Just One Evil Act

become so nationalist over the years, it was practically Nazi in its leaning. She decided flag waving was the way to go. Brits versus the Pasta Eaters. But not yet. Not till she had him hooked.

He finally said, “All right. But this had better be very good, Barb.”

She said, “It is,” and just to be pleasant, she allowed him to name the place of their meeting.

He chose Leicester Square, the half-price ticket booth. The real half-price ticket booth, he told her, not some wannabe. There was a fancy notice board next to the real one where tickets on offer for the dramas, comedies, and musicals were announced. He’d meet her there.

She kept her voice airy. “I’ll wear a rose in my lapel.”

“Oh, I expect I’ll know you by the sweat of your desperation,” he said.

They set up a time, and she got there early. Leicester Square was, as usual, a terrorist’s wet dream, with the crowds only getting worse as summer came on. Now there were masses of tourists gathered at open-air restaurants, in front of buskers, buying tickets for the cinema, and attempting to negotiate terms for theatrical productions in need of an audience. By mid-July the masses would have morphed into hordes, and moving through them would be nigh impossible.

She planted herself in front of the notice board and made a show of studying its offerings. Musicals, musicals, musicals, musicals. Plus Hollywood celebrities trying to be stage actors. Shakespeare was spinning in his grave, she reckoned.

She was seven and a half minutes into listening to various debates all round her—what to see, how much to spend, whether Les Miz could possibly run for yet another century or maybe two—when the scent of aftershave worked on her like smelling salts. Mitchell Corsico was at her side.

She said, “What the bloody hell are you wearing? Essence of horse? Christ, Mitchell.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Isn’t the get-up enough for you?” How long, she wondered, could one man possibly keep wearing clothes that suggested a bloke on a quest to find Tonto?

He said, “You wanted this meeting, right? So it needs to be important or I’m not a happy horseman.”

“How does an Italian cover-up sound?”

He glanced round. The jostling of people trying to see the notice board was something of a trial, so he moved towards the edge of the square in the direction of Gerrard Street and its one-hundred-yard claim of being London’s Chinatown. Barbara followed. He planted himself squarely in front of her, then, and said, “What’re you talking about? You better not be playing me.”

“The Italians have the cause of death. They’re not saying officially what it is. They don’t want the papers getting a whiff of it because they don’t want to start a panic. Either among the people or in the economy. Is that enough for you?”

His gaze shifted from her to a balloon seller to her again. “Could be,” he said. “What’s the cause?”

“A strain of E. coli. A super strain. A deadly strain. The worst there is.”

His eyes narrowed. “How d’you know this?”

“I know it because I know it, Mitchell. I was there when the call came through from the rozzers.”

“‘Came through’? Where?”

“DI Lynley. He got the word from the chief investigator in Lucca.”

Mitchell’s eyebrows locked. He was, she knew, evaluating her words. He wasn’t a fool. Content was one thing. Meaning was another. The fact that she would bring Lynley into anything at all was raising his warning hairs.

He said, “Why would you be telling me? That’s what I’m wondering.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to me.”

“Bloody hell, Mitchell. You know E. coli comes from food, don’t you? Contaminated food.”

“So she ate something bad.”

“We’re not talking about a single vinegar crisp, mate. We’re talking about a supply of food. Who knows what? Spinach, broccoli, minced beef, tinned tomatoes, lettuce. For all I know it got baked into her lasagna. But the point is, if the word gets out, that whole industry in Italy takes a hit to the solar plexus. A whole section of their economy—”

“You can’t be suggesting there’s a lasagna industry.”

“You know what I mean.”

“So maybe she had a burger somewhere and a worker went to the loo and didn’t wash his hands before stacking on the tomatoes?” He shifted his weight from one cowboy-booted foot to the other and pushed his Stetson farther back on his head. He was garnering one or two curious glances from people who looked to be seeking whatever violin case or other receptacle in which they were supposed to deposit appreciative ten-pence pieces for his costuming, but there weren’t many of those since, in Leicester Square, far more interesting sights existed than the one presented by a London man in a cowboy get-up. “And anyway, the fact that only one person died . . . That pretty much supports the idea, doesn’t it? One person, one burger, one bad tomato.”

“With this bloke, whoever he was, and assuming they even serve burgers in Lucca, Italy—”

“Christ. You know what I mean. The burger’s an example. Say it was a salad. What about that salad with tomatoes and that Italian cheese and whatever that green crap is they put on it? That leafy bit.”

“I look like I would know that, Mitchell? Come on, I’m giving you a significant heads-up on a story that’s going to break in Italy at any moment, only you now have the edge because, believe me, the cops and the health blokes over there aren’t about to release it and cause a stampede away from Italian products.”

“So you say.” But he wasn’t a fool. “Why’re you into this anyway, Barb? This got to do with . . . ? Where’s our Love Rat Dad these days?”

There was no way she wanted him anywhere near Azhar. She said, “Haven’t spoken to him. He went to Lucca for the funeral. I expect he’s back now. Or still there with the kid, getting her packed. Who the bloody hell knows? Listen, you can do what you want with this story, mate. I think it’s gold. You think it’s lead? Fine, don’t run it. There’re other papers who’d be happy to—”

“I didn’t say that, did I? I just don’t want this to be another bomb like the other.”

“What d’you mean, ‘bomb’?”

“Well, let’s face it, Barb, the kid was found.”

Barbara stared at the man. She wanted so badly to punch his Adam’s apple that her fingernails clawed at the skin of her palms. She said slowly as her blood pounded so hard in her head that she thought she would soon see stars, “Too right, Mitch. That was a blow for your lot. So much better to have had a corpse. Mutilated, too. That would move those copies right off the newsstand.”

“I’m only saying . . . Look, this is an ugly business. You know that. Fact is, you and I wouldn’t be talking in the first place if you thought it was anything else.”

“If we’re talking ugly, Italian cops and Italian politicos in bed with each other is bloody ugly. That’s your story, at the cost of an Englishwoman’s life with more lives in jeopardy. You can take it or leave it to another rag. Decision is yours.”

She turned and began to stride towards Charing Cross Road. She would walk the distance back to New Scotland Yard. She needed the time to cool off, she reckoned.

WAPPING

LONDON

Dwayne Doughty had lots of ideas on the subject of how Emily Cass afforded her flat in Wapping High Street but he decided not to pursue them. He could tell, however, that Bryan Smythe was mentally listing the potential sources of income allowing her to occupy a second-floor conversion in a Grade II–listed warehouse overlooking the Thames. She couldn’t possibly own it, Smythe was thinking. Therefore she had it on let. But the cost would be enormous. She couldn’t pay it on her own. There was a man involved then, depend upon it. She was— gasp!—a kept woman. Or someone’s live-in lover, more likely. In exchange for sexual favours accomplished in the astounding athletic positions of which a woman in her physical condition was capable, she domiciled herself within brick walls, exposed beams and pipes, and mod cons of stainless steel. It was a subject worthy of some considerable teeth gnashing. Doughty reckoned Smythe’s poor molars would be worn to