Just One Evil Act (88 page)

As far as Mitchell Corsico was concerned, she reckoned he’d raise his Stetson-covered head when next he wanted a hot bit of information. She would, of course, be his contact of choice. She would hold him off. What else could she do? Of course, she went on, she could apply for a transfer. Mitchell would hardly want her as a source if she changed her circumstances so as to become gainfully employed in . . . say . . . Berwick-upon-Tweed. If it came to that, that’s what she would do, she told him. Isabelle knew that. Indeed, the paperwork that was necessary to requesting a transfer had already been filled out, signed, sealed, and placed carefully away in the superintendent’s desk.

“So she’s got me by the nipple hairs, and don’t I know I deserve it?” Barbara said.

He couldn’t deny the truth of this statement. Still, he watched her trudge up the driveway in the direction of her bungalow, and he regretted the disconsolate set of her shoulders. He wished for her a different sort of life. He did not know how she was going to achieve it.

When he rang the appropriate buzzer next to the door, indicating Flat One, Daidre came personally to open it. Flat One was just to the right of the entry. She smiled, said, “Terrible traffic?” and he sighed, “London,” and kissed her.

She led him inside Flat One and shut the door behind him. He heard the
snick
of the lock and was reassured by this. Then he told himself that Daidre Trahair could take care of herself very well, thank you. Truth to tell, though, when he saw what her accommodation was, he had his doubts.

It was a terrible place, with a shotgun arrangement of rooms, each more horrible than the one preceding it. They began in the sitting room, which was painted the pink of a newborn’s tongue with a radiator done up in a less-than-compelling shade of blue. The floor was hardwood that had sometime in the past been painted lavender. There was no furniture, and he couldn’t help thinking that was for the best.

A corridor ran the length of the place, narrow and sided by the walled-up stairway that had once made the building a family home. Off of this opened a single bedroom wallpapered in stripes of the bright vintage associated with the 1960s, Carnaby Street, and the heavy use of psychedelic drugs. The room would have no need of curtains upon its single window. It was painted over. Red had been the choice.

The next room contained the toilet, a washbowl, and the tub. The tub looked like a host for every sort of deadly bug. The window here was painted blue.

The kitchen came last, such as it was. There was room for a table and chairs, but neither a cooker nor a refrigerator stood in place. One knew it was a kitchen by virtue of a large sink. That there were no taps was merely a compelling detail.

Beyond the kitchen was, as Daidre explained to him, the finest feature which made the flat a true must-have. This was the garden, accessible only to her. When she had it cleared of the rubbish, the weeds, and especially the cooker and the refrigerator that lay on their sides with broom blooming through their cracks and crannies, it would be lovely. Didn’t he think so?

He turned to her. “Daidre . . . darling . . .” He stopped himself. Then he couldn’t keep from saying, “What on earth are you thinking? You can’t live here.”

She laughed. “I’m very handy, Tommy. It’s all cosmetic . . . well, aside from the kitchen plumbing, which will require someone with more expertise than I have. But other than that, one must look at the bones of a place.”

“I’m thinking osteoporosis.”

She laughed again. “I like a challenge. You know that.”

“You haven’t bought it,” he said. And then hopefully, “Have you?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. Not until my place sells in Bristol. But I
do
have an option. I’m quite happy about that. A freehold, as well. And that’s nothing to sniff at, is it?”

“Ah. Indeed not,” he said.

“You’re less than wildly enthusiastic,” she said. “But you must consider its benefits.”

“I’m all ears and ready to embrace them as they are spoken.”

“Right.” She took his arm and they strolled back towards the sitting room, although in the narrow corridor this was something of a careful manoeuvre. “Number one is that it’s not terribly far from the zoo. I can bicycle there in a quarter hour. No need for transport. I could even sell my car. Which I won’t, of course, but the point is that I needn’t deal with traffic to get to work. That and the benefit of the exercise as well. It’s actually . . . well, it’s heavenly, Tommy.”

“I’d no idea you were a cyclist,” he said mildly. “Roller derby, tournament darts, cycling . . . You’re full of surprises. Is there more I should know?”

