Just One Evil Act il-18

by Elizabeth George

  She saw Daidre wandering to the table between the two front windows. On it stood a silver-framed picture of Lynley and his wife on their wedding day. Barbara glanced at him and wondered why he hadn’t removed it prior to bringing Daidre into his home. He’d thought of everything, but he hadn’t thought of this.

  Daidre picked up the picture as anyone might have done. Barbara and Lynley exchanged a look. Before Daidre could turn and mention the picture—the obvious comment being one about how lovely a woman Helen Lynley had been—Barbara said expansively, “So I’ll say an early good-night, sir. And thanks for the meal. Got to dash before I become a pumpkin.” She added, “Or whatever,” when she realised that her Mini would turn into the pumpkin and not herself. She’d never been good with allusions to fairy tales.

  Daidre said, “I should go as well, Thomas. Perhaps Barbara can drop me at my hotel?”

  Another look between Lynley and Barbara, but he jumped in before she had to come up with the reason on her own. “Nonsense,” he said. “I’m happy to drive you. Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Take him up on that,” Barbara told her. “It’d take me till morning to clear the takeaway cartons from the passenger seat of my heap.”

  That said, she got herself out of the town house. The last thing she saw was Lynley pouring brandy into two crystal balloons. Whoops on that one, she thought. He should have used teacups or something. Supper within a bona fide dining room had been bad enough.

  She quite liked the vet, but she wondered about Lynley’s pursuit of her. There was definitely a kind of tension between them. It just didn’t seem sexual to Barbara.

  No matter, she thought. It wasn’t her affair. As long as Lynley didn’t ensnare himself with Isabelle Ardery again, anyone else was fine by her. For his time with Isabelle had constituted the malodorous dead elephant. She was that happy the rotting corpse of it had finally been removed from the room.

  She was thinking of nothing in particular when she saw the panda car in front of the yellow Edwardian villa when she arrived home. It was double-parked in the street next to an ancient Saab, and in the evening light, most of the inhabitants of the building behind which Barbara’s tiny bungalow sat stood along the driveway in clusters, as if waiting to see someone brought outside in handcuffs. Barbara parked hastily and illegally. She got out and heard someone saying, “Don’t know . . . Didn’t hear a thing till the cops showed up,” and she made fast time to join the onlookers.

  “What’s going on?” She addressed her question to Mrs. Silver, who lived in a flat on the second floor of the house. She was wearing, as always, one of her pinafore aprons and an accompanying turban, and she was chewing nervously on what looked like a tongue depressor bearing chocolate stains.

  “She’s phoned the police,” Mrs. Silver said. “Or someone has. Maybe he did it. There was shouting at first. All of us heard it. Both of them. Another man as well. Not an English speaker, him. He was shouting in I-don’t-know-what language. I couldn’t tell. Well, it’s my hearing, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter. They must have been heard all the way to Chalk Farm Road.”

  This was shorthand for something. What it was Barbara didn’t know. She looked round to see who else was in the crowd, but what she noticed was who wasn’t there. And then her gaze went to the villa itself, where every light appeared inside of the ground-floor flat and the French windows were standing open.

  Her throat got tight. She murmured, “Is Azhar . . . ? Has something . . . ?”

  Mrs. Silver turned to her. She read something on Barbara’s face. She said, “She’s come back, Barbara. She’s not alone. Something’s happened and she’s brought the police to sort it out.”

  CHALK FARM

  LONDON

  “She” could have only one meaning. Angelina Upman had returned. Barbara dug in her chaotic shoulder bag and brought out her warrant card. It was the one thing that would gain her access to Azhar’s flat, no matter who was in charge inside.

  She worked her way through the rest of her neighbours. She entered the picket gate and crossed the lawn. The shouting became intelligible as she approached the French windows. It was easy to recognise Angelina’s voice.

  “Make him tell you!” She was screaming at someone. “It’s Pakistan! He’s put her there. She’s with his family. You’re a monster! To do this to your own daughter.”

