Just One Evil Act

this, including a call upon his estranged wife and their children as well as proof of his own presence in Berlin at the time of Hadiyyah’s disappearance.

“Ah, yes, Berlin,” Salvatore said. “A conference, vero?”

Azhar nodded. A conference of microbiologists, he said.

“Many of them?”

Perhaps three hundred, Azhar told him.

“Tell me, what does a microbiologist do? Forgive my ignorance. We policemen . . . ?” Salvatore smiled regretfully. “Our lives, they are very narrow, you see.” He put a packet of sugar into his caffe. He took another biscotto and let it melt on his tongue like the other.

Azhar explained, although he didn’t look convinced by Salvatore’s declaration of ignorance. He spoke about the classes he taught, the graduate and postgraduate students he worked with, the studies carried out in his laboratory, and the papers he wrote as a result of those studies. He spoke of conferences and colleagues as well.

“Dangerous things, these microbes, I would think,” Salvatore said.

Azhar explained that microbes came in all shapes and sizes and levels of danger. Some, he said, were completely benign.

“But one does not interest oneself with those that are benign?” Salvatore said.

“I do not.”

“Yet to protect yourself from the danger of exposure to them? This must be crucial, eh?”

“When one works with dangerous microbes, there are many safeguards,” Azhar informed him. “And laboratories are differently designated according to what’s studied within them. Those that have higher biohazard levels have more safeguards built into them.”

“Si, si, capisco. But let me ask: What, really, is the point of studying such dangerous little things as these microbes?”

“To understand how they mutate,” Azhar said, “to develop a treatment should one be infected by them, to increase the response time when one is trying to locate the source. There are many reasons to study these microbes.”

“Just as there are many types of microbes, eh?”

“Many types of microbes,” he agreed. “As vast as the universe and mutating all the time.”

Salvatore nodded thoughtfully. He poured more caffe into his cup from the crockery jug and held it up to both Birgit and Azhar. Birgit nodded; Azhar shook his head. He tapped his fingers against the tabletop and looked beyond Salvatore towards the door of the room. Hadiyyah’s high, excited chattering came to them. She was speaking Italian. Children, he thought, were so quick to pick up languages.

“And in your laboratory, Dottore? What is being studied there? And is this laboratory a . . . what did you call it? A biohazard laboratory?”

“We study the evolutionary genetics of infectious diseases,” he said.

“Molto complesso,” Salvatore murmured.

This required no translation. “It is complex indeed,” Azhar said.

“Do you favour one microbe over another in this biohazard laboratory of yours, Dottore?”

“Streptococcus,” he said.

“And what do you do with this Streptococcus?”

Azhar seemed thoughtful at this. He frowned and once again his eyebrows drew together. He explained his hesitation by saying, “Forgive me. It is difficult to—forgive me—to simplify what we do for a layman’s understanding.”

“Certo,” Salvatore acknowledged. “Ma provi, Dottore.”

Azhar did so after another moment of thinking. He said, “Perhaps to make it simple, it’s best to say that we engage in a process that allows us to answer questions about the microbe.”

“Questions?”

“About its pathogenesis, emergence, evolution, virulence, transmission . . .” Azhar paused to give Birgit time to work upon the more complicated words in Italian.

“And the reason for all this?” Salvatore asked. “I mean, the reason for all this in your laboratory?”

“The studying of mutations and how they affect virulence,” he said.

“In other words, how the mutation makes the microbe more deadly?”

“This is correct.”

“How the mutation makes the microbe more likely to kill?”

“This is also correct.”

Salvatore nodded thoughtfully. He observed Azhar at greater length than was called for by their conversation about his work. This obviously told the Pakistani man that something was up and, considering that he had been asked to turn his passport over to the police, what was up was obviously the death of his daughter’s mother and its possible connection to his own work.

Azhar said with apparent great care, “You are asking me these questions for a reason, Inspector. May I know what it is?”

Instead of replying in answer, Salvatore asked, “What happens to these microbes of yours if they are transported, Dottore? What I mean is, what happens to them if someone transports them from one place to another?”

“It depends on how they’re transported,” Azhar said. “But I don’t understand why you ask me this, Inspector Lo Bianco.”

“So they can indeed be transported?”

“They can. But again, Inspector, you ask me these questions because—”

“The kidneys of an otherwise healthy woman fail,” Salvatore cut in. “Obviously, there must be a reason for this.”

Azhar said nothing at all in reply. He was still as a statue, as if any movement he made would tell a tale he did not wish to be told.

“So you see, we ask you to remain in Italy for a bit of time,” Salvatore went on. “You would wish, perhaps, to have an English-speaking attorney at this point? You would wish, perhaps, to see to it that little Hadiyyah has someone to care for her in the event—”

“I will care for Hadiyyah,” Azhar said abruptly. But he sat so stiffly in his chair that Salvatore could imagine every muscle in his body tensing as all the implications behind Salvatore’s questions, his own frank responses, and the advice about an avvocato fell upon him.

“What I would suggest, Dottore,” Salvatore said carefully, “is your preparation for all possible outcomes to this conversation you and I are having.”

Azhar rose then. He said quietly, “I must go to my daughter now, Inspector Lo Bianco. I have promised her that we will take flowers to her mother’s grave. I will keep that promise.”

“As a father should,” Salvatore said.

CHELSEA

LONDON

The glorious May weather made Lynley long for a convertible as he coursed along the river. There were other routes to get to Chelsea from New Scotland Yard, but none of them provided what first Millbank and then Grosvenor Road provided on this day: trees bursting forth with brilliant green leaves still untouched by the city’s dust, dirt, and pollution; the sight of runners taking exercise on the wide pavement that followed the course of the Thames; barges in the water and pleasure craft heading towards Tower Bridge or Hampton Court. Gardens were brilliant with grass renewed and with shrubbery bearing its new spring growth. It was a fine day to be alive, he thought. He breathed in life deeply and felt momentarily at peace with his world.

That had not been the case a few minutes earlier when he’d reported to Superintendent Ardery the phone