Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

be yours and mine, and believe me I’ve been chuffed by it beyond my wildest dreams—is over. You refuse to confirm . . . ?” She waggled her hand. “The local rozzers, the local magistrate, and the Met’ll be wild to make your acquaintance.”
    “So are you saying,” he said, “that if I confirm your imaginative theories about this nine-year-old—and I’m not confirming anything, by the way—my name does
not
get handed over to the Met at once? Or to the local police? Or to anyone?”
    “Bryan, you are one clever lad. That is
exactly
what I’m saying. So what’s it going to be? Admittedly, Doughty isn’t going to want your services after this, but you can’t blame him for that, eh? Small price to pay for your continuing ability to do business at all, you ask me.”
    He shook his head. He walked over to gaze at his garden. He finally turned back to her and said, “What the bloody hell kind of cop are you?”
    She was taken aback by the force of loathing behind his words, but she managed to keep her face a perfect blank as she said, “Meaning?”
    “You think I don’t see where this is heading?”
    “Where?”
    “Today what you want is confirmation and tomorrow it’s cash. Not wired to some account on the Isle of Man or tucked away in Guernsey or God knows where but handed over in an envelope in tens and twenties and fifties and next week more and next month more and always this ‘D’you really want the Met to know about you, mate?’ You’re dirtier than I am, you miserable cow. And if you think I’m going to—”
    “Rein in the ponies,” Barbara said to the man, although her heart was pounding in her temples. “I told you I want Doughty, and Doughty’s who I want.”
    “And your word on that is good, is it?” Bryan laughed, a high whinny that spoke of how desperate
he
was feeling. It came to Barbara that they were like two Wild West ne’er-do-wells out in the street in front of the saloon, both of them having drawn their rusty pistols at the exact same moment, both of them trying to work out how to walk away from the confrontation instead of ending up in the dust with a bullet in the chest.
    She said, “Looks to me like we’ve got each other by the you-know-whats, Bryan. But between us, I think I’ve got the better grip. I’m telling you for the last time that I want Doughty and only Doughty and that’s an end to this. Either you go for that or you decide you’d rather risk it by escorting me to the door and seeing what I’ll do next.”
    His jaw moved, teeth biting down on something unpalatable. She understood. Her teeth were doing much the same thing.
    He said, “You have your confirmation. I wiped Doughty’s records. Everything having to do with a bloke called Michelangelo Di Massimo. Everything having to do with a bloke called Taymullah Azhar. Emails, bank statements, phone calls, mobile calls, wire transfers of money, websites looked at, anything discovered via search engines having to do with Lucca, Pisa, or anywhere else in Italy. Whatever you can think of, it was dealt with. As deeply as I and a few . . . a few colleagues here and there could go. All right?”
    “One more thing.”
    “Christ, what else?”
    “When?”
    “When what?”
    “When did all these records begin?”
    “What does it matter? I went back in time and got it all.”
    “Right. Brilliant. Got that in a trap. What I’m asking is the date all these records having to do with Italy got wiped.”
    “What’s that got to do with—”
    “Believe me. It does.”
    Astoundingly, then, Bryan went to something worthy of Dickens to sort this one out. He opened the desk and brought out—of all things—a pocket diary. He began to leaf through it, back into time. He found nothing. He rooted in his desk and brought out another. As he did so, Barbara felt her stomach tighten into a ball.
    “Last December,” he said. “The fifth. That’s when it all began.”
    God, Barbara thought. In advance of Hadiyyah’s kidnapping in Lucca. In advance of everything. She said, “‘It’? What’s ‘it’ supposed to be?”
    A small smile, containing just enough triumph to tell Barbara she’d won the battle but lost the war. “I expect you can work that one out,” he said. To this he added, “If you’re planning your next stop to be in Bow, then you’d be wise to plan on something else as well.”
    “And that would be?” she asked, although her lips were barely working at this point.
    “A fail-safe