Just One Evil Act

“The one in which we admit that we care for each other. I care for you. You care for me. Perhaps we’d both rather not since, let’s face it, caring for anyone is a messy business. But it’s happened and if we get it into the air between us, we can decide what, if anything, we’d like to do about it.”

“We know the truth of things, Thomas,” she said firmly and, he thought, a little fiercely. “I don’t belong in your world. And no one knows that better than you.”

“But that’s what’s at the bottom of the precipice, Daidre. And just now . . . Well, isn’t the truth that we don’t even know if we want to jump?”

“Anything can lead to jumping,” she said. “Oh God. Oh God. I don’t want that.”

He could feel her fears. They were as real a presence at the table as was Daidre herself. Their cause was far different from the fears he himself felt, but they were nonetheless as strong as his own. Loss wears so many guises, he thought. He wanted to tell her this, but he did not. The time wasn’t right for it.

He said, “I’m actually willing to approach the precipice on my own, Daidre. I’m willing to say that I care for you, that I would welcome your presence in London for what it might mean in my life to have you closer than an extremely lengthy drive down the M4 to Bristol. Whether you wish to approach the precipice any closer just now . . . ? That’s up to you, but it’s not required.”

She shook her head and her eyes were bright and he wasn’t at all certain what this meant. She clarified with a nearly voiceless “You’re a very good man.”

“Not at all, really. My point is that we can be whatever we wish to be in each other’s life. What that is . . . ? We don’t need to define it here. Now, have you had your dinner? Would you like to have dinner with me? Not here, actually, because I have a few doubts about the quality of their food. But perhaps somewhere nearby?”

She said, “There’s a restaurant at my hotel.” And then she looked horrified and hastily added, “Thomas, you aren’t intended to think I meant . . . because I didn’t mean . . .”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “And that’s precisely why it’s so easy for me to say that I care for you.”

5 May

CHALK FARM

LONDON

Barbara Havers was sitting up in bed reading when Taymullah Azhar knocked on her door. His knock was so soft and her interest in her book so intense that she very nearly didn’t hear him. After all, Tempest Fitzpatrick and Preston Merck were in mutual torment over Preston’s mysterious past and his agonising inability to act upon his acutely passionate love for Tempest—although Barbara thought they would be better off in torment over his rather strange and unheroic surname—and she was paragraphs away from discovering how they were going to resolve this troubling issue. Had Azhar not also tentatively called out, “Barbara? Are you awake? Are you there?” she might have missed his visit to her bungalow altogether. As it was, though, when she heard his voice, she cried out, “Azhar? Hang on,” and she leapt out of bed.

She looked round frantically for something to put on as a cover-up. She was wearing one of her sleeping tee-shirts, this one with a faded caricature of Keith Richards on it along with the words Forget His Money . . . I Want His Constitution written below it. She reached for her tattered chenille dressing gown but noticed as she tied its belt that she’d not laundered it since spilling tinned beef goulash down the front of it six weeks earlier. She threw it off and grabbed her mac from the wardrobe. It would have to do.

She drew the bedcovers over the disarray of sheets, pillows, and Tempest and Preston’s amorous difficulties. She hurried to the door.

She’d waited four days to talk to Azhar. Every evening, she’d arrived home from work and had immediately checked for his return from Italy. Every morning, she’d had to report to DI Lynley that he’d not yet come back to London. Every day, she’d had to repeat that she wanted to speak to Azhar face-to-face about everything that she’d uncovered concerning the kidnapping of his youngest child. And in response, Lynley’s reply had been unvarying: I want a report from you, Barbara, and I do not want to discover at some later date that Azhar’s been back since the evening of the first of May. She’d said passionately, I’m not lying to you. I wouldn’t lie to you. A raised aristocratic eyebrow told her exactly how seriously he took that claim.

When she swung the door open, it was to see Azhar standing hesitantly in the shadows. She flipped on the light above the front step, but it wasn’t helpful in the illumination department as it flashed brightly once like a bolt of lightning and then went dead. She said, “Oh, bloody hell,” and then, “Come in. How are you? How’s Hadiyyah? Are you only just back?”

She stepped away from the door, and he came into the light from the bungalow. He looked good, she thought. The relief he was feeling had to be enormous. She didn’t ask herself what the relief’s source was: having his daughter safe, having escaped Italy without anyone’s suspicions falling on him, or having a plan in place to spirit Hadiyyah to another country when the time was right. These things she shoved to the back of her mind. Not yet, she told herself.

He was carrying a plastic carrier bag, which he handed to her, saying, “I have brought you something from Italy. A very small way to say thank you for everything, Barbara. I am and have been so grateful to you.”

She took the bag from him and closed the door as he entered. He’d brought her olive oil and balsamic vinegar. She’d not the slightest clue what to do with the former—perhaps a Mediterranean fry-up? she thought— but she reckoned the latter would be smashing on chips. She said, “Ta, Azhar. Sit, sit,” and she went to the kitchen area and put on the kettle.

He was looking at her bed, at the light on next to it, at the cup of Ovaltine next to the light. He said, “You were in bed. Indeed, I thought you might be because of the hour, but I wanted to . . . Yet I probably should not have—”

“You should have,” she told him. “And I wasn’t asleep. I was reading.” She hoped he didn’t ask what she was reading because she’d have to lie and tell him Proust. Or perhaps The Gulag Archipelago. That would go down a real treat.

She brought out the PG Tips, a bowl of sugar—from which she removed the clotted evidence of a wet spoon having been dipped into it with rather too much regularity—and a jug of milk. She took mugs from a shelf and bustled round like the owner of a third-rate B & B accommodating a late-night arrival. Jaffa Cakes on a plate, two paper napkins, two spoons, then a “whoops” and a replacement for one of them when she saw it was dirty . . . Back and forth from the kitchen to the table she went until there was nothing left but to pour the water over the tea bags and sit and talk to this man whom she knew and did not know all at once.

He watched her solemnly. He knew something was up. He said nothing at first.

Then his initial statement: “Inspector Lynley will have told you the details.”

“Most of them, yeah,” Barbara said. “I would have rung you to get the rest of them, but I reckoned you had a lot to cope with. With Hadiyyah, with Angelina and Lorenzo. With the coppers as well, I expect.” She watched his face as she said this last, but he was busying himself with the tea, much dunking of the tea bag and then a questioning look as to where he was supposed to put it. She fetched an ashtray for the bag. She fetched her fags as well. She offered him one but he demurred and she found she didn’t feel much like a smoke either.

He said, “There was much to discuss. The nightmare has, I believe, finally ended.”

“Which means what exactly?”

He stirred his tea. He’d used sugar but no milk. Barbara saw to hers and waited for his answer. She found that nerves were making her suddenly ravenous. She grabbed up a Jaffa Cake and shoved it into her mouth.

“Not that Hadiyyah is restored to me,” he said, “but that she will come to me and I may go to her—to Lucca—as often as I like. I need only ring Angelina first. I believe it took this . . . this loss of Hadiyyah to allow Angelina to see that to either parent, the loss of a child cannot be contemplated, let alone endured. I think she did not realise this, Barbara.”

“Bollocks. She has to have known that.”

“I think not. She wanted Hadiyyah with her. She wanted Lorenzo and the life she now is making with him. She knew no other way to achieve this. She is not, at heart, an evil woman.”