Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  “Forget it, Mitchell. He’s agreed to wear a wire, and if I give you his name and you use it, the entire investigation goes straight to hell.”

  “You can trust me,” he said.

  “I trust you like I trust my hair to stop growing.”

  “I won’t use the name till you say the word.”

  “Not going to happen and that’s how it is. You write your story. You leave blanks or whatever else you want to leave where the names should go. Once we have what we need from the wire, I give you the names and then you hit send. That’s how it has to be because there’s too much on the line.”

  He thought about this for a moment, slurping his coffee another time. Around them Mercato Centrale was starting to heat up with activity as more vendors arrived and organised themselves in something of a ring round the place. The coffee-selling business began to be brisk.

  Corsico finally said, “Problem is . . . I don’t trust you not to go sour on me. I think some kind of guarantee . . .”

  She nodded at his laptop and said, “You’ve got your guarantee right there. I don’t do what you want when you want it, you just hit send.”

  “Send this, you mean?” He clicked and the story was on its way to his editor. “Whoops,” he said solemnly. “There it goes, Barb.”

  “And there goes our deal,” she told him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because of this.” He did a bit more expert manoeuvring and revealed another story he’d been writing. This one’s proposed headline was Dad Was Behind It, and when Barbara read through it quickly, her teeth seemed to grind of their own volition.

  He’d got to Doughty. Or Doughty had got to him. Or perhaps it was Emily Cass or Bryan Smythe, but she reckoned on Doughty. He’d given Mitch Corsico line and level, A to Z, the whole bleeding alpha to omega on Azhar, on Barbara, on Hadiyyah’s disappearance, and on her subsequent kidnapping in Italy. He’d given him names and dates and places. He had, in effect, pointed a loaded gun at Azhar. He’d also put an end to her career.

  Barbara discovered that one couldn’t actually think when one’s heart was leaping about like a wounded kangaroo. She raised her eyes from the laptop’s screen and simply had nothing to say other than, “You can’t do this.”

  Mitch said, “Alas and alack,” in a tone so speciously solemn that she wanted to punch him. Then this tone altered and the words were stone. He glanced at his watch. “Midday should do it, don’t you think?”

  She said, “Noon? What’re you talking about?” although she had a fairly good idea.

  “I’m talking about how much time you have before this baby rockets off into cyberspace, Barb.”

  “I can’t guarantee—”

  He waggled a finger at her. “But I can,” he said.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Barbara named it a miracle that she found her way back to Torre Lo Bianco, although she didn’t do it without several wrong turns. But as things developed, the tower was well known to the citizens of Lucca because of its rooftop garden, and it seemed that many of them used it as some sort of landmark. Everyone she asked knew where it was, although the directions to get there—always in Italian—seemed more complicated each time she enquired about them. It took her an hour to locate it. By the time she arrived, everyone in the tower was in the kitchen.

  Salvatore was at his coffee, Hadiyyah was at a mug of hot chocolate, and Mamma was at a stack of what looked like demented tarot cards, which she was laying out in front of Hadiyyah. Barbara looked at these as a way of avoiding Salvatore’s speculative gaze. Mamma was presenting one that depicted a robe-clad woman holding a tray that contained a pair of eyeballs, presumably hers if the blood on her face was anything to go by. Above this, other cards had been arranged: a bloke being crucified upside down, another chained to a pillar and sprouting arrows, a youngish man in a vat with a fire lit beneath it.

  Barbara said, “Bloody hell! What’s going on?”

  Hadiyyah said happily, “Nonna is teaching me ’bout the saints.”

  “Could she possibly choose less bloody ones?”

  “I don’t think there are any,” Hadiyyah confided. “At least not so far. Nonna says that what’s brilliant is you c’n always tell who the saint is by what’s going on in the picture ’cause it shows what happened to them. See, this is St. Peter on the upside-down cross, and this is St. Sebastian with the arrows and this”—she tapped the young man in the vat—“is St. John the ’Vangelist ’cause nothing they did to him killed him and look how God up here is sending gold rain down to put out the fire.”

