Just One Evil Act

“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?”