Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

computer systems as easily as tumbling locks. And he or she knows someone who knows someone who knows someone else . . . Do you know how much trouble I could put you in, Mr. Doughty?”
    “I’m attempting to cooperate,” he said. “I learned there was a bank account here in London, an account held in the name Bathsheba Ward but in a branch nowhere near her home or her work. I found this curious and did a little . . . work on it. In . . . in time, let’s say, I discovered that funds had been wired from another account, this one in Lucca. I needed someone in Italy to trace that account and to see who was at the other end of this wired money.”
    “Michelangelo Di Massimo was your man in Italy, then?”
    “He was.” Doughty pushed back from his desk. He went to the filing cabinet, made an adjustment to the artificial plant, and opened a drawer. He riffled through some files till he found what he wanted. He handed it over. It was slim enough, but it contained a copy of the report he’d written. Barbara read this quickly to see it contained the information he’d just supplied her, along with the name, the address, and the email of the private investigator in Pisa whom DI Lynley and the Italian chief inspector had interviewed that day.
    Barbara closed the file and handed it back. She had a terrible feeling about what she was going to learn if she asked the next question, but she asked it anyway. “What did you do with this information?” she said.
    “I gave it to Professor Azhar,” he told her. “Sergeant, I’ve given him everything from the first.”
    “But he said . . .” Barbara’s lips felt stiff. What had he said? Had she misinterpreted his words in some way? She tried to remember, but she was feeling turned round, down the rabbit hole, and out of her league. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him.
    “Because I was working for him, not for you,” Doughty said, not unreasonably. “And when I began working for you, what you asked me to uncover had to do with the professor’s trip to Berlin and nothing else.” He put the folder back and shut the drawer. He turned back to them, but he did not sit. He extended his hands in the universal gesture of look-at-me-I-have-nothing-to-hide. “Sergeant,” he said and then added Winston in his remarks by saying, “Sergeants. I’ve told you the absolute truth at this point, and if you’d care to look through my phone records and my computer files and, yes, even my hard drive, you’re more than welcome to do so. I’ve nothing to hide from you, and I’ve no interest in anything other than getting home to my wife and my dinner. Are we finished here?”
    They were, Barbara said. What she didn’t say, however, was that she knew how easily Doughty could have cleared his records, his hard drive, his entire life of suspicion if any of this was in the possession of a computer tech expert with inside contacts at various institutions. And there was virtually nothing she could do about it.
    She and Winston left him. They descended the stairs and went into the street, where a short distance away the Roman Café was making the seductive offer of kebabs. She said to her colleague, “At least let me buy you dinner, Winnie.”
    He nodded and walked thoughtfully at her side. He was deep into something, and she didn’t ask him what it was because she had a feeling she already knew. He confirmed this as they took a table by the window and considered the menu. He looked at it briefly and then spoke to her.
    “Got to ask, Barb.”
    “What?”
    “How well you know him.”
    “Doughty? ’Course he could be lying and he probably is because he’s lied already and—”
    “Don’t mean Doughty,” Winston told her. “’Spect you know that, eh?”
    She did. To her sorrow and misery, she absolutely did. He was asking how well she knew Taymullah Azhar. She’d been asking herself the very same question.
    BOW
    LONDON
    Doughty waited patiently. He knew it wouldn’t be long, and it wasn’t. Em Cass burst into his office not one minute after the cops’ departure. He could tell how much of a lather she was in from the fact that she’d removed both her waistcoat and her tie.
    “From the first,” she began. “Goddamn it, Dwayne, from the—”
    “It’ll all be over soon,” he cut in. “There’s nothing to worry about. Everyone will go home happy, and you and I will fade into the sunset, ride off on our ponies, whatever.”
    “I think you’ve gone mad.” She