Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Unable to speak past the stricture in her throat, she gave him a jaunty salute instead. She managed a “Later, then, mate.” He nodded and that was it.

  She had the key to his flat. Upon her return from the launderette, when there was nothing more for her to do inside her own bungalow, she walked to the front of the villa and across the lawn and let herself inside the place, empty of him, empty of Hadiyyah, but somehow bearing the echo of them both. She wandered its rooms and ended up in the one Azhar had shared with Angelina Upman. Her belongings were gone, of course, but his were not. In the clothes cupboard everything hung neatly: the trousers, the shirts, the jackets, the neckties. On the floor were shoes, arranged in a row. On the shelf were scarves and gloves for winter. On the back of the door were ties. She fingered the jackets and she held them to her face. She could smell him on them.

  She spent an hour in the sitting room that Angelina had so carefully redone. She touched surfaces of furniture, she looked at pictures on the walls, she fingered books on shelves. At last she sat and did nothing at all.

  Finally, she knew, there was nothing for it. She’d gone to bed. At that point, she’d had eight calls from Lynley on her mobile and two more on her landline. Each time, as soon as she heard his well-bred baritone, she deleted the message at once. Soon enough, she would face the music she’d so jauntily claimed herself perfectly capable of facing. But not yet.

  She slept better than she expected. She readied herself for work with more than her usual brand of care. She actually managed to put together something that a charitable fashionista might brand an ensemble . . . of sorts. At least, she eschewed elastic or drawstring waistbands in favour of a zipper and belt loops, although she certainly did not possess a belt. She also let slogan-bearing tee-shirts sit by the sartorial wayside. Her fingers did pause at This is my clone. I’m actually somewhere else having a much better time, but she concluded that—while true—the sentiment was largely inappropriate for work.

  When she could avoid it no longer, she headed out for Victoria Street in the fine May weather. Passing beneath the profusely blossoming limbs of the ornamental cherry trees, she decided on the Underground instead of her car, and she made her way over to Chalk Farm Road. This would allow her to stop at her local newsagent. She needed to know the worst in advance of having to deal with her superiors’ reaction to it.

  Inside the place, it was airless as usual, its temperature a nod to the proprietor’s homeland. It was a shop just marginally wider than a corridor, with one wall devoted to magazines, broadsheets, and tabloids and the other to every kind of sweet and savoury known to humanity. What she wanted, though, was not going to be among what was on offer that morning. So she worked her way past three uniformed schoolgirls in earnest discussion of the health benefits of pretzels over crisps and a woman with a toddler attempting to escape his pushchair. At the till she asked Mr. Mudali if he had any remaining copies of yesterday’s edition of The Source. He responded with the assurance that indeed he had. He brought forth a bundled square of what had not sold from among the newspapers on the previous day. It was a simple matter to hand over The Source—she was lucky, he said, as there was only one left—and although he refused to take money for a day-old newspaper, she pressed it on him anyway. She also purchased a packet of Players and one of Juicy Fruit before she left the place.

  She didn’t open The Source until she was on the Northern Line, where most unusually, she actually was able to secure a seat among the commuters heading for central London. For a moment she hoped against all reason that Mitchell had not made good his threat, but a simple glance at Kidnap Dad Behind It All told the tale.

  Her very soul felt heavy. She folded the paper without reading the story. Then, two stops farther along, she reckoned she needed to prepare herself. The many phone calls from Lynley that she’d ignored spoke of the Met’s knowledge of her participation in everything concerning Hadiyyah’s kidnapping. No matter that she had not known of Azhar’s plan. She was complicit from the moment she’d involved Mitchell Corsico in manipulating New Scotland Yard into sending Lynley to Italy in the first place. Perhaps, she thought, she could come up with some sort of defence. The only way to do it was going to be to forearm herself through reading Mitch’s story.

  So she unfolded the paper and did so. It was damning, of course. Names, dates, places, exchanges of cash . . . the whole rotten business. There was only one thing missing from the article. Nowhere in it was she herself mentioned.

