Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

Angelina took the wine meant for Azhar and Barbara Havers said with a wink at him, “Just like bloody
Hamlet
, eh, mate? Mura tried to stop her from drinking it, but she thought he was just worried because she was pregnant. So what the hell was he supposed to do? I expect he could’ve leapt over the table and dashed the glass out of her hand. But it all happened too fast. She just knocked the vino back. And then? That’s what you want to ask, eh? Well, he could’ve made her sick it up, I s’pose, or he could’ve thrown himself on her mercy and told the truth, but he was never completely sure of her, was he? No bloke ever was. She loved ’em and she left ’em and sometimes she had three of ’em at once and that’s just who she was. It’s what, I expect, made her different from her sister and God knows they wanted to be different from each other. But let’s suppose he goes ahead and tells her what he’s done—sorry, darling, but you’ve just knocked back a glass of deadly bacteria—and
then
what? How does she view him then, eh?”
    Nearly all of which Salvatore did not follow. So he was more than grateful when Ottavia appeared with the
questura
’s translator, a multilingual and distractingly buxom thirtyish woman showing so much cleavage—
Dio
, was it eight inches?—that he momentarily forgot her name. Then it came to him: Giuditta Something. She asked how she could be of assistance.
    She and Barbara Havers spoke at some length. After an equally lengthy translation from Giuditta, Salvatore asked only two questions. Both were crucial to building a case if, indeed, a case even could be built on something that seemed so speculative. How? he wanted to know. And why?
    Barbara Havers went with the why first: Why would Lorenzo Mura want to kill this man Taymullah Azhar? Good question, Salvatore. He, after all, had won Azhar’s woman. He had taken her from the Pakistani man. She lived with him in Italy, far from London. He had made her pregnant. They were to marry. What was the point?
    “But who could ever be sure of Angelina Upman?” was the Englishwoman’s explanation. “She’d messed about with Esteban Castro while she was with Azhar. She’d left them both for Lorenzo Mura. Anyone could see there was still a bond between Azhar and her, and beyond that, they shared Hadiyyah. Once Azhar appeared on the scene, he was going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. She might have decided to return to him. Who the hell
ever
knew what she would do?”
    “But ridding their lives of Azhar would not have made his own position with Angelina secure,” Salvatore pointed out.
    Barbara listened to the translation, then said, “Sure, but he wasn’t thinking like that. He wasn’t looking at the big picture of If Not Azhar, Then Who Else Might She Leave Me For? He just wanted Azhar gone and he was doing it the best way he knew: make him good and ill and hope he keels over and there’s an end to the problem. Salvatore, when people are jealous, they don’t think straight. They just want the object of their jealousy gone. Or ruined. Or devastated. Or what
ever
. But what did Lorenzo Mura have? The return of the rejected lover, Hadiyyah’s dad back in Hadiyyah’s life, Hadiyyah’s dad back in
Angelina’s
life.”
    “Men survive that sort of thing all the time.”
    “But those men aren’t entangled with Angelina.”
    Salvatore considered this. It was plausible, he thought. But it was only
plausible
. There still existed the biggest sticking point: the
E. coli
itself. If what the sergeant was saying was true, how had Lorenzo come to put his hands upon it? And not just
E. coli
but a deadly strain of it.
    He spoke to the detective sergeant about this: about the
how
of the
E. coli
’s acquisition. She listened but could offer him no advice. They—along with Giuditta—meditated in silence upon this thorny issue. Then Giorgio Simione came into Salvatore’s office.
    For a moment, Salvatore blinked at him in absolute incomprehension. He’d given him an assignment, but he couldn’t recall what it was, even when Giorgio said helpfully, “DARBA,
Ispettore
.”
    Salvatore said, “
Come?
” and repeated the word. When Giorgio said, “DARBA Italia,” Salvatore recalled.
    “It’s here in Lucca,” Giorgio told him. “It’s on the route to Montecatini.”
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Mitchell Corsico had to be dealt with first. He’d done her an enormous favour in getting the entire, unedited television news film