Just One Evil Act

6 May

SOUTH HACKNEY

LONDON

Barbara rang the Yard in advance of what she presumed was Superintendent Ardery’s normal arrival time. She left a carefully crafted message. She was on her way to Bow for a final word with Dwayne Doughty, she told Dorothea Harriman. There were a few more details that needed to be hammered down, sewed up, or whatever, with regard to the private investigator’s place in the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, and once she’d accomplished this, she’d be able to write the report that the superintendent was anticipating. Harriman asked if Detective Sergeant Havers wished her to fetch the guv so that she could give her the message personally. “She’s only just arrived,” the departmental secretary revealed. “Gone off to the ladies’. I c’n fetch her in a tick, if you’d like to speak with her yourself, Detective Sergeant.”

Speaking with Isabelle Ardery was not high on the list of things Barbara wanted to do. She replied with an airy, “No need for that, Dee,” but added that she’d be grateful if Dorothea would let DI Lynley know what she was up to when he showed his face in Victoria Street. Barbara knew quite well that she was on uneven ground with Lynley as it was. She also knew she’d go under entirely if she didn’t keep him in the loop of what she was up to. More or less.

The detective inspector was already there as well, Dee Harriman told her. So she’d give him the word as soon as they rang off. The poor man had been cornered by DI Stewart for some sort of ear bending when last she’d seen him. She’d pop round and rescue him by means of passing along the detective sergeant’s message. “Any message from you for Detective Inspector Stewart?” Harriman asked impishly.

“Very amusing, Dee,” Barbara told her. And she thought how far, far better a thing it was that Lynley and not herself be on the receiving end of one of Stewart’s diatribes.

She fetched Azhar from the ground-floor flat at the front of the big house in Eton Villas as soon as her phone call was completed. They set off, but not for Bow. Their destination was South Hackney and Bryan Smythe.

They’d been up till after two in the morning developing a strategy for dealing with Bryan Smythe. They had a separate strategy for dealing with Dwayne Doughty. But one would not function without the other.

During all of their discussing and planning, Barbara had tried to keep her mind on both Azhar and Hadiyyah and away from where she was placing herself in dealing with this situation. Azhar had been desperate, she told herself. Azhar had a right to his child. To this she added that little Hadiyyah deserved a loving father in her life. All of these facts she’d repeated to herself like a mantra. She massaged her brain with them. It was the only thing she could bear to think of.

What she hadn’t dared consider was how far she was sliding off the rails in this personal spate of employment in which she was engaged. There would be time for that later. Now, however, there was only coming up with a way to mitigate the jeopardy into which Azhar had placed himself in the cause of finding the daughter he loved.

When he opened the door to her persistent knocking, Bryan Smythe did not seem wildly chuffed to see Barbara standing on his doorstep with an unidentified dark-skinned man at her side. She couldn’t blame him for this. In his line of work, he probably didn’t much like unexpected visitors. He probably also didn’t much like attention being drawn to his house. She was betting on this latter assumption as the best means of gaining entrance to his lair should he not be ready to roll out the red carpet for them.

She said, “You were right, Bryan. Honours to you. Doughty had everything backed up on film.”

He said, “What’re you doing here? I told you what you wanted to know, and I said he’d have a fail-safe position. He had one, so the story ends there.” He glanced right and left as if with the concern that his neighbours—such as they were in this street—were behind the dismal, sagging curtains at their filthy windows taking snapshots of his tête-à-tête with a rozzer. A car turned at the corner and began rolling in their direction, its driver cruising slowly as if hunting for the proper address. Bryan gave a curse and jerked his head towards the inside of his house.

Barbara inclined her head to Azhar. She gave mental thanks that Smythe’s sense of caution tended to make him both jumpy and suspicious. They needed Bryan Smythe in their corner. If they couldn’t manoeuvre him there in the coming minutes, the game was over.

“You’ll get no aggro from me on that front,” Barbara told him as she passed over the threshold. “That’s not why we’re here.” She introduced him to Azhar. She watched as Bryan took in the other man and made whatever mental adjustments were necessary to align the reality of the Pakistani he was looking at to whatever mental image he’d had of him. “So be hospitable, eh? Make us a cuppa, toast us a teacake, and we’ll tell you what we need.”

“Need?” Bryan said incredulously. He shut the door smartly and locked it for good measure. “As I see it, you’re not in the position to be needing anything. At least nothing more than I’ve already given you.”

Barbara nodded thoughtfully. “I c’n see why you reckon that. But I think you’re forgetting a salient point.”

“What would that be?”

“That I’m the only one of you lot who’s clean. You watch every one of Dwayne’s films—’cause I bet he’s got dozens, if not hundreds—and you look through every record you c’n find on me out there in cyberland, and there’s nothing that connects me to this Italian business because I wasn’t connected to this Italian business. Whereas the lot of you . . . ? You’re all hanging from the precipice by broken fingernails, Bryan.”

“Including your friend here.” He jerked his head at Azhar.

“No one’s saying otherwise, mate. Now, how about that cuppa? I like mine with the works. Azhar goes with sugar. Do you lead the way or do I?”

He had little choice but to see what she was up to, so he went through to the other half of his house. There, the enormous flat screen television had been muted but was showing a chat show in which five badly dressed women appeared to be measuring the size of their bums against a life-size poster featuring the bony arse of a catwalk model. Bryan had apparently been enthralled with this when they’d knocked on his door, for on a coffee table in front of a fine leather sofa with a superb view of the telly, breakfast for one was still laid out. Eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, the works. Barbara’s stomach rumbled. She nearly regretted her single Pop-Tart and cup of coffee.

