Just One Evil Act

He spoke with no appreciable accent. He sounded like someone born in Henley-on-Thames. When she asked him about this, letting him know she’d done a little looking into a background that had told her he’d been born in Mexico City, he said he’d moved to London when he was twelve, his father a diplomat and his mother a writer of children’s books. It had been important to him to assimilate into the English culture, he said. Accent was part of it as he did not wish to be marked eternally as a foreigner in this place.

He was very good-looking. Barbara could see what the attraction had been for Angelina Upman. Indeed, she could see what the attraction would be for any woman. He smouldered in the way that Latin men often smouldered, helped along by a three-day growth of beard that made him look sexy instead of what it made most other men look, which was largely unkempt. His hair was dark and thick and so healthy-looking Barbara had to keep herself from touching it. She reckoned other women had the same reaction, and she also reckoned Esteban Castro knew it.

When they were alone in the room, Castro indicated the folding chairs and walked over to them. He moved as one would expect of a dancer: fluidly and with perfect posture. Like the dancers he’d dismissed, he wore a leotard that went miles to define every muscle on his legs and his arse. Unlike them, he also wore a tight white muscle-man tee-shirt that did much the same for his chest. His arms were bare. So were his feet.

He sat with his arms on his legs and his hands dangling between them. This gave Barbara a view of his package that she would have preferred not to have, so she moved her own chair to a position that kept his jewels from view. He said without preamble and without waiting to hear the reason for her call upon him, “My wife doesn’t know Angelina and I were involved. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I wouldn’t place money on that,” Barbara told him. “Women aren’t stupid, as a rule.”

“She’s not quite a woman” was his reply. “That was part of the problem. Have you spoken to her?”

“Not yet.”

“There’s no need. I’ll tell you what you want to know. I’ll answer your questions. But leave her out of this.”

“‘This’?” Barbara asked.

“Whatever this is. You know what I mean.” He waited for Barbara to say something. When she gave him no assurance of any kind, he cursed and said, “Come with me.”

He led the way out of the dance studio and across the lobby. He opened the other door and jerked his head in a way that told her she was to look inside. There she saw Dahlia Rourke with a group of some dozen little girls at the barre. She was attempting to position them gracefully, one arm curved above their heads. It looked hopeless to Barbara. Nice to know, she thought, that there appeared to be no real, natural grace in life. As for Dahlia, she was skeletally thin, more X-ray than human. Perhaps feeling she was being watched, she turned towards the door.

“Daughter’s a potential for ballet,” Castro said to her, in reference to Barbara. “She wanted a look.”

Dahlia nodded. Her gaze took in Barbara but it seemed to be without speculation. She gave a hesitant smile directed at them both and then went back to her work with the nation’s future ballerinas. Castro led the way back to his own studio. He closed the door and said, “Her body functions only as a ballerina’s. Nor is she interested in its functioning as anything other than a ballerina’s.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she ceased being a woman some time ago. That’s largely why Angelina and I became involved.”

“Are there other reasons, then?”

“Have you met her?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know. She’s lovely. She’s passionate. She’s alive. That’s very appealing. Now what the hell is going on and why are you here?”

“Have you been out of the country in the last month?”

“Of course not. I’m in the middle of choreographing Wind in the Willows. How could I possibly leave? And let me repeat: What the hell is going on?”

“No quick trip for a weekend in the sun somewhere?”

“Like where? Spain? Portugal?”

“Italy.”

“Of course not.”

“What about the wife?”

“Dahlia’s doing Giselle with the Royal Ballet. And she’s got her classes here. She has no time for anything other than soaking her feet at home when she isn’t working. So the answer is no and no again and I’m not saying another word until you tell me what the hell is going on, understand?” To emphasise this point, he got to his feet. He strode into the centre of the room and stood there with his arms crossed on his chest and his legs spread. Very manly pose, Barbara thought. She wondered if it was deliberate, full of the knowledge, perhaps, of how to use what he had.

She said, “Angelina Upman’s daughter was snatched from a marketplace in Lucca, Italy.”

Castro stared at her. His mind appeared to be coming to terms with this and with what it meant that the police had come calling upon him. He said, “And what? D’you think I did it? I don’t know her daughter. I never met her daughter. Why the hell would I want to snatch her?”

“Everything has to be checked out, which means everyone whose life touches Angelina’s has to be checked out. I know she dropped you without a word, just disappeared from your life. You might have taken a bit of offence at that. You might have wanted to do something to smack her round a bit—figuratively speaking. You might have wanted to play mind games with her the way she played mind games with you.”

He laughed shortly. “That’s going nowhere, Sergeant . . . ?” He paused.

“Havers,” she said. “Detective Sergeant, actually.”

“Havers,” he said. “Detective Sergeant, actually. She didn’t play mind games. She was here, she was gone, that was it.”

“And you didn’t wonder where she’d gone off to?”

“I didn’t have the right to wonder. I knew that and she knew I knew it. Our rules were simple: I wasn’t going to leave Dahlia for her. She wasn’t going to leave Azhar for me. She’d disappeared once before for a year, but then she’d returned and she and I more or less resumed meeting. I’ve assumed this is the same sort of thing.”

“You mean you’ve reckoned she’ll be back.”

“That’s how it was in the past.”

“So you knew all along about Azhar? During the entire time you were involved with her?” It was germane to nothing, but Barbara had to know, although she would have preferred it if it made no difference to her.

“I knew. We didn’t lie to each other.”

“And Lorenzo Mura, her other lover? What about him? Did you know about him?”

To this, Castro said nothing. He walked back to the chair on which he’d been sitting. He dropped into it and gave a sharp bark of a laugh. He shook his head. Barbara got the point. He said, “So she was . . . what? Fucking all three of us?”

“It’s looking that way.”

“I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised.”

“Why not?”

He rubbed his hands through his hair. He squeezed a handful of it as if this would drive more blood to his brain. He said, “It’s this. Some women are driven by excitement. Angelina’s one of them. To settle into life with one man? Where’s the excitement in that?”

“She appears to be with one bloke now, though: Lorenzo Mura in Italy.”

“Appears is the operative word, Sergeant. She appeared to Azhar to be with Azhar. Now she appears to him to be with this Italian.”

Barbara thought about this in light of her knowledge of Angelina. The woman she knew was a consummate actress. She herself had been completely taken in by Angelina’s air of friendliness and her spurious interest in Barbara’s own life. Was it out of the question, then, that she’d managed to bamboozle everyone else around her