  “Guarda, guarda,” Mamma said to Hadiyyah, tapping yet another card, on which a young woman tied to a stake was being consumed by eager flames.

  “St. Joan of Arc,” Barbara said.

  Mamma looked delighted. “Brava, Barbara!” she cried.

  “How’d you know?” asked Hadiyyah, equally delighted.

  “Because us Brits killed her,” Barbara said. And since there was no further way to avoid it, she smiled at Salvatore and said, “Morning.”

  He said, “’Giorno, Barbara.” He’d already risen politely, and he indicated an Italian coffeemaker that sat on a burner of the old stove. On the worktop next to this, an array of breakfast foods was spread out. Barbara said, “Cake for breakfast?” to him. “I could start liking this place.”

  Hadiyyah said, “It’s a breakfast torta, Barbara.”

  Mamma said, “Una torta, sì. Va bene, Hadiyyah,” and she smoothed her hand fondly on Hadiyyah’s hair. To her son she said, “Una bambina dolce” to which Salvatore said, “Sì, sì,” but he seemed preoccupied.

  When he presented Barbara with her coffee, he said something which Hadiyyah translated as, “Salvatore wants to know where you were,” as she was presented with another saint’s card, which Mamma announced as a depiction of San Rocco.

  Barbara made walking motions with her fingers against the tabletop. “Out for a morning walk,” she told him.

  “Ho fatto una passeggiata,” Hadiyyah said. “That’s how you say it.”

  “Right. Oh fat-o una passa—whatever.”

  “Ah. E dov’è andata?”

  “An’ where did you go?” Hadiyyah translated.

  “I got bloody well lost. Tell him I’m lucky I didn’t end up in Pisa.”

  When Hadiyyah passed this along to Salvatore, the inspector smiled. But Barbara could see it didn’t touch his eyes, and she steeled herself for whatever was coming next. This turned out to be Salvatore’s mobile, which chimed. He looked at it and said, “Ispettore Lynley.”

  She pressed a finger to her lips, asking Salvatore in this way to keep mum on her whereabouts. He nodded cooperatively.

  He said with a smile, “Pronto, Tommaso,” into the mobile. But after a moment, his face altered. He glanced at Barbara, and he left the room.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Not having heard from Barbara Havers felt to Lynley distinctly like a case of no news being good news, although he knew how unlikely this was. So he was unsurprised when the relative ease he was feeling ended shortly after his arrival at work. Winston Nkata related that there was no connection to Italy that he could find among Angelina Upman’s family and associates aside from the fact that her parents were evidently now in Lucca, and shortly thereafter DI John Stewart accosted him in the corridor and handed over a copy of The Source.

  On page one of the tabloid was a very large and extremely soulful picture of Hadiyyah Upman gazing out of a window, below which were arrayed a large collection of highly recognisable succulents. The picture was accompanied by a story headlined When Will She Come Home? This story was attached to the by-line Mitchell Corsico. In combination with the photo, this revealed the absolute worst. For there was only one way that Mitchell Corsico could have worked out where Hadiyyah had
been stowed by Barbara Havers. Lynley knew this, and so did Stewart.

  The other DI made this point clear when he said, “What’s it to be, Tommy? Do I give this to the guv or do you? If you want my opinion on the subject, she’s been in bed with The Source God only knows how long. Years, probably. She’s been on the take as a snout and now she’s finished.”

  Lynley said, “You carry your aversions too openly, John. I’d advise you to back off.”

  Stewart’s lips formed a sneer that was as amused as it was all-knowing. “Would you indeed?” he said. “Right. Well, I suppose you would.” He glanced in the direction of Isabelle Ardery’s office to indicate the subject of his next point. “She’s met with CIB1, Tommy. The word’s out on that.”

  Lynley said calmly, “Then obviously your sources are far better than mine.” Tapping the tabloid against his palm, he concluded with “May I keep this, John?”

