Just One Evil Act

wept. “I wasn’t scared at first ’cause he said my dad . . . But she made me go into the cellar . . .”

The story came in fits and starts and from it Salvatore picked up snatches and the rest was translated by Lynley as the little girl spoke, telling the tale of what in her confused mind Domenica Medici had determined to be the will of God. A visit to the cellar clarified matters further, for deep within the labyrinthine shadowy place was an ancient marble bathing pool in which disturbingly green and cloudy water had waited for the immersion of a frightened child, baptising her and washing away whatever “sins” stained her soul and made her less pleasing to the sight of God. Once she’d been thus baptised, locking her away was the only manner in which her keeper Domenica could assure her continued purity while she herself awaited the next sign from God to tell her what to do with the child.

When Salvatore saw the place to which Domenica Medici had dragged the little English girl, he understood the screaming that had brought the carabinieri to the convent. For the vast and vaulted cellar of the Villa Rivelli would be a place of nightmares for any child, with one crypt-like chamber giving onto another, with looming dusty disused wine barrels the size of military tanks in rows, with ancient olive presses looking like instruments of torture . . . It was no wonder that Hadiyyah had screamed in terror. There was more than a good chance that she would wake up screaming from her dreams for a very long time to come.

It was time to get her out of this place and back to her parents. He said to Lynley, “Dobbiamo portarla a Lucca all’ospedale,” for Hadiyyah would have to be examined by a doctor and spoken to by a specialist in childhood trauma if one could be found whose English was adequate.

“Si, si,” Lynley agreed. He suggested that they phone the parents and have them meet them there.

Salvatore nodded. He would make that call once he spoke to Captain Mirenda. The carabinieri would, for the present, take charge of Domenica Medici. He doubted they would get much more from the young woman than they’d got already, but she had to be dealt with. She didn’t seem to be an accomplice so much as an instrument of her cousin Roberto Squali. But buried within the confusion of her mind could be something that would tell them more about the commission of the crime. She, too, would need to be examined by a doctor. This doctor, however, would be one of the mind so that an assessment could be made of her.

“Andiamo,” Salvatore said to Lynley. Once these things were accomplished, their work here was finished and whatever details Hadiyyah herself might be able to provide about her kidnapping, those could wait until she’d been seen to at the hospital and until she was reunited with her parents.

VICTORIA

LONDON

It wasn’t as difficult as it had used to be, getting an officer from Special Branch to talk. Time was when the blokes from SO12 were a deeply secretive lot, not only closemouthed but also nervy. They had trusted no one, and who could blame them? In the days of the IRA and bombs on buses, in cars, and in rubbish bins, pretty much everyone looked Irish to them, so it didn’t matter if a questioner happened to be from another branch of the Met. The SO12 blokes were tight-lipped and all the et ceteras. Prying information out of them generally took a court order.

They were still careful, but sharing information was sometimes necessary in these days of fiery clerics in English mosques exhorting their listeners to jihad, British-born young men schooled in the beauties of martyrdom, and professionals from unexpected fields like medicine deciding to alter the course of their lives by wiring their cars with explosives and planting them where they would do the most harm. No one could afford unsafe convictions in any of these matters, so if one agency within the Met needed information from another agency within the Met, it wasn’t impossible to find someone who could impart a few details if a name was given.

Barbara got inside to talk to Chief Inspector Harry Streener by using the magic words Pakistani national living in London and a developing situation in Italy. The bloke had the accent of someone who should have been whistling commands to his sheepdog in the hills of Yorkshire and the pasty cue-ball complexion of a poor sod who hadn’t seen the sun for the past ten years. His fingers were yellow from nicotine and his teeth weren’t much better, and when she saw him, Barbara made a mental note that giving up smoking wasn’t an entirely bad idea. But she set this aside for future consideration and gave him the name she was loath to give him.

“Taymullah Azhar?” Streener repeated. They were in his office, where an iPod in a docking station was playing something that sounded like hurricane-force winds in a bamboo grove. Streener saw her glance in its direction. “White noise,” he said. “Helps me to think.”

“Got it,” she said with a wise nod. It would have driven her to the nearest Underground station for shelter, but everyone’s boat floated on different water.

Streener tapped at his computer’s keyboard. After a moment, he read the screen. Barbara itched to get out of her seat, crawl over his desk, and have at the information, but she forced herself to wait patiently for whatever it was that Streener decided to impart. She’d already sketched in the facts for him: Azhar’s employment at University College London, his entanglement with Angelina Upman, their production of a child together, Angelina’s flight with Hadiyyah to destinations unknown, and Hadiyyah’s disappearance via kidnapping. Streener had listened to all this with a face so impassive that Barbara wondered if he was actually hearing her. At the end of her recitation, she’d said, “Superintendent Ardery’s put me onto the London end of things while DI Lynley’s working the Italian end. I thought it best to check with you lot and see if you’ve been having a look at the bloke.”

“And your thought as to why SO12 would be onto this . . . What was the name again?” Streener said.

Barbara spelled it out for him. “Just seemed like an i that needed to be dotted,” she told him. After a moment, she added, “Pakistan? You know what I mean. I don’t have to be PC with you, do I?”

Streener guffawed. The last thing cops needed to be was politically correct with each other. He typed a bit. Then he read. His lips formed a whistle that he didn’t make. He nodded and said, “Yeah. He’s here. Ticket to Lahore triggered the usual alarms. One-way ticket upped the noise.”

Barbara felt her gut clench. “C’n you tell me . . . Were you looking at him before the one-way ticket?”

Streener glanced at her sharply. She’d tried to keep her voice intrigued by this development but not involved other than as a professional doing a job. He seemed to evaluate her question and what it might imply. He finally looked back at his screen, scrolled a bit, and said slowly, “Yes, it appears that we were.”

“C’n you tell me why?”

“It’s the job,” he said.

“I know it’s your job, but—”

“Not mine. His. Professor of microbiology? He has his own lab? You can fill in the blanks there, can’t you?”

She could indeed. As a professor of microbiology, as a professional with his own lab . . . God only knew what tasty weapon of mass destruction he could be cooking up. As she herself had said, the magic words were Pakistani national living in London. Pakistani meant Muslim. Muslim meant suspicious. Put one and one together among this lot in SO12, and you came up with three every time. It wasn’t fair but there you had it.

She couldn’t really blame them. To them, Taymullah Azhar was just a name just as, to them, terrorists were hiding in every garden shed. The job of SO12 was to make sure those blokes didn’t emerge from those sheds with bombs inside their shorts or, in the case of Azhar, with a Thermos filled with God only knew what, sufficient to contaminate the water supply of London.

She said, “Have you blokes been following the kidnap situation, then?”

Streener looked some more, then nodded slowly. “Italy,” he said. “He landed in Pisa.”

“Any indication that Azhar’s contacted an Italian there? Michelangelo Di Massimo would be the name.”

Streener shook his head, his eyes on the computer’s screen. “Doesn’t seem to be, but this goes back forever. Let me try . . .” He typed. He was fast, using only two fingers but getting the job done. There was nothing on a Michelangelo Di Massimo, he reported. There was nothing, in fact, in Italy at all aside from his landing in Pisa and the name and location of his B & B.