Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

then at her. “And this is . . . ?”
    “What you want.”
    “Uh . . . no.” He pushed it back to her and went on typing. “If I’m manufacturing horse dung here”—with a gesture at his laptop—“for the delectation of the great UK public, then something about the tale has to be genuine and what that something is going to be is a picture of the kid here in Italy.”
    “Mitch, listen—”
    “
You
listen, Barb. F’r all Rod knows I’m here having the holiday of a lifetime although God knows why I’d choose Lucca to have it in since its after-dinner nightlife consists of hundreds of Italians on bikes, in trainers, or with pushchairs circling the town on that wall like crows contemplating fresh roadkill. But he doesn’t know that, does he? Far as he’s concerned, Lucca’s Italy’s answer to Miami Beach. I need something that shows him I’m hot on the trail of whatever. Now, from what I can tell, you need to
be
hot on the trail of whatever, so let’s cooperate with each other. We’ll start with a picture of the kid—showing she’s in goddamn Italy, by the way—and we’ll go from there.”
    Barbara could see that further argument would get her nowhere. She took back the photo of Hadiyyah and struck the deal. She’d get him that picture herself as there was no way in hell she ever wanted it getting back to Azhar that she’d allowed a tabloid journalist to photograph his daughter. She’d pose Hadiyyah at the window of the breakfast room, which looked out on the piazza. She’d photograph the front of the building so that Mitchell’s editor would be able to see that his ace reporter was indeed in Italy with his nose to the grindstone. He could then edit the size of the picture any way he wanted to. Her guarantee was that Hadiyyah would look soulful in spades.
    Corsico wasn’t thrilled to bits with this plan, but he handed over his digital camera. Barbara took it from him and told him what she wanted in exchange for the picture, which was a conversation with one of his new Italian journalist mates, one with access to the television news.
    “Why?” Corsico asked her warily.
    “Just
do
it, Mitchell.” She strode back across the piazza
.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    When Salvatore took the phone call from DI Lynley, he saw at once that the connection suggested by the London man had more than one application. DARBA Italia, Lynley had told him, was the manufacturer of two of the incubators in the laboratory of Professor Taymullah Azhar, creating a heretofore unknown link between the microbiologist and Italy that needed exploration. Salvatore agreed with this, but the very idea of manufacturers of incubators prompted him to think in larger terms than a single company. At an international conference of microbiologists, surely manufacturers of the equipment they used showed up to demonstrate their wares in the hope of sales, no?
    So he gave Ottavia Schwartz new direction under the topic of Investigating the Berlin Conference. She had two new assignments, he told her. Had manufacturers of laboratory equipment been present at the conference? If so, who were they and what individuals—by name—had represented them in Berlin?
    “What are we looking for?” Ottavia asked, not unreasonably.
    When Salvatore said that he wasn’t entirely sure, she sighed, muttered, but got on with it.
    He went to Giorgio Simione next. “DARBA Italia,” he said to him. “I want to know everything about it.”
    “What is it?” Giorgio asked.
    “I have no idea. That’s why I want to know everything.”
    Salvatore was heading back to his office, then, when he saw Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers just entering the lobby of the
questura
. She was not accompanied by translator Marcella Lapaglia on this day, however. She was alone.
    Salvatore went to her. She was, he noted, garbed not dissimilarly from the previous day. The clothes themselves were different, but their dishevelled nature was unchanged. Her tank top was, at least, tucked in. But as this emphasised the wine-barrel shape of her body, she might have been better advised to wear it untucked.
    When she saw him, she began speaking, at a volume and with exaggerated movements that attempted to clarify what she was trying to tell him. In spite of himself, he had to smile. She was as earnest as he’d ever seen anyone. It took some fortitude to attempt to make oneself understood in a country where one was a stranger and didn’t speak the language. In her place, he wondered if