Just One Evil Act

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.”

“Sayyid?” A woman’s voice, then. She spoke from behind the boy, sounding as if she was in another room. “Who is there, Sayyid?”

He made no reply. He locked eyes with his father, as if challenging him to identify himself to the wife he’d deserted. When he didn’t respond, footsteps approached and Sayyid stepped away from the door. Azhar and his wife stood face-to-face. Without looking at her son, she said, “Sayyid, go to your room.”

Barbara had expected the traditional dress of shalwar kameez. She’d expected the scarf. What she hadn’t expected was how beautiful Azhar’s wife was because she’d thought—perhaps like most people, she reckoned—that Azhar would have left an ordinary kind of woman in order to take up life with an extraordinary one. Men being men, she’d reckoned, they’d trade up, not down, not even across. But this woman far outclassed Angelina in the beauty department: dark, sloe-eyed, with cheekbones to kill for, a sensuous mouth, an elegant long neck, and perfect skin.

Azhar said, “Nafeeza.”

Nafeeza said, “What brings you here?”

Angelina was the one to answer. “We want to search the house.”

“Please, Angelina,” Azhar said quietly. “Surely you can see . . .” And then to his wife, “Nafeeza, my apologies for this. I would not . . . If you would please tell these people that my daughter is not here.”

She wasn’t a tall woman, but she brought herself up to her full height, and when she did this, the suggestion made was one of strength running through her body. She said, “Your daughter is upstairs in her room. She is doing her school prep. She’s a very fine student.”

“I am pleased to hear that. You must be . . . She will be a source of . . . But I do not speak of . . .”

“You know who he’s talking about,” Angelina said.

Barbara took out her police ID. She could barely stand the amount of pain that seemed to be rolling off Azhar. She said to his wife, “C’n we come in, Mrs. . . .” And to her dismay she realised she hadn’t a clue what to call her. She switched to, “Madam, if we c’n come in. We’ve a missing child we’re looking for.”

“And you think this child is within my house?”

“No. Not exactly.”

Nafeeza looked them over, each of them, one at a time, and she took her time doing it. Then she stepped back from the door. They entered the house and filled a narrow corridor that was already filled by a stairway, boots, coats, rucksacks, hockey sticks, and football equipment. They crowded into a small lounge to the right.

There, they saw that Sayyid hadn’t gone to his room. He was in the lounge, on the edge of the sofa, elbows on his thighs and hands dangling between his knees. Above him on the wall a large picture featured thousands of people on pilgrimage to Mecca. There were no other pictures or decorations aside from two small school photographs in frames on a table. Azhar went to these and picked them up. His gaze upon them was hungry. Nafeeza crossed the room and removed them from his hand. She placed them facedown on the table.

She said to him, “There is no child here, aside from mine.”

“I want to look,” Angelina said.

“You must tell her that I speak the truth, husband,” Nafeeza said. “You must explain to her that I have no reason to lie about this. Whatever has happened, it is nothing to do with me or with my children.”

“So she’s the one?” Sayyid put in. “She’s the whore?”

“Sayyid,” his mother said.

“I am sorry, Nafeeza,” Azhar said to her. “For this. For what it was. For who I was.”

“Sorry?” This from Sayyid. “You c’n bloody talk to Mum about sorry? You’re a piece of shit and don’t think we think anything else. If you plan to—”

“Enough!” his mother said. “You will wait in your room, Sayyid.”

“While this one”—with a sneer towards Angelina—“goes through our house looking for her bastard brat?”

Azhar looked at his son. “You may not say—”

“You, wanker, don’t tell me what to do.” And with that, he leapt to his feet, pushed his way through all of them, and left the room. His footsteps did not go up the stairs, however, but rather into the corridor, where they could hear him making a telephone call. He spoke in Urdu. This seemed to mean something to both Azhar and Nafeeza, Barbara saw, because Azhar’s wife said to him, “It will not be long,” and he said again, “I am so sorry.”

“You do not know sorrow.” Nafeeza then spoke to the rest of them, her gaze going from one face to the other. Her voice contained perfect dignity. “The only children in this house are the children from my own body, got off this man and abandoned by him.”

Barbara said to Azhar in a low voice, “Who’s the kid ringing?”

“My father,” Azhar told her.

What she thought at this was, Hot bloody hell. What she knew was that things were about to get worse. She said to Angelina, “We’re wasting time. You can see Hadiyyah isn’t here. You can tell, for God’s sake. Can’t you see these people wouldn’t do him a favour any more than your family would do you one?”

“You’re in love with him,” Angelina snapped. “You’ve been from the first. I no more trust you than I’d trust a snake.” Then she said to Lorenzo, “You check above and I’ll—”

Sayyid was back in the room in a flash. He threw himself at Lorenzo, shouting, “Get out of our house! Get out! Get out!”

Lorenzo batted him away like a fly. Azhar took a step forward. Barbara grabbed his arm. Things were going in a very bad direction, and the last thing they needed was one of these people making a call to the local cops.

“You listen to me,” she said, her tone sharp. “You have a choice here, Angelina. Either you believe what Nafeeza’s telling you, or you conduct a search and explain yourself to the cops when they get here. Because if I was Nafeeza, I’d be on the blower the minute Mr. Universe here put his big toe on the stairs. You’re wasting time. We’re wasting time. So for God’s sake think. Azhar was in Germany. He’s shown you that. He wasn’t in Italy and he had no idea that you were. So you can continue to raise holy hell, or we can all get on a plane and get back to Italy and lean on the cops there to find Hadiyyah. I suggest you decide. Now.”

“I won’t believe till—”

“For God’s bloody sake! What’s wrong with you?”

“You may search.” Nafeeza spoke quietly. She indicated Barbara. “Only you,” she said.

“Is that good enough for you?” Barbara asked Angelina.

“How do I know that you aren’t part of this? That you and he together haven’t—”

“Because I’m a bloody cop, because I love your daughter, because if you can’t see that the last thing either of us would do—me or Azhar—is what you’ve done to him by hiding her away somewhere and denying her access to one of her own parents, because if that’s what you really think has