Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

“Did Mura hear all this?” Barbara asked.

“He’d already departed in something of a temper. But I have a feeling things aren’t finished there. He indicated as much before exiting stage left. He’s convinced that Azhar’s at the bottom of everything that’s gone on. I must tell you that chances are you’ll be hearing from Chief Inspector Lo Bianco or whoever’s replaced him.”

“Was he pulled from the case?”

“He was, so he tells me. And Hadiyyah explained that . . .” He stopped for a moment. He spoke to someone in Italian. Barbara caught pagherò in contanti and a woman’s voice in the background saying “ Grazie, Dottore. ” He continued, “Hadiyyah told me that she went with a man who told her he was taking her to her father. She said he had a card—a greeting card, I think—with a message purporting to be from Azhar telling her to go with the man as he’d bring her to her father.”

Barbara felt a frisson at this. “Have you seen the card?”

“As yet, no. But the carabinieri have Domenica Medici in hand, which means they have the entire convent in hand. If there’s a card at Villa Rivelli and Hadiyyah kept it, it’ll turn up soon enough.”

“It could be elsewhere,” Barbara said. “And anyone could have written that message, sir.”

“My first thought as well, as she apparently wouldn’t recognise his writing. But then she told me something curious, Barbara. The man who took her from the market called her khushi . Have you ever heard Azhar use that term? She said it’s his nickname for her.”

Barbara’s stomach turned to liquid. She casually repeated, “ Khushi , sir?” to buy a few moments in which her thoughts jumped feverishly from one point to another, like fleas indicating directions on a map.

“She said that’s why she went with him. Not only because of the card holding out the promise of her father, but also because he called her khushi , which meant to her that Squali had to be telling the truth, for how else would he have known the term?”

Doughty, of course, Barbara thought. That king of rats. He would have passed the nickname on. But there were several reasons he may have done so, and offering any of them to Lynley was to take a route that led nowhere remotely helpful. So she said, “Azhar might’ve called her that round me, but I bloody well don’t remember, sir. On the other hand, if it is a nickname, I reckon Angelina knew it, too.”

“I take it you’re suggesting a path from Angelina to Lorenzo Mura?”

“It makes sense in a way, doesn’t it? From what you’ve said, sounds to me like Mura’s got a very wide streak of jealousy running up his spine. Also sounds to me like he hates Azhar and it doesn’t take too much of a jump to get from there to him wanting to cut the tie between Azhar and Angelina permanently in some way. Plus . . .” And here Barbara put into words what didn’t bear thinking of, “What if he’s also jealous of Angelina’s bond with Hadiyyah? What if he wants Angelina only for himself? P’rhaps the plan was to set Azhar up with a kidnap charge and to . . .” At the end, she couldn’t put it into words.

Lynley did it for her. “Are you suggesting his intention would have been to eliminate Hadiyyah?”

“We’ve seen nearly everything in our line of work, sir.”

He was silent. He would, of course, know this was true.

“What about Doughty?” Lynley asked. “What have you turned up on him?”

Barbara didn’t want to go within fifty yards of what she’d learned about Doughty, leading as it did to his claims about Azhar. What she wanted was a chance to talk to Azhar, to ask him questions and to study his face as he gave his answers. But her brief had been to dig into Doughty’s part in Hadiyyah’s disappearance, so she had to give Lynley something and she quickly made her choice. “I’ve come up with a bloke called Bryan Smythe,” she said. “He does computer work for Doughty, the kind requiring a special touch of the hacking variety.”

“And?”

“Haven’t put the thumbscrews to him yet. That’s on for tomorrow. But what I hope to learn is that Doughty employed him to wipe clean all traces of communication between himself and one Michelangelo Di Massimo. Which’ll more or less confirm that Doughty’s involved.”

Lynley said nothing. Barbara waited in a welter of anxiety for him to take the next step, which logically demanded that Barbara check for a connection between Doughty and Azhar. He said finally, “As to that . . .”

She cut in hastily with what she hoped sounded like a conclusion. “Someone would have hired him, of course. Way I see it, it could go two directions. Either someone here hired him to execute a plan to snatch Hadiyyah—”

“And that would be?”

“Anyone who hated Azhar, I expect. Angelina’s relatives top that list. They knew Hadiyyah was missing from London ’cause I went to see them when she first disappeared. Azhar went as well. They hate him, sir. To do something to hurt him? Nothing they might pay for that pleasure would be too much, believe me.”

“And the other direction?”

“Your end. Someone in Italy setting everything up, including creating a line to a private detective in London for purposes of making someone in London look suspicious. Who does that suggest to you?”

“We know Lorenzo Mura is probably acquainted with Di Massimo. They both play football for their cities’ teams.” He was quiet for a moment, then she heard him sigh. “I’ll pass all this on to Lo Bianco,” he finally said. “He can hand it over to his replacement.”

“D’you still want me to—”

“Complete your work on the Doughty end of things, Barbara. If you come up with something, we’ll send it to Italy when I get back. Everything’s in the hands of the Italians now. As liaison officer, my work is finished.”

Barbara let out her breath, which she’d been holding as she’d waited for his reaction to the tale she’d spun. She said, “When d’you come back home, sir?”

“I’ve a flight out in the morning. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They rang off then, and Barbara was left at her desk with the malignant stare of DI Stewart upon her. Across the room as he was, he hadn’t been able to hear any part of her conversation with Lynley, but he had on his face the expression of a man who had no intention of letting any sleeping dog alone if there was a chance he could kick it soundly in the ribs.

She returned his stare until he shifted in his chair and went back to wasting his time in a putative examination of paperwork on his desk. Barbara sorted through her feelings about what she had just done and not done in her phone call with Lynley.

She was fast approaching a professional line. Should she cross it, that move would forever define her. She asked herself what was owed to the people she loved, and the only answer she could come up with was absolute loyalty at all costs. The difficulty was in choosing those people. The additional difficulty was attempting to understand the exact nature of the love she felt for them.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Inside the kitchen of Torre Lo Bianco, Salvatore fondly watched the interaction of his two children with their nonna . The previous night had been one of those designated for the children to spend with their father and, as it happened because of his current abode, with their nonna. Salvatore’s mother was taking full advantage of the presence of her nipoti .

She’d given them a breakfast heavily reliant upon dolci , which naturally would have met with Birgit’s outraged protests. She’d made a vague bow to nutrition with cereale e latte— thanks be to God she’d at least chosen bran flakes, Salvatore thought—but after that she’d brought out the cakes and the biscotti . The children had devoured far more than was good for them and were showing the effects of so much sugar. For her part their nonna was plying them with questions.