Bryan took himself to the kitchen end of the huge room, where he filled a stainless steel electric kettle. It was sleek and modern like the kitchen itself, and it matched the handles on the cabinets as well as the lighting fixtures. From an impressive fridge—also of pristine stainless steel—he brought out milk and sloshed some into a jug. Barbara told him they’d wait in the garden.

“Gorgeous day,” she said. “Out in nature. Fresh air and all the et ceteras. Don’t see gardens like this in our neighbourhood, do we, Azhar?” She led him out.

Midway between the pool with its lily pads and its sparkling fountain, there was a seating area fashioned from bluestone benches. Behind it grew a plethora of brilliant flowers artfully planted to look unarranged. Here, Barbara sat and gestured for Azhar to do the same. In the garden, Barbara reckoned, Bryan wouldn’t have a system to record whatever was said between them. For he did his business in the house itself, and she didn’t think it likely that he invited anyone who employed him to enjoy the fruits of his labours beyond the windows. Indeed, she thought it was probable that those who employed him never came to his house anyway. But better safe than sorry was how she looked at it.

She sat with Azhar next to her. When Bryan joined them with tea on a tray—the thoughtful bloke had actually provided the teacakes as requested, she saw—he sat opposite them. The tray he placed on the stone bench next to him. Barbara reckoned his hospitality didn’t extend to being mother, so she did the honours and she also scored a teacake for herself. It was tasty and the butter was real. There was nothing second-rate about the bloke.

Except perhaps his manners since he said, “You have your tea. Now what do you want? I’ve work to do.”

“Didn’t look that way from the telly.”

“I don’t care what it looked like. What do you want?”

“To employ you.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“Let’s say Azhar and I are pooling our resources, Bryan. Let’s also say that, all things considered, we reckon you’ll give us something of a cut-rate price.”

“What things?”

“What ‘what things’?”

“You said ‘all things considered.’”

“Ah.” She chowed down on more of the teacake. It had very nice currants in it, not at all dried out. Lovely, she thought. The thing had to have come from a bakery. No way did one score such a delicacy from the local Tesco. “In that, we go back to your line of work,” she said, “and what happens to it if I give the word to the blokes in Victoria Street who look into Internet crimes. We’ve been through this before, mate, so let’s not beat the horse while it’s lying in the dust. You’ve wiped all the records to make Doughty clean, and now you’re going to do something similar for Azhar. It’ll be trickier, but I reckon you’re the bloke to do it. We’ve got air tickets to Pakistan that need to be altered in the records at the Met. No worries that there’s terrorism involved. There isn’t. Just a detail on the tickets that needs changing in a file on someone who’s been investigated and vetted and is in the clear. That’s Azhar, by the way. He look like a terrorist to you?”

“Who bloody knows what a terrorist looks like these days?” Bryan said. “They’re jumping out of rubbish bins. And it’s impossible to do what you ask. Hacking into that system . . . ? D’you know how long that would take? D’you have any idea how many backups exist? I’m not talking about backups just at the Met, either. I’m talking about backups at the airline, on their main databases, on their alternative databases. I’m talking about backups on tape that you can alter only if you have the tape itself. Plus, there’re computer applications that’ve been written by hundreds of people over dozens of years and—”

“If we needed all that,” she cut in, “I c’n see it’d be something of a headache for you. But as it happens, we want the airline ticket altered, like I said, and it only needs to be altered in the Met’s system. The date of purchase needs to be changed, and it needs to be roundtrip instead of one-way. That’s it. There’s one in Azhar’s name and one in the name of Hadiyyah Upman.”

“And if I can’t get into the Met’s system . . . Which department are we talking about? Who’s got the records?”

“SO12.”

“Completely impossible. Laughable even to suggest it.”

“Not for you, and you and I know it. But to give you a little practice in advance—a bit of a way to exercise your typing skills, let’s say—we also need you to take care of a few bank records. Not a big deal for a bloke with your talents, and it’s an alteration again, not an erasure. Azhar here needs to have paid Doughty less: just enough to cover his services up to the point where the trail Angelina Upman left—such as it was—went dead as a corpse. That’s it, Bryan. Airline tickets and payments to Doughty and we’re out of your life, more or less.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I want you to hand over your fail-safe position. Just for an hour or two and you’ll have it back, but I’m going to need to take it with me. Today.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Barbara hooted. She said to Azhar, “You’re not to mind that he thinks we’re idiots. Computer nerds and their attitude problems? Hand in glove, if you know what I mean.” And then to Smythe, “Bryan, the one thing you’re not is stupid. You’ve backed up all of the information you removed from Doughty’s records. Wherever you have it—and I expect it’s right here in the house in a very nice safe with a very secure combination on it—I want it. Like I said, I need it for an hour or two and then you’ll have it back. And stop denying that you have it because you’re the sort of bloke who knows how to put the full stops where they belong.”

He said nothing at first. His expression was hard, his eyes flinty. He looked from Barbara to Azhar to Barbara and he said to her, “How many more of you are there?”

Azhar stirred next to her, but Barbara put her hand on his arm. She said, “Bryan, we’re not here to discuss—”

“No. I want to know. How many more dirty cops’re going to crawl out of the woodwork if I cooperate with you? And don’t please tell me you’re the only one. Your sort doesn’t exist alone.”

Barbara felt Azhar glance in her direction. For her part, she was surprised at how Smythe’s words stung. It wasn’t the first time he’d accused her of being dirty, but the fact was that this time, he was speaking the truth. That she was dirtying herself in the cause of a larger good, however, was not something she wished to debate with the man. So she said to him, “This is a one-time operation. It’s about Azhar, it’s about his daughter, and after that, it’s about us being gone from your life.”

