Just One Evil Act (52 page)

“Hang on.” She lit a fag and handed him the packet. “We’re in it now, so it’s not the time to lose your nerve.”

“This is not a matter of nerve.” He took a cigarette and lit it, but after one drag on it, he threw it out of the window in disgust. “This is a matter of what you are doing because of me. Because of my decisions. And I . . . Silent like a miserable statue in that man’s garden. I despise myself.”

“Let’s stick with the facts as we know them. Angelina took Hadiyyah. You wanted her back. The wrong involved here started with her.”

“Do you think that matters? Do you think that
will
matter should the details of this morning excursion of ours come to light?”

“Details won’t come to light. Everyone’s at risk. That’s our guarantee.”

“I should not have . . . I cannot . . . I must stand like a man and tell the truth and—”

“And what? Go to gaol? Spend some time in a prison learning how to say ‘Touch me there and I’ll cut off your hand’ in Italian?”

“They would have to extradite me first and then—”

“Oh, too right, mate. And while you’re waiting to be extradited, Angelina is going to be doing what? Sending Hadiyyah for pleasant, extended visits with the man who arranged her kidnapping and—oh, by the way—also bought one-way tickets to Pakistan for himself and her?”

He was silent, and she glanced at him. His face was anguished. “All of this is down to me,” he said. “No matter how Angelina has behaved in the past, the first sin was mine. I wanted her.”

At first, Barbara thought he was talking about the daughter he and Angelina had created. But when he went on, she saw that was not what he meant at all.

“How wrong could it be, I asked myself, to want a lovely young woman in my bed? Just once. Or twice. Three times, perhaps. Because, after all, Nafeeza is heavy with child and wishes to be left in peace until she delivers and as a man, I have my needs and there she is, so lovely, so fragile, so . . . so English.”

“You’re human,” Barbara said, although the words did not come easily to her.

“I saw her at that table at University College, and I thought, What a particularly lovely English girl she is. But I also thought what Middle Eastern men—men like me—are schooled to think of particularly lovely English girls, of all English girls: They are not like our women, their clothing alone illustrates how easy they are with their chastity, and these things that rob them of their virtue mean very little to them. So I sat with her. I asked her if I could join her at her table, and as I did so, I knew exactly what I wanted from her. What I did not think was that the wanting would increase, the ‘must have’ would dominate, and I would bring ruin upon my world. And now I am set upon the same course, but the world to be ruined is going to be yours. How, then, do I live with that?”

“You live with that by knowing that this is
my
decision,” she told him. “We have another half hour to live through, and then we’re through it, all right? We have Bryan where we want him and all that’s left is putting Doughty into line behind him. But that’s only going to happen if you
believe
it’s possible because if you don’t—if you go into that office broadcasting on your face that the only end reachable is the one with you sitting in the dock in a Lucca courtroom—we’re finished, Azhar. We, not you. We. And I’d like to hold on to my job.”

She pulled to the kerb and let the Mini idle. They were round the corner from Doughty’s office, parked near a primary school where the happy noise of children running about a schoolyard came to them through the open windows of the car. They listened to this in silence for a moment. Barbara shut off the Mini’s ignition and said, “Are we on the same page, Azhar?”

At first he did not answer. Like her, he listened to the children. Like her, he was also probably thinking of his own child, perhaps of all his children. He raised his head and closed his eyes briefly. He finally said firmly, “Yes. Yes. All right,” and together they climbed out of the car.

Doughty wasn’t in his office. They found him, however, in the office next door, where Em Cass was set up. She’d obviously just arrived at work since she was wearing running clothes, trainers, and a sweatband round her head, and at first it looked from his position as if Doughty was taking in the fragrance of her armpits since he was sitting at her table of computers and she was bent forward across him to use the mouse. She was saying, “No. The hotel records indicate—” But she straightened, ceasing her words abruptly, when Barbara pushed open the door. Doughty turned and said, “What the hell . . . You’re out of order walking in unannounced.”

Barbara said, “I think that’s a social nicety we can all wave farewell to at this point, Dwayne.”

