Just One Evil Act

everything. But she said nothing about airline tickets to Pakistan, and Lynley knew this damned her.

That knowledge felt like a crack in his chest. He hadn’t actually understood until that moment how important his partnership with Barbara was to him. She was at most times a maddening woman whose personal habits set his teeth on edge. But she had always been a decent cop with a very good mind, and God knew he enjoyed her fractious company. And it had to be said: She had also saved his life on a night when he hadn’t cared in the least if that life was going to be taken from him by a serial killer.

It wasn’t so much that he believed he owed Barbara Havers something, though. It was that he cared deeply for the bloody woman. She was more than a partner. She was a friend. As such, she was like the other people in his small circle of trusted intimates: She was part of the fabric of his life, and he wanted to keep that fabric as whole as he could make it considering the rent that he’d had to repair when Helen had been torn from him.

She talked on and on. Her monologue had the appearance of the unburdening of one soul to another. He waited and hoped she would be totally frank with him. When she wasn’t, he had no further choice.

He said at the end of her remarks, “Pakistan, Barbara. You’ve left that out.”

She took a slurp of her coffee. Then she took three more gulps in rapid succession and looked round Peeler’s for a top-up. She said casually, “Pakistan, sir?”

He said, “Airline tickets. One in the name of Taymullah Azhar. The other in the name of Hadiyyah Upman. Purchased in March for a flight in July. You’ve not mentioned that, but SO12 was happy to.”

Her gaze met his. He tried to read her face, but he couldn’t tell if what he was looking at was defiance or chagrin. She said, “You bloody checked my work. I can’t believe that.”

“SO12 raised questions. In my mind and, more important, in Isabelle’s.”

“‘Isabelle,’” she repeated. “Not ‘the guv’ and not ‘the superintendent.’ I reckon I know what that means, don’t I?” Her words were bitter.

“I reckon you don’t,” Lynley told her evenly. “SO12 was my own initiative.”

They were eyeball to eyeball for a moment. “Sorry, sir,” she said at last, looking away from him.

“Accepted,” he replied. “As to the airline tickets . . . ? You must see how it’s going to look when it comes out that you withheld this information. If I discovered it with a simple call upon Harry Streener, then it stands to reason that DI Stewart’s going to uncover the very same thing.”

“I c’n handle Stewart.”

“That’s where you go wrong. You want to ‘handle’ him and you think you can ‘handle’ him because I daresay you believe the truth will out and the truth will set you free and whatever other aphorisms you’d like to apply to this situation.”

“The ‘truth’ is he hates me and everyone knows it, including, pardon me, Isabelle, sir. And if we want to look at how she positioned me into working for the bloke so that—as you and I both bloody well know—I’d eventually be kicked back down to uniform when I stepped out of order, then what I ‘daresay’ is we’re going to see a master plan at work.”

Lynley had not worked as a homicide detective for years to be unaware that Havers was attempting to wrest control of their conversation in order to divert it away from the more crucial matter onto something she could bear to speak about. So he said, “Pakistan, Barbara. Airline tickets. Let’s get back to that, shall we? Anything else takes us into the realm of speculation and wastes our time.”

She ran a hand through her chopped-up hair. She said, “I don’t know what it means, all right?”

“Which part? The fact that he’s holding tickets to Pakistan, the fact that he purchased them in March when he ostensibly didn’t know where his daughter was, or the fact that you’ve withheld this detail? Which part is the part whose meaning you don’t know, Barbara?”

“You’re cheesed off,” she said. “You’ve a right to be.”

“Don’t let’s go there. Just answer me.”

“I don’t know what it means that he bought those tickets.”

“He told me she’s coming to him in July, Barbara. Spending her holidays with him is the agreement he reached with Angelina once Hadiyyah was safely returned from the convent in the Alps. That first holiday commences in July.”

“I still don’t know what it means,” she insisted. “I want to talk to him. Until he gets back to London, I won’t know what his intentions are. Until he can explain himself to me—”

“You’re intent on believing whatever he says?” Lynley asked her. “Barbara, you’ve got to see how mad that is. What you should be doing is what you should have been doing all along: following the money, the money going from Azhar to anyone else.”

“He would have paid Doughty for his services in looking for Hadiyyah,” she said. “What’s that supposed to prove? The man’s daughter disappeared with her mum, Inspector. The cops here were doing nothing about it. He had no rights and—”

“The dates of the transfers out of his account are going to tell us volumes,” Lynley said. “You know that very well.”

“Anything can be argued about dates. Azhar paid Doughty when he’d gathered enough money to pay him. It was more expensive than he’d thought it would be, so he made more than one payment. He had to do it . . . over a period of months, say. And what he paid him for was to hire someone over in Italy to find his daughter. Everything else was on Doughty’s head.”

“For the love of God, Barbara—”

“Doughty saw a way to make more money out of this. Hold her long enough to make everyone desperate, make a demand for ransom a few weeks from now, and Bob’s the rest of it.”

Lynley sat back in his chair. He stared at her, his breath taken with her self-delusion. He said, “You can’t possibly believe that. There was no demand for money, and Azhar’s damned by those airline tickets.”

“He bought them to reassure himself that she would be found. It was like hedging his bets.”

“For Christ’s sake, she hadn’t even been kidnapped from the mercato in Lucca when he bought them.”

“There’s an explanation. I’m going to find it.”

“I can’t let you decide—”

She grabbed his arm fiercely. “I need to talk to Azhar. Give me time to talk to Azhar.”

“You’re walking on the wrong side in this. The consequences are going to come down on your head like the wrath of God. How can you expect me—”

“Just let me talk to him, sir. There’s going to be an explanation. He’ll be back soon. A day. Two or three at the most. He has students at work in his lab at University College. He has courses to teach. He’s not going to hang round Italy waiting for July to roll round. He can’t do that. Just give me a chance to talk to him. If there’s no explanation he can offer for those tickets and when he bought them and all the rest, I’ll tell the guv about them and I’ll give her my conclusions. I swear to God I’ll do that. If you’ll give me the time.”

Lynley gazed at the raw appeal on her face. He knew what he was meant to do: report the entire twisted mess at once and let the inevitable gear itself up to happen. But years of partnership lay between him and what he was meant to do. So he sighed deeply and said, “Very well, Barbara.”

She breathed, “Thank you, Inspector.”

“I don’t want to regret this,” he told her. “So once you’ve spoken to Azhar, you’re to speak to me straightaway. Are we clear on this?”

“We’re absolutely clear.”

He nodded, got to his feet, and left her nursing the rest of her coffee.

There was absolutely nothing he liked about the situation. Everything was screaming Taymullah Azhar’s involvement. Since Barbara had withheld the information about those tickets to Pakistan, it stood to reason that there were other damning details she was withholding as well. He now knew she was in love with Azhar. She would never admit the fact to herself, but her relationship with the Pakistani professor went far beyond her friendship with his daughter, and it had been heading in that direction from the first. Could he rationally expect her to turn against the Pakistani man if his involvement turned out to be more than a father’s desperate search for his child? Would he himself have turned against Helen had he discovered something questionable that she had done? More to the point, would he turn against Havers now?