“I’m expected to believe that?”

“I don’t see that you have a choice.” She waited as he thought things over. Birds were chirping pleasantly from the ornamental cherry trees in the garden, and within the pool a goldfish surfaced in the hope of feeding time’s approach. She said, “My grip’s better than yours is, mate. Face up to it and we’re out of here and you c’n go back to your breakfast and those ladies’ arses.”

“Grip,” he repeated.

“On the whatsies. We’re all hanging on to each other’s, let’s face it. But just now I’ve got the better hold. You know it. I know it. Let’s have your fail-safe data so Azhar and I c’n get on with things.”

“You’re heading for Doughty next,” he said.

“Bob’s definitely your uncle, mate.”

BOW

LONDON

“This is too much, Barbara” were Azhar’s first words. He’d said nothing at all during their encounter with Bryan Smythe, but once they were in Barbara’s car and heading over to Doughty’s office, he pressed fingers to his forehead as if trying to contain the pain in his head. “I am so sorry,” he said. “And now this. I cannot—”

“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.”

He moved his hand to her cheek—he could feel her blush, although in the dim light he couldn’t see it—and he bent to kiss her. He held her briefly and breathed in the scent of her and acknowledged that her scent was not the citrus of Helen that he’d so loved and realised that this was not a bad thing. He said, “Ring me, please.”

“As you recall, I did. And will do again.”

“I’m glad of that, Daidre,” he told her and then he left.

There was no question of his going to her room. He didn’t want to. And what, he wondered, did that mean, Thomas?

“Are you listening to me, Tommy?” Isabelle asked. “Because if you are, I’d expect at some point you’d grunt or nod or look reflective or, for God’s sake, something.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Late night and not enough coffee this morning.”

“Shall I have Dee bring you a cup?”

He shook his head. “John bent my ear when I got here,” he told her. “Taking that decision to put Barbara on his team, Isabelle—”

“It was a brief enough period. It hardly killed her.”

“Still, his antipathy for her—”

“I hope you’re not about to tell me how to run the department. I doubt you did that with Superintendent Webberly.”

“I did, as it happens.”

“Then the man was a saint.”

Before he could reply, Barbara Havers joined them. She came in in a rush. She was the personification of all business, aside from her clothing, which was, as usual, a bow to the fashion of an era that had never existed. She’d at least eschewed the cupcake socks. She’d replaced them, however, with Fred and Wilma Flintstone. They more or less made a piece with her tee-shirt: She was wearing the bones of the Natural History Museum’s T-rex across her chest.

She said, “Here’s how it looks,” after she acknowledged the tardiness of her arrival with “Sorry. Traffic. Had to buy petrol as well.” She went on with, “Everything points to Di Massimo trying to finger Doughty for what he himself cooked up. He knows there’ll be records of communications between him and Doughty—and there are—and he reckons that as there was no ransom request, we’re going to fall into line with whatever he claims. But the link from him to Squali is what’s going to bring him down. He’s telling partial truth and partial lie, and his idea is that if he muddies the waters enough, no one is going to sort it all out.”

“Meaning what, Barbara?” Isabelle said.

Lynley said nothing. He merely noted that the sergeant’s colour was high and he wondered if this was due to the rush she was in or the tale she was telling.

“Meaning Doughty hired Di Massimo to start at the airport in Pisa, which was as far as he—Doughty, that is—was able to get in working out where Angelina Upman had taken Hadiyyah. He didn’t give Azhar the information because he didn’t know where it would lead. Di Massimo’s brief was to find Angelina and report back. He was told to do whatever it took to find her because—according to Doughty’s tale—whatever it took was ultimately going to be funded by her dad. Only once Di Massimo knew where she was, it was a short journey from there to who’s-got-more-dosh and the answer to that was the extended Mura family. So he hired Squali to snatch her but what he told Doughty was that he couldn’t find her at all. Records show all communication between him and Doughty ended at the point he made his report.”

“Which was when?”

“December fifth.”

“What records are we talking about, Barbara?” Lynley asked quietly.

Another slight rush of colour to her cheeks. He reckoned that she hadn’t expected him to be sitting in Isabelle’s office as a party to this meeting. She had a few decisions to make as a result of his presence. He could only pray she made the right ones.

“Doughty’s,” she said. “He opened them to me, sir. He’s printing up the whole lot of them and he’ll be shipping them over to the bloke in Italy who’s dealing with that end of things once we give him the name. ’Course he’ll want someone to translate, but they’ll have someone for that.” She licked her lips, and he saw her swallow. She turned back to Isabelle and went on. “What I can’t work out is the ransom request.”

“There wasn’t one as I understand it,” Isabelle said.

“That’s the screw in the works,” Barbara acknowledged. “What I reckon is that once Di Massimo worked out how much money the Mura family has, he planned one of those typical Italian kidnappings. Think of it: Here’s a country with a big tradition of holding people for months to get what they want. Sometimes the demand comes quickly; sometimes they like to wait till the family is ready to blow itself to bits with worry. Look at the poor Getty kid all those years ago.”

“I doubt the Muras have pockets quite so deep as the Gettys,” Lynley said evenly, watching Barbara. Her upper lip looked damp.

“True. But what I reckon is everything depended on what Di Massimo wanted. Was it money, land, cooperation, stock options, political influence . . . who the bloody hell knows? I mean, how much do we know about the Muras, sir? What does Di Massimo know that we don’t?”

“You’re doing a great deal of ‘reckoning,’” Lynley said. His tone was dry and he felt, rather than saw, Isabelle glance his way.

