Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

place on page one. Every tabloid reporter worth his salt wanted this: a by-line that melted the nerves of anyone whose activities suggested that a reputation-demolishing exposé was in order in the inimitable style of
The Source
. She’d known that when she’d got involved with the bloke.
    So she paced. She had her cigarettes, and she smoked. Someone brought her a
panino
which she did not eat and a bottle of water which she did not drink. Once a female officer escorted her to the loo. And that was all.
    Hours had passed by the time she was released. Salvatore was the one to fetch her. In those hours, much had happened. Lorenzo Mura had been brought to the
questura
, he had been questioned, he had been processed, and all the details had been taken care of.
    “
Mi dispiace
,” Salvatore told her. His eyes were indescribably sad.
    Barbara said, “Yeah. Me too,” and when he handed her her mobile phone, she said, “D’you mind if I . . . ?”
    “
Vada, Barbara, vada
,” he told her.
    He left her. He closed the door, but he didn’t lock it. She wondered if the room was wired, figured it was, and stepped out into the corridor. She rang Mitchell Corsico.
    It was, of course, too late. Mitch said, “Sorry, Barb, but a bloke’s got to do what a bloke’s—”
    She ended the call without listening to the rest. She trudged to Salvatore’s office. He was on the phone with someone called Piero, but when he saw Barbara, he rang off. He stood.
    She said, throat tight, “I wish I could make you understand. I didn’t have a choice, see? Because of Hadiyyah. And now . . . things’re going to be worse because of what comes next and I still don’t have a choice. Not really. Not in the ways that are the most important. And you’re not going to understand the way it comes down, Salvatore. You’re going to think once again that I’m betraying you and I s’pose I will be, but what else is there to do? A story—a big one—is going to hit a major tabloid tomorrow morning. It’s going to be about Azhar, about me, about what was planned and who planned it, about hiring certain people to snatch Hadiyyah, about money exchanging hands and records altered and all of this is very bad. Your tabloids are going to pick up on it, and even if they don’t, DI Lynley is going to ring you and tell you the truth. And you see, I can’t let that happen although I’ve already failed to stop the tabloid story from being sent in.” She cleared her throat mightily and said through lips that felt as if they would bleed, “And I’m so sorry because you are one very decent bloke.”
    Salvatore listened carefully. She could see the care he was taking to try to sort it all out. But it seemed to her that the only things he picked up on were names: Azhar and Hadiyyah. He spoke about Lorenzo Mura in reply, about Azhar, about Angelina. From this she reckoned he was telling her that Mura had confessed to what she herself had suspected: that Azhar was intended to drink that wine with the
E. coli
in it. She nodded as he said to her, “
Aveva ragione, Barbara Havers.
Aveva proprio ragione
.”
    From this, she supposed he was telling her that she had been right all along. It certainly gave her not a moment’s pleasure.

19 May
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    B arbara rose before half past five. She dressed and sat on the edge of her bed. She watched Hadiyyah sleeping, innocent of the knowledge of the change that now had to come to her life.
    One did not orchestrate an international kidnapping and simply walk away from that kidnapping’s fallout. Within a few hours, Azhar was going to be free to return to London with his child, but once the full story came out, the hell that would follow would ruin him financially, personally, and professionally. Interpol would see to that. Italian prosecution would see to that. Extradition would see to that. A London investigation would see to that. And the Upman family would see to that.
    What Barbara knew she had to do was to get to work on the problem and do it quickly. She had little enough time to see to things properly, and she needed Aldo Greco to help her.
    She’d rung him late on the previous day. She told him what she needed. He’d already been informed of Lorenzo Mura’s arrest and of Azhar’s being in the clear of all charges related to the death of Angelina Upman, so when she suggested that it was imperative to little Hadiyyah’s mental and psychological state—“The kid’s been through the emotional