Just One Evil Act (57 page)

BELGRAVIA

LONDON

T
he fact that Isabelle Ardery had made no move to deal with Barbara Havers suggested to Lynley that she was either giving him the time he had asked for to try to sort out what Barbara had been up to or she was herself building a case against Barbara that would give her the result she’d been looking for since first encountering the sergeant as a difficult member of her team. Isabelle was someone who wanted things to run smoothly, and it couldn’t be argued that Barbara lent to the machinery of a police investigation the constant oil of her cooperation.

Isabelle had, of course, asked for a report from him. He told her of his conversation with Bryan Smythe, but he made no mention of either the airline tickets to Lahore or what Barbara Havers had asked Smythe to do. He left out the information that she had gone to see Smythe in the company of Azhar as well. This proved to be a misstep on his part.

Isabelle slid the report across her desk to him. He put on his glasses, opened it, and read.

John Stewart had been on top of the call upon Bryan Smythe made by Havers and Azhar. He’d merely not had a chance to hand it over to Isabelle when Lynley and she had met earlier with the sergeant. When Lynley asked the superintendent why she had not yet turned Barbara over to CIB, her steady reply of “I’m waiting to see how far this reaches” told him that his own actions would be scrutinised as well.

“Isabelle, I admit that I’m trying to find excuses for her” was what he told the superintendent.

“Looking for reasons is understandable, Tommy. Looking for excuses is not. I expect you see the difference between the two.”

He returned Stewart’s report to her, saying, “And as for John . . . his reasons? His excuses? What are you planning to do about him?”

“John’s well in hand. You’re not to concern yourself with John.”

He could hardly believe what she was saying since it had to mean she’d actually
set
DI Stewart to the task of watching Havers closely and noting her movements. If that was the case, Isabelle was giving Barbara rope. She also was telling him not to wrest that rope from Barbara’s grasp only to wrap it round his own neck.

All that was wanted to finish Barbara off was Lynley’s own report on the full contents of the conversation he’d had with Bryan Smythe. For although Stewart knew where Barbara had gone and when she’d gone there and with whom, what he had not known from the first was what she was up to. Only Lynley himself—and Barbara—knew that.

Early in the morning, he went into the garden behind his house. His place was laid for breakfast, his newspapers were on the dining room table precisely angled from his fork, and the scent of bread toasting under Charlie Denton’s watchful eye was emanating from the kitchen. But he walked to the window, looked out on the bright spring day, and saw how beautifully the roses were blooming. He went outside to look them over, aware that in the time since Helen’s death, he’d not once ventured out into the garden she’d loved. Nor, he realised, had anyone else.

Among the rose bushes he found a pail. Within it pruned branches from the plants leaned. Hooked over the pail’s side was a small pair of secateurs, rusty now from being exposed to the weather for more than a year. The bushes themselves told the tale of why the pail, its contents, and the secateurs had been left out here for so long. Helen had been in the midst of pruning them when she’d been murdered.

Lynley thought of how he’d watched her once from the window of his library above stairs. He’d gone to join her in the garden and even now her words came to him, spoken in her typical self-deprecating, droll fashion.
Tommy darling, I do think this might be the
only
useful activity I could possibly become adept at
.
There’s something so satisfying about grubbing round in the dirt. I think it takes one back to one’s roots.
And then she thought about what she’d said and laughed.
What a terrible pun. It was completely unintentional.

He’d offered to help her, but she wouldn’t let him.
Don’t please rob me of my one opportunity to excel at something.

He smiled now at the thought of her. Then he was struck by how the thought of Helen had for the first time not been accompanied by searing pain.

A door opened behind him. He turned to see Denton opening it for Barbara Havers. Seeing her, Lynley glanced at his watch. It was seven twenty-eight in the morning. What on earth was she doing in Belgravia? he wondered.

She crossed the lawn to him. She looked horrible. Not only was she more thrown together than usual, but she also seemed to have spent an entire night without sleep. She said to him, “They have Azhar.”

He blinked. “Who?”