“I was thinking the same,” she said to Havers.

“Well, right. Yes. Of course. But isn’t our part of the investigation to turn over what we have to this bloke in Italy . . . What’s his name, sir?”

“Salvatore Lo Bianco. But he’s been replaced. I’ve no idea who has the case now.”

“Right. Well. I expect we can sort that out with a phone call. Point is that it’s an Italian situation and it seems to me our part is finished.”

Of course, their part wasn’t finished at all, and Lynley waited for Havers to bring up all those things that she was leaving out of what was going for her report to the superintendent. The list of those things was topped by one-way tickets to Pakistan. The fact that she was saying nothing about them was so damning that Lynley felt its pressure upon his chest like a pallet of bricks.

Havers said, “Far as I can tell and far as the records’re going to show, no crime was committed on British soil, guv. Everything’s up to the Italians now.”

Isabelle nodded. She said, “Include that in your written report, Sergeant. I don’t want another day to pass without my seeing it on my desk.”

Havers remained where she was, obviously waiting for more. When nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, she said, “That’s it?”

“For now. Thank you.”

It was more than clear that Isabelle was dismissing her. It was additionally clear that she wasn’t dismissing Lynley. Havers caught this and Lynley saw her do so. She cast a look in his direction before she took herself out of the superintendent’s office.

When the door closed behind her, Isabelle stood. She went to her window and gazed at the sunny day outside, at what she could see of rooftops and fresh green treetops and in the distance St. James’s Park. Lynley waited. He knew more was coming from her or she would have dismissed him along with Barbara.

She went to a filing cabinet and brought out a manila folder. She returned to her desk. She handed it to him wordlessly, and he knew that whatever was within it was something he wasn’t going to want to see. He could tell that much from her expression, which seemed caught in the undecided no-man’s-land between hardness and compassion. The hardness came from the set of her jaw. The compassion came from her eyes.

She sat again. He put on his reading glasses and opened the folder. It contained a series of documents. They were official activities reports, but the activities they documented were unofficial in the extreme. Every out-of-line and off-the-record move Barbara Havers had made since the earlier time of being put to work as a member of John Stewart’s team was contained in the report of activities. Stewart had continued this surveillance of her after Isabelle had reassigned her. He had assigned two detective constables to shadow Havers, to check on her work or the lack thereof, to confirm the reasons for her every absence from the Yard. He’d verified details about her mother’s life in Greenford at the home of Florence Magentry. He’d identified every person with whom she met: Mitchell Corsico, the family of Taymullah Azhar, Dwayne Doughty, Emily Cass, Bryan Smythe. The only thing missing was SO12. There was no mention of the airline tickets to Pakistan. Lynley wasn’t sure why this was the case except that as it had to do with Barbara’s actions inside the Met’s actual buildings, perhaps there had been no need to shadow her. Or, he thought, perhaps John Stewart was holding back on this as the pièce de résistance on the off chance that Isabelle decided to do nothing about what his unauthorised investigation had revealed.

Lynley handed the report back when he’d finished it. He said the only thing he could. “You and I both know you’re going to have to do something about him, Isabelle. That he’d be using the Met’s manpower to conduct his own investigation . . . It’s outrageous and we both know that. Did any of this”—with what he hoped was a dismissive gesture at Stewart’s paperwork—“get in the way of Barbara’s completion of whatever John assigned her to do? If not, then what does it matter that she did this as well?”

Her gaze upon him was perfectly even and quintessentially Isabelle. She looked at him unspeaking for a good thirty seconds in which she kept her gaze on him before she said quietly, “Tommy.”

He had to break the look. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say and he certainly didn’t want to know what she might ask of him.

She said, “You know that Barbara’s completion of John’s assignments isn’t the point. Nor is the when and how of her completing them. You know that what occurred just now among the three of us says it all. I know you know that. In what we do, there’s no place for a sin of omission, no matter who’s involved.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do what needs to be done.”

He wanted to plead, which told him how far he himself had waded into the river into which Barbara Havers had dived headlong. But he did not do so. Instead he said, “Will you give me a few days to deal with this? To try to sort things out?”

“Do you actually suppose there’s something to sort at this point? More important, do you really think there’s something exculpatory that will come out of the sorting?”

“There probably isn’t, but I’m asking all the same.”

She picked up the folder and tapped the papers within it neatly so that they were aligned. She handed it to him and said, “Very well. This is your copy. I’ve another. Do what you must.”

SOUTH HACKNEY

LONDON

He was caught between anger and sorrow, in the land of others’ expectations of him. He asked himself what sort of person he seemed to be to other people and in particular to his longtime partner Barbara Havers. She clearly expected him to hold his tongue, to take her part, to be the breathing personification of like-a-bridge-over-troubled-water in her life, no matter what she did or how far out of order she took herself. This expectation on her part angered him: not only that she would have it but that he would have—through his own past actions—somehow schooled her into having it. And what, he wondered, did that say about him as an officer of the Met?

More, what did the information contained within John Stewart’s report say about Barbara, and what was he to do with what it said? He needed to think about this and to consider it from every angle, and he couldn’t do so standing in the corridor at the door to Isabelle’s office, so he took himself down to the underground car park—avoiding conversation with everyone on his way—and he climbed into the Healey Elliott. There, he opened the manila folder and read every word of the damning information inside and tried like the devil to think what it meant beyond what DI Stewart wanted it to show, which was Barbara’s normal means of doing business, with her the living embodiment of going her own way whenever the inclination came upon her.

