Just One Evil Act

“You know, of course, that there are ways to discern a forgery from a real document,” Salvatore told him. “There are experts in forgery—forensic experts—who spend all day doing such work. They look for special signs, marks of hesitation that the true writer of something would not make in the course of penning a note. You know this, si?”

“The professor is not an idiot,” Greco commented. “He has answered your question, Salvatore.”

Salvatore pointed out the word khushi. “And this?” he said to Azhar.

Azhar confirmed that it was his pet name for his daughter, something he had called her from the moment of her birth. It meant happiness, he explained.

“And this name khushi . . . you alone called her that?” And when Azhar confirmed that this was the case, “Just between the two of you?”

Azhar frowned. “I don’t . . . What exactly do you mean, Inspector?”

“I mean was this something said in private only?”

Azhar shook his head. “It was not a secret. Anyone who witnessed us together would know that this is what I call her.”

“Ah.” Salvatore nodded. It was nice to know in advance what direction Aldo Greco would take if things proceeded as he expected them to proceed. He took the copy of the card from Azhar and returned it to the manila envelope in which he’d carried it to the pensione. “Grazie, Professore,” he said.

In a movement that was nearly imperceptible, Azhar blew out a long breath. It was over, the expiration said, whatever “it” had been.

Aldo Greco, however, was not stupid. He said, “What else, Ispettore Lo Bianco?”

Salvatore smiled in acknowledgement of the attorney’s wisdom in this situation. He said to Azhar, “Now we speak of Berlin.”

“Berlin?”

Salvatore watched him closely as he nodded. “You told me there were many microbiologists in Berlin when you were there for your conference last month, vero?”

“What has Berlin to do with anything?” Greco asked as he translated Salvatore’s words.

“I think the professore knows very well what Berlin has to do with, Dottore,” Salvatore murmured.

“I do not,” Azhar said.

“Certo, you do,” Salvatore said expansively, his voice quite pleasant. “Berlin is your alibi for the moment of your daughter’s abduction, no? You have insisted upon that from the very first, and I will say that everything you claimed about Berlin has proven itself to be God’s own truth.”

“Then . . . ?” Greco asked with a glance at his watch. Time was of the essence, he was saying. His own time was far too valuable to be spent beating round bushes.

Salvatore said, “Tell me, Dottore, about the nature of this conference once again.”

“What has this to do with the matter in hand?” Signor Greco demanded. “If, as you say, the professor’s alibi has been confirmed for the time of his daughter’s kidnapping—”

“Si, si,” Salvatore said. “But now we speak of other things, my friend.” And with a look at Azhar, “Now we speak of the death of Angelina Upman.”

Azhar was absolute stone. It was as if his mind had begun screaming at once: do nothing, say nothing, wait, wait, wait. And this was good advice that his mind was giving him, Salvatore acknowledged silently. But the vein throbbing in his temple was betraying his body’s reaction to the change of subject.

An innocent man would have no such reaction, and Salvatore knew this. What he also thus knew was that the London professor was well aware that Angelina Upman’s death was far more than the result of an unfortunate misdiagnosis on the part of her doctors.

He’d very nearly got away with it. Just a few hours more on the day Salvatore had requested his passport and he’d have been back in London, from where only the lengthy and complicated process of extradition could have wrested him, if it managed to wrest him at all.

Greco said abruptly, “Say nothing,” to Azhar. Then he turned in his chair and went on to Salvatore with, “I insist that you explain yourself, Ispettore, before I allow my client to reply. What is this you’re now talking about?”

“I’m talking about murder,” Salvatore told him.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Lynley waited until late in the day to speak to Barbara Havers, two hours after Isabelle Ardery had buttonholed him in her office. She’d wanted to know how his “sorting out” was going, and who could blame her? On her watch, an officer under her command had gone off the rails and was, for all intents and purposes, continuing to do so. Lynley’s brief was to complete the incomplete picture of John Stewart’s reports on Barbara’s activities, but he didn’t know how to do it without sinking Barbara’s entire career.

Part of him was shouting that it bloody well deserved to be sunk. Her connection to Mitchell Corsico alone was enough to put her back in uniform. When one took into account everything else—from withholding information to outright lying about details relevant to a case—she was finished in police work. He knew this intellectually. It was emotionally that he couldn’t accept that there were consequences involved and that Barbara Havers had to face them. His heart was arguing that she’d had very good reasons for betraying every tenet of their profession and, in time, everyone would accept that.

That was, of course, the lie. Not only would everyone not accept it, it was a form of insanity on his part to expect them to do so. He himself couldn’t accept what she’d done. He wouldn’t, he knew, be in so much turmoil if he wholeheartedly embraced how Barbara had behaved.

He chose the Met’s library for his meeting with Barbara. Any other place and they would be seen. At this time of day, so late in the afternoon, it was unlikely that anyone else would be on the thirteenth floor. So he asked her to join him there, and there he waited. She came in reeking of cigarette smoke. She’d had a fag in one of the stairwells, another infraction but it mattered little set beside everything else that had been going on.

They walked to one of the windows. From here, the London Eye dominated the skyline, with each of its capsules crowded with spectators, and the spires of Parliament poked hopefully upward, towards a sky that today was the colour of old pewter. It exactly matched his mood, Lynley thought.

“Been there?” Havers said to him.

For a moment he didn’t know what she meant till he glanced at her and saw that she was looking upon the enormous Ferris wheel. He shook his head and told her he hadn’t. She nodded, said, “Neither have I. It’s the glass cars or whatever they are. I don’t think I’d fancy being inside with a crowd of tourists jostling each other to get a snap of Big Ben.”

“Ah. Yes.”

And then nothing. He turned from the view and took from his jacket pocket the copy of the greeting card that Salvatore Lo Bianco had sent to him. He handed it over to Barbara. She said, “What’s—” but her words faded as she read what was on it.

Lynley said to her, “Earlier, you told me that khushi was unfamiliar to you. This was found where Hadiyyah was kept hidden. Azhar has confirmed, by the way, that this khushi was his pet name for Hadiyyah. You’ve known the two of them how long, Barbara?”

“Who?” she asked, although she seemed to have some trouble with the word.

“Barbara . . .”

“All right. Two years this month. But you know that, don’t you, so why’re you asking?”

“Because I find it impossible to believe that in that time you never heard her father call her khushi. And yet that’s precisely what you asked me to believe. That and other things as well.”

“Anyone could have known—”

“Who, exactly?” Lynley felt the first piercings of an anger he’d been holding at bay since this entire miserable