anything save him. The other two people, the table, the background . . . it all faded away as the man spat and roared.

  Which, Barbara realised with a bolt of understanding, was why the film had played on television, had been given to Hadiyyah, had been watched and watched without a single person involved seeing what was in front of them the entire time.

  “Oh my God,” she murmured.

  She felt dazed and her mind began to spin as she tried to come up with a next step and then another and then a third, all of which could evolve into a plan. Lynley, she knew, would not help her now. That left only one possibility.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Thus, Mitchell Corsico was the proverbial port in the storm that was brewing. He’d been in Italy long enough to acquire the sort of sources Barbara needed now, but she knew he was going to want a deal. He wouldn’t hand anything over to her unless he had his picture of Hadiyyah. So she rang his mobile and she prepared herself for a round of bargaining with the bloke.

  “Where are you?” she asked him. “We need to talk.”

  “Your lucky day,” he told her. He was just outside in the piazza at that very moment, enjoying a caffè and a brioche as he waited for Barb to come to her senses in the matter of Hadiyyah Upman. He’d been working on the story, by the way. It was a real tearjerker. Rodney Aronson was going to love it. Page one guaranteed.

  Barbara said sourly, “You’re the confident one, aren’t you?”

  “In this business, you’d better be confident. ’Sides, one gets to know the scent of desperation.”

  “Whose?”

  “Oh, I wager you know.”

  She told him to stay where he was as she was coming out to meet him. She found him as promised: beneath an umbrella at a café table across from the pensione. He’d finished his coffee and pastry, and he was busily tapping away at his laptop. His remark of “Christ, I’m brilliant” as she reached him told her he was working on his Hadiyyah story.

  She took from her bag the school photo of Hadiyyah that she had showed Aldo Greco on the previous day. She laid it on the table, but she didn’t sit.

  Mitch looked at the photo and then at her. “And this is . . . ?”

  “What you want.”

  “Uh . . . no.” He pushed it back to her and went on typing. “If I’m manufacturing horse dung here”—with a gesture at his laptop—“for the delectation of the great UK public, then something about the tale has to be genuine and what that something is going to be is a picture of the kid here in Italy.”

  “Mitch, listen—”

  “You listen, Barb. F’r all Rod knows I’m here having the holiday of a lifetime although God knows why I’d choose Lucca to have it in since its after-dinner nightlife consists of hundreds of Italians on bikes, in trainers, or with pushchairs circling the town on that wall like crows contemplating fresh roadkill. But he doesn’t know that, does he? Far as he’s concerned, Lucca’s Italy’s answer to Miami Beach. I need something that shows him I’m hot on the trail of whatever. Now, from what I can tell, you need to be hot on the trail of whatever, so let’s cooperate with each other. We’ll start with a picture of the kid—showing she’s in goddamn Italy, by the way—and we’ll go from there.”

  Barbara could see that further argument would get her nowhere. She took back the photo of Hadiyyah and struck the deal. She’d get him that picture herself as there was no way in hell she ever wanted it getting back to Azhar that she’d allowed a tabloid journalist to photograph his daughter. She’d pose Hadiyyah at the window of the breakfast room, which looked out on the piazza. She’d photograph the front of the building so that Mitchell’s editor would be able to see that his ace reporter was indeed in Italy with his nose to the grindstone. He could then edit the size of the picture any way he wanted to. Her guarantee was that Hadiyyah would look soulful in spades.

  Corsico wasn’t thrilled to bits with this plan, but he handed over his digital camera. Barbara took it from him and told him what she wanted in exchange for the picture, which was a conversation with one of his new Italian journalist mates, one with access to the television news.

  “Why?” Corsico asked her warily.

  “Just do it, Mitchell.” She strode back across the piazza.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  When Salvatore took the phone call from DI Lynley, he saw at once that the connection suggested by the London man had more than one application. DARBA Italia, Lynley had told him, was the manufacturer of two of the incubators in the laboratory of Professor Taymullah Azhar, creating a heretofore unknown link between the microbiologist and Italy that needed exploration. Salvatore agreed with this, but the very idea of manufacturers of incubators prompted him to think in larger terms than a single company. At an international conference of microbiologists, surely manufacturers of the equipment they used showed up to demonstrate their wares in the hope of sales, no?

  So he gave Ottavia Schwartz new direction under the topic of Investigating the Berlin Conference. She had two new assignments, he told her. Had manufacturers of laboratory equipment been present at the conference? If so, who were they and what individuals—by name—had represented them in Berlin?

  “What are we looking for?” Ottavia asked, not unreasonably.

  When Salvatore said that he wasn’t entirely sure, she sighed, muttered, but got on with it.

