Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

be a shinier coin in the collection plate than the magistrate who heads the case, everything might have gone along the way you intended it to go. But those phone calls piqued Lo Bianco’s interest, and he followed the trail of them rather more quickly than you—at this end—apparently anticipated. So what he ended up with is a set of records far different from those you later provided him. And, Barbara Havers aside for the moment, that’s quite an interesting development in the kidnapping investigation.”
    Silence. Lynley let it go on. Outside, down in the Roman Road, two men argued loudly in a foreign tongue. A dog barked and a dustbin’s lid clanged against the receptacle. But in the office, there was nothing.
    Lynley said, “What I’m assuming is that, in the manner of similar shady characters, all of you have been double- and triple-crossing each other. One person gets a leg up on the other, then that person raises the ante and so on. Now, I’m not going to involve myself in any further questioning at the moment, as the hour is late and I’d like to get home, as I expect you would as well. But before you go, I’d like you to reflect on your neck, Ms. Cass’s neck, and the neck of your colleague Mr. Smythe. While you’re doing this reflecting, I’d like you to consider that Inspector Lo Bianco will be employing a forensic technology expert to follow all the diddling you’ve been doing with everyone’s records, and the Metropolitan police will be doing the same thing. Computers, as I expect you know, leave trails of cookie crumbs along the paths they take. To the average soul—like me, for example—these trails are impossible to find. To the expert in modern computer technology, this sort of work is a piece of cake. Or cookie, if you will.”
    He gave Doughty time to look at the material Lo Bianco had sent him. Doughty did so and, as the man could read, he was fully capable of interpreting the message on the wall.

17 May
    ISLE OF DOGS
    LONDON
    P rior to going to bed, Dwayne Doughty had been able to hold things together in front of his wife because he didn’t want to worry her nor did he want to watch her China-blue eyes fill with tears at the thought of their having to flee the country one step ahead of a police enquiry. He rued the day he’d ever got involved in the Italian mess, and the effort to hide from his wife his ruing from the time he arrived home to the time he went to bed resulted in what felt like a very sharp knitting needle piercing his head.
    Candace knew something was wrong. She wasn’t stupid. But he managed to fend off her questions with the stock answer of “just a bit of a head-scratcher at work, luv,” which she accepted for the evening but wasn’t likely to accept into the following day. He needed either to perfect his acting skill—a doubtful prospect when it came to facing off with Can—or he needed to work out a solution to his little problem.
    He rose at half past three. In the kitchen of their semidetached, he quietly made a pot of coffee, which he began to drink, sitting at the table and mostly staring at nothing as he turned over various possibilities. He had worked his way through an entire package of fig bars—always his favourite, since childhood—but had got not much further than a mild case of heartburn and a more serious case of dietary guilt.
    There had to be possibilities for him at this point, he thought, for the simple reason that there always were if one took the time and had the patience to develop them. No way in hell was he going to flush his line of employment, the years he’d spent coaxing it out of nothing, and his whole life down the loo. He’d never let anything defeat him in the past, and he sure as bloody hell wasn’t going to be defeated now. Especially was he not going to be defeated by a Scotland Yard detective with a posh public school voice and a Savile Row suit that fairly screamed,
Carefully worn by a faithful retainer for two years before being donned by me
. Absolutely no way was that ever going to happen. But unless something
did
happen to prevent it, he was a few short days away from a knock on his office door that doubtless would herald the advent of some serious difficulties in his future.
    It was his own fault. From the first and with Em Cass’s insistence, he’d twigged that the woman was a cop, but that hadn’t stopped him. He’d agreed to help the professor find his kid—Christ but he had to harden his soft heart