Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

change was a good thing. It meant his mind was working on all cylinders and her job was to oil the gears of his brain so the entire mechanism began to operate in her direction. “I gave all the information I had to Professor Azhar,” Doughty said. “I swear it. What the professor did with it, I don’t know and I have no clue. He wanted the kid back, you know that. Maybe he found someone over there to snatch her for him. What
I
did—and I’ve already told you this—was hire a bloke in Italy once we learned a bank account in Lucca was involved. I gave him the information, the professor. I also told him the name of the bloke who did the work for me. Michelangelo Di Massimo. Now, if Professor Azhar then hired Di Massimo to take things further . . . I had nothing to do with that.”
    Barbara nodded, unimpressed. It was a nice performance verbally, but she watched the private detective’s eyes as he spoke. They were as jittery as the rest of him was. They fairly danced in his head. And his fingers were restless, tapping in unison against his thumbs.
    “So you say,” she said. “But I expect this Carlo Casparia they’ve got over there is saying something else. See, he’s not going to want to take the fall for this, not completely, because no one ever does. And what I reckon is that between him and that Michelangelo bloke, someone’s not going to have your skill set when it comes to wiping hard drives, emails, and telephone records and God knows what else squeaky clean. So my guess is that in the next day or so, there’s going to be a trail uncovered that leads from Casparia to Michelangelo to you, dates and times included. And
you’re
going to have one bloody hell of a time trying to explain it all away. See, Dwayne, the trouble with cooking up schemes like this one to snatch Hadiyyah is that the old ‘no honour among thieves’—or in this case kidnappers—always applies. You get more than one person involved, and someone’s going to break, because when it comes to necks being saved, most people choose their own.”
    Doughty was silent. He was, of course, evaluating all this for its potential to be the truth. Barbara herself didn’t know what this bloke Casparia had to do with anything, but if dropping his name and his arrest and stretching things from there was going to get her one step closer to Hadiyyah, she intended to drop it at every opportunity.
    Doughty finally spoke. “All right.”
    “Meaning?”
    He looked away from her. He was suddenly still, and only a steadying breath moved his body. “It was Professor Azhar’s idea from the first.”
    Barbara narrowed her eyes. “What was Professor Azhar’s idea?”
    “To find her, to plan it all, to wait until the time was right, then to snatch her. The right time turned out to be when he was in Berlin for his conference, establishing an alibi. The kid was supposed to be snatched and held in a location until Azhar could get there and fetch her back to London.”
    “Bollocks,” Barbara said.
    Doughty’s gaze flew back to her. “I’m telling you the truth!”
    “Oh, are you? Aside from a few little problems having to do with getting her out of Italy and into England without a passport, what was supposed to happen when Azhar got her back to London, eh? Let me tell you: What was supposed to happen is what
actually
happened, which is why your tale is rubbish. Hadiyyah’s mum showed up, demanding her back, because the first person she suspected of having snatched her daughter was the dad she’d stolen her from in the first place.”
    “Right, right,” Doughty said. “That’s how it was supposed to play out. She’d show up, he’d prove to her that he didn’t have the girl, he’d return to Italy with the mother, and then—while he was in Italy—she’d be handed over to him. And he’s there now, isn’t he? Isn’t that proof enough for what I’m trying to tell—”
    “Same problem, mate. Double problem, actually. He doesn’t have her, and even if he does or if he knows where she is and is putting on the performance of a lifetime for the Italian cops, my colleague over there, and everyone else, what’s next on the chart for him when she’s handed over? Is he supposed to bring her back to London without her mum ever knowing she’s here?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. It didn’t make any difference to me. All he wanted from me was information and that’s what I gave him. End of story.”
    “Not quite, mate. You’re