  He went to Giorgio Simione next. “DARBA Italia,” he said to him. “I want to know everything about it.”

  “What is it?” Giorgio asked.

  “I have no idea. That’s why I want to know everything.”

  Salvatore was heading back to his office, then, when he saw Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers just entering the lobby of the questura. She was not accompanied by translator Marcella Lapaglia on this day, however. She was alone.

  Salvatore went to her. She was, he noted, garbed not dissimilarly from the previous day. The clothes themselves were different, but their dishevelled nature was unchanged. He
r tank top was, at least, tucked in. But as this emphasised the wine-barrel shape of her body, she might have been better advised to wear it untucked.

  When she saw him, she began speaking, at a volume and with exaggerated movements that attempted to clarify what she was trying to tell him. In spite of himself, he had to smile. She was as earnest as he’d ever seen anyone. It took some fortitude to attempt to make oneself understood in a country where one was a stranger and didn’t speak the language. In her place, he wondered if he’d be able to do the same.

  She pointed to herself. “I,” she said, “want you”—pointing at him—“to watch”—pointing to her eyeballs—“this”—pointing to the screen of a laptop that she was holding.

  “Ah. You want I must to watch something,” he said in his terrible English. Then, “Che cos’è? E perché? Mi dispiace, ma sono molto occupato stamattina.”

  “Bloody goddamn,” the woman muttered to herself. “What’d he just say?”

  She went through the pointing and speaking routine a second time. Salvatore realised it would be quicker to watch whatever she wanted him to watch than it would be to find someone who could translate what he already understood. So he gestured that she was to follow him to his office. On the way he asked Ottavia to find the usual translator on the chance that what the English detective wanted him to see was going to prompt him to ask her questions. Barring that individual’s availability, he told her, find someone else. But not Birgit. Chiaro?

  Ottavia raised an eyebrow at the Birgit part, but she nodded. She shot a look at the detective sergeant that managed to convey an Italian woman’s incredulity that a member of the same gender would wander about thus garbed, but then she went about her business. She would find someone and she would do it quickly.

  Salvatore ushered the detective sergeant into his office. He said politely, “Un caffè?” to which Sergeant Havers went on at some length. Among her words, Salvatore caught one: time. Ah, he thought. She was telling him they did not have time. Bah, Salvatore thought. There was always time for caffè.

  He went to make it after gesturing her into a seat. When he returned to his office, she’d set up her laptop in the middle of his desk and she was standing at the ready. She’d lit a cigarette, which she looked at, gestured to, and said, “Hope it’s buono with you.” Salvatore smiled, nodded, and opened a window. He indicated the caffè he’d brought her. She put two sugar cubes into it, but during the course of their meeting, she never took a sip.

  As he stirred his own caffè, she said, “Ready?” with lifted eyebrows. She pointed to the laptop and smiled encouragingly. He shrugged his acceptance. She left-clicked on the laptop and gestured Salvatore over to join her at the desk.

  She said, “Right. Well, watch this, Salvatore,” from which he presumed she meant guardi, so that was what he did. In short order he found himself viewing the interview of Angelina Upman and Taymullah Azhar that had appeared on the television news. It contained their appeal for the safety of their child and their appeal for her return. It also contained Piero Fanucci’s frothing rant about bringing the malefactor to justice one way or the other. Salvatore cooperatively watched the sequence, but he gained absolutely nothing from it. When it was over, he looked at Barbara Havers, frowning. She pointed upward with a finger and said, “Wait,” and she directed him to watch the screen where the film continued.

  The sequence comprised conversation that was mostly inaudible during which people removed their microphones. Salvatore didn’t see what any of this had to do with anything. Then Lorenzo Mura appeared with a tray. On it were an array of wineglasses and plates that he began to hand out to the film crew. He then set a plate and a glass in front of Fanucci, gave the same to the reporter, and then to Taymullah Azhar. To Angelina he gave only a plate.

  Barbara Havers froze the picture at that moment. She pointed to the screen and said with excitement in her voice, “There’s your E. coli, Salvatore. It’s right there in the glass he gave to Azhar.”

