Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

detective Di Massimo, can he not do the same for me?”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Barbara said.
    “I do not see why.”
    “Because Doughty has those films. Every meeting. Every plan. Every request you made. I expect he denied them all when you were in his office. I expect he phoned you later—from a call box or a throwaway mobile—and said he’d thought things over and p’rhaps there
was
a way he could help. What I’m saying is you can rest assured there’s nothing on those films that makes him look bad and everything on them that puts you in an Italian gaol for ten years and counting.”
    He was quiet for a moment as he considered this. He finally said quietly, “Then we must get those films.”
    Barbara did not miss his use of the plural pronoun.

6 May
    SOUTH HACKNEY
    LONDON
    B arbara rang the Yard in advance of what she presumed was Superintendent Ardery’s normal arrival time. She left a carefully crafted message. She was on her way to Bow for a final word with Dwayne Doughty, she told Dorothea Harriman. There were a few more details that needed to be hammered down, sewed up, or whatever, with regard to the private investigator’s place in the kidnapping of Hadiyyah Upman, and once she’d accomplished this, she’d be able to write the report that the superintendent was anticipating. Harriman asked if Detective Sergeant Havers wished her to fetch the guv so that she could give her the message personally. “She’s only just arrived,” the departmental secretary revealed. “Gone off to the ladies’. I c’n fetch her in a tick, if you’d like to speak with her yourself, Detective Sergeant.”
    Speaking with Isabelle Ardery was not high on the list of things Barbara wanted to do. She replied with an airy, “No need for that, Dee,” but added that she’d be grateful if Dorothea would let DI Lynley know what she was up to when he showed his face in Victoria Street. Barbara knew quite well that she was on uneven ground with Lynley as it was. She also knew she’d go under entirely if she didn’t keep him in the loop of what she was up to. More or less.
    The detective inspector was already there as well, Dee Harriman told her. So she’d give him the word as soon as they rang off. The poor man had been cornered by DI Stewart for some sort of ear bending when last she’d seen him. She’d pop round and rescue him by means of passing along the detective sergeant’s message. “Any message from you for Detective Inspector Stewart?” Harriman asked impishly.
    “Very amusing, Dee,” Barbara told her. And she thought how far, far better a thing it was that Lynley and not herself be on the receiving end of one of Stewart’s diatribes.
    She fetched Azhar from the ground-floor flat at the front of the big house in Eton Villas as soon as her phone call was completed. They set off, but not for Bow. Their destination was South Hackney and Bryan Smythe.
    They’d been up till after two in the morning developing a strategy for dealing with Bryan Smythe. They had a separate strategy for dealing with Dwayne Doughty. But one would not function without the other.
    During all of their discussing and planning, Barbara had tried to keep her mind on both Azhar and Hadiyyah and away from where she was placing herself in dealing with this situation. Azhar had been desperate, she told herself. Azhar had a right to his child. To this she added that little Hadiyyah deserved a loving father in her life. All of these facts she’d repeated to herself like a mantra. She massaged her brain with them. It was the only thing she could bear to think of.
    What she hadn’t dared consider was how far she was sliding off the rails in this personal spate of employment in which she was engaged. There would be time for that later. Now, however, there was only coming up with a way to mitigate the jeopardy into which Azhar had placed himself in the cause of finding the daughter he loved.
    When he opened the door to her persistent knocking, Bryan Smythe did not seem wildly chuffed to see Barbara standing on his doorstep with an unidentified dark-skinned man at her side. She couldn’t blame him for this. In his line of work, he probably didn’t much like unexpected visitors. He probably also didn’t much like attention being drawn to his house. She was betting on this latter assumption as the best means of gaining entrance to his lair should he not be ready to roll out the red carpet for them.
    She said, “You were right, Bryan.