Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

Barbara said. There was no point to additional conversation with the guv. The only point was getting herself to Italy, which she fully intended to do.
    SOUTH HACKNEY
    LONDON
    First, however, there were matters to settle with Bryan Smythe. The last time she’d seen him, she’d given him his marching orders. She hadn’t heard from him about having done the work required. She’d phoned him twice with no success. It was time, she reckoned, to jostle his bones with a reminder of what could befall him if she had a word with the appropriate authorities about what he was up to when he sat down daily at his computer.
    She found him at home. He was not, however, at work on anything. Instead he was apparently dressing for going out. He’d done something about the dandruff, praise God, because at least for the moment his shoulders were devoid of the flakes of Maldon sea salt that otherwise had sprinkled his shirts when she’d seen him previously. He was also wearing a jacket and tie. The fact that he came to the door with keys in hand suggested that she’d caught him in the nick of time.
    She didn’t wait to be admitted into his sanctum sanctorum. She said, “I won’t be requiring a cuppa this time,” and she sauntered past him, through his work area and into the garden once again. She chose another spot this time. Knowing the bloke’s habits as she was learning them, she had little doubt that after her last meeting with him in the garden, he’d wired that earlier area for sound.
    At the end of all the fine plantings, she spied a garden shed, disguised with a heavy growth of wisteria in such full bloom that she reckoned he fed it with the ground-up remains of the neighbourhood’s missing pets. She headed in that direction, and he followed her. “Let me ask in advance,” he said to her. “What part of ‘you’re trespassing on private property’ might be too difficult for you to understand?”
    “Where are you with making the changes on the tickets to Pakistan?” she demanded.
    “You can leave or I can phone the local cops.”
    “We both know you’re not about to do that. What’ve you done about those tickets?”
    “I don’t have time to talk about this. I’ve an employment interview to go to.”
    “‘Employment interview,’ is it? What sort of employment does a bloke with your talents come up with?”
    “I’ve been headhunted by a Chinese firm. For tech security. Which is what I do. Which is what I
have
been doing for the better part of fifteen years. If you must know.”
    “That’s kept you in expensive art in the modern mode, has it?” she asked archly, indicating his house and its collection.
    “Let’s be straight with each other” was his reply. “You’ve done your best to destroy the better part of my career—”
    “Such as it was, although it’s a bit like hearing a cat burglar complaining because someone’s had the bollocks to put a security system on their house. But do go ahead.”
    “So I owe you nothing. And nothing is what I have to offer you.” He glanced at his watch. “Now if there’s nothing more . . . and traffic being what it is . . .”
    “You’re bluffing, Bryan. I’m holding a better hand than you are, or have you forgotten that? Now what’s been done about those Pakistan tickets?”
    “I told you there was no way to get into SO12’s system, and there’s no way to get into SO12’s system. Surely you’re capable of understanding that.”
    “What I’m also capable of understanding is there are other blokes exactly like you out there in cyberland, and you know each other bloody well. And don’t tell me there’s no one out there who could hop, skip, and jump their way into SO12’s system because on a daily basis these blokes hack into everything from the Ministry of Defence to Inland Revenue to the Royals’ social calendars. So if you haven’t found someone to do the job, it’s because you haven’t asked someone to do the job. And in your position, that’s risky, Bryan. I’m holding your backups. I could sink you in a minute. Have you forgotten that?”
    He shook his head, not an I’ve-not-forgotten movement but one that signalled disbelief. He said, “You can do what you like, but I think, if you do, you’ll find out soon enough that all of us are cooking in the same pot just now. And that would be largely due to you.”
    “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
    “First of all, you’ve been bloody stupid to think that Dwayne