Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  “‘This is from your father’?” Lynley repeated. “Did he speak English or Italian to you?”

  “English.”

  “And what was from your father?”

  “A card.”

  “Like . . . a greeting card, perhaps?” Lynley thought of the pictures they had from the tourists in the mercato, Roberto Squali with a card in his hand, then Hadiyyah with something similar in hers. “What did the card say?”

  “It said to go with the man. It said not to be afraid. It said he would bring me to him, to my dad.”

  “And was it signed?”

  “It said ‘Dad.’”

  “Was it in your father’s handwriting, Hadiyyah? D’you think you would recognise his handwriting?”

  Slowly she sucked in on her lip. She looked up at him, and her great dark eyes began to spill tears onto her cheeks. In this, Lynley had his answer. She was nine years old. How often had she even seen her father’s handwriting and why would she ever be expected to remember what it looked like? He put his arm round her and pulled her closer to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said again, this time pressing his lips to her hair. “I expect you’ve missed your father badly. I expect you’d very much like to see him.”

  She nodded, tears still dribbling down her face.

  “Right. Well. He’s here in Italy. He’s waiting for you. He’s been trying to find you since you went missing.”

  “Khushi,” she said against his shoulder.

  Lynley frowned. He repeated the word. He asked her what it meant and she told him happiness. It was what her father always called her.

  “He said khushi,” she told him with trembling lips. “He called me khushi.”

  “The man with the card?”

  “Dad said he’d come at Christmas hols, see, but then he didn’t.” She began to weep harder. “He kept saying ‘soon, khushi, soon’ in his emails. I thought he came as a big surprise for me and was waiting for me and the man said we had to drive to him so I got in the car. We drove and drove and drove and he took me to Sister Domenica Giustina and Dad wasn’t there.” She sobbed and Lynley comforted her as best he could, no expert in the ways of little girls. “Bad, bad, bad,” she wept. “I did bad. I made trouble for everyone. I’m bad.”

  “Not in the least,” Lynley said. “Look at how brave you’ve been from the start. You weren’t frightened and that’s a very good thing.”

  “He said Dad was on his way,” she wailed. “He said to wait and Dad would come.”

  “I see how it happened,” Lynley told her. He stroked her hair. “You did brilliantly, Hadiyyah, from beginning to end and you’re not to blame. You’ll remember that, won’t you? You are not to blame.” For at that point, Lynley thought, what else was the child to do but wait for her father? She had no idea where Squali had taken her. There was no nearby house to which she could have run. Inside the cloister, the nuns might have seen her but they assumed she was a relative of their caretaker. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary to them, for the child played on the villa’s grounds. If she acted like anything at all, what she didn’t act like was a kidnap victim.

  He fished his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it into Hadiyyah’s small hands. He met the gaze of Lo Bianco in the rearview mirror. He could see what the chief inspector was thinking: They needed to get their hands on that card Squali had given the child, and they needed to find the connection between him and anyone who knew Hadiyyah’s nickname was khushi.

  When they arrived at the hospital in Lucca, Angelina Upman rushed at the car. She flung open the rear door and grabbed her daughter, crying her name. She looked terrible, everything from her difficult pregnancy to her anxiety about her child having taken a grievous toll upon her. But at the moment, the only thing of import was Hadiyyah. Angelina cried, “Oh my God! Thank you, thank you!” and she ran frantic hands over Hadiyyah from head to toe, a desperate search for any possible injuries.

  For her part, Hadiyyah only said, “Mummy,” and “I want to go home,” and then she saw her father.

  Azhar was approaching from the hospital doors with Lorenzo Mura following him. Hadiyyah cried out, “Dad! Dad!” and the Pakistani man broke into a sprint. When he reached Angelina and his daughter, he swept both of them into his arms. They formed a tight unit of three, and Azhar bent to kiss Hadiyyah’s head. He pressed his lips to Angelina’s as well. “The best of all conclusions,” he said. And to Lynley and Lo Bianco as they got out of the car, “Thank you, thank you.”