  Mitchell had deleted every reference to her before he’d sent the piece to his editor. She had no idea if this was mercy or a Machiavellian preparation for worse to come. There were, she knew, two ways to find out. She could wait for the future to unfold or she could ring the journalist himself. She chose the latter when she reached St. James’s Park Station. Walking along Broadway in the direction of the heavily secured front entrance to the Met, she rang the man on his mobile.

  He was, she found, still in Italy, hot on every part of the E. coli story and the arrest of Lorenzo Mura. Had Barbara seen his piece this morning? he asked. It was another front-pager and he was dining out on the information he was supplying his cohorts in Italy who, alas, did not have his sources. By which, of course, he meant Barbara herself.

  She said, “You changed the story.”

  He said, “Eh?”

  “The one you showed me. The one you were holding over me. The one . . . Mitchell, you took out my name.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, what can I say? Old times’ sake, Barb. That and the goose.”

  “I’m not the goose, there are no eggs, and we have no old times,” she told him.

  He laughed outright at this. “But we will, Barb. Believe me. We will.”

  She rang off. She passed a rubbish bin and tossed the day-old edition of The Source on top of a half-eaten takeaway egg salad croissant and a banana peel. She followed the line of people going through the Yard’s enhanced security system. She was safe from one kind of judgement, she reckoned. But she certainly wasn’t safe from others.

  Winston Nkata was the one to tell her. Odd for him, she would think later, since Winston wasn’t given to gossip. But that something big was going on was evident the moment she stepped out of the lift. Three detective constables were earnestly talking at the black detective while a buzz of conversation in the air spoke of changes having nothing to do with a new case developing and a team beginning to work upon it. This was something different, so Barbara approached her fellow detective sergeant. There, in short order, the news broke over her. John Stewart was gone, and someone would soon be promoted to replace him. It was that or bring in a different DI. The DCs present round Winston’s desk were telling him he was all but poised to be the man of the hour. They had no ethnic DI under Ardery’s command. “Go for it, mate” was how they put it.

  Nkata, ever the gentleman like his mentor Lynley, would make no move without Barbara’s blessing, and he asked her, “Have a word, Barb?” in order to get it. After all, she’d been a DS far longer than he, and just as they had no ethnic DI under the command of Isabelle Ardery, so also had they no female DI.

  Nkata took her to the stairwell for a natter. He descended two steps to mitigate the great difference in their heights. What he had to say needed to come from an equal and height was a metaphor for this, she supposed.

  He said, “Took the exam a while back. I di’n’t talk about it cos . . . Seemed like I would jinx it, eh? I passed, though, but I got to say it: You been a sergeant for a long time, Barb. I’m not goin for this if you want it.”

  Barbara found this oddly charming, that Winston would defer to her when the likelihood of her even keeping her job at this point was more remote than the moon. Besides, it had to be said that Winston Nkata would always be the better choice to lead a team of coppers. He played by the rules. She did not. At the end of the day, that was a critical difference.

  “Do it,” she told him.
<
br />   “You sure, Barb?”

  “Never more than now.”

  He flashed his brilliant smile.

  Then she went on, heading for the superintendent’s office to learn her fate. For she’d been spared by Mitchell Corsico, but her sins were still great nonetheless. Away without leave was among the worst of them. There was a price to pay, and she would pay it.

  BELSIZE PARK

  LONDON

  Lynley found a parking space midway down the street, in front of the long line of terrace houses. It was in an area undergoing gentrification. The house in question, alas, had not been touched by this particular brand of architectural magic. He wondered—as he always did when it came to areas in transition—about the safety of this part of town. But then what was the point of such wondering when his own wife had been gunned down on the front steps of their house in a pricey neighbourhood unknown for anything other than a house alarm accidentally blaring when an owner stumbled home too inebriated to think about disarming it?

  He grabbed up what he had brought with him to Belsize Park: a bottle of champagne and two long-stemmed flutes. He got out of the car, locked it, hoped for the best as he always did when he parked the Healey Elliott in the street, and climbed the front steps to a shallow porch where the Victorian tiles that lined it had, gratifyingly, remained unmolested.

