Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

Upman’s dead. Why’d you blokes not pick up on the story?”
    His fire wasn’t lit. “Who says we didn’t pick up on the story?”
    “I sure as hell didn’t see it.”
    “Are you saying I’m responsible for what you see or don’t see in the paper?”
    “Are you saying it was in the paper but it didn’t make front-page news? You are seriously out of the loop, son. We better meet, pronto.”
    He still didn’t bite, the wily bastard. “Tell me why this is front-page news, and
I’ll
tell
you
if we need to meet, Barb.”
    She refused to be irritated by the bloke’s arrogance. She said, “
Did
it even make
The Source
, Mitchell? A British girl is kidnapped from a crowd of people, then she’s found stowed in a convent in the Italian Alps under the care of a mental case who thinks she’s a nun, then her mother dies unexpectedly. What part of this isn’t the kind of story that’s meat and potatoes to you lot?”
    “Hey, she made page twelve. If she’d done us a favour and offed herself, she’d’ve made page one, but what can I tell you? She didn’t, so she got buried inside.” He guffawed and added, “Pardon the pun.”
    “And what if she actually did you blokes a real page-one favour and died in a way that the powers in Italy want hushed up?”
    “What, are you saying the Prime Minister killed her? What about the Pope?” Another irritating guffaw from the bloke. “She died in hospital, Barb. We got all the facts. She slipped into a coma and she never came out of it. Her kidneys were done for. So what’re you suggesting: that someone tiptoed into her hospital room and put kidney poison in her drip bag?”
    “I’m suggesting you and I need to talk and I’m not prepared to talk till I see your face.”
    She allowed him to dwell on this while she herself feverishly considered which of the many ways possible would be best to spin the story in order to hook
The Source
. Politically the rag had become so nationalist over the years, it was practically Nazi in its leaning. She decided flag waving was the way to go. Brits versus the Pasta Eaters. But not yet. Not till she had him hooked.
    He finally said, “All right. But this had better be very good, Barb.”
    She said, “It is,” and just to be pleasant, she allowed him to name the place of their meeting.
    He chose Leicester Square, the half-price ticket booth. The
real
half-price ticket booth, he told her, not some wannabe. There was a fancy notice board next to the real one where tickets on offer for the dramas, comedies, and musicals were announced. He’d meet her there.
    She kept her voice airy. “I’ll wear a rose in my lapel.”
    “Oh, I expect I’ll know you by the sweat of your desperation,” he said.
    They set up a time, and she got there early. Leicester Square was, as usual, a terrorist’s wet dream, with the crowds only getting worse as summer came on. Now there were masses of tourists gathered at open-air restaurants, in front of buskers, buying tickets for the cinema, and attempting to negotiate terms for theatrical productions in need of an audience. By mid-July the masses would have morphed into hordes, and moving through them would be nigh impossible.
    She planted herself in front of the notice board and made a show of studying its offerings. Musicals, musicals, musicals, musicals. Plus Hollywood celebrities trying to be stage actors. Shakespeare was spinning in his grave, she reckoned.
    She was seven and a half minutes into listening to various debates all round her—what to see, how much to spend, whether
Les Miz
could possibly run for yet another century or maybe two—when the scent of aftershave worked on her like smelling salts. Mitchell Corsico was at her side.
    She said, “What the bloody hell are you wearing? Essence of horse? Christ, Mitchell.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Isn’t the get-up enough for you?” How long, she wondered, could one man possibly keep wearing clothes that suggested a bloke on a quest to find Tonto?
    He said, “You wanted this meeting, right? So it needs to be important or I’m not a happy horseman.”
    “How does an Italian cover-up sound?”
    He glanced round. The jostling of people trying to see the notice board was something of a trial, so he moved towards the edge of the square in the direction of Gerrard Street and its one-hundred-yard claim of being London’s Chinatown. Barbara followed. He planted himself squarely in front of her, then, and said,