  And then Azhar’s voice, in a panic, “How can you say . . . ?”

  Then a foreigner, a heavy accent, “Why you no make to arrest this man?”

  Barbara entered to a scene in which everyone seemed frozen into position: Two uniformed constables had placed themselves between Taymullah Azhar and Angelina Upman. Her face looked painted with the mascara that had raccooned her eyes, and her features were pinched. The man with her was handsome, looking like someone who could pose for the sculpture of an athlete. His hair was curly and thick, his shoulders broad, his chest like a trunk. His fists were clenched as if he would punch Azhar could he only reach him. One of the constables was preventing this, holding him back as Azhar and Angelina shouted at each other.

  Azhar was the first to see Barbara. His face had been worn for months, but now it looked worse. He’d been running on empty since their final conversation with Dwayne Doughty, taking on more graduate students, attending every conference that would take him as far from Chalk Farm as he could get. He’d returned from another one—this time in Berlin—only the night before, stopping by her bungalow to ask if there had been anything . . . any message . . . any word . . . ? It was his regular question upon returning. Her answer had always been the same.

  Angelina turned when she saw Azhar’s expression alter. So did the man with her. In doing so, he fully exposed his face. It had a port wine birthmark like the mark upon Cain, extending from his right ear onto his cheek. It was the only thing that marred his beauty.

  The constable holding back this man spoke. “Madam, you’ll have to leave.”

  Barbara flipped him her warrant card. “DS Havers,” she said. “I live in the back. What’s happened? C’n I help?”

  “It’s Hadiyyah” was all that Azhar managed to say.

  “He’s taken my child,” Angelina cried. “He’s kidnapped Hadiyyah. He has her somewhere. Do you understand? Oh, of course you do. You’ve bloody well helped him, haven’t you?”

  Barbara tried to take this in. Helped who do what? was what she wondered.

  “Tell me where she is!” Angelina shouted. “You goddamn bloody well tell me where she is!”

  “Angelina, what happened?” Barbara asked. “Listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  The story came from all directions. When the constables understood that Barbara was a friend of the family and not there from the Met, they attempted to escort her from the premises, but at that point both Angelina and Azhar wanted her to stay, each for their own reasons, although those reasons went unspoken other than Angelina crying, “She needs to bloody hear this, she does,” and Azhar saying, “Barbara knows my daughter very well.”

  “Your daughter, your daughter,” Angelina snarled. “You’re no father to a child you would treat like this.”

  She’d been taken from a market in Lucca, Italy, Barbara discovered. This had happened two days previously. She’d been there with Lorenzo—the man in the flat with Angelina and obviously, to Barbara, Angelina’s new lover—as they had done their weekly shop. She was to wait where she always waited, where a musician played, but she hadn’t been there when Lorenzo arrived and he hadn’t thought to search for her.

  “Why not?” Barbara asked.

  “What difference does it make?” Angelina demanded. “We know what happened. We know who took her. She would never walk off with a stranger, anywhere. And no one could possibly have carried her off in the middle of a market in front of hundreds of people. She would have screamed. She would have fought. You’ve taken her, Hari, and as God is my witness, I’m going to—”

  “Cara,” Lorenzo said, “non devi.” He moved
to her. “La troveremo,” he said. “Te lo prometto.” At this she began to weep. Azhar took a step towards her.

  “Angelina,” he said, “you must listen to me. So much depends—”

  “I don’t believe you!” she cried.

  “Did you phone the police in Lucca?” Barbara asked her.

  “Of course I phoned them! What do you think I am? I phoned them, they came, they searched, they’re still searching. And what are they finding? Nothing. A nine-year-old gone without a trace. And he has her. Because no one else could have taken her. Make him tell me where she is.” This last she directed to the constables. They looked to Barbara as if for some sort of help.

  What Barbara wanted to say was, “He supposedly took her like you took her? Like you told Azhar where she was?” But instead she turned to Angelina’s companion. “Tell me exactly what happened,” she said. “Why didn’t you look for her when she wasn’t where you expected her to be?”