“You can go wait in my office,” he said. “And you can thank your stars I don’t toss you and the professor back down the stairs you just tramped up.”

“We will all speak together,” Azhar said. “Either in your office or in this office but in either case now.”

Doughty rose from his chair. “Where’d
your
manners take themselves off to? I don’t take orders from people who aren’t employing me.”

“Got that in a biscuit box, Dwayne.” Barbara brought out of her pocket Bryan Smythe’s memory sticks and dangled them from her fingertips. “But I expect you take orders from someone who’s hanging on to these trying to decide which department at the Met is going to be happiest to see them. They’re on loan, by the way. Bryan handed them over.”

There was a moment of tight, evaluative silence among them. From below in the street, the sound of Bedlovers’ protective grille being raised came to them like the noise of a castle’s portcullis. Someone coughed, hacked, and spit with the force of a minor explosion. Em Cass grimaced at the sound. Obviously, a woman who disapproved of life’s indelicacies, Barbara thought. That was a very good thing, she reckoned, since they were well in the midst of one of them.

“Are we going to talk or are we going to stand here staring at each other?” Barbara asked.

Doughty said, “I know a bluff when I’m looking at one.”

“Not in this case, mate. You c’n ring Bryan if you like. Like I said, these’re on loan from him. He feels a bit like you do when it comes to the Bill.
Anything
to clear one’s house of the coppers.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Em Cass said. “Christ, Dwayne. I don’t know why I ever listen to you and your plans and your I’ve-got-everything-under-control. I should have done a runner when I was packed.”

Barbara liked even more the fact that, along with her delicacies, Emily Cass also appeared to be someone who preferred that her line of employment not lead her in the direction of arrest. This of course begged the question: What was she doing working as a blagger for Dwayne Doughty in the first place? But economic times were tough. Perhaps it had been that or becoming a barista.

She said, “Let’s decamp to your office, Dwayne. Without the filming this time, ’f you don’t mind. You come, too, Emily. It’s roomier, there’re chairs, and someone might go weak at the knees.” She made a sweeping gesture to the doorway. She was gratified to see Emily the first person through it. Doughty followed her, giving Barbara a withering glance and ignoring Azhar altogether.

Inside his own office, Doughty removed the hidden camera, placed it in a drawer, and positioned himself behind his desk. Barbara wanted to guffaw at this final I’m-in-charge move. She sat, Emily went to the window and leaned against its sill, and Azhar took the other chair. Doughty said, “It wouldn’t take all those memory sticks, in case you’re actually thinking Bryan isn’t having you for a fool.”

“When I said everything, I meant everything,” Barbara replied. “I’ve got his entire system here, Dwayne. Not just you but everyone else. My fail-safe position, if you’d like to call it that. Sometimes people need a little urging when it comes to cooperating, I find. Now what I wonder is how much urging you’re going to need.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“To hand over
your
fail-safe position—”

“In your bloody dreams.”

“—and to assure us you’ve seen the light of salvation and it’s called Di Massimo.”

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

Emily Cass stirred. “I expect it’s a good idea to hear her out.”

“Oh, you
expect
that, do you? Did you
expect
that when you gave her Smythe? Which, by the way, is the only way she could have dug him out of whatever molehill he happens to operate from and don’t think I haven’t worked that one out.”

“Let’s not start pointing fingers,” Barbara said. “It wastes my time and I’ve wasted enough of it already dealing with you lot. Now we can get down to business or, like I said, I can—”

“Sod you,” Dwayne told her. “Sod the professor.”

Barbara looked at Emily. “He always this stupid?”

“He’s a man,” Emily said in reply. “Go on. Pretend he’s not here.”

“I want him on board.”

“He is. He won’t tell you that, but he is.”

Barbara turned to Azhar. “How did Di Massimo come into this mess?”

“Mr. Doughty found him,” he said, telling her what she already knew and what had been established between them on their long night of planning. “He said that we needed a detective in Italy who spoke English, and Mr. Di Massimo was that detective.”

“How often did you speak to him?”

“To Mr. Di Massimo? Never.”

“How often did you contact him by email?”

“Never.”

“How did he get paid?”

