Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

recap of what had happened to Hadiyyah since the previous November. Interestingly, though, there was no mention of anyone from New Scotland Yard being sent there to liaise for the troubled child.
    That, Lynley knew, was a telling detail. The tale it told was one of collusion between the journalist who had written the story and Barbara Havers. For if he named her, he named his source, and he wasn’t fool enough to do that. Yet Barbara was the only way he could have located Hadiyyah. And only through Barbara’s cooperation could he ever have managed to get a picture of the child.
    This article, Lynley knew, put the lie to everything Barbara Havers had said about her interactions with Corsico. She wouldn’t be the first cop to have been exposed as on the take from a tabloid. In recent years, cops on the take had become just another part of the landscape of what was a growing national scandal involving the gutter press. But in combination with every other black mark against her, this was going to finish her.
    He went to Isabelle’s office. The fact that she’d requested CIB1’s involvement was an indication of her confidence in the case she was building against Barbara. But there had to be a chance that this tabloid article could be painted another way.
    He tossed his copy of
The Source
into the nearest rubbish bin. He knew this was only a temporary measure since, as John Stewart had pointed out, there were more available just up the street. A few steps over to St. James’s Park Station and any one of half a dozen or more tabloids could be purchased. Stewart had probably already popped out to buy one. He’d see to it that Isabelle was apprised of the page-one story, and he’d do it soon.
    Isabelle’s office door stood open, but she wasn’t inside. Dorothea Harriman, however, was. She was in the midst of arranging a stack of files on the superintendent’s desk. When she saw Lynley, she said merely, “Tower Block.”
    “How long?”
    “It’s just gone an hour.”
    “Did he phone her or did she phone him?”
    “Neither. It was a scheduled meeting.”
    “CIB1?”
    Harriman looked regretful.
    “Blast,” he said. “Did she take anything with her?”
    “She had a tabloid,” Dorothea said.
    Lynley nodded and headed back to his office. There he placed his call to Salvatore Lo Bianco. If Barbara had indeed gone bad, then he owed it to his Italian colleague to warn him.
    When Lo Bianco answered, he was still at home. Chattering in Italian was going on in the background. This faded as Salvatore stepped out of the room to speak to Lynley.
    The Italian brought Lynley up-to-date on everything: his call upon DARBA Italia, his discoveries there, his subsequent interviews with Daniele Bruno, the
E. coli
connection between Bruno and Lorenzo Mura. “We have an agreement, his lawyer and I. He will wear a wire,” Salvatore told him. “In this way I believe we will have a resolution this very day.”
    Lynley said, “And the child? She’s with Barbara Havers?”
    “She is well and she is with Barbara.”
    “Salvatore, tell me. This is an odd sort of question, but can you tell me . . . is Barbara in Lucca alone?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Have you seen her in the company of anyone?”
    “I know she has been in the company of Aldo Greco. He is the lawyer of Taymullah Azhar.”
    “I’m speaking of an Englishman,” Lynley said. “He might be dressed like a cowboy, actually.”
    There was a pause before Salvatore chuckled. “A strange question, my friend,” he said. “Why do you ask this, Tommaso?”
    “Because he’s a tabloid journalist from London and he’s written a story that indicates to me he’s there in Lucca.”
    “But why would Barbara be in the company of a tabloid journalist?” Salvatore asked, not unreasonably. “And what is this tabloid?”
    “It’s called
The Source
,” Lynley said, and at that point he found that he could go no further with the information. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Salvatore about the picture of Hadiyyah at the window of Pensione Giardino
,
and more than that, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Salvatore what this meant. Obviously, the Italian could seek out a copy of
The Source
himself, either online or from a
giornalaio
selling UK tabloids for purchase by English speakers. If Salvatore did that, he could put together the pieces, but chances were still that he might put them together in an order that didn’t make Barbara look bad. So Lynley said,