  Lo Bianco murmured again that this was his job: to reach a successful conclusion to a bad situation. For his part, Lynley made no reply. He was, instead, watching Lorenzo Mura and trying to determine what it meant that his expression was black and his eyes mirrored fury.

  LUCCA

  TUSCANY

  Lynley was not long in the dark on this matter. While Angelina accompanied her daughter to be examined by one of the doctors in casualty, Lynley and Lo Bianco remained with Lorenzo and Azhar. They found a sheltered corner of the waiting room, where they could speak in private, and here the two police officers explained not only what had happened in the mercato on the day that Hadiyyah had disappeared but also where she had been taken and by whom and for what reason.

  “He has done this!” was Lorenzo’s reaction the moment that the police had reached the conclusion of the story. In case they didn’t know to whom he was referring, Lorenzo went on, indicating Azhar with a jerk of his head in the Pakistani man’s direction. “Can you not see he has done this?”

  Azhar’s dark eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”

  “You have done this to her. To Angelina. To Hadiyyah. To me. You found her and you want her suffering—”

  “Signore, Signore,” Lo Bianco said. His voice was calm and conciliatory. “Non c’è la prova di tutto ciò. Non deve—”

  “Non sa niente!” Lorenzo hissed. And what followed was Italian so rapid-fire that Lynley could follow none of it. What he did understand was Lo Bianco’s statement about proof: There was nothing to indicate that Azhar had been involved in this matter. He also understood that there might be, that the London connection between Michelangelo Di Massimo and the private investigator Dwayne Doughty did not look good. But this was a matter about which Lorenzo Mura knew nothing. At the moment he was operating on nerves alone, and God knew his had been strung out for weeks.

  Azhar was silent, his face immobile. He watched the heated conversation between Lo Bianco and Mura, and he did not ask for a translation. In part, Lynley could tell, no translation was necessary. The murderous looks Lorenzo was shooting the Pakistani man were enough indication that something accusatory was being said.

  Angelina approached them at this point, Hadiyyah’s hand in hers. Lynley could tell she took in the situation with a single glance, because she stopped and bent to her daughter. She smoothed her hair, took her to a nearby chair that was well within her sight, parked her there with a kiss on the top of her head, and came to join the men.

  “How is Hadiyyah?” Azhar asked at once.

  “Oh, he asks this now,” Lorenzo scoffed. “Vaffanculo! Mostro! Vaffanculo!”

  Angelina blanched, which was something to see as she had virtually no colour in her face to begin with. She said, “What’s going on?”

  “How is Hadiyyah?” Azhar repeated. “Angelina . . .”

  She turned to him. Her face was soft. “She’s well. There was no . . . She’s unhurt, Hari.”

  “May I . . .” He nodded at his daughter, who watched them with her great dark eyes so solemn and confused.

  “Of course you may,” Angelina said. “She’s your daughter.”

  Azhar nodded, even managing a small and formal bow. He strode across to Hadiyyah and she jumped from her chair. He swung her up and into his arms, and the child buried her face in his neck. Angelina watched this, as did everyone.

&n
bsp; “Serpente,” Lorenzo hissed at Angelina, indicating Azhar with a scornful jerk of his head in the Pakistani’s direction. “L’uomo è un serpente, cara.”

  She turned to him. She examined him in a way that suggested she was only seeing Lorenzo Mura for the very first time. She said, “Renzo, my God. What are you saying?”

  “L’ha fatto,” he said. “L’ha fatto. L’ha fatto.”

  “He did what?” she asked.

  “Tutto, tutto!”

  “He did nothing. He did nothing at all. He’s been here to help find her; he’s made himself available to the police, to us; he’s suffered every bit as much as I have suffered and you cannot, Lorenzo, no matter how you feel and what you want, accuse him of anything but loving Hadiyyah. Chiaro, Lorenzo? Do you understand?”

  The Italian’s face had flooded with colour. One hand knotted into a fist. “Non è finito” was what he said.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Barbara was in the midst of planning out her next confrontation with Dwayne Doughty when the call from Lynley came. She was at her desk, she was reorganising her notes, and she was ignoring the baleful glares from John Stewart that the DI was firing at her from across the room. He’d not stopped his ceaseless observation of her despite being warned off by their guv. He seemed to be turning his mania for ruining her into a form of religion.