“Through Mr. Doughty. I paid him and he transferred the money to Italy.”

“Keeping some for himself, you reckon?”

“Are you bloody
accusing—”

“Relax, mate,” Barbara told Doughty. “You employed a subcontractor. You took your cut. It’s the way of the world.” She held up the memory sticks another time and she said to Azhar, “What d’you reckon these’re going to show, then?”

“The movement of money, among other things. From my bank account to Mr. Doughty’s to Mr. Di Massimo’s. Internet activities: emails and searches. Telephone records. Mobile records. Credit card records.”

“So what you’re saying,” she said to Azhar, “is that over there in Italy, at this very moment while Michelangelo Di Massimo is being the canary on matters having to do with the snatching of Hadiyyah, what I’ve got here in my grubby hands is proof that the bloke is telling the truth.”

Azhar nodded. “It does appear that way, Barbara.”

She turned to Doughty. “The point being that the interests of everyone—that would include you, Dwayne—would best be served if we took a solid look at where we ought to be applying our talents, such as they are.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could speak.

“And,” she said, “I’d suggest you think that one over before you reply. We’ve got Di Massimo, but we’ve also got a dead bloke called Squali and all the information he may have left behind, which I reckon is plentiful. Now, do we climb into the boat and plug its holes and float it together, mate, or do we let it sink on its bloody own?”

Doughty examined her before he shoved his chair back and opened the drawer in which he kept his own fail-safe memory stick.

“You and your sodding metaphors,” he replied.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Lynley wasn’t sure what his preoccupation actually meant. He’d come into the Yard early upon Isabelle’s request, he’d been buttonholed by John Stewart for an extended and unpleasant conversation about Barbara Havers’s tendency towards insubordination, he’d finally managed to wrest himself away from the other DI, and now as he waited in Isabelle’s office, he realised that he hadn’t taken in whatever it was that Stewart had been implying about Barbara’s performance while on his team.

The reason was Daidre Trahair. They’d had a fine dinner together at her hotel, conversation flowing easily between them until the moment that he’d finally got up the nerve to ask her who Mark was—“That bloke you were speaking to on your mobile when I came into the wine bar?” he said to her when she looked utterly puzzled by the question—and he’d been unaccountably relieved to learn that Mark was her solicitor in Bristol. He would be looking over the contract that London Zoo had offered Daidre because, as she put it, “I’m hopeless when it comes to the ‘party of the first part’ and ‘pursuant to Clause One,’ and that sort of thing, Thomas. Why do you ask about Mark?”

That was certainly the question, he admitted. Why did he ask? He hadn’t been this preoccupied by a woman since before his marriage to Helen. And what was puzzling to him was that Daidre Trahair was absolutely nothing like Helen. He couldn’t quite work out what it meant: that the first woman to interest him seriously was someone completely different from his dead wife. So he had to ask himself if he was truly interested in Daidre or merely interested in making Daidre interested in him.

He’d said to her, “The answer to that question. It’s something I’m working on. Not very adeptly, I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” she said.

“Ah, indeed. Like you, I’m a bit at sixes and sevens.”

“I’m not entirely sure I want to know what you mean.”

“Believe me, I understand,” he’d said.

At the end of their meal, she walked with him through the lobby of the hotel to the front door of the place. It was a large hotel, part of an American chain, the kind of place where businessmen and -women stayed and their comings and goings went largely ignored by the staff. This meant all sorts of things, among which was the fact that when someone went to someone else’s room, no one took note of that unless observation of the CCTV films became necessary later. He found himself acutely aware of this. He felt a sudden need to get out of the place unscathed. And what did
that
mean? he asked himself. What was bloody wrong with him?

She walked out onto the pavement in his company. There, the night was inordinately pleasant. She said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

He said, “Will you tell me when you’ve decided about the job?”

“Of course I will.”

Then they looked at each other, and when he kissed her, it seemed like a natural thing to do. He fingered a piece of her sandy hair that had come loose from the slide at the back of her head, and she reached up and caught his fingers and squeezed them lightly. She said, “You’re a lovely man, Thomas. I would be every way the fool if I didn’t see that.”