From the first Barbara had been on the wrong end of things when it came to Hadiyyah’s disappearance in Italy. Like his personal snout inside the Met, she’d given the story to Mitchell Corsico and The Source. She’d done so in order to force Isabelle’s hand because she herself wanted to be in Italy, and he had to ask himself what this said about Barbara. Was it an indication of her love for Hadiyyah? Her love for Azhar? Or, more difficult to face, was it an indication of her own involvement in the child’s kidnapping for some reason that, as yet, he did not clearly see? And what in God’s name did it mean that in Isabelle’s presence she said nothing about those tickets to Pakistan? She was protecting Azhar, of course, and there could be only one reason for this, a reason that went far beyond whether Barbara loved the man or not: She was doing it because he needed protecting in this matter of his daughter’s kidnapping, obviously. But wasn’t the truth that he himself—Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley—had also said not a word to Isabelle about those tickets to Pakistan? So if Barbara was protecting Azhar for whatever reason, wasn’t the truth that he was protecting Barbara?

He forced his mind away from the whys and wherefores, and he directed it to the immediate problem: Stewart’s report and the evidence it contained. Among the other information that Barbara had omitted in Isabelle’s office was her visit to South Hackney, to someone that Stewart’s man had identified as Bryan Smythe. An address was included, the time and length of her call upon him, and her call upon Dwayne Doughty in Bow immediately upon the conclusion of her dealings with Smythe. It seemed, then, that Smythe was the logical place to begin. But Lynley had to admit to himself that the thought of beginning what could well end with Barbara’s sacking from the Met produced in him such a heaviness of spirit that it invaded his body as well, making the very effort of pushing his key into the Healey Elliott’s ignition a matter of will that he did not know if he possessed. How had they come to this moment? he wondered. Barbara, he thought, what in God’s holy name have you done?

He couldn’t bear to consider the answer to that question, so he started the car and he left the Yard and he took himself to South Hackney with as little thinking as possible involved, listening instead to Radio 4 and an amusing wordplay programme in which various celebrities matched wits with each other. It was a poor substitute for what he really wanted—which was total liberation from thought itself—but it did the trick for now.

He found the street in which Bryan Smythe lived without any trouble. It wasn’t a thoroughfare the salubrious nature of which encouraged him to park his car. Indeed, it was insalubrious in the extreme, but there was nothing for it but to guide the Healey Elliott to the kerb and to hope for the best.

What he concluded from Barbara’s actions on the day that she had called upon Smythe was that, whoever the bloke was, he was also involved in this business of Hadiyyah, Azhar, and Italy. He could see no other reason that Barbara would come to call upon the man and then go from him directly to Dwayne Doughty. So his expectation of Smythe was that the man would stonewall, and he was going to have to come up with a way to break through whatever barriers Smythe put up once he opened the front door upon Lynley’s knock upon it.

Smythe was nondescript, completely ordinary save for his dandruff, which was mightily impressive. Lynley had not seen such dandruff since he’d been at Eton and Snow-on-the-Mountain Treadaway had been his history master.

He took out his warrant card and introduced himself. Smythe looked from the police ID to Lynley to the police ID to Lynley again. He said nothing, but his jaw hardened. He looked beyond Lynley to the street. Lynley told him he’d like a word. Smythe said he was busy, but he sounded . . . Was that anger in his tone?

Lynley said, “This won’t take long, Mr. Smythe. If I might come in . . . ?”

“No, you may not” would have been the wise answer, followed by Smythe’s closing the door, striding to the phone, and ringing his solicitor. Even “What’s this about, then?” might have been the reasonable response of an innocent person. As would any indication that something untoward might have happened in the neighbourhood and here was an officer of the Met to ask him questions about it. But none of that was forthcoming from Smythe because no one guilty of something ever thought of the list of replies that an innocent person might make when faced unexpectedly with a policeman on his doorstep.

Smythe stepped back from the door and indicated with an impatient jerk of his head that Lynley could enter. Inside, Lynley saw, was an impressive collection of Rothko-esque paintings along with various other objets d’art. Not exactly what one expected to find in a South Hackney sitting room. Parts of the borough were on a galloping course towards gentrification, but Smythe’s home was extreme. As was the fact that he appeared to own an entire row of the terrace in which his house stood and had bashed his way from one house to the next in order to fashion a showplace of all of them.

He had money by the lorryful. But from what? Lynley doubted its source was on the up-and-up. He said to Smythe, “Your name has come up, Mr. Smythe, in an investigation into the kidnapping of a child in Italy.”

Smythe said at once and nearly by rote, “I know nothing about a kidnapping of any child in Italy.” His Adam’s apple, however, jumped in a rather revealing fashion.

“You don’t read the newspapers?”

“From time to time. Not recently, as I’ve been rather busy.”

“Doing?”

“What I do.”

“Which is?”

“Confidential.”

“Related to someone called Dwayne Doughty?”

Smythe said nothing, but he looked round as if with the wish that he could do something to move Lynley’s attention off him and onto one of his art pieces. He was, at that precise instant, probably bitterly regretting admitting Lynley into his house. He’d done it to look less guilty as if with the belief that a show of reluctant cooperation on his part would mean something other than having very little sense.

Lynley said, “Mr. Doughty is connected to this Italian kidnapping. You’re connected to Mr. Doughty. Since your work is”—with a gesture to acknowledge the room itself and its art collection—“quite obviously profitable, it leads me in the direction of believing that it also violates any number of laws.”

Unaccountably, then, and contrary to Lynley’s expectations of him, Smythe muttered, “Jesus Bloody Christ.”

Lynley raised an eyebrow expectantly. Calling upon the Saviour wasn’t the reaction he’d thought he might get. Nor was what came next from the man.