“The cops in Lucca. They’ve taken his passport. He’s being detained. He doesn’t know why.”

“Is he being questioned about something?”

“Not yet. He just can’t leave Italy. He doesn’t know what’s going on.
I
don’t know what’s going on. So how do I help him? I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t speak Italian. I don’t know their game. I don’t know what’s happened.” She took three paces along the flowerbeds before she swung round and said abruptly, “C’n you ring them, sir? C’n you find out what’s happening?”

“If they’re detaining him, it’s obviously because they’ve got questions about—”

“Look. Right. Whatever. I know. For what it’s worth, I’ve told him to ring the embassy. And to get a solicitor, just in case. I’ve
told
him that. But there must be something more I c’n do. And you
know
these blokes and you c’n speak Italian and you c’n at least . . .” She punched a fist into her palm. “Please, sir. Please. It’s why I’ve come from Chalk Farm. It’s why I couldn’t wait till you got to work. Please.”

He said, “Come with me,” and took her to the house. Inside the dining room, he saw that Denton was already laying another place for breakfast. Lynley thanked him, poured two cups of coffee, and told Barbara to serve herself some eggs and bacon from the sideboard.

“Already eaten,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“Chocolate Pop-Tart and a fag.” She cocked her head at the sideboard and added, “Anything nutritious’ll probably put my system into shock.”

“Humour me,” he told her. “I don’t wish to eat alone.”

“Sir, please . . . I need you to . . .”

“I’m completely aware of that, Barbara,” he said steadily.

Reluctantly, she spooned herself some scrambled eggs. She added to this two rashers of bacon. She got into the spirit of things with four mushrooms and a piece of toast. He followed her lead and then joined her at the table.

She said with a nod to his newspapers, “How d’you read three bloody broadsheets every morning, for God’s sake?”

“I take the news from
The Times
and the editorials from
The
Guardian
and
The
Independent.
”

“Seeking balance in life?”

“I find it’s wise to do so. The overuse of adverbs in journalism these days is becoming something of a distraction, though. I don’t like to be told what to think, even surreptitiously.”

They locked eyes at this. She broke away first, scooping up some of her scrambled eggs and piling them up on a portion torn from her toast. She chewed quite a bit. Swallowing, however, did not appear easy for her.

Lynley said, “Before I make the call to Inspector Lo Bianco, Barbara . . . ?” He waited for her gaze to meet his. “Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything I need to know?”

She shook her head.

“You’re certain?” he said.

“Far ’s I know,” she told him.

So be it, he thought.

BELGRAVIA

LONDON

For the first time in her life, Barbara Havers cursed the fact that she had no language other than English. While it was true that she’d had moments of desire to learn a foreign tongue—most of them having to do with understanding what the cook at her local curry house was really yelling about the lamb
rogan josh
before he slopped it into a takeaway container—for the great majority of her life she’d had no need of one. She had a passport, but she’d never used it to go anywhere a foreign tongue was spoken. She’d never used it at all, in fact. She only had it on the off chance that a heretofore unknown Prince Charming might show up unexpectedly in her life and wish to take her on a luxury Mediterranean holiday in the sun.

But now, watching Lynley as he spoke to Chief Inspector Lo Bianco in Lucca, she tried to pick up anything she could. She listened hard for words she might recognise. She tried to read his face. From the words, she only picked up names: Azhar, Lorenzo Mura, Santa Zita—whoever the hell that was—and Fanucci. She thought she also heard Michelangelo Di Massimo mentioned as well as
information
,
hospital
, and
factory
, for some reason. Most of what she learned came from Lynley’s face, which grew graver as the conversation continued.

He finally said, “
Chiaro, Salvatore
.
Grazie mille. Ciao
,” which told her the conversation was ending.

Barbara felt only dread when he rang off, but the dread didn’t stop her. “What?” she asked. “
What?
”

“It appears to be
E. coli
,” he said.

Food contamination? she thought.
Food?
She said, “How the bloody hell did she die of food poisoning in this day and age? How does
anyone
die of food poisoning now?”

