Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

suggested she’d smoked for decades. She held her cigarette like a man, as well. Salvatore wondered vaguely if she was a lesbian. Then he wondered if he was stereotyping lesbians. Then he wondered why he was wondering anything at all about the curious detective.
    She said, “Want to share what’s taking your head in that direction? It’s a bloody strange one, you ask me.”
    Salvatore was careful with what he told her. He had banking information that contradicted earlier banking information, he explained. This information made things look as if someone somewhere was fixing evidence.
    She said, “Sounds like nothing’s traceable to Professor Azhar, far as I can tell.”
    “It’s true that a forensic computer specialist will have to sort through it all to follow the trails. But this can be done, and it will be, eventually.”
    “‘Eventually’?” She thought about this, drawing her heavy eyebrows together. “Ah. You’re not on that case any longer, are you? Someone gave me that info.”
    He waited while Marcella struggled with
info
. When she had it straightened out in her mind and the translation came, he said, “Murder is, I think you will agree, a more pressing issue to be dealt with now that the child is safe and several arrests have been made for her kidnapping. Everything will happen in due time. It is how we do things in Italy.”
    She crushed out her cigarette. She did this vigorously, however, and some of the ashes spilled onto her trousers. She tried to rub them off, which made things worse. She said, “Bloody hell” and “Oh well,” which she followed with, “As to seeing Azhar. I’d like a few words with him. You c’n arrange that, right?”
    He nodded. He would do that for her, he decided, as it was only right that the professor see the police liaison from his own country. But he had a feeling that this Sergeant Havers knew more about Taymullah Azhar than she was telling him. He reckoned Lynley would be able to help him out with the questions he had about this strange woman.
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    The truth of the matter was that Lynley not only didn’t know if anything could save Barbara Havers, but he also didn’t know if he wanted to go to the effort even to forestall what was looking more and more like the inevitable conclusion to this business.
    He told himself initially that the maddening woman didn’t really belong in police work anyway. She couldn’t cope with authority. She had a chip on her shoulder the size of a military tank. She had appalling personal habits. She was often dazzlingly unprofessional and not only in her manner of dress. She had a good mind, but half the time she didn’t use it. And half of the half when she did use her mind, it led her completely astray. As it had done now.
    And yet. When she was on, she was on and she gave the job her life’s blood. She was fearless when it came to challenging an opinion with which she didn’t agree, and she never put the possibility of promotion ahead of her commitment to a case. She might argue and she might bite into a theory that she believed in like a pit bull with its jaws locked on a piece of meat. But her ability to confront the sorts of people she shouldn’t begin to be
able
to confront set her apart from every other officer he’d worked with. She didn’t pull a forelock in anyone’s presence. That was the sort of officer one wanted on one’s team.
    And then, there was the not small matter of her having saved his life. That act of hers would always hang between them. She never brought it up and he knew she never would. But he also knew he would never forget it.
    So he ended up deciding that he had no real choice. He had to give it a go and try to save the bloody woman from herself. The only way he saw to do this was to prove she was right about everything regarding Angelina Upman’s death.
    It would be tough going, and he brought Winston Nkata in on the process. Nkata would check into everyone associated with Angelina Upman in London: their whereabouts during the time of her illness and death in Tuscany as well as their associates in London and the unlikely possibility of their getting their hands on
E. coli
. He was to start with Esteban Castro—Angelina’s erstwhile lover—and he was to include the man’s wife, along with Angelina’s own relatives: Bathsheba Ward and her parents and Hugo Ward as well. No matter what name he came up with, Lynley told him, he was to follow that name and to look for