  He was a little late. A conversation with Barbara Havers had resulted in his offer to drive her home. Since driving her home put him in the area to which he was going anyway, it seemed the reasonable thing to do. But traffic had been bad.

  She’d spent ninety minutes in Isabelle Ardery’s office. She’d emerged, according to that most reliable source Dorothea Harriman, white-faced and seeming . . . Was it humbled? chastened? humiliated? surprised? stunned by her good fortune? Dee didn’t know. But she could tell, Detective Inspector Lynley, that no voices were raised during the colloquy that Detective Superintendent Ardery had with Detective Sergeant Havers. She’d overheard the detective superintendent say, “Sit down, Barbara, because this is going to take a while,” before the door closed. But that was it.

  Barbara reported very little to him. Other than “She did it for you,” she didn’t appear to wish to talk about it. But his “I assure you, she didn’t” prompted further discussion between them because what he wanted to know was why she had refused to take his calls when his calls were meant to prepare her for what was going on at the Yard.

  She said, “Guess I didn’t want to know. Guess I didn’t trust you, sir. Guess I don’t trust anyone, not even myself. Not really.”

  She was silent after that and, knowing her as he did, he could tell she wanted to light a cigarette. He also knew she wouldn’t do so in the Healey Elliott. So he used her nerves to press a point. “You’ve been saved in any number of ways. I saw Corsico’s article about the kidnapping.”

  “Right,” she said. “Well, that’s Corsico for you. He goes his own way.”

  “For a price. Barbara, what do you owe him?”

  She looked at him. He noted how drawn her face was . . . She looked broken, he thought, and he knew this had everything to do with Taymullah Azhar. She claimed they’d parted at the airport in Pisa. He wanted a few days with Hadiyyah, she said. Just the two of them, she said, to recover from everything that had happened in Italy. That was all she knew, she claimed.

  As far as Mitchell Corsico was concerned, she reckoned he’d raise his Stetson-covered head when next he wanted a hot bit of information. She would, of course, be his contact of choice. She would hold him off. What else could she do? Of course, she went on, she could apply for a transfer. Mitchell would hardly want her as a source if she changed her circumstances so as to become gainfully employed in . . . say . . . Berwick-upon-Tweed. If it came to that, that’s what she would do, she told him. Isabelle knew that. Indeed, the paperwork that was necessary to requesting a transfer had already been filled out, signed, sealed, and placed carefully away in the superintendent’s desk.

  “So she’s got me by the nipple hairs, and don’t I know I deserve it?” Barbara said.

  He couldn’t deny the truth of this statement. Still, he watched her trudge up the driveway in the direction of her bungalow, and he regretted the disconsolate set of her shoulders. He wished for her a different sort of life. He did not know how she was going to achieve it.

  When he rang the appropriate buzzer next to the door, indicating Flat One, Daidre came personally to open it. Flat One was just to the right of the entry. She smiled, said, “Terrible traffic?” and he sighed, “London,” and kissed her.

  She led him inside Flat One and shut the door behind him. He heard the snick of the lock and was reassured by this. Then he told himself that Daidre Trahair could take care of herself very well, thank you. Truth to tell, though, when he saw what her accommodation was, he had his doubts.

  It was a terrible place, with a shotgun arrangement of rooms, each more horrible than the one preceding it. They began in the sitting room, which was painted the pink of a newborn’s tongue with a radiator done up in a less-than-compelling shade of blue. The floor was hardwood that had sometime in the past been painted lavender. There was no furniture, and he couldn’t help thinking that was for the best.

  A corridor ran the length of the place, narrow and sided by the walled-up stairway that had once made the building a family home. Off of this opened a single bedroom wallpapered in stripes of the bright vintage associated with the 1960s, Carnaby Street, and the heavy use of psychedelic drugs. The room would have no need of curtains upon its single window. It was painted over. Red had been the choice.

  The next room contained the toilet, a washbowl, and the tub. The tub looked like a host for every sort of deadly bug. The window here was painted blue.

  The kitchen came last, such as it was. There was room for a table and chairs, but neither a cooker nor a refrigerator stood in place. One knew it was a kitchen by virtue of a large sink. That there were no taps was merely a compelling detail.