  “We have her, Barbara” was how Lynley began. “We’ve found her. She’s fine. You can set your mind at rest.”

  Barbara was unprepared for the explosion of emotion inside of her. She said past something that occluded her throat, “You have Hadiyyah?”

  They indeed had Hadiyyah, Lynley told her. He spoke of a place called Villa Rivelli, of a young woman who thought herself a Dominican nun, of the same young woman’s delusions about having the care of Hadiyyah placed into her hands, and of an aborted “baptism” of Hadiyyah that had frightened the child enough to raise the alarm and gain the notice of the Mother Superior inside the cloistered convent. When he was finished, all Barbara could say was “Bloody hell, bloody hell. Thank you, thank you, sir.”

  “Thanks go to Chief Inspector Lo Bianco.”

  “How’s . . .” Barbara thought how to phrase it.

  Lynley kindly intercepted her question. “Azhar’s fine. Angelina is a little worse for wear. But she and Azhar have made their peace, evidently, so all’s well that ends well, I daresay.”

  “Peace?” Barbara asked.

  Lynley explained the scene at Lucca’s hospital, where Hadiyyah was taken after her rescue from the convent. Post a number of accusations from Lorenzo Mura on the matter of Azhar’s putative involvement in Hadiyyah’s disappearance, Angelina and her former lover were able to reach a rapprochement with each other. For her part, Angelina had admitted to doing Azhar a grave injustice in leading him to believe she’d returned to him while all the time planning the disappearance of his daughter. For his part, Azhar asked forgiveness for having been unwilling from the first to give Angelina what she had so wanted: marriage or a sibling for their daughter. He’d said that he was wrong in this. He said he understood that it was too late for them now—for Angelina and himself—but he hoped that she could forgive him as he fully, wholeheartedly, and freely forgave her.

  “Did Mura hear all this?” Barbara asked.

  “He’d already departed in something of a temper. But I have a feeling things aren’t finished there. He indicated as much before exiting stage left. He’s convinced that Azhar’s at the bottom of everything that’s gone on. I must tell you that chances are you’ll be hearing from Chief Inspector Lo Bianco or whoever’s replaced him.”

  “Was he pulled from the case?”

  “He was, so he tells me. And Hadiyyah explained that . . .” He stopped for a moment. He spoke to someone in Italian. Barbara caught pagherò in contanti and a woman’s voice in the background saying “Grazie, Dottore.” He continued, “Hadiyyah told me that she went with a man who told her he was taking her to her father. She said he had a card—a greeting card, I think—with a message purporting to be from Azhar telling her to go with the man as he’d bring her to her father.”

  Barbara felt a frisson at this. “Have you seen the card?”

  “As yet, no. But the carabinieri have Domenica Medici in hand, which means they have the entire convent in hand. If there’s a card at Villa Rivelli and Hadiyyah kept it, it’ll turn up soon enough.”

  “It could be elsewhere,” Barbara said. “And anyone could have written that message, sir.”

  “My first thought as well, as she apparently wouldn’t recognise his writing. But then she told me something curious, Barbara. The man who took her from the market called her khushi. Have you ever heard Azhar use that term? She said it’s his nickname for her.”

  Barbara’s stomach turned to liquid. She casually repeated, “Khushi, sir?” to buy a few moments in which her thoughts jumped feverishly from one point to another, like fleas indicating directions on a map.

  “She said that’s why she went with him. Not only because of the card holding out the promise of her father, but also because he called her khushi, which meant to her that Squali had to be telling the truth, for how else would he have known the term?”

  Doughty, of course, Barbara thought. That king of rats. He would have passed the nickname on. But there were several reasons he may have done so, and offering any of them to Lynley was to take a route that led nowhere remotely helpful. So she said, “Azhar might’ve called her that round me, but I bloody well don’t remember, sir. On the other hand, if it is a nickname, I reckon Angelina knew it, too.”

