Just One Evil Act

companion was a woman by calling her Emily, Barbara reckoned he was the sort of man who liked a bit of boy flesh on the side. Turned out she was wrong on all fronts. They’d been discussing a triathlon along with the intentions of some bloke called Bryan to accompany Em with stopwatch, mineral water, and power bars. Doughty was finding this amusing. Em Cass was not.

They were leaving for the day, Doughty told Barbara. He did wish she’d rung first for an appointment. As it was, he needed to be off and so did Em.

Barbara said, “Yeah. Sorry. Should have but I was in the area and thought I’d take a chance. Just five minutes of your time?”

They both looked supremely doubtful about all of it: from being in the area to five minutes of their time. One wasn’t generally in the area of the Roman Road, and nothing they did took only five minutes unless it was to endorse a client’s cheque, which could be accomplished in far less time.

“Five minutes?” Barbara repeated. “I swear.” She brought out her chequebook. A dead moth fell out of it. Not a good sign, but Doughty overlooked this. “I’ll pay, of course.”

“This is about . . . ?”

“Same as before.”

They exchanged another look. Barbara wondered again. Private eyes were notorious for all sorts of skulduggery. They were also known for providing the fruits of their labour to various tabloids round the capital. If Doughty or his assistant had been into this game, Barbara wondered was there something they didn’t want her to know.

Doughty sighed and said, “Five minutes.” He opened the office and ushered her inside.

Barbara said, “What about . . . ?” in reference to his employee.

“Triathlon training is triathlon training,” he told her. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

“What’s she do for you exactly?” Barbara followed him into his office as Emily Cass powered down the stairs.

“Emily? This and that with the computer. Research. Phone calls. Tying loose ends. The occasional interview.”

“What about blagging?”

He looked cagey enough at this to suggest that Emily Cass had talents extending beyond those related to swimming, biking, and running marathons.

Barbara said, “Look. I’ve talked to Azhar. I know what you told him. No trace left. Completely disappeared. But no one disappears without leaving some sort of trail, and I don’t see how Angelina Upman managed to do it.”

“Nor do I,” he said frankly. “But such is the case. It happens.”

“Her alone maybe. All right. On a stretch. She takes off with no one noticing or, for that matter, no one much caring. But that’s not the situation here. Someone cares. And she’s not alone. She’s got a nine-year-old with her—and this is a kid who’s bloody close to her dad, by the way—so even if Angelina doesn’t want to be found, at some point Hadiyyah’s going to start talking about Dad and where he is and why they’re not sending him a bloody postcard.”

Doughty nodded but then he said, “Children are told all sorts of things about their parents in this kind of situation. I expect you know that.”

“Such as?”

“Such as ‘Dad and I are divorcing’ or ‘Dad’s dropped dead in his office this morning’ or anything for that matter. Point is, she’s done a successful runner, I’ve told the professor as much, and if there’s more to be done, I don’t know what it is and he’ll need someone else to do it.”

“He told me you managed the last name. Angelina’s mother. Ruth-Jane Squire.”

“Hardly a difficult feat. He probably could have managed that much himself.”

“In possession of that and other details—addresses, birthdates, and whatnot—you and I both know that a blagger can go miles: banks, credit cards, postal boxes, mobile phone records, landline records, passports, driving licences. But you still say there was no trail?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Doughty told her. “I might not like it, the professor certainly doesn’t like it, and you might not like it, but that’s how it is.”

“Who’s Bryan, then?”

“Who?”

“I heard Emily mention Bryan. Is he your blagger?”

“Miss . . . Havers, is it?”

“Excellent memory, mate.”

“Bryan is my tech expert. He did the more detailed work on the laptop from the little girl’s room.”

“And?”

“The result’s the same. The child used it. The mother did not. Which is to say there was nothing on it that could have been deemed remotely suspicious.”

“Then why did someone wipe it clean?”

“Perhaps to muddy the waters, to make it look as if there was something on it that needed to be removed. But there wasn’t. Now.” Doughty had been sitting but he got to his feet and his intention was clear: Farewells were in order and hers was the job of making them. “You’ve had your five minutes. I’ve a wife at home and a dinner to eat, and if you’ve a wish for a longer natter with me, it’s going to have to take place at another time.”

Barbara eyed him. There had to be something else, if not here then elsewhere. But aside from sliding burning slivers of bamboo beneath Dwayne Doughty’s fingernails, she reckoned she’d got all she could from the man. She took a Biro from her bag and opened her chequebook.

At this, Doughty held up his hand. “Please. It’s on the house,” he said.

15 April

LUCCA

TUSCANY

He decided that the encounter between them could happen most easily in a mercato. There were enough of them in and around Lucca, and the best took place inside the colossal wall that encircled the oldest part of the town. Piazza San Michele’s mercato was a now-and-then occurrence, mad with Lucchese from neighbourhoods beyond the wall who wandered in through one of the great gates for a day of browsing through stalls selling everything from scarves to wheels of cheese. But Piazza San Michele was also the central point of the walled city, making an escape from the place fraught with problems. That left him with a choice between either the mercato in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi not more than a stone’s throw from escape through Porta San Pietro, or the decided insanity of the mercato that stretched the distance from Porta Elisa to Porta San Jacopo.

When he thought about these latter two mercati, his final decision had to do with the atmosphere and with what sort of people tended to frequent each of them. Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi attracted tourists, along with a more well-heeled kind of shopper, and its offerings appealed to those with ready cash to hand over for its delicacies. Because of this, he found that the family did not shop often in this place. So he was left with the other.

This other mercato stretched along the narrow, curving lane of Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane, which backed right up to the looming mass of the city’s wall. Frequenters of the place had to elbow between one another, and in doing so they had to avoid stepping on barking dogs and encountering beggars at the same time as they attempted to make their demands of lo venderebbe a meno? heard above the din of conversations, arguments, musicians playing for a handout, and people shouting into their mobile phones. Indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that this mercato in Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane was actually perfect. Anything could happen unnoticed in the place, and it had the additional advantage of being quite close to the home on Via Santa Gemma Galgani, where every Saturday the