Just One Evil Act

the railway station, and the last thing she’d needed was Salvatore Lo Bianco putting his hooded gaze upon the UK’s version of the Lone Ranger sans mask. Because of the distance and the crowds of people milling about, she knew she’d be able to make her escape from the questura without Mitchell becoming wise to her whereabouts. But if he discovered she’d done this, there would be hell to pay.

She had to use half-truths. While Salvatore went for a vehicle in the car park next to the questura, she rang Corsico.

“We’ve got a potential source for the E. coli,” she told him. “I’m heading there now.”

“Hang the hell on. You and I had an agreement. I’m not letting you—”

“You’ll get the story, Mitch, and you’ll get it first. But ’f you show up now and want to play tagalong, Salvatore’s going to want to know who you are. And believe me, that’ll be tough to explain. He trusts me, and we need to keep things that way. He finds I’m leaking to the press, we’re done for.”

“It’s Salvatore now? What the hell’s going on?”

“Oh for God’s bloody sake. He’s a colleague. We’re heading for a place called DARBA Italia, and that’s all I know just now. It’s here in Lucca, and ’f you ask me, it’s the source of the E. coli and that’s where Lorenzo Mura got it.”

“If it’s here in Lucca, it could also be where the professor got it,” Corsico pointed out. “He was here in April looking for the kid. All he had to do was waltz over to this place and make the buy.”

“Oh, too right. Are you trying to tell me that Azhar—a man who speaks no Italian, by the way—swanned over to DARBA Italia with euros in hand and said, ‘How much for a test tube of the worst bacteria you lot have going? I’ll need something I don’t grow in my own lab, so all forms of Strep are off the table.’ And then what, Mitch? One of their salesmen tap-danced into the place where they keep this stuff—Quality Control, maybe?—and nicked a little bacteria without anyone noticing? Don’t be a fool. This stuff is going to be controlled. It can take out an entire population, for the love of God.”

“So why the hell are you going there? Because what you just said—save not speaking Italian—applies to Lorenzo Mura as well. And while we’re talking about this whole bloody mess, how the hell do you know they have E. coli in the first place?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re paying them a visit.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I’m sitting here waiting for a story, Barb.”

“You’ve got your piece on Hadiyyah. Go with that.”

“Rod’s not chuffed. He says page five. He says Professor Falsely Imprisoned is the only path to page one. Thing is, of course, from what you just told me it sounds like the falsely part of the headline might not be needed.”

“I’ve told you how—”

“I got you the television film. What’s the payoff for me?”

Salvatore Lo Bianco pulled to the kerb and leaned over to push open the passenger door. Barbara said, “It’s coming. I swear I’ll keep you in the loop. I’ve given you DARBA Italia. Ask your Italian journalist mates to take things from there.”

“And give them the story ahead of me? Come on, Barb—”

“It’s the best I can do.” She ended the call and got into the car. She nodded to Salvatore and said, “Let’s go.”

“Andiamo,” he told her with a smile.

“Back at you, mate,” she replied.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Isabelle Ardery’s meeting with the assistant commissioner had lasted two hours. Lynley had this information from the most reliable source: David Hillier’s secretary. It didn’t come to him directly, though. The conduit was the redoubtable Dorothea Harriman. Dorothea cultivated sources of information the way farmers cultivate crops. She had informants within the Met, the Home Office, and the Houses of Parliament. So she knew from Judi MacIntosh the length of the meeting between Hillier and Ardery and she knew it had been tense. She also knew that present at the meeting had been two blokes from CIB. She didn’t know their names—“I did try, Detective Inspector Lynley”—but the only details she had managed to unearth were that the blokes had come from one of the two arms of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, and that arm was CIB1. Lynley received this titbit with a frisson of apprehension. CIB1 dealt with internal complaints. CIB1 dealt with internal discipline.

The superintendent didn’t offer to share the content of her meeting. Lynley tried to learn something useful from her, but her quick and firm “Don’t let’s go there, Tommy” told him that things were in motion and the nature of those things was as serious as he’d earlier concluded they might be when she’d phoned Hillier and asked for a meeting.

So he was deeply thoughtful when he took a surprising and welcome phone call from Daidre Trahair. She’d come to town to look for a flat, she told him. Would he like to meet her for lunch in Marylebone?

He said, “You’ve taken the job? That’s brilliant, Daidre.”

“They’ve a silverback gorilla that’s quite won my heart,” she said. “It’s love on my part, but I can’t say how he feels just yet.”

“Time will tell.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?”

They met in Marylebone High Street, where he found her waiting inside a tiny restaurant at a very small table tucked into a corner. He knew his face lit up when she raised her head from studying the menu and saw him. She smiled in return and lifted a hand in hello.

He kissed her and thought how completely normal it felt to be doing so. He said, “Have Boadicea’s Broads gone into permanent mourning?”

She said, “Let’s say that my stock isn’t very high with them at the moment.”

“The Electric Magic, on the other hand, must be breaking out the bubbly.”

“One can only hope.”

He sat and gazed at her. “It’s very good to see you. I needed a tonic, and it seems you’re it.”

She cocked her head, examined him, and said, “I must say it. You’re a tonic as well.”

“For . . . ?”

“The grim process of looking at flats. Until I sell up in Bristol, I’m beginning to think I’ll be sleeping upright in someone’s broom closet.”

“There are solutions to that,” he told her.

“I wasn’t hinting at your spare room.”

“Ah. My loss.”

“Not entirely, Tommy.”

At that, he felt his heart pound harder a few times, but he said nothing. Instead he smiled, took up the menu, asked what she was having, and gave their orders to a waiter hovering nearby expectantly. He asked her how long she was in town. She said four days and this was the third. He asked her why she hadn’t phoned sooner. She said the business of finding a flat, of meeting people at the zoo, of seeing what was needed to organise her offices and labs, of speaking with the various keepers about problems they were encountering with the animals . . . It had all taken up so much of her time. But how lovely it was to see him now.

This, he thought, would have to suffice. Perhaps it was enough to feel how engaged he became in her presence, as the rest of the day faded into insignificance.

Unfortunately, that engagement in her presence did not last long. As their starters were set before them, his mobile rang. He glanced at it and saw, heart sinking, that it was Havers. He said to Daidre, “I’m sorry. I’ll have to take this call.”

“I need your help” was Havers’s first remark.

“You need more than what I can provide. Isabelle’s had a meeting with two blokes from CIB.”

“That doesn’t matter.”