Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

position, a backup plan, whatever you want to call it,” he told her. “Dwayne’s not stupid and he’s going to have one.”
    “And you know this because . . .”
    “Because he always does.”
    BOW
    LONDON
    Dwayne Doughty was not surprised to see her. Barbara was herself not surprised to discover that this was the case. The Doughty-Cass-Smythe operation had been up and running for quite some time. They might give each other up like third-rate burglars hoping to strike a deal with the cops, but they would also let each other know that they had done so. She readied herself to do battle with the man. She readied herself to see what the private investigator’s fail-safe position was going to be.
    He said to her, “Very good time from South Hackney,” just in case she needed the full score on exactly whose loyalties were going to lie where. He looked at his watch. “Quarter of an hour. Did you hit all the lights green or did you use a siren?”
    “I think this is about the jig being up,” Barbara told him. “And as there’s no music, we’re not talking about dancing.”
    “Your way with metaphors continues to astound,” Doughty said. “But one of the reasons Bryan Smythe has at one time or another been in my employ has to do with his talent at wiping away any sign that he’s actually been in my employ.”
    “Does this mean you’re assuming the Met doesn’t employ blokes whose talents match the redoubtable Bryan’s?” Barbara asked him. “Does it mean you’ve somehow jumped to the conclusion that the Met has no way to contact the cops in Italy who will come up with equally talented blokes who c’n deal with Michelangelo Di Massimo’s records? You seem to believe that no stone has been left unturned by Bryan’s magical power to erase your past manoeuvres, mate, but here’s what I’ve learned from years of dealing with villains of every make and variety: No one thinks of everything and the thing about stones and turning them over . . . ? There’s always a pebble nearby that goes unnoticed.”
    He gave a little salute. “Once more with the metaphor. You do amaze.” He leaned back in his chair. It was the sort that gave way when pressure was put upon its back, and Barbara sent a fleeting prayer heavenward that he’d lean too far, fall over, and bash himself senseless on the floor. No such luck. But what he did was roll the chair over to a filing cabinet and slide open its bottom drawer. From this he took a memory stick. He said, “You can go that route with the cops in Italy, the tech experts at the Met, and the tech experts in Italy. But it isn’t something that I’d advise. To attempt your own skill at metaphor: That’s a road I wouldn’t drive a donkey cart on.”
    When Barbara saw the memory stick, she reckoned they were at the fail-safe that Bryan Smythe had mentioned. There was nothing for it but to see what Doughty had on it, and she knew that all she had to do was wait for the revelation.
    He gestured affably for her to sit. He offered coffee, tea, a chocolate digestive in an irritatingly specious display of manners. Her response to this was “Get to the bloody point,” and she remained standing.
    “As you will,” he said, and he plugged the memory stick into his computer.
    He was well prepared. It took him a two-breath moment to find what he wanted. He tapped three or four keys, turned the monitor in her direction, and said, “Enjoy the show.”
    It was a film in which the stars were Dwayne himself and Taymullah Azhar. Its setting was here in Doughty’s office. Its dialogue comprised Doughty revealing every bit of information on Hadiyyah’s whereabouts in Italy as discovered by Michelangelo Di Massimo. Fattoria di Santa Zita came first, in the hills above a town called Lucca, in the home of one Lorenzo Mura, whose apparent idiocy in the arena of wiring money from Lucca to London so that Angelina would be able to finance her escape from Azhar had left a trail not of breadcrumbs but of veritable pieces of foccacia. A secondary bank account this was, as Dwayne explained to Azhar, in the name not of Angelina but of her sister Bathsheba, on whose passport Angelina departed the country on the fifteenth of November.
    Barbara heard her heart pounding in her ears. But she said casually, “And your point is what, Dwayne? Way I recall things, we know all this. So you want me to know you told Azhar when I wasn’t present? Am I supposed to be impressed?”
    Doughty paused the film,