Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

to
Met Officer Involved with Love Rat Dad
, Barbara discovered. He was also back to making threats. He wanted his bloody exclusive interviews with Azhar and Nafeeza, and Barbara was the means to get them for him. If she didn’t manage this feat, she could expect to see her mug on the front page of
The Source
, entangled with the son and the father of Azhar in a street imbroglio.
    There was no point in telling him that the angle to pursue was
Mother of Kidnapped Girl in Hospital
.
The Daily Mail
was already onto that. For its part, the
Mirror
was having fun speculating on what had put Angelina Upman into a hospital bed in the first place. They appeared to like the idea of a suicide attempt—
Distraught Mother Ends Up in Hospital
—which they were able to hint at since no one in Italy was telling their reporter a single thing.
    Barbara tried to reason with Corsico. “The story’s in Italy,” she told him. “What the bloody hell are you still doing in London trying to follow it, Mitchell?”
    “You and I both know the value of an interview,” Corsico countered. “Don’t pretend you think prowling round some Italian hospital is going to produce shit because we both know that’s bollocks.”
    “Fine. Then interview someone over there. But interviewing Nafeeza or talking to Sayyid again . . . Where the bloody hell is that going to take you?”
    “Give me Lynley, then,” Corsico told her. “Give me his mobile’s number.”
    “If you want to talk to the inspector, you can get your arse over there and talk to the inspector. Hang round the Lucca police station and you’ll see him soon enough. Call the hotels to find him. The town’s not big. How many could there be?”
    “I’m not pursuing the same fucking angle every other paper’s going with. We broke the story and we’re planning to keep breaking it. Joining every Tom, Dick, and Giuseppe over in Tuscany gives me nothing but shit in a basket. Now, way I see it is you’ve got a decision to make. Three choices and I’m giving you thirty seconds to decide once I name them, okay? One: You give me the wife for an interview. Two: You give me Azhar for an interview. Three: I break the
Met Officer and Love Rat Dad
angle. Come to think, I’ll give you four: You give me Lynley’s mobile. Now. Do I start counting, or do you have a watch to look at to see the seconds flying by while you decide which it’s going to be?”
    “Look, you bloody fool,” Barbara said, “I don’t know how many ways to tell you the story’s in Italy. Lynley’s in Italy, Azhar’s in Italy, Angelina is in hospital in Italy. Hadiyyah’s in Italy and so’s her bloody kidnapper and so’re the police. Now if you want to stay here and follow the Love Rat Dad and whatever the hell you think my involvement with him is supposed to be, more power to you. You can write chapter and verse and another chapter about whatever you imagine our hot love affair is like, and you’ve got your scoop or whatever the hell you want to call it.
But
another rag is going to pick up the story and want to interview me for my explanation, and what I’m going to tell them—I promise you—is how I’ve been trying to keep
The Source
from exploiting an anguished teenager’s understandable upset about his dad in order to milk a story out of him that’s sixty percent fury and forty percent fantasy and perhaps they ought to look at the source—pardon the pun—of the story in
The Source
since for some reason that reporter is fixated on something having nothing to do with a little girl’s disappearance in a foreign country and what does
that
tell you about the value of even buying a copy of the worthless rag, gentle readers?”
    “Yeah. Right. Brilliant move, Barb. As if the unwashed public out there is the least bit interested in anything beyond gossip. You’re threatening me in the wrong direction. I make my living feeding garbage to the gulls, and they’re eating it up just like always.”
    Barbara knew there was truth in this. Tabloids appealed to the worst inclinations in human nature. They made their money off people’s appetite for learning about others’ sins, corruption, and greed. Because of this fact, however, she had an ace and she knew there was nothing for it but to play the card now.
    “That being the case,” she said to Corsico, “how about a new angle for you, then, one the other tabloids don’t have?”
    “They don’t have
Met Officer Involved
—”
    “Right. Let’s give