Just One Evil Act

Deborah’s father, Joseph Cotter, rose to his feet and said, “Afternoon, m’lord. A coffee?”

Lynley waved Cotter back to his seat. He fetched another chair from the terrace at the top of the steps that led to the house’s basement kitchen. He joined them at the table and took a look at the remains of their meal. Salad, a dish with green beans and almonds, lamb bones littering their plates, the tail end of a loaf of crusty bread, a bottle of red wine. Cotter had been cooking, obviously. Deborah’s talents were artistic, but her artistry was decidedly minimal in the kitchen. As for St. James . . . If he managed marmite on toast, it was cause for massive celebration.

“How old is Alaska?” he enquired, preparatory to giving his opinion.

“Lord, I don’t know,” Deborah said. “I think we got him . . . Was I ten years old, Simon?”

“He can’t possibly be seventeen,” Lynley said. “How many lives can he have?”

“I think he’s been through eight of them at least,” St. James told him. He said to his wife, “Perhaps fifteen.”

“Me or the cat?”

“The cat, my love.”

“Then I proclaim his mousing days . . . still ongoing,” Lynley said. He made a hasty benediction over the animal, who was at that moment attacking a fallen leaf with an enthusiasm that suggested he thought it was dinner.

“There you have it,” Deborah said to her husband. “Tommy knows best.”

“Having vast experience with felines?” St. James asked.

“Having vast experience of knowing with whom I ought to agree when paying a social call,” Lynley said. “I had a feeling that Deborah was on the side of mousing. She’s always been an advocate for your animals. Where’s the dog?”

“Being punished, if one can actually punish a dachshund,” Deborah told him. “She was being far too insistent about having her share of lamb, and she’s been put back into the kitchen.”

“Poor Peach.”

“You only say that because you weren’t present to witness her machinations,” St. James told him.

“We call it ‘love eyes,’” Deborah added. “She casts them upon one and it’s impossible to deny her.”

Lynley chuckled. He leaned back in his chair and took a final moment to enjoy their company, the day, the simple pleasure of gathering in the garden for lunch. Then he said, “It’s business I’ve come on, actually,” and as Joseph Cotter then rose as if to make himself scarce, Lynley told him to stay if he wished as there was no secret involved in his mission in Chelsea.

But Cotter said it was time for him to do the washing up. He took a tray from its resting place on the lawn and loaded it efficiently. Deborah helped him, and in a moment she and her father left the two men alone.

“What sort of business?” St. James asked him.

“Scientific, actually.” Lynley brought him into the picture regarding the death of Angelina Upman in Italy. He related the details from the phone call Salvatore Lo Bianco had made to him. St. James listened in his usual fashion, his angular face reflective.

At Lynley’s conclusion, he was silent for a moment before he said, “Could there have been a laboratory error? Having an isolated case of so virulent a strain of bacteria . . . To me, it doesn’t suggest murder as much as it suggests human error in examining what came from the dead woman’s gut. The point at which bacterial involvement is suspected . . . ? That should have happened while she was alive. It’s going to be difficult for Lo Bianco to prove anything, isn’t it? For example, how the E. coli entered her system at all.”

“I suppose that’s why he wants to begin with the lab. Will you do it for me?”

“Pay a call at University College? Of course.”

“Azhar claims his lab’s studying Streptococcus. Lo Bianco’s looking for anything else they might be studying. As for transport . . .” Lynley shifted in his chair. Movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Alaska had dived into the herbaceous border and a furious battle appeared to be going on among a patch of violas. He said, “Could he have transported a bacteria safely from London to Lucca, Simon?”

St. James nodded. “It merely needs to be put on a medium that allows it to survive, a broth and a solidifier. Onto the solid, one would streak the bacteria. Placed onto a petri dish, it not only would survive but grow.”

“How much would be needed to kill someone?”

“That depends, doesn’t it?” St. James said. “Toxicity is the key.”

“I have the impression from Salvatore that the E. coli we’re seeking is particularly toxic.”

“I’ll have to be careful, then,” Simon said. He folded his linen table napkin and pushed himself to his feet. He was disabled, so rising was always a rather awkward business for St. James, but Lynley knew better than to offer his assistance.

VICTORIA

LONDON

When Barbara saw who was ringing her mobile, she ducked into the stairwell to take the call. There were voices echoing up the stairs from somewhere far below, but they disappeared as whoever was climbing left the stairwell for one of the lower floors. She said to Azhar, “How are you? Where are you? What’s happening over there?” and although she tried to keep from her voice the desperate urgency that she was feeling, she could tell from his hesitation prior to responding that he heard it and wondered about it.

“I have a solicitor,” he told her. “He is called Aldo Greco. I wanted to give you his phone number, Barbara.”

She had a pencil but no paper, and she searched the floor frantically for something to write on before she had to give in and use the faded yellow wall. She took the number down for later programming into her mobile. She said, “Good. That’s an important step.”

“He speaks English very well,” Azhar said. “I’m told that it is lucky indeed that I found myself in need of a solicitor while being detained in this part of Italy. I’m told had this . . . this situation occurred in one of the small towns deeply south of Naples, it would be more difficult as a solicitor would have had to be willing to come from a larger city. I do not know why this is the case. It is merely what they told me.”

Barbara knew he was only making conversation. Her heart cracked a little at the thought that he would have to do this with her, his friend. She said, “What’s the embassy going to do? Have you spoken to anyone there?”

He said that he had, that it was the embassy who had given him a list of solicitors in Tuscany. But aside from that list, they could do little else for him beyond phoning his relatives, which he hardly wanted them to do. “They say that when a British national gets into difficulties on foreign soil, it’s up to that British national to get himself out of those difficulties.”

“Nice of them, informing you of that,” Barbara noted sardonically. “I always did wonder what our bloody taxes are going for.”

“Of course they have other concerns,” he said. “And as they do not know me and only have my word that there is no reason for the police to wish to question me . . . I suppose I can understand.”

Barbara found she could see him even without his presence. He’d be wearing one of the crisp white shirts he usually wore, she reckoned, along with trousers that were dark and simple. Cut well to fit him, the clothing would inadvertently reveal his slender frame. He’d always looked so delicate, she thought, so insubstantial when compared to other men. His appearance along with how well she knew him—and she knew him well, she told herself—spoke of his essential goodness. Which was, at the end of the day, why she gave him the information he needed in order to prepare himself for what was coming. This wasn’t about her loyalty to anyone, she told herself. This was about basic fairness.

She said, “Her kidney failure was caused by a toxin, Azhar. Shiga toxin it’s called.”

There was silence for a moment. Then he said, “What?” as if he hadn’t heard her clearly or, hearing her, couldn’t quite believe what she was telling him.

“DI Lynley rang the Italian bloke for me. He got the information.”

“From Chief Inspector Lo Bianco?”