Just One Evil Act

the Met, and there was only one way short of killing the bugger.

She said, “Go to the post office.”

“What the fuck? Are you hearing me at all, Sergeant? Do you know the damage I could do if you don’t —”

“Stop being a wanker for thirty seconds. The post office is directly across the street, all right? Go over there and I’ll meet you. It’s either that or you and I are finished because if I’m seen with you . . . You do get the point, don’t you, since you’re using it to threaten me in the first place?”

“I’m not threatening you.”

“And I’m your great-grandmother. Now are you going across the street or are we going to argue the finer points of blackmail: emotional, professional, monetary, or otherwise?”

“All right,” he agreed. “The post office. And I hope you show, Barb. If you don’t . . . Well, you won’t much like what comes next.”

“I’m giving you five minutes,” she told him.

“That,” he said, “is all I need.”

Barbara rang off and considered her options. There were very few in the aftermath of her meeting with Stewart and Ardery. She rubbed her forehead and looked at her watch. Five minutes, she thought. Dorothea could surely cover her for the time it would take to get to the post office, have a word with Corsico, and get back to John Stewart’s incident room.

She gave the departmental secretary the word.

“You’re in the ladies’,” Dorothea said cooperatively. “Female troubles, and do you need chapter and verse on what they are, Detective Inspector Stewart?”

“Ta, Dee.” Barbara hurried for the lifts and made for Reception and, from there, out of the building.

Corsico was just inside the post office doors. Barbara didn’t wait for him to reveal the purpose of his call upon her. Instead, she marched up to him, grabbed him by the arm, and jerked him over to a vending machine selling postage stamps.

“Right,” she said. “Here I am at your beck and call, and this is happening once and once only. What do you want? This is our swan song, Mitchell, so make it good.”

“I’m not here to argue.” He glanced down at her hand, still gripping his arm. She released her hold on him and he took a moment to brush his fingers against the suede of his fringed jacket where she’d left an imprint.

“Great,” she said. “Nice. Brilliant. So let’s make this good-bye and we can part sadder but wiser with our love unfulfilled.”

“Actually, that can’t happen quite yet.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because I want two interviews.”

“I don’t bloody care what you want after the Love Rat Dad story, Mitchell.”

“Oh, I think you need to care. And I think you will. P’rhaps not at this precise moment, but soon.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What’re you on about?”

He had a rucksack with him, and from this he pulled out the digital camera she’d seen round his neck at Sayyid’s comprehensive. It wasn’t a palm-size suitable-for-tourist-snaps job, either. It was, instead, a professional model with a large viewing screen. He clicked it on, scrolled, and came up with what he wanted. He turned the camera so that Barbara could see what he’d photographed.

On the screen was the brouhaha that had occurred in front of Sayyid’s school. The boy and his grandfather were in a tangle, with Barbara and Nafeeza trying to separate them. Mitchell clicked from this to another photo, with Barbara hustling them all into the car. In a third, she was talking through the vehicle’s open window to Nafeeza, and in the background the secondary comprehensive was clearly visible. So were the date and the time on each of the photos, comprising the very moments Barbara was putatively on her way to her mother’s bedside after her tragic fall.

“What I’m thinking,” Mitchell said, “is that Met Officer Involved with Love Rat Dad has a very nice ring to it. It’s a follow-up story that opens up worlds of additional possibilities, don’t you think?”

The real issue for Barbara, of course, wasn’t a story in The Source about her “relationship” with Azhar but rather the evidence that she had both lied to her superior officers and disobeyed their orders. But Mitchell Corsico didn’t know this, and Barbara was determined to keep him from finding out. She said, “So . . . what? All I see is an officer from the Met breaking up a family row. What do you see, Mitchell?”

“I see Sayyid telling me that this ‘officer from the Met’ is his father’s extra little bit on the side. I see a score of follow-up interviews coming from every quarter, or at least the quarter relating to Chalk Farm and everyone in residence at a conversion in Eton Villas.”

“You actually want to embarrass yourself like that? You don’t have proof of anything, and I swear to God: You run a story like that and the next person you’ll hear from is my solicitor.”

“For what? Just quoting a furious young boy who hates his dad? Come along, Barb, you know the score. Facts are interesting, but innuendo is what gives a story its charm. Involved is the operative word in the headline. It can mean anything. The reader will decide exactly what all the comings and goings between your two abodes actually mean. You didn’t mention that to me, naughty you. I hadn’t a clue you actually knew these people, let alone that you live within lip-locking distance of Love Rat Dad.”

Barbara thought feverishly about how to handle the reporter at this point. Temporising seemed the only possibility available to her other than caving in to his demands. If she caved in, though, she knew he had her by the throat. So stalling for time was the only direction in which she could turn.

She said, attempting to sound defeated, “Who d’you want to interview?”

“That’s my girl,” he said.

“I am not—”

“Yes, yes. Whatever,” he agreed. “I want one heart-to-heart with Nafeeza. And then a follow-up with Taymullah Azhar.”

Barbara knew that Nafeeza would have her tongue ripped out before she’d talk to any reporter. She also knew that Mitchell Corsico was mad as a hallucinating monkey eating plastic bananas if he thought Azhar was going to submit himself to the scrutiny of The Source. But the fact that there appeared to be no end to the reporter’s self-delusion could, she saw, be used to her advantage for at least a day. So she said, “I’ll have to speak to both of them. This will take time.”

“Twenty-four hours,” he told her.

“It’ll take longer, Mitchell,” Barbara argued. “Azhar’s in Italy, and if you think Nafeeza’s going to come round quickly to the idea of spilling her guts to you—”

“That’s what I have to offer,” he said. “Twenty-four hours. After that, it’s the Met and the Love Rat Dad. Your choice, Barb.”

CHALK FARM

LONDON

So she had to make a move. Barbara knew there was no point to making an attempt to convince Nafeeza that talking to The Source was in her best interests. Not only was it not in her best interests to say a single word to anyone representing that piece-of-rubbish-in-newspaper’s-clothing, it was also Barbara’s own use of the tabloid that had started them all down this road to public humiliation in the first place. To take on more of the mantle of responsibility for what The Source was doing to the abandoned family and would next do to the abandoned family should Nafeeza talk to them was something that Barbara wasn’t about to do.

That left her with Azhar, with convincing Azhar to talk to Corsico in order to defend himself from the attack upon him as the Love Rat Dad who’d deserted wife and children. She would then have to persuade Corsico to accept this compromise of a single interview as the best she could do. She thought she could manage this manoeuvre if she explained to Azhar that her job was virtually on the line. The only question for her was whether she could live with herself after she had done so.

She hadn’t spoken to Azhar since learning from Dwayne Doughty that all of the information collected by the investigator and his assistant regarding Angelina Upman’s whereabouts had been handed over to him in January. If