“Evidently, it was an enormously virulent strain, and the doctors didn’t recognise what it was because she reported being ill earlier due to her pregnancy. That’s what they initially thought they were still dealing with: a more serious version of morning sickness. Once they believed they had that sorted, they did other tests and those were all negative.”

“What sort of tests?”

“Cancers, colitis, other diseases. Colon and bowel. There was nothing, so they assumed she’d picked up a bug of some sort, as people do. They gave her a course of antibiotics as a precaution. And that’s what killed her.”

“
Antibiotics
killed her? But you said
E. coli
 . . . ?”

“It was both. Evidently with
E. coli
—at least with this strain of it, as far as I can tell from what Salvatore said—antibiotics cause a toxin to be produced. Shiga, it’s called. It finishes off the kidneys. By the time the doctors realised from Angelina’s symptoms that her kidneys were going, it was too late to save her.”

“Bloody hell.” Barbara took this all in, and what seeped slowly into her consciousness was the fact that her body was relaxing for the first time in twelve hours and her mind was chanting, Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God. Food poisoning ultimately leading to death, as unfortunate as it was, did not mean . . . what she did not want it to mean.

She said, “It’s over, then.”

Lynley gazed at her long before he said, “Unfortunately, it isn’t.”

“Why not?”

“No one else is ill.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it? They dodged the—”

“No one, Barbara. Anywhere. Not at Fattoria di Santa Zita—that’s the land Lorenzo Mura owns—not in any surrounding village, and not anywhere in Lucca. No one, as I said. Anywhere. Not in Tuscany. Nor in the rest of Italy. Which is one of the reasons the doctors didn’t recognise what they were dealing with immediately.”

“Should I be following this?”

“When
E. coli
’s involved, it’s generally referred to as a breakout. Do you see what I mean?”

“I see that this was an isolated case. But like I said, that’s good, isn’t it? That means . . .” And then she indeed saw what it meant, as clearly as she saw Lynley regarding her. Her mouth went dry. She said, “But they’d be checking
everywhere
for the source, right? They’d have to do that to prevent anyone else from getting infected. They’d be looking at everything Angelina ate and . . . Are there animals at this
fattoria
place?”

“Donkeys and cows, yes.”

“Could the
E. coli
have come from them? I mean, don’t animals pass this stuff on in some way? Aren’t we talking about . . . you know . . .”

“Evidently cattle are a reservoir for the bacteria, and it passes through their system. Yes. But I don’t believe there will be evidence of
E. coli
at Fattoria di Santa Zita, Barbara. Neither does Salvatore.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one else who ate there is ill. Hadiyyah, Lorenzo, even Azhar in the immediate days after Hadiyyah was found.”

“So maybe it’s . . . Does it incubate or something?”

“I’m vague on the details, but the point is someone there would have fallen ill by now.”

“Okay. Let’s say she went for a walk. Let’s say she got too near to a cow. Or let’s say she . . . P’rhaps she got it somewhere else. In town. At the marketplace. Visiting a friend. Picking something up off the road.” But even Barbara could hear the desperation in her voice, so she knew Lynley would clock it, as well.

“We go back to no one else being ill, Barbara. We go back to the strain itself.”

“What about the strain?”

“According to Salvatore”—with a nod at his mobile phone lying by his plate—“they’ve never seen anything like it. It’s to do with the virulence. A strain this virulent can take out an entire population before they identify its source. But that population falls ill quickly, in a matter of days. The health authorities become involved, and they begin looking at anyone else who might have seen a doctor or ended up in casualty with similar symptoms. But as I said, no one else has been ill. Not before Angelina. Not after Angelina.”

“I still don’t see how that’s such a bad thing. I don’t see why Azhar’s been detained unless . . .” Again that steady gaze upon her. She read the grim nature of it, but she read something else, and she wanted more than anything in her life not to be able to understand that look. She said lightly, “Oh, I see. They’re keeping Azhar in Lucca because they don’t want him to pass it on to someone else, I expect. If he’s got it in him—like dormant or something—and he brings it back to London . . . I mean, he could be a modern-day Typhoid Mary, eh?”