  “Are you accusing him?” Angelina cried.

  “If Hadiyyah’s missing—”

  “If? What d’you think this is?”

  “Angelina, please,” Barbara said. “If Hadiyyah’s missing, there’s no time to waste. I need to know what happened from start to finish.” And to Lorenzo, “Why didn’t you look for her at once?”

  “Because of my sister,” he said. And when Angelina protested the fact that he was even replying when they all knew who’d taken her daughter, he said, “Per favore, cara,” in a gentle voice. “Vorrei dire qualcosa, va bene?” Then, in the limited English he possessed, he explained. “My sister live near this mercato. There we go always after, to her house. When Hadiyyah I miss from this place, I think she go there. To play.”

  “Why would you think that?” Barbara asked.

  “Mio nipote . . .” He looked to Angelina for help.

  “His nephew is there,” she said. “Hadiyyah and the boy play together.”

  Across the room Azhar closed his eyes. “All these months,” he said. And for the first time since his child had gone missing, Barbara saw the man’s lips struggle with the effort not to weep.

  “I finish with making shop,” Lorenzo said. “I think I see Hadiyyah when I go to the house.”

  “She knew how to get there?” Barbara asked.

  “There she go many times to play, sì. Angelina come to the mercato then, and—”

  “From where?”

  “Piazzale—”

  “I mean what was she doing? What were you doing, Angelina?”

  “Are you now accusing me—”

  “Of course not. Where were you? What did you see? How long were you gone?”

  She was doing her yoga, as it turned out. She went regularly to a class in the town.

  “She come to the mercato, we meet like always, we go to my sister. Hadiyyah is not there.”

  They’d thought at first she’d become lost somewhere in the large market. Or, perhaps, she’d become distracted on her way to the musician and now was back there in the market waiting for them in her usual place near Porta San Jacopo. They returned, this time with Lorenzo’s sister and her husband, and the four of them had begun to search.

  They searched the market. They extended the search outside the city wall, where the rest of Lucca—the modern part of the town—spread out in all directions. They walked the top of the huge wall itself with its baluardi, the great ramparts from which defences were long ago maintained. On these were now planted trees and lawns, and among them were places children could play. But Hadiyyah had been nowhere on the wall, nor had she been just beneath it at the playground near Porta San Donato, so close to her school as to be a natural destination for a little girl tired of waiting for her parents.

  Barbara looked at Azhar when the word parents was spoken. He looked as if he’d taken a blow.

  At that point they began to think the unthinkable and had phoned the police. But Angelina had also phoned Azhar. Gone for a few days from University College, she’d learned. Not answering his mobile, she’d then discovered. Not answering his landline here in Chalk Farm, either. And that was when she knew what had actually happened.

  “Angelina,” Azhar said desperately, “I was at a conference.”

  “Where?” she demanded.

  “Germany. Berlin.”

  “You can prove that, sir?” the constable asked.

  “Of course I can prove it. It was four days long. There were many sessions. I delivered a paper and also attended—”

  “You left Berlin long enough to take her, didn’t you?” Angelina said. “That would have been simple. That’s what you did. Where is she, Hari? What have you done with her? Where have you taken her?”

  “You must listen,” Azhar said, and then to her companion whom he had otherwise ignored, “You must ask her to listen. I could not find you once you left me, Angelina. I tried. Yes, I tried. I hired someone many months ago. But there was no trail. Please listen to me.”

  “Madam,” the constable said, “this is a matter to be handled at the source, not here. The Italian police need to instigate a wider search, beyond Lucca. They’ll also be able to make sure that his attendance at this conference—”

  “Do you know how easily he could have made it for himself to leave that bloody conference?” Angelina said. “He’s taken her from Italy, don’t you see? She might be in Germany. Why in God’s name won’t you listen to me?”

  “How could I have taken her?” Azhar countered. He shot Barbara an agonised look.

  She said, “Angelina, her passport. Her papers. Think. You took everything with you. I was here. I checked. Azhar came for me the night you left him. He couldn’t have taken her from Italy without documents of some kind.”