“Yoga, running, and skiing,” she said. “Trekking as well, but not as often as I would like.”

“I’m humbled,” he said. “If I walk to the corner for a newspaper, I feel virtuous.”

“I know you’re lying,” she told him. “I can see it in your eyes.”

He smiled, then. He held up the bottle of champagne he carried. He said, “I’d thought . . . Well, I have to say I expected something . . . a bit different. Sitting on a sofa, perhaps. Or in a pleasant garden. Or even sprawled on a tasteful Persian rug. But in any case, christening the place and welcoming you to London and . . . I daresay, whatever followed.”

Her lips curved. “I don’t see why we can’t do that anyway. I am, as you know, quite a simple girl at heart.”

“Requiring what?” he asked. “I mean, of course, for the christening.”

“Requiring, as it happens, only you.”

BELGRAVIA

LONDON

It was just past midnight when he arrived home. He felt filled with emotions that would take time to sort through. There was, for the first time, a rightness about the life he was leading. Something fragile and previously broken was being reconstructed one extremely careful piece at a time.

The house was dark. Denton had, as always, left a single light burning at the foot of the stairs. He switched it off and climbed upward in the darkness. He made his way to his room, where he felt for the wall and flipped on the light. He stood for a moment, considering all of it: the great mahogany bed, the chest of drawers, the two vast wardrobes. In silence, he crossed to the embroidered stool that stood in front of the dressing table. Across the glass-topped surface of this, Helen’s perfumes and jars still stood untouched as she had left them on the last day of her life.

He picked up her brush. Still it held a few strands of her chestnut hair. For less than a year he’d been able to watch her as she’d brushed it at the end of the day, just a few strokes as she chatted to him.
Tommy darling, we’ve had an invitation to a dinner that—may I be honest?—will be nothing short of the soporific that the world of science has been seeking for decades. Can we come up with an artful excuse? Or do you wish for torture?
I can go either way, as it happens. You know my facility for looking fascinated while my brain atrophies. But I have my doubts about your ability to dissemble so well. So . . . what shall I do?
And then she’d turn, come to the bed, join him, and allow him to mess the hair she’d only just brushed. Whether they went to the dinner or not made little difference to him, as long as she was there.

“Ah, Helen,” he whispered. “Helen.”

He closed his fingers over the hairbrush. He carried it to his chest of drawers. He opened the top one and, deep at the back, he placed the brush like the relic it had become. He closed the drawer carefully upon its contents.

Upstairs, Charlie Denton was asleep as Lynley had expected. He knew that he could leave things until the morning, but he felt that this was the moment and he did have some fear that it wouldn’t come again. So he went to Denton’s bed and touched his shoulder. He said his name, and the younger man was instantly awake.

Denton said quite unusually, “Your brother . . . ?” for the fact of Peter Lynley’s addictions and his battles with them was something they did not generally discuss. But wakened so suddenly, what else would he think? Only that something terrible had occurred to a member of his family.

Lynley said, “No, no. Everything’s fine, Charlie. But I wanted to . . .” How to go on? he wondered.

Denton sat up. He turned on the light on his bedside table. He reached for his glasses and put them on. Awake now and back in the character he so assiduously played, he said, “D’you require something, sir? I’ve left dinner in the fridge for reheating and—”

Lynley smiled. “His lordship requires nothing at all,” he said. “Just your help tomorrow, as it happens. I want to pack Helen’s things in the morning. Can you sort out what we need to do this?”

“In a tick,” Denton said. And when Lynley thanked him and headed for the door, “Are you sure about it, sir?”

Lynley paused, turned, and considered the question. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not at all sure. But there’s no real certainty about anything, is there?”

I’m indebted to some wonderful people who helped me with this novel, not only in the United States and in Great Britain, but also in Italy.