  “Many more where that came from, mate. Just in case it doesn’t end up on . . . on Isabelle’s desk.” He winked and sauntered off, his step quite jaunty. They were down to the last set, and he was determined to win the match.

  Lynley watched him go. He gazed at the tabloid’s page-one story once he was alone. It was vintage material from The Source: The good guys wore white. The bad guys wore black. No one wore grey. In this case, both Taymullah Azhar and Lorenzo Mura were the bad guys for reasons having to do with the death of Angelina Upman (Azhar) and with keeping Hadiyyah from her father (Mura). Of course, since Azhar was in prison at the moment, put there by Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco (white), who was in charge of the investigation into the death of Angelina Upman, the child had to be domiciled somewhere and the villa in which she had lived with her mother and Mura (pictures on page three) had seemed reasonable until other arrangements could be made. But hers was now the face of sadness, abandonment, and the desperate need to recover from the crimes that had been committed against her, and nothing was being done about that. She was now alone and in the hands of a foreign government (very black), and when was the Foreign Secretary (white but moving towards black very quickly) going to step in and demand that the child be returned to London where she belonged?

  Much space was taken up with the recap of what had happened to Hadiyyah since the previous November. Interestingly, though, there was no mention of anyone from New Scotland Yard being sent there to liaise for the troubled child.

  That, Lynley knew, was a telling detail. The tale it told was one of collusion between the journalist who had written the story and Barbara Havers. For if he named her, he named his source, and he wasn’t fool enough to do that. Yet Barbara was the only way he could have located Hadiyyah. And only through Barbara’s cooperation could he ever have managed to get a picture of the child.

  This article, Lynley knew, put the lie to everything Barbara Havers had said about her interactions with Corsico. She wouldn’t be the first cop to have been exposed as on the take from a tabloid. In recent years, cops on the take had become just another part of the landscape of what was a growing national scandal involving the gutter press. But in combination with every other black mark against her, this was going to finish her.

  He went to Isabelle’s office. The fact that she’d requested CIB1’s involvement was an indication of her confidence in the case she was building against Barbara. But there had to be a chance that this tabloid article could be painted another way.

  He tossed his copy of The Source into the nearest rubbish bin. He knew this was only a temporary measure since, as John Stewart had pointed out, there were more available just up the street. A few steps over to St. James’s Park Station and any one of half a dozen or more tabloids could be purchased. Stewart had probably already popped out to buy one. He’d see to it that Isabelle was apprised of the page-one story, and he’d do it soon.

  Isabelle’s office door stood open, but she wasn’t inside. Dorothea Harriman, however, was. She was in the midst of arranging a stack of files on the superintendent’s desk. When she saw Lynley, she said merely, “Tower Block.”

  “How long?”

  “It’s just gone an hour.”

  “Did he phone her or did she phone him?”

  “Neither. It was a scheduled meeting.”

  “CIB1?”

  Harriman looked regretful.

  “Blast,” he said. “Did she take anything with her?”

  “She had a tabloid,” Dorothea said.

  Lynley nodded and headed back to his office. There he placed his call to Salvatore Lo Bianco. If Barbara had indeed gone bad, then he owed it to his Italian colleague to warn him.

  When Lo Bianco answered, he was still at home. Chattering in Italian was going on in the background. This faded as Salvatore stepped out of the room to speak to Lynley.

  The Italian brought Lynley up-to-date on everything: his call upon DARBA Italia, his discoveries there, his subsequent interviews with Daniele Bruno, the E. coli connection between Bruno and Lorenzo Mura. “We have an agreement, his lawyer and I. He will wear a wire,” Salvatore told him. “In this way I believe we will have a resolution this very day.”

  Lynley said, “And the child? She’s with Barbara Havers?”

  “She is well and she is with Barbara.”

  “Salvatore, tell me. This is an odd sort of question, but can you tell me . . . is Barbara in Lucca alone?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Have you seen her in the company of anyone?”

  “I know she has been in the company of Aldo Greco. He is the lawyer of Taymullah Azhar.”