  Salvatore heard “E. coli.” From where she was directing his attention—her finger pointing to the glass sitting in front of the professor—he understood what she meant. He was less clear when she went on, her voice so rapid that only individual names were clear to him. She said, “He intended Azhar, not Angelina, to drink the wine with the E. coli in it. But he didn’t know that Azhar’s a Muslim. He has one vice that he shouldn’t have—he smokes—but he doesn’t drink. And he does the whole Muslim bit from A to Z otherwise. The hajj, the fasting, the almsgiving, whatever. But he doesn’t drink. He probably never has. Angelina knew that, so she took the wine from him. Here, watch.” And she showed the next sequence of the film. In it, Angelina took the wine meant for Azhar and Barbara Havers said with a wink at him, “Just like bloody Hamlet, eh, mate? Mura tried to stop her from drinking it, but she thought he was just worried because she was pregnant. So what the hell was he supposed to do? I expect he could’ve leapt over the table and dashed the glass out of her hand. But it all happened too fast. She just knocked the vino back. And then? That’s what you want to ask, eh? Well, he could’ve made her sick it up, I s’pose, or he could’ve thrown himself on her mercy and told the truth, but he was never completely sure of her, was he? No bloke ever was. She loved ’em and she left ’em and sometimes she had three of ’em at once and that’s just who she was. It’s what, I expect, made her different from her sister and God knows they wanted to be different from each other. But let’s suppose he goes ahead and tells her what he’s done—sorry, darling, but you’ve just knocked back a glass of deadly bacteria—and then what? How does she view him then, eh?”

  Nearly all of which Salvatore did not follow. So he was more than grateful when Ottavia appeared with the questura’s translator, a multilingual and distractingly buxom thirtyish woman showing so much cleavage—Dio, was it eight inches?—that he momentarily forgot her name. Then it came to him: Giuditta Something. She asked how she could be of assistance.

  She and Barbara Havers spoke at some length. After an equally lengthy translation from Giuditta, Salvatore asked only two questions. Both were crucial to building a case if, indeed, a case even could be built on something that seemed so speculative. How? he wanted to know. And why?

  Barbara Havers went with the why first: Why would Lorenzo Mura want to kill this man Taymullah Azhar? Good question, Salvatore. He, after all, had won Azhar’s woman. He had taken her from the Pakistani man. She lived with him in Italy, far from London. He had made her pregnant. They were to marry. What was the point?

  “But who could ever be sure of Angelina Upman?” was the Englishwoman’s explanation. “She’d messed about with Esteban Castro while she was with Azhar. She’d left them both for Lorenzo Mura. Anyone could see there was still a bond between Azhar and her, and beyond that, they shared Hadiyyah. Once Azhar appeared on the scene, he was going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. She might have decided to return to him. Who the hell ever knew what she would do?”

  “But ridding their lives of Azhar would not have made his own position with Angelina secure,” Salvatore pointed out.

  Barbara listened to the translation, then said, “Sure, but he wasn’t thinking like that. He wasn’t looking at the big picture of If Not Azhar, Then Who Else Might She Leave Me For? He just wanted Azhar gone and he was doing it the best way he knew: make him good and ill and hope he keels over and there’s an end to the problem. Salvatore, when people are jealous, they don’t think straight. They just want the object of their jealousy gone. Or ruined. Or devastated. Or whatever. But what did Lorenzo Mura have? The return of the rejected lover, Hadiyyah’s dad back in Hadiyyah’s life, Hadiyyah’s dad back in Angelina’s life.”

  “Men survive that sort of thing all the time.”

  “But those men aren’t entangled with Angelina.”

  Salvatore considered this. It was plausible, he thought. But it was only plausible. There still existed the biggest sticking po
int: the E. coli itself. If what the sergeant was saying was true, how had Lorenzo come to put his hands upon it? And not just E. coli but a deadly strain of it.

  He spoke to the detective sergeant about this: about the how of the E. coli’s acquisition. She listened but could offer him no advice. They—along with Giuditta—meditated in silence upon this thorny issue. Then Giorgio Simione came into Salvatore’s office.

  For a moment, Salvatore blinked at him in absolute incomprehension. He’d given him an assignment, but he couldn’t recall what it was, even when Giorgio said helpfully, “DARBA, Ispettore.”

  Salvatore said, “Come?” and repeated the word. When Giorgio said, “DARBA Italia,” Salvatore recalled.

  “It’s here in Lucca,” Giorgio told him. “It’s on the route to Montecatini.”

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Mitchell Corsico had to be dealt with first. He’d done her an enormous favour in getting the entire, unedited television news film via one of the contacts he’d made with the Italian journalists. He was going to want the payoff for this, and he was going to need to pass along a juicy and otherwise significant detail to the Italian who’d helped him in the first place. Quid pro quo and all that. So Barbara had to tell him something, and she had to make sure it was something good.

  When she understood from the translator that Salvatore’s intention was an unannounced call upon DARBA Italia, she fully intended to accompany him there. But she couldn’t have Mitch Corsico tagging along with them. She and Salvatore needed time to pin down their information. What they didn’t need was any of it leaking to the press.