“I don’t know who you are, but let’s get this straight. I don’t bribe cops, no matter what you think.”

“How very good to know,” Lynley replied, “as I’m not here to be bribed. But I expect you see how the suggestion on your part doesn’t actually clarify your connection to Mr. Doughty, although it does leap in the direction of admitting you’re operating something here that’s illegal.”

Smythe seemed to be evaluating this for some reason. The reason became marginally clear when he said, “Did she give you my name?”

“She?”

“We both know who I mean. You’re from the Met. You’re a cop. So is she. And I’m not stupid.”

Not entirely, Lynley thought. He had to be speaking about Havers, so another connection was made. He said, “Mr. Smythe, what I know is that an officer of the Met came to see you and, after her call upon you, went directly to the office of a private investigator called Dwayne Doughty who was—earlier in the year—engaged in a search for a British child kidnapped in Italy. This same Mr. Doughty has been named by a man under arrest in Italy for his own involvement in the kidnapping. Now, the Smythe-to-Doughty business asks for conclusions to be drawn, and that’s my job. It also asks whether there might be Smythe-to-Doughty-to-bloke-under-arrest-in-Italy conclusions to be drawn as well, which is also my job. I can happily draw those conclusions or you can clarify. Frankly, I don’t know what we have here unless you tell me.” And when Smythe’s expression bordered on the complacent at the end of these remarks, Lynley added, “So I suggest you enlighten me lest the report I give to my guv indicates that a more thorough investigation of you is necessary.”

“I’ve told you. I work for Doughty occasionally. The work’s confidential.”

“A broad idea would be fine.”

“I compile information on cases he’s working on. I pass the information to him.”

“What’s the nature of the information?”

“Confidential. He’s an investigator. He investigates. He investigates people. I follow trails that they leave and I . . . Let’s say I map those trails, all right?”

Trails suggested only one thing in this day and age. “Using the Web?” Lynley said.

Smythe said, “Confidential, I’m afraid.”

Lynley smiled thinly. “You’re a bit like a priest, then.”

“Not a bad analogy.”

“And for Barbara Havers? Are you her priest as well?”

He looked confused. Clearly, he had not expected the river to course in this direction. “What about her? Obviously, she’s the cop who came to see me and she went from me to Doughty. You already know that. And as to what I told her or what sent her there . . . If I don’t keep my work confidential, Inspector . . . What did you say your name was?”

“Thomas Lynley.”

“Inspector Lynley. If I don’t keep my work confidential, I’m out of business. I’m sure you get that, eh? It’s a bit like your own work when you think about it.”

“As it happens, I’m not interested in what you told her, Mr. Smythe. At least not at present. I’m interested in why she showed up on your doorstep.”

“Because of Doughty.”

“He sent her to you?”

“Hardly.”

“She came on her own, then. For information, I daresay, since—if you work for Doughty—supplying information is your business. We seem to have come full circle in our conversation and what’s left is for me to repeat the obvious: Gathering information appears to be paying you quite well. From that and the look of your home, I expect what you’re doing can lead you to trouble.”

“You’ve said this.”

“As I noted. But your world, Mr. Smythe”—he glanced round the large room—“is about to undergo a seismic shift. Unlike Barbara Havers, I’m not here on my own behest. I’ve been sent, and I expect you can put the pieces together and come up with the reason why. You’re on the Met’s radar. You’re not going to be happy to be there. To use an analogy that I’m certain you’ll understand, you’re living in a house of cards and the wind has now begun to blow.”

“You’re investigating her, aren’t you?” he said, with dawning understanding. “Not me, not Doughty, but her.”

Lynley didn’t reply.

“So if I tell you—”

Lynley interrupted him. “I’m not here to make deals.”

“So why should I bloody—”

“You can do as you like.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“The simple truth.”

“The truth’s not simple.”

Lynley smiled. “As Oscar himself once said. But let me make it simple. At your own admission you look for trails and create ‘maps’ of them for Dwayne Doughty and, I expect, for others. As this pays you extraordinarily well by the look of your home, I’m going to assume you also ‘uncreate’ maps by removing those trails, an activity for which you charge rather more. Since Barbara Havers was here, I suspect—due to some glaring omissions in her reports to me—that she’s employing you to engage in uncreating and removing. What I need from you is confirmation of this fact. A simple nod of your head.”

“Or?”

“‘Or’?”

“There’s always an or,” he said angrily. “Spit it out for God’s sake.”

“I’ve mentioned the wind. I think that’s sufficient.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“I’ve said—”

“No! No! There’s always something bloody more with you lot. First it was her and I cooperated. Then it was her and him and I still cooperated. Now it’s you and where the hell is it going to end?”

“‘Him’?”

“The bloody Paki, all right? She came alone first. Then she brought him. Now you’re here and for all I know, the bloody Prime Minister is going to show up next.”

“She was here with Azhar.” That wasn’t in the report and how, Lynley wondered, had John Stewart missed that?

“Of course she was bloody here with Azhar.”

“When?”

“This morning. When d’you think?”

“What did she want?”

“My backup system. Every record, all my work. You name it, she wanted it.”

“That’s all?”

He looked away. He walked to one of his paintings—this one largely red with a blue stripe at the bottom that bled almost imperceptibly into a purple haze. Smythe gazed on it as if evaluating what would become of it once the appropriate Met officers started swarming round the place. “As I said,” he explained to the painting rather than to Lynley, “she wanted to hire me as well. One job only.”

“Its nature?”

“Complicated. I’ve not even done it yet. I’ve not even begun.”

“So its revelation should present no . . . no moral or ethical dilemma for you.”