  “I’m speaking of an Englishman,” Lynley said. “He might be dressed like a cowboy, actually.”

  There was a pause before Salvatore chuckled. “A strange question, my friend,” he said. “Why do you ask this, Tommaso?”

  “Because he’s a tabloid journalist from London and he’s written a story that indicates to me he’s there in Lucca.”

  “But why would Barbara be in the company of a tabloid journalist?” Salvatore asked, not unreasonably. “And what is this tabloid?”

  “It’s called The Source,” Lynley said, and at that point he found that he could go no further with the information. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Salvatore about the picture of Hadiyyah at the window of Pensione Giardino, and more than that, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Salvatore what this meant. Obviously, the Italian could seek out a copy of The Source himself, either online or from a giornalaio selling UK tabloids for purchase by English speakers. If Salvatore did that, he could put together the pieces, but chances were still that he might put them together in an order that didn’t make Barbara look bad. So Lynley said, “He’s called Mitchell Corsico. Barbara’s acquainted with him, as are the rest of us here in London. If she hasn’t seen him, you might warn Barbara of his presence when you next see her.”

  Salvatore didn’t ask why Lynley simply didn’t ring Barbara and pass on the information. He said instead, “And he looks like a cowboy?”

  “He wears a cowboy kit. I’ve no idea why.”

  Salvatore chuckled another time. “I shall pass this information to Barbara when I meet with her today. But I myself have not seen such a person as this. A cowboy in Lucca? No, no. I would remember had I seen him.”

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Barbara tried not to feel as if she were carrying a ticking time bomb in her shoulder bag. She tried to act as if everything were business-as-usual and the business was getting Daniele Bruno set up with a wire. But as she and Salvatore set off for the questura, she could think only of the hands of the clock, moving relentlessly in the direction of midday and Mitchell Corsico’s hitting send.

  She could hardly protest when Salvatore suggested they walk to his office, and in other circumstances she might actually have enjoyed the stroll. For the day was fine, church bells were still ringing all over town, shops were just coming to life, the fragr
ance of pastries was in the air, and the cafés were serving morning espressos to people heading out for the day. Students and workers passed on bicycles, and the blinging of their bells acted as punctuation to the greetings that the riders tossed at one another. It was like being in the middle of a bloody Italian film, Barbara thought. She half expected someone to yell, “Cut and print.”

  Salvatore seemed changed. His mood of morning good cheer had altered to one of studied solemnity. Since Lynley had phoned him, Barbara reckoned it had to do with whatever the London DI had related. But with Salvatore’s limited English and her own nonexistent Italian, there was no way for her to discover exactly what it was that Lynley had said. She could have rung him and asked him directly, but she had a feeling that would not serve her well. So as they walked, she cast worried gazes in Salvatore’s direction.

  When they reached the questura, she was relieved to see that a white van was parked just at the entrance. That it was not only unmolested but also blocking traffic heading in the direction of the train station suggested that it was not a delivery transport for some product despite the unintelligible Italian scrolled artfully along its side. Barbara reckoned this was going to be the means of picking up whatever Daniele Bruno was able to transmit via the wire he would wear, and when Salvatore slapped his hand against the back door of the vehicle, she saw that she was not incorrect.

  A uniformed officer opened the door, headphones on head. He and Salvatore exchanged a few words, at the conclusion of which Salvatore said, “Va bene,”and proceeded into the questura.

  Daniele Bruno and his solicitor were waiting. More intense and incomprehensible Italian was exchanged. Rocco Garibaldi graciously translated the high points for Barbara: His client wished to know how he was supposed to cajole Lorenzo Mura into admitting his guilt.

  It seemed to Barbara that more was going on with Bruno than the man’s merely wanting a little bout of how-to from Salvatore. The man was sweating profusely—enough to make her think he was probably going to short out the wire they put on him—and he looked struck by half a dozen fears growing from more than his ability to act whatever part Salvatore wished him to play. She said to Signor Garibaldi, “What else?”