Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

wants to know where you were,” as she was presented with another saint’s card, which Mamma announced as a depiction of San Rocco.
    Barbara made walking motions with her fingers against the tabletop. “Out for a morning walk,” she told him.
    “
Ho fatto una passeggiata
,” Hadiyyah said. “That’s how you say it.”
    “Right.
Oh fat-o una passa
—whatever.”
    “Ah.
E dov’è andata?
”
    “An’ where did you go?” Hadiyyah translated.
    “I got bloody well lost. Tell him I’m lucky I didn’t end up in Pisa.”
    When Hadiyyah passed this along to Salvatore, the inspector smiled. But Barbara could see it didn’t touch his eyes, and she steeled herself for whatever was coming next. This turned out to be Salvatore’s mobile, which chimed. He looked at it and said, “Ispettore Lynley.”
    She pressed a finger to her lips, asking Salvatore in this way to keep mum on her whereabouts. He nodded cooperatively.
    He said with a smile, “
Pronto, Tommaso
,” into the mobile. But after a moment, his face altered. He glanced at Barbara, and he left the room.
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    Not having heard from Barbara Havers felt to Lynley distinctly like a case of no news being good news, although he knew how unlikely this was. So he was unsurprised when the relative ease he was feeling ended shortly after his arrival at work. Winston Nkata related that there was no connection to Italy that he could find among Angelina Upman’s family and associates aside from the fact that her parents were evidently now in Lucca, and shortly thereafter DI John Stewart accosted him in the corridor and handed over a copy of
The Source.
    On page one of the tabloid was a very large and extremely soulful picture of Hadiyyah Upman gazing out of a window, below which were arrayed a large collection of highly recognisable succulents. The picture was accompanied by a story headlined
When Will She Come Home?
This story was attached to the by-line
Mitchell Corsico
. In combination with the photo, this revealed the absolute worst. For there was only one way that Mitchell Corsico could have worked out where Hadiyyah had been stowed by Barbara Havers. Lynley knew this, and so did Stewart.
    The other DI made this point clear when he said, “What’s it to be, Tommy? Do I give this to the guv or do you? If you want my opinion on the subject, she’s been in bed with
The Source
God only knows how long. Years, probably. She’s been on the take as a snout and now she’s finished.”
    Lynley said, “You carry your aversions too openly, John. I’d advise you to back off.”
    Stewart’s lips formed a sneer that was as amused as it was all-knowing. “Would you indeed?” he said. “Right. Well, I suppose you would.” He glanced in the direction of Isabelle Ardery’s office to indicate the subject of his next point. “She’s met with CIB1, Tommy. The word’s out on that.”
    Lynley said calmly, “Then obviously your sources are far better than mine.” Tapping the tabloid against his palm, he concluded with “May I keep this, John?”
    “Many more where that came from, mate. Just in case it doesn’t end up on . . . on
Isabelle’s
desk.” He winked and sauntered off, his step quite jaunty. They were down to the last set, and he was determined to win the match.
    Lynley watched him go. He gazed at the tabloid’s page-one story once he was alone. It was vintage material from
The Source
: The good guys wore white. The bad guys wore black. No one wore grey. In this case, both Taymullah Azhar and Lorenzo Mura were the bad guys for reasons having to do with the death of Angelina Upman (Azhar) and with keeping Hadiyyah from her father (Mura). Of course, since Azhar was in prison at the moment, put there by Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco (white), who was in charge of the investigation into the death of Angelina Upman, the child had to be domiciled somewhere and the villa in which she had lived with her mother and Mura (pictures on page three) had seemed reasonable until other arrangements could be made. But hers was now the face of sadness, abandonment, and the desperate need to recover from the crimes that had been committed against her, and nothing was being done about that. She was now alone and in the hands of a foreign government (very black), and
when
was the Foreign Secretary (white but moving towards black very quickly) going to step in and demand that the child be returned to London where she belonged?
    Much space was taken up with the