In the UK, Detective Superintendent John Sweeney of New Scotland Yard set me on the correct course towards understanding exactly what happens when a British national is kidnapped in a foreign country, as well as what happens when a British national is murdered abroad. It’s a complicated process that involves the British embassy, the Italian police, the victim’s local police from the individual’s hometown in England, and New Scotland Yard, and I’ve attempted to make it a process that the reader is able to follow easily in this novel, and I hope I have been somewhat successful in that endeavour. The indefatigable and always resourceful Swati Gamble assisted in this, making initial arrangements for me and tracking down bits and pieces of information as I needed them. Private Investigator Jason Woodcock was essential to my understanding of what private investigators can and cannot do in the UK. He also was terrific when it came to the art of blagging, and it must be said that he bears absolutely no resemblance to Dwayne Doughty in this novel. Fellow writer John Follain weighed in via email with information about the labyrinthine nature of Italian policing, and his book
Death in Perugia: The Definitive Account of the Meredith Kercher Case
gave me additional assistance. Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi’s extraordinary book
The Monster of Florence
was a great help to me in sorting out the part played by the public magistrate in a criminal investigation, and Candace Dempsey’s
Murder in Italy
as well as Nina Burleigh’s
The Fatal Gift of Beauty
were also extremely helpful.

With this novel, I bid a very fond farewell to my longtime UK editor at Hodder, Sue Fletcher, who retired in December 2012, and I begin my thanks to my new editor, Nick Sayers, with the hope that I’ll be continuing to thank him for any number of years. It’s also high time for me to thank Karen Geary, Martin Nield, and Tim Hely-Hutchinson for all they do to promote my books in the UK.

In Italy, Maria Lucrezia Felice started me out in Lucca with a detailed tour that took me into churches, piazzas, parks, and shops in order to familiarise me with the medieval centre of the town. She was also helpful in Pisa at the Field of Miracles, and together she and I attempted to work through the parts played by the
Polizia di Stato
, the
Arma dei Carabinieri
, the
Polizia Penitenziaria
, the
Polizia Municipale
, and the
Vigili Urbani
when it comes to an investigation. Giovanna Tronci’s home in the hills above Lucca—Fabbrica di San Martino—was the model for my Fattoria di Santa Zita, and I am most grateful for the tour she and her partner gave me of the house itself as well as of the property. A chance encounter with Don Whitley on the train from Milan to Padua gave me the one thing I was desperate for—the source of the
E. coli
—and I am grateful that he was my seatmate for that journey, willing to let me pick his brain about his business in West Yorkshire. Finally, Fiorella Marchitelli was my amiable and lovely Italian tutor in Florence while I studied the language in Scuola Michelangelo.

In the US, Shannon Manning, PhD, of Michigan State University, was my go-to source for all things relating to
E. coli
, which she studies in her lab. She fielded phone calls and sent me photographs, and it has to be said that without Shannon’s participation, there probably would not have been a book called
Just One Evil Act
in the first place. Josette Hendrix and the Northwest Language Academy started me off on my long and ongoing journey to learn Italian, Judith Dankanics has willingly practised the language with me for several years now, and for this novel native speaker Fiorella Coleman kindly went over every single Italian word or phrase to make sure I wasn’t making any ghastly errors. This same service was also supplied by two excellent copy editors: Mary Beth Constant and Anna Jardine. If there are any linguistic errors remaining at this point, they are my own.

Also in the US, I’m grateful to my assistant, Charlene Coe, who maintains good cheer and a gracious presence in my life no matter what request I throw at her; to my husband, Tom McCabe, who puts up with my long hours of disappearance into my study; to my goddaughter Audra Bardsley, who was my initial companion-in-arms in Lucca and who is always willing to go on a girl-trip no matter where it takes us; and to my supportive friends and fellow writers here on Whidbey Island and elsewhere. They always believe I can do it, and they never tire of telling me so: Gay Hartell, Ira Toibin, Don McQuinn, Mona Reardon, Lynn Willeford, Nancy Horan, Jane Hamilton, Karen Joy Fowler, and Gail Tsukiyama. There are probably others that I am forgetting in this moment of writing, but their omission is unintentional.

Finally, I must thank my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb, for steering the ship; my extraordinary Dutton team of Brian Tart, Christine Ball, Jamie McDonald, and Liza Cassidy; and above all I must thank Susan Berner, who has been my cold reader for an incredible twenty-five years. This book is dedicated to her, for that reason and for many others.

Elizabeth George

WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON