Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

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.