Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

about.”
    “I see. This helps me, my friend. Because her questions and her comments were suggesting to me more than merely professional interest.”
    Dangerous ground, Lynley thought. He said untruthfully, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
    “Nor am I, exactly. But there is an intensity about her . . . She wanted to argue certain points relating to the professor’s arrest. Coincidences, she called them. Circumstantial evidence at best, she said. Now, it is not that her declarations have influenced me, my friend. But I find the intensity of her interest unusual in someone who is here in Italy only to see to the care of a child.”
    This was the juncture at which, Lynley knew, he ought to be telling Salvatore Lo Bianco about Barbara’s relationship with Azhar and his daughter, not to mention about the unauthorised nature of her jaunt to Italy. But he understood that, if he did so, the Italian would prevent her access to the Pakistani man. It was likely that he also would deny her any contact with Hadiyyah. That seemed unfair, especially to a child who was no doubt feeling both frightened and abandoned. So he told Lo Bianco that Barbara’s intensity of interest in the case he was building probably had to do with her inquisitive nature. He’d worked with Barbara many times, he reported to the Italian. Her habit of arguing, playing devil’s advocate, seeking other routes, looking at matters from all directions . . . ? This was merely who she was as an officer of the Met.
    In a shift of topic, he quickly went on to tell Salvatore that he would pay a call upon Dwayne Doughty. “Perhaps I can sew up one part of the kidnapping investigation, at least,” he said.
    “Piero Fanucci will not like anything that detracts from how he sees that case,” Salvatore told him.
    “Why do I expect that will give you a lot of pleasure?” Lynley asked.
    Salvatore laughed. They rang off. Lynley continued on his way to Bloomsbury.
    At Taymullah Azhar’s laboratory, he showed his identification to a white-coated research technician who introduced himself with the bicultural name of Bhaskar Goldbloom, clearly the offspring of a Hindi mother and a Jewish father. The technician had been seated at a computer when Lynley entered the lab, one of eight people who were at present working in the complex of rooms. None of the researchers had been informed about the arrest in Italy of their laboratory’s leading professor, Lynley found. He brought Goldbloom slowly into the picture by means of introducing the reason for his unexpected call at the lab.
    He would like, he told the research technician, to be shown everything in the lab. He would need the identification and the stated purpose of every item. He would need to know and to see all the strains of bacteria both in storage and undergoing experimentation.
    Bhaskar Goldbloom didn’t embrace the idea of a detailed tour. Instead, he pointed out pleasantly that, as far as he knew, Detective Inspector Lynley would need a search warrant for that sort of thing.
    Lynley was prepared for this response. It was, after all, reasonable and wise. He pointed out to Goldbloom that he could indeed go through channels in order to obtain the appropriate warrant, but his assumption had been that no member of Azhar’s lab would really want a team of policemen to come inside and mess things about. “Which,” he added, “I’d like to assure you they’d have no compunction at all about doing.”
    Goldbloom thought this one over. He said, at the end of his thinking, that he would need to phone Professor Azhar to obtain his permission. And this was the point at which Lynley informed Goldbloom and, through him, everyone else of Azhar’s perilous situation in Italy: under arrest for a murder by means of a bacteria and currently unavailable by phone.
    This changed the complexion of things at once. Goldbloom said he would cooperate with Lynley. He added, “How many hours do you have, Inspector?” in a sardonic tone. “Because this is going to take a while.”
    SOLLICCIANO
    TUSCANY
    When the phone call came through from Chief Inspector Lo Bianco, Barbara Havers and Mitchell Corsico were cooling their heels at a pavement table outside of a café in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi where, at the moment, an outdoor market was offering a dazzling variety of foodstuffs from several dozen colourful stalls. They were imbibing the national beverage of Italy, a viscous liquid that was dubbed coffee—or at