Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

fool.”
    “I’m chuffed to hear that, so you’ll understand that, while I personally would love to give you all the time God ever invented to produce the names, the dates, the whatevers and whoevers, in my line of work, time counts for something. Deadlines, Barb. That’s what they’re called. I have them, you don’t.”
    She thought furiously. She knew the disaster that would befall not only her but also Azhar if Mitchell Corsico sent off the story he’d crafted from what Dwayne Doughty had given him: Her next job—and only if she happened to be extremely lucky—would probably be sweeping the gutters in Southend-on-Sea while Azhar’s future would consist of facing kidnapping charges or, if he somehow managed to get home before those charges hit the light of day in this country, spending the next few years fighting extradition to Italy.
    “Listen to me, Mitchell,” she said. “I’ll give you everything that I can. There’ll be a transcript of what goes down between the bloke we have wired and Lorenzo Mura. I’ll put my hands on that and send it your way. You’ll have your Italian journalist mate do the translation—”
    “And give
him
the exclusive? Not bloody likely.”
    “Okay, you’ll have someone else do the translation . . . Aldo Greco, Azhar’s solicitor . . . and then you’ll have the story.”
    “Fine. Excellent. Brilliant.”
    Barbara thought, Thank God.
    But then he added, “Just as long as I have it by noon.”
    He rang off on her crying out his name. She cursed him soundly. She thought about throwing her mobile phone into the loo. Instead, she left the stall she’d been occupying.
    She opened the door and walked directly into Salvatore.
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    Salvatore couldn’t lie to himself about the nature of the phone call that Barbara Havers had just made. He’d heard her say
Mitchell
and he’d noted the urgency in her tone. Even had that not been the case, the expression on her face would have told him that trusting her had been an error. He reflected briefly on why he felt so afflicted by this betrayal. He decided it was because she was a guest in his home, because she was a fellow cop, and because he’d only just protected her from the loathsome Upmans. He thought, ridiculously, that she owed him something.
    She began to babble, regardless of the fact that he couldn’t understand a word she was saying. He could see that she was trying to explain and that she was asking him to find someone who could translate her words for him. He recognised
bloody
,
bleeding
,
sodding
, and
hell
, and whatever she said was also peppered with
Azhar
and
Hadiyyah
and references to London. When he nodded at her mobile and said quietly, “
Parlava a
un giornalista
,
nevvero?
,” he could see that she perfectly understood what he meant. She said, “Yes, yes, all right, it was a journalist but you’ve got to try to understand because he has information from a bloke in London and it can sink me and it can sink Azhar and Azhar will end up losing everything including Hadiyyah and you need to see for the love of God that he can’t lose Hadiyyah because if he does then he loses everything and why why why don’t you speak English because we could talk this out and I could make you see because I can tell from your face that this is something personal to you like I’ve stabbed you straight in the heart and bloody hell Salvatore bloody bloody bleeding hell.”
    None of which he understood as it all came out, to him, as one very long word. He nodded to the door of the ladies’
bagno
and said, “
Mi segua
,” and she followed him back to the interview room where Daniele Bruno was waiting for what came next.
    He opened this door, but instead of walking inside, he told Bruno and his
avvocato
that he had to deal with one small matter before they could proceed. This small matter was taking Barbara Havers to a second interview room, where he asked her to sit by indicating a chair on one side of the table.
    “
Il Suo telefonino, Barbara
,” he said to her. To make sure she understood, he took out his own mobile and pointed to it. She said, “What? Why?” which was clear to him. He merely repeated his request and she handed it over. He could tell she thought he was going to use it to hit a redial on the number she’d rung, but he had no intention of doing that. He knew whom she’d phoned. But as he lived and breathed, she wasn’t going to phone him again. He slipped her mobile into his pocket.