Just One Evil Act

“That’s the name. This bloke Lo Bianco said that Shiga toxin caused her kidneys to fail.”

“How is this possible? The strain of E. coli that results in Shiga toxin—”

“She picked it up somewhere, the E. coli. Apparently a bloody nasty strain of it. The doctors didn’t know what they were dealing with because of her earlier problems with the pregnancy, so they did a few basic tests and when the tests were negative or whatever they gave her a course of antibiotics—”

“Oh my God,” he murmured.

Barbara said nothing, and after a moment, he seemed to begin thinking aloud because he went on in a meditative tone with, “This is why he asked me about . . .” And then his voice altered to insistence as he said, “It has to be a mistake, Barbara. For one person alone to die from this? No. Virtually impossible. This is a bacteria, E. coli. It infects a food supply. Someone else would fall ill. Many people would fall ill because they would eat from the same food supply as Angelina. Do you see what I mean? This cannot have happened. There has to be a laboratory error.”

“As to laboratories, Azhar . . . You see where they’re heading, don’t you? The Italian coppers? With the whole idea of laboratories?”

He was silent then. The pieces were clicking into place. Or at least that was what Barbara had to believe. He wasn’t speculating in this silence, he wasn’t wondering, and he wasn’t planning his next move. He was merely concluding, completing for himself the chain of events that began with Angelina’s disappearance from London with their daughter in tow and ended with her death in Lucca.

He finally said quietly, “Streptococcus, Barbara.”

“What?”

“This is what we study in my laboratory at University College: Streptococcus. Some laboratories study more than one bacteria. We do not. We study more than one strain of it, of course. But only strains of Streptococcus. Of personal interest to me is the Strep that causes meningitis in newborn infants.”

“Azhar. You don’t have to tell me this.”

“The mother, you see,” he said insistently as if she hadn’t spoken, “passes it to the infant as the baby travels through the birth canal. From this develops—”

“I believe you, Azhar.”

“—the infant’s meningitis. We’re seeking a way to prevent this.”

“I understand.”

“And there are other forms as well, other forms of Strep that we study in the lab since the graduate students are working on dissertations and the postgraduates are working on papers to be published. But the one I study . . . It is as I said. And of course Angelina was pregnant so they will ask about this, won’t they? How coincidental is it that I would study a bacteria found in pregnant women? And they will wonder as you are wondering because, after all, I arranged the kidnapping of my own child—”

“Azhar, Azhar.”

“I did not harm Angelina,” he said. “You cannot think I harmed her.”

She hadn’t been thinking that. She couldn’t even bring herself close to thinking that. But the truth was that in this entire Italian situation, there was more than one kind of harm, and Azhar knew this as well as Barbara herself. She said, “The kidnapping. Those tickets to Pakistan. You have to see how it’s going to look in conjunction with her death if word gets out.”

“Only you and I know about these things, Barbara.” His voice was wary.

“What about Doughty and Smythe?”

“They work for us,” he said. “We do not work for them. They’ve been instructed . . . You must believe me because if you of all people do not believe . . . I did not harm her. Yes, the kidnapping was a terrible thing to arrange, but how else could she ever be made to experience what it feels like when your child is there one day and gone the next and you have no idea . . . ?”

“Pakistan, Azhar. One-way tickets. Lynley knows about them. And he’s doing his homework.”

“You are not thinking,” he cried. “Why would I purchase tickets for July but arrange Angelina’s death in May? Why would I do that when I would have no need of tickets to Pakistan with Angelina dead?”

Because, Barbara thought, those tickets absolve you of suspicion and I did not see that until this moment because I couldn’t see it until I learned how Angelina Upman died. She said none of this, but her silence seemed to tell Azhar that something more was required of him, if not now then the next time Inspector Lo Bianco wanted to question him.

He said, “If you think I harmed her, you must ask yourself where I got this bacteria. Of course, someone somewhere in England studies it and perhaps in London but I do not know who. And yes, of course, this is an easy enough thing for me to find out. So I could have found out. But so could anyone else.”

“I see that, Azhar. But you have to ask how likely it is . . .” And here she paused because she had to consider what she owed: not only to Lynley, to Azhar, to Hadiyyah, but also to herself. She said, “The thing is . . . you lied to me once and—”

“I do not lie now! And when I did lie . . . How could I tell you what I had planned? Would you have allowed me to go forward and kidnap her? No, you would not. An officer of the police? How could I have expected this of you? It was something that had to be done on my own.”

As murder is generally done, she thought.

A silence endured between them, broken finally by Azhar. “Is there nothing you are willing to do to help me now?” he asked.

“I haven’t said that.”

“But it’s what you think, isn’t it? ‘I must distance myself from this man because if I do not, it could cost me everything.’”

Which was, Barbara thought wryly, not that far off from what DI Lynley had told her. Everything was on the line for her unless she could think of a way to get herself one step ahead of the Italian police.

THE WEST END

LONDON

Mitchell Corsico was the way, she decided. Once she programmed the phone number of Azhar’s solicitor into her mobile and rubbed it off the stairwell’s wall, she rang the reporter and said, “We need to meet. Angelina Upman’s dead. Why’d you blokes not pick up on the story?”

His fire wasn’t lit. “Who says we didn’t pick up on the story?”

“I sure as hell didn’t see it.”

“Are you saying I’m responsible for what you see or don’t see in the paper?”

“Are you saying it was in the paper but it didn’t make front-page news? You are seriously out of the loop, son. We better meet, pronto.”

He still didn’t bite, the wily bastard. “Tell me why this is front-page news, and I’ll tell you if we need to meet, Barb.”

She refused to be irritated by the bloke’s arrogance. She said, “Did it even make The Source, Mitchell? A British girl is kidnapped from a crowd of people, then she’s found stowed in a convent in the Italian Alps under the care of a mental case who thinks she’s a nun, then her mother dies unexpectedly. What part of this isn’t the kind of story that’s meat and potatoes to you lot?”

“Hey, she made page twelve. If she’d done us a favour and offed herself, she’d’ve made page one, but what can I tell you? She didn’t, so she got buried inside.” He guffawed and added, “Pardon the pun.”

“And what if she actually did you blokes a real page-one favour and died in a way that the powers in Italy want hushed up?”

“What, are you saying the Prime Minister killed her? What about the Pope?” Another irritating guffaw from the bloke. “She died in hospital, Barb. We got all the facts. She slipped into a coma and she never came out of it. Her kidneys were done for. So what’re you suggesting: that someone tiptoed into her hospital room and put kidney poison in her drip bag?”

“I’m suggesting you and I need to talk and I’m not prepared to talk till I see your face.”

She allowed him to dwell on this while she herself feverishly considered which of the many ways possible would be best to spin the story in order to hook The Source. Politically the rag had