Still, Smythe kept his gaze on the painting. Lynley wondered what he saw there, what anyone saw when they tried to interpret someone else’s intentions. Smythe finally said with a sigh, “It involves altering bank records and phone records. It involves a date change.”

“What sort of date change?”

“On an airline ticket. On two airline tickets.”

“Not their elimination?”

“No. Just the date. That and making them round-trip.”

Which would, Lynley thought, explain why Barbara had said nothing to Isabelle about those tickets to Pakistan that SO12 had uncovered. Altering them would remove suspicion from Azhar entirely, especially if the change involved the date of purchase. So he said, “Purchase date or flight date?” and he waited for what, at heart, he knew Smythe would say.

“Purchase,” he said.

“Are we talking about the airline’s records, Mr. Smythe, or something else?”

“We’re talking about SO12,” he said.

SOUTH HACKNEY

LONDON

He’d given up smoking long before he and Helen had married. But as Lynley stood with the key to the Healey Elliott in his hand, he longed for a cigarette. Mostly, it was for something to do other than what needed doing. But he had no cigarettes, so he got into the car, rolled down the window, and gazed sightlessly at the London street.

He understood why Barbara’s call upon Smythe with Taymullah Azhar in tow had not been part of John Stewart’s report. It had only occurred that morning, itself the reason she’d arrived late at the Yard. But he had no doubt that it would be included as an addendum that Stewart would hand over to Isabelle at the appropriate moment. The only question was when and what, if anything, he himself was going to do about it. Obviously, there was no stopping Stewart. There was only preparing Isabelle in advance.

In this, he saw that he had two options. He could either manufacture a reason that Barbara had paid a call on Bryan Smythe. Or he could report to Isabelle what he’d discovered and let matters develop from there. He’d asked the guv for time to sort all of this out but what, really, was there to sort at this point? The only saving grace that he could see was that his own call upon Smythe had obviated any tinkering the hacker might have been about to do inside the records of SO12, if he could, indeed, even get inside them in the first place. At least that blot on the copybook of Barbara’s career would not be present. As to everything else . . . The truth was that he didn’t know how far she was steeped in the sin of this mess and there was only one way to find out and he didn’t want to do it.

He’d never been a coward when it came to confrontations, so he had to ask himself why he was feeling such cowardice now. The answer seemed to be in his longtime partnership with Barbara. The truth was that she’d apparently gone bad, but his years working with her told him that, in spite of everything, her heart was good. And what in God’s name was he supposed to do about that? he asked himself.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

Salvatore’s removal from the kidnapping investigation put him in the position of ship-without-harbour. This left him daily slinking by the morning meeting of Nicodemo and his team, a displaced policeman trying to catch a word here and there that would allow him to know where the investigation stood. No matter that the child had been returned to her parents unharmed. There were things going on here that needed understanding. Unfortunately, Nicodemo Triglia was not the person to sort through them.

Salvatore caught the eye of Ottavia Schwartz on his fifth morning venture by the meeting. He went on his way but was gratified when a minute later, she came to find him. He was, ashamedly, even more gratified when the young woman murmured, “Merda. It goes nowhere,” but he was professional enough to give Nicodemo a minor show of support by murmuring back, “Give him time, Ottavia.”

She gave a sputter that communicated as you like and said, “Daniele Bruno, Ispettore.”

“The man with Lorenzo in the Parco Fluviale.”

“Sì. A family with very big money.”

“The Brunos? But not an old family, non è vero?” By this he meant, not old money handed down through the centuries.

“Twentieth century. It all comes from the great-grandfather’s business. There’re five great-grandsons and they all work for the family company. Daniele’s director of sales.”

“The product?”

“Medical equipment. They sell a lot of it if looks say anything.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they live on a compound outside Camaiore. Much property and all the houses together behind a great stone wall. Everyone’s married with children. Daniele has three. His wife’s an assistente di volo on the Pisa–London route.”

Salvatore felt a little rush of excitement at this connection to London. It was something. Perhaps it was insignificant, but it was something. He told Ottavia to look into the wife. Keeping it all very quiet, he said. “Puoi farlo, Ottavia?”

“Certo,” She sounded a little offended. Of course she could do this. Keeping things quiet was her middle name.

Shortly after they parted, Salvatore took a call from DI Lynley. The London man claimed that, as he did not know how to reach the new chief investigator, perhaps Salvatore could pass along some information they’d uncovered in London . . . ? Between the lines, Salvatore read the truth of the matter, which was that DI Lynley was kindly keeping him informed. He played along, assuring the other detective that he would indeed tell Nicodemo whatever Lynley wished him to know.

“Non è tanto,” Lynley said. The private investigator in London named by Di Massimo claimed that he had hired the Italian to look for the girl in Pisa but that Di Massimo had reported to him that the trail went dead at the airport. He was, in fact, sending a report to Salvatore in proof of this. “He claims,” Lynley said, “that once the trail went dead at the airport, everything from that point on had to have come from Di Massimo on his own initiative as he—Doughty—knows nothing of it, and there’s no evidence pointing otherwise.”

“How can there be no evidence?”

“There’s a computer technology wizard involved here in London, Salvatore. Chances are very good that he’s wiped all superficial traces of a connection between them. They’ll be somewhere deep on God only knows what kind of backup system there is, and we can certainly find them in time, but I think it’s going to come down to whatever can be unearthed at your end if you want to settle this quickly. And whatever you unearth, Salvatore . . . ? It’s going to have to be solid evidence.”

“Chiaro,” Salvatore said. “Grazie, Ispettore. But it is out of my hands now, as you know.”

“But not, I suspect, out of your mind or out of your heart.”