  “I take it you’re suggesting a path from Angelina to Lorenzo Mura?”

  “It makes sense in a way, doesn’t it? From what you’ve said, sounds to me like Mura’s got a very wide streak of jealousy running up his spine. Also sounds to me like he hates Azhar and it doesn’t take too much of a jump to get from there to him wanting to cut the tie between Azhar and Angelina permanently in some way. Plus . . .” And here Barbara put into words what didn’t bear thinking of, “What if he’s also jealous of Angelina’s bond with Hadiyyah? What if he wants Angelina only for himself? P’rhaps the plan was to set Azhar up with a kidnap charge and to . . .” At the end, she couldn’t put it into words.

  Lynley did it for her. “Are you suggesting his intention would have been to eliminate Hadiyyah?”

  “We’ve seen nearly everything in our line of work, sir.”

  He was silent. He would, of course, know this was true.

  “What about Doughty?” Lynley asked. “What have you turned up on him?”

  Barbara didn’t want to go within fifty yards of what she’d learned about Doughty, leading as it did to his claims about Azhar. What she wanted was a chance to talk to Azhar, to ask him questions and to study his face as he gave his answers. But her brief had been to dig into Doughty’s part in Hadiyyah’s disappearance, so she had to give Lynley something and she quickly made her choice. “I’ve come up with a bloke called Bryan Smythe,” she said. “He does computer work for Doughty, the kind requiring a special touch of the hacking variety.”

  “And?”

  “Haven’t put the thumbscrews to him yet. That’s on for tomorrow. But what I hope to learn is that Doughty employed him to wipe clean all traces of communication between himself and one Michelangelo Di Massimo. Which’ll more or less confirm that Doughty’s involved.”

  Lynley said nothing. Barbara waited in a welter of anxiety for him to take the next step, which logically demanded that Barbara check for a connection between Doughty and Azhar. He said finally, “As to that . . .”

  She cut in hastily with what she hoped sounded like a conclusion. “Someone would have hired him, of course. Way I see it, it could go two directions. Either someone here hired him to execute a plan to snatch Hadiyyah—”

  “And that would be?”

&nbs
p; “Anyone who hated Azhar, I expect. Angelina’s relatives top that list. They knew Hadiyyah was missing from London ’cause I went to see them when she first disappeared. Azhar went as well. They hate him, sir. To do something to hurt him? Nothing they might pay for that pleasure would be too much, believe me.”

  “And the other direction?”

  “Your end. Someone in Italy setting everything up, including creating a line to a private detective in London for purposes of making someone in London look suspicious. Who does that suggest to you?”

  “We know Lorenzo Mura is probably acquainted with Di Massimo. They both play football for their cities’ teams.” He was quiet for a moment, then she heard him sigh. “I’ll pass all this on to Lo Bianco,” he finally said. “He can hand it over to his replacement.”

  “D’you still want me to—”

  “Complete your work on the Doughty end of things, Barbara. If you come up with something, we’ll send it to Italy when I get back. Everything’s in the hands of the Italians now. As liaison officer, my work is finished.”

  Barbara let out her breath, which she’d been holding as she’d waited for his reaction to the tale she’d spun. She said, “When d’you come back home, sir?”

  “I’ve a flight out in the morning. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They rang off then, and Barbara was left at her desk with the malignant stare of DI Stewart upon her. Across the room as he was, he hadn’t been able to hear any part of her conversation with Lynley, but he had on his face the expression of a man who had no intention of letting any sleeping dog alone if there was a chance he could kick it soundly in the ribs.

  She returned his stare until he shifted in his chair and went back to wasting his time in a putative examination of paperwork on his desk. Barbara sorted through her feelings about what she had just done and not done in her phone call with Lynley.

  She was fast approaching a professional line. Should she cross it, that move would forever define her. She asked herself what was owed to the people she loved, and the only answer she could come up with was absolute loyalty at all costs. The difficulty was in choosing those people. The additional difficulty was attempting to understand the exact nature of the love she felt for them.