  “Then you’re part of this,” Angelina declared. “You’ve helped him, haven’t you? You’d know how to get a false passport for her. Identity cards. Everything you need.” And saying this, she began to weep. “I want my daughter,” she cried. “I want my little girl.”

  “On my life, I do not have her, Angelina,” Azhar said brokenly. “We must go to Italy at once to find her.”

  ILFORD

  GREATER LONDON

  Neither Angelina nor her lover—a bloke whose name turned out to be Lorenzo Mura—was about to consider a return to Italy until whatever stones they’d decided needed to be turned over were turned over. Barbara learned this within a quarter hour’s conversation with them. No matter what Azhar produced in an attempt to convince his former lover that he’d been exactly where he said he’d been, no amount of paperwork—from the conference in Berlin, from the hotel in which he’d stayed, from the flight he’d taken to get there, from the restaurants in which he’d eaten—was going to persuade Angelina that time was of the essence in a kidnapping case and that time needed to be spent in Italy and not in a shouting match in Chalk Farm.

  She wanted to go to Ilford, she announced. When she said this, Azhar looked so appalled that Barbara thought he might sick up on the floor. She herself said, “Ilford? What in God’s name has Ilford got to do with anything?” and Azhar answered with four words that spoke volumes, “My wife and parents.”

  Barbara said to Angelina, “You think he’s got Hadiyyah stowed with his parents? Come on, Angelina. Have some sense. We need to—”

  “Shut up!” she screamed. The two constables tried to intervene, but before they could stop her, she had gone for Azhar. “You’d do anything!” she cried.

  Barbara grabbed her and pulled her away, and when Angelina swung on her next, she said, “All right. Ilford. We’re going to Ilford.”

  “Barbara, we cannot . . .” Azhar’s voice was a separate agony from everything else.

  “We’re going to have to,” Barbara told him.

  The local constables, at this point, were only too happy to leave the matter in the hands of the Metropolitan police. They faded out of the flat, and the one favour they did before departing the property altogether was to disperse the neighbours. Thus, when Barbara and her companions left Az
har’s flat and headed for his car, they were able to do so in a relatively inconspicuous manner.

  They rode to Ilford in silence. Barbara could hear Lorenzo murmuring something to Angelina as they went along, but he did his murmuring in Italian, and he might as well have been speaking Martian.

  Azhar kept his gaze on the road and a strangling grip upon the steering wheel. From his rapid and shallow breathing, Barbara had an idea of the degree to which he was wrestling with everything going on.

  Azhar’s family turned out to live directly off Green Lane, just round the corner from an establishment called Ushan’s Fruit and Veg. It was a street of terrace houses like so many other similar streets in the city where the now-lit streetlamps shone on homes distinguished only by the nature of their patch of front garden. Unlike areas closer to the centre of town, however, this particular street wasn’t lined with cars. They would be an expense most families daren’t take on.

  “Which one?” Angelina said, as Azhar stopped the car midway down the street.

  Lorenzo opened the car door and helped her out. He kept his hand on the small of her back. Azhar indicated the house by going to the door. When he rang the bell, a teenage boy was the one to answer. It was a terrible moment. Barbara saw the anguish of it in the very immobility of Azhar’s face. She knew he was looking at his son. She also knew he hadn’t seen him in a decade.

  That the boy hadn’t a clue who this group of people was was obvious enough. He said, “Yeah?” and used the heel of his hand to move his floppy hair from his forehead. Barbara saw Azhar make a gesture as if to touch the boy, but he stopped himself short of doing so. Then he said, “Sayyid. I am your father. Will you tell these people with me that no child has been brought to this house?”

  The boy’s lips parted. He seemed to tear his gaze from Azhar, and he directed it to Barbara and then to Angelina. When he finally spoke, it was clear he’d been well schooled in the family history. “Which of them is the whore?” he asked.

  Azhar said, “Sayyid. Please do as I say. Tell these people that no child of nine years old—a little girl—has been brought to this house.”