Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

Fanucci nodded. He still didn’t look entirely convinced by Salvatore’s performance, so Salvatore repeated his apology as he gathered the material from the magistrato ’s desk. He said, “This I will give to Nicodemo now. So that he—and you—can put a period to the investigation.”

“The extradition of Doughty,” Piero murmured. “This will not be an easy business.”

“But you will manage it, no?” Salvatore said. “You are more than a match for the British legal system, my friend.”

“ Vedremo ,” Fanucci said with a shrug.

Salvatore smiled. Certo , he thought, they certainly would see. And in the meantime, Taymullah Azhar was off the magistrato ’s radar. Out of sight and out of mind, which made him available in every possible way to Salvatore. Which was what he wanted.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Lynley knew he couldn’t put off a meeting with Isabelle. He was out of time. He could attempt to avoid her for a few more days of “I’m on it, guv, but there’s one more thing . . .” But as she was not a fool, she wouldn’t accept that. So he was down to outright lying to her about what Barbara was up to since the only information John Stewart had been able to provide was where she’d been and not what she’d done there, or he could tell Isabelle the truth.

He regretted knowing a single thing about what Barbara Havers had been doing. He’d given her warning, but that had amounted to nothing. She hadn’t backed away from the mad course she was travelling because she was driven by love. But while the expression “love is blind” had applications to overlooking the faults of another person, it had no application to the responsibilities held—and sworn to—by a member of the police force when it came to a crime.

Yet . . . hadn’t he wished to protect his own brother several years in the past when Peter’s proclivity for involving himself with unsavoury sorts from the underbelly of London’s drug culture had resulted in his being suspected of murder? Yes. He had wished so. No matter the evidence to the contrary, he had refused to believe that Peter was involved, and as things turned out, he wasn’t. So that could indeed be the case just now between Barbara Havers and Taymullah Azhar. Except they wouldn’t learn if Azhar was indeed innocent of all things should she suppress evidence, would they? Which was what it had come down to with Peter. Only by forcing Peter through the process of being a suspect had he been entirely cleared. It had nearly destroyed his own relationship with Peter to keep his hands off what was going on, but he had done so. And this was what Barbara needed to do.

Lynley chose not to wait like a coward for Isabelle to call him to account. When he saw her coming towards him in the corridor, he inclined his head towards her office. Did she have a moment? Yes, she did.

She closed the door. She put distance between them by means of her desk. He accepted this as a declaration of the difference in their positions. He drew a chair up, and he told her what he knew.

He didn’t spare her any of the details he’d managed to uncover about Dwayne Doughty, Bryan Smythe, Taymullah Azhar, the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, the death of Angelina Upman, and Barbara Havers. Isabelle listened. She didn’t make notes and she didn’t ask questions. It was only when he got to the plane tickets to Pakistan and Barbara’s knowledge of them that she gave any reaction at all. And then, her reaction was to go pale.

She said only, “And you’re certain of the dates? The purchase date and the flight date, Tommy?” Before he could reply, she went on. “Never mind. Of course you’re certain. John Stewart wouldn’t have known about those tickets, of course. If Barbara discovered them in-house—through SO12—he’d have no reason to wonder what she was doing in talking to those blokes. She hadn’t left the building, after all. She might even just have phoned up SO12 and called in a favour from someone, mightn’t she?”

“It’s possible,” he said. “And as she was working on a case, more or less, they wouldn’t question her needing to know something from them, especially since they’d already cleared Azhar of all terrorist concerns.”

“What a bloody mess.” Isabelle sat there thoughtfully, looking not at him but not at anything else either. Her eyes seemed fixed on something in the distance. He reckoned what she was looking at was her own future. She said, “She’s met with the reporter again.”

“Corsico?”

“They met in Leicester Square. He’s in Italy now, so we can assume he’s on Barbara’s business.”

“How do you know? Not the Leicester Square part, but the rest?”

She nodded towards the closed door, towards what lay beyond it in the building. “John, of course. He’s not given up. He has her leaking information to the press, disobeying direct orders, conducting her own mini-investigation on matters occurring in another country. Where’s that place along the river, Tommy, the spot that pirates got hanged and the tide washed over them?”

“Execution Dock?” he said. “There’s probably more legend to that than reality.”

“No matter. That’s where John would like to see her. Figuratively or otherwise. He won’t stop till it happens.”

Lynley could sense the despair that the superintendent was feeling. He felt it himself but in far less measure. She’d managed to hold DI Stewart at bay by telling him she was taking on board every detail that he provided her. But if she didn’t act upon those details soon, he would go above her head to the assistant commissioner. Sir David Hillier wouldn’t look with kindness upon the facts as presented by Stewart. When he turned from those facts to assign to someone responsibility for how they were handled, that person was going to be Isabelle herself. She had to act and soon.

He said, “Where’s Barbara now?”

“She’s asked to go to Italy. I denied the request. I told her to get back to work. I’ve still not received her final report on this Dwayne Doughty person, whatever that report is going to look like. Obviously, I can’t put her back on John’s team and Philip Hale doesn’t need her at the moment. Did you not see her when you came in?”

He shook his head.

“Has she not phoned you?”

“She hasn’t,” he said.

Isabelle was thoughtful for a moment before she asked, “Has she a passport, Tommy?”

“I have no idea.”

“God. What a cock-up.” She looked at him as she reached for the phone. She punched in a number and waited for an answer. When it came she said, “Judi, I need to arrange a word with Sir David. Is he in today?” Hillier’s secretary said something on her end of the line, and in a moment Isabelle looked at the diary on her desk. “I’ll be up then,” she told the other woman. She thanked her, rang off, and stared at the phone.

Lynley said, “There’s more than one way to end this, Isabelle.”

“Don’t, for God’s sake, tell me how to do my job,” she replied.

CHALK FARM

LONDON

Who the higher-ups were that Bryan Smythe was referring to, Barbara didn’t know. But when she left his house in South Hackney and strode to her car at the end of the street, she learned. Where before she’d been too caught up in her plans, her next steps, and her machinations to be both aware and wary, now she had her eyes open for anything out of place, and she saw it easily enough.

Clive Cratty, newly minted as a detective constable and eager to prove himself to his immediate supervisor, tried to dodge out of sight behind a white Ford Transit some ten houses along the terrace on the opposite side of the street. But Barbara clocked him and she instantly knew that John Stewart had placed someone on her tail.