  Beyond the kitchen was, as Daidre explained to him, the finest feature which made the flat a true must-have. This was the garden, accessible only to her. When she had it cleared of the rubbish, the weeds, and especially the cooker and the refrigerator that lay on their sides with broom blooming through their cracks and crannies, it would be lovely. Didn’t he think so?

  He turned to her. “Daidre . . . darling . . .” He stopped himself. Then he couldn’t keep from saying, “What on earth are you thinking? You can’t live here.”

  She laughed. “I’m very handy, Tommy. It’s all cosmetic . . . well, aside from the kitchen plumbing, which will require someone with more expertise than I have. But other than that, one must look at the bones of a place.”

  “I’m thinking osteoporosis.”

  She laughed again. “I like a challenge. You know that.”

  “You haven’t bought it,” he said. And then hopefully, “Have you?”

  “Can’t, I’m afraid. Not until my place sells in Bristol. But I do have an option. I’m quite happy about that. A freehold, as well. And that’s nothing to sniff at, is it?”

  “Ah. Indeed not,” he said.

  “You’re less than wildly enthusiastic,” she said. “But you must consider its benefits.”

  “I’m all ears and ready to embrace them as they are spoken.”

  “Right.” She took his arm and they strolled back towards the sitting room, although in the narrow corridor this was something of a careful manoeuvre. “Number one is that it’s not terribly far from the zoo. I can bicycle there in a quarter hour. No need for transport. I could even sell my car. Which I won’t, of course, but the point is that I needn’t deal with traffic to get to work. That and the benefit of the exercise as well. It’s actually . . . well, it’s heavenly, Tommy.”

  “I’d no idea you were a cyclist,” he said mildly. “Roller derby, tournament darts, cycling . . . You
’re full of surprises. Is there more I should know?”

  “Yoga, running, and skiing,” she said. “Trekking as well, but not as often as I would like.”

  “I’m humbled,” he said. “If I walk to the corner for a newspaper, I feel virtuous.”

  “I know you’re lying,” she told him. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  He smiled, then. He held up the bottle of champagne he carried. He said, “I’d thought . . . Well, I have to say I expected something . . . a bit different. Sitting on a sofa, perhaps. Or in a pleasant garden. Or even sprawled on a tasteful Persian rug. But in any case, christening the place and welcoming you to London and . . . I daresay, whatever followed.”

  Her lips curved. “I don’t see why we can’t do that anyway. I am, as you know, quite a simple girl at heart.”

  “Requiring what?” he asked. “I mean, of course, for the christening.”

  “Requiring, as it happens, only you.”

  BELGRAVIA

  LONDON

  It was just past midnight when he arrived home. He felt filled with emotions that would take time to sort through. There was, for the first time, a rightness about the life he was leading. Something fragile and previously broken was being reconstructed one extremely careful piece at a time.

  The house was dark. Denton had, as always, left a single light burning at the foot of the stairs. He switched it off and climbed upward in the darkness. He made his way to his room, where he felt for the wall and flipped on the light. He stood for a moment, considering all of it: the great mahogany bed, the chest of drawers, the two vast wardrobes. In silence, he crossed to the embroidered stool that stood in front of the dressing table. Across the glass-topped surface of this, Helen’s perfumes and jars still stood untouched as she had left them on the last day of her life.

  He picked up her brush. Still it held a few strands of her chestnut hair. For less than a year he’d been able to watch her as she’d brushed it at the end of the day, just a few strokes as she chatted to him. Tommy darling, we’ve had an invitation to a dinner that—may I be honest?—will be nothing short of the soporific that the world of science has been seeking for decades. Can we come up with an artful excuse? Or do you wish for torture? I can go either way, as it happens. You know my facility for looking fascinated while my brain atrophies. But I have my doubts about your ability to dissemble so well. So . . . what shall I do? And then she’d turn, come to the bed, join him, and allow him to mess the hair she’d only just brushed. Whether they went to the dinner or not made little difference to him, as long as she was there.