“È vero,” Salvatore said.

“So I’ll keep you informed. And you may pass information on to Nicodemo as you will.”

Salvatore smiled. The London officer was a very good man. He told Lynley of the wife of one Daniele Bruno: a flight attendant on the Pisa–Gatwick route.

“Any connection to London needs to be explored as well,” Lynley concluded. “Give me her name and I’ll see what I can do from this end.”

Salvatore did so. They rang off with promises to keep each other informed. And less than five minutes later he had his first piece of new information.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

It came from Captain Mirenda of the carabinieri. It came by special messenger. It was a copy of the original, which she was keeping, but it included a note from the captain in which she explained that a thorough search of the rooms above the barn at Villa Rivelli had turned it up. All of this information was contained on the cover page of three pages that were clipped together. Salvatore removed this top one and looked to see what he had been sent.

The second page comprised the front and back of a greeting card, unfolded so as to show it in its entirety on one sheet of paper. It was a smiley-face sun with no message printed. Salvatore glanced at it, removed it, and looked at the third page.

This was the message contained within the card. It was handwritten. It was in English. Salvatore could not translate the message completely, but he recognised key words.

He rang Lynley back at once. He knew he could have—should have—gone to speak with Nicodemo Triglia instead, not only because he was holding something that could indeed be vital to the case he was now assigned but also because, unlike himself, Nicodemo spoke English. But he told himself it was a case of quid pro quo, and when Lynley answered, he read him the message.

Do not be afraid to go with the man who gives you

this card, Hadiyyah. He will bring you to me.

Dad.

Lynley said, “God,” and then he translated the message into Italian. He said, “What remains is the handwriting. Is the message in cursive, Salvatore?”

It was, and thus they needed to see a sample of the Pakistani man’s handwriting. Could Ispettore Lynley get a sample? Could he fax it to Italy? Could he—

“Certo,” Lynley said. “But I expect there’s a source more immediate, Salvatore.” Taymullah Azhar would have filled out paperwork at the pensione where he had stayed in Lucca. This was Italian law, no? Signora Vallera would have that paperwork. There would not be a lot of writing upon it, but perhaps there would be enough . . . ?

Salvatore said that he would see to it at once. And in the meantime, he would send to Lynley a copy of the card and its contents, exactly as it had been sent to him.

“And the original?” Lynley said.

“It remains with Captain Mirenda.”

“For God’s sake, tell her to keep it safe,” Lynley said.

Salvatore went on foot to Pensione Giardino. It was a half-mad way of making a bargain with Fate. If he went by car, there would be nothing at the pensione in the handwriting of Hadiyyah Upman’s father. If he went on foot—walking briskly—there would be something he could use to identify the writer of the card as Taymullah Azhar.

The anfiteatro was filled with sunlight and activity when Salvatore arrived. A large group of tourists encircled a tour guide at the centre of the place, people were charging into and out of the shops in search of souvenirs, and most of the tables at the cafés were occupied. Tourist season was hard upon Lucca now, and in the coming weeks the town would become more and more crowded as guides with their duckling charges in tow began to explore the many churches and piazze.

The greatly pregnant owner of Pensione Giardino was washing windows, a small child in a pushchair next to her. She was putting a great deal of energy into the activity, and a fine sheen of perspiration glistened upon her smooth olive skin.

Salvatore introduced himself politely and asked her name. She was Signora Cristina Grazia Vallera and, Sì, Ispettore, she remembered the two Englishmen who stayed at the pensione. They were a policeman and the anguished father of the little girl who’d been kidnapped here in Lucca. By the grace of God, it had all ended well, no? The child had been found safe and healthy, and the newspapers were full of the happy conclusion to what could have been a most tragic tale.

“Sì, sì,” Salvatore murmured. He explained that he was there to check upon a few final details and he would like to inspect any documents in the signora’s possession that the kidnapped girl’s papà had filled out. If there was anything else he had written upon in addition to those documents, that would be helpful as well.

Signora Vallera dried her hands on a blue towel tucked into the apron she was wearing. She nodded and indicated the pensione’s front door. She guided the pushchair into the dim, cool entry of the place and invited Salvatore to sit in the breakfast room while she searched for something that might answer his need. She kindly offered him a caffè while he waited. He demurred politely and said he would prefer to entertain her bambino while she assisted him.

“Il suo nome?” he enquired politely as he dangled his car keys in front of the toddler.

“Graziella,” she said.

“Bambina,” he corrected himself.

Graziella was not overly enthusiastic about Salvatore’s car keys. Give her a few years, he thought, and she’d be delighted to have them dangled in front of her eyes. As it was, she watched them curiously. But she just as curiously watched Salvatore’s lips as he made a series of bird noises that she doubtless found strange emanating from a human being.

In short order, Signora Vallera returned. She had with her a registration book in which her guests filled out their names, their street addresses, and—should they wish—their email addresses as well. She also had with her a comment card with which each of her rooms was supplied in order that she might better meet the needs of her guests in the future.

Salvatore thanked her and took these things to a breakfast table beneath one of the front windows that the signora had been washing. He sat and unfolded from his pocket the copy of the card that Captain Mirenda had sent to him. He began with the reception book and he went on to the comment card on which Taymullah Azhar had thanked Signora Vallera for her great kindness to him during his stay, adding that he would have changed nothing about the establishment other than the reason that had necessitated his stay within its walls.

It was the comment card that Salvatore found most useful. He set it next to the copy of the card from Captain Mirenda. He took a deep breath and began his perusal of first one, then the other. He was not an expert, but he did not need to be one. The handwriting on each was identical.