Just One Evil Act

fine.” Clearly, she was willing her lover to say nothing more. Just as clearly he wasn’t going to remain silent in the face of what she was apparently doing.

He said, “No! During this time especially, it is bad. You know this.”

And everything changed in that instant. Utter stillness fell among them. No one moved. Into this a rooster crowed suddenly and as if in response, a burst of pigeons took to the sky from the winery’s roof.

Lynley looked from Lorenzo to Angelina to Azhar. During this time especially did, of course, have more than one meaning: During this time especially when your child is missing, it is bad to drink, for you need to have your wits about you. During this time especially when you can neither eat nor sleep, wine will go to your head too quickly. During this time especially in the presence of these people who will be watching every move that you make, it is best to remain completely sober. There were many possibilities here. But the expression on Angelina’s face said that the most wrenching of the possibilities was the one that had automatically brought the words to Lorenzo’s lips. He’d said them without thinking and there could be, realistically, only one reason: During this time especially when you are carrying a child, you must not drink.

Angelina said quietly to Azhar, “You weren’t meant to know, Hari. I didn’t want you to know.” And then desperately, “Oh God, I’m so sorry about everything.”

Azhar didn’t look at her. Nor did he look at Lorenzo. He didn’t, in fact, look at anyone. Rather he stared straight ahead, and there was no expression whatsoever on his face. That alone told Lynley more than any words would have done. No matter how she had devastated him during their relationship, the Pakistani man was unaccountably as much in love with Angelina Upman as he had ever been.

LUCCA

TUSCANY

“Castro’s a nonstarter” were Barbara Havers’s words to Lynley.

His words to her were “She’s pregnant, Barbara.”

To which she said, “Bloody sodding hell. How’s Azhar coping?”

“He’s difficult to read.” Lynley was careful on this topic. There was little point, he reckoned, in causing Barbara grief should her feelings for the Pakistani man be deeper than she generally pretended. “I’d say the news is a shock.”

“What about Mura?”

“Obviously, he knows.”

“I mean is he happy? Worried? Suspicious?”

“About what, exactly?”

She told him what she’d learned about Angelina Upman from her former lover Castro. She passed on his allusion to the fact that there might be yet another lover in Italy, beyond Lorenzo Mura. According to Castro, it was all part of the excitement she seemed to require, Barbara told him. Anyone there who might fill the bill as Angelina’s little bit on the side?

He’d have to look into it, Lynley told her. Was there anything else he needed to know?

She said nothing for a few moments, which told him there was something more. He said her name in a way that he knew would tell her it was in her best interests to fess up immediately since he would find out eventually. She revealed to him that The Source had generated another story, this one about Azhar’s desertion of his family in Ilford. She added, “But it’s nothing I can’t control,” which told him volumes about what she’d been up to with the tabloid, despite her protestations on the matter.

He said, “Barbara . . .”

She said, “I know, I know. Believe me, Winnie’s given me chapter and verse.”

“If you persist—”

“Well, I’ve started something now and I’ve got to stop it, sir.”

Lynley didn’t know how she could. No one got between the sheets with The Source and emerged with their clothing still ironed. She should have known that. He cursed quietly.

They rang off soon after, and he considered her words about Angelina Upman. He would have to look for another lover, someone who wanted her enough to punish her if she wouldn’t leave Mura for him.

He’d taken the call from Barbara on Lucca’s great wall, where he’d gone to walk its perimeter and to think. He’d chosen a clockwise direction and was midway around it, at the point where a cafe stood offering refreshments to the scores of people who were also taking exercise up above the medieval town. He decided to stop for a coffee, and he moved towards the tables spread out beneath the leafy trees. He saw that Taymullah Azhar had evidently had the same idea. For the London professor was already at a table with a pot of tea next to him and a newspaper spread out before him.

It would probably be an English-language paper, since Lynley had already seen them on sale at a kiosk in Piazza dei Cocomeri, which adjoined one of the few uncurving streets in the town. He reckoned it was a local paper for visitors, and so it seemed to be. He gave a quick look at it as he asked Azhar if he could join him. The Grapevine, it was called—more a magazine than a paper—and he saw that either Azhar or the local police had managed to get a story about Hadiyyah’s disappearance into it. Her picture was there, along with the simple headline Missing. This was good, he thought. Every avenue was being used to find her.

He wondered if Azhar knew that, in London, The Source was exposing the story of his family situation. He said nothing to him about it. Chances were good he was going to be told by someone eventually. Lynley didn’t see the point of that someone being himself.

Azhar folded the paper and moved his chair to accommodate Lynley’s bringing another to the table. Lynley ordered a coffee, sat, and gazed at the other man. He said, “The television appeal will turn up something. There’ll be dozens of phone calls to the police, and most of them will be rubbish. But one of them, perhaps two or three, will give us something. Meantime, Barbara is continuing to work several angles in England. There’s hope, Azhar.”

Azhar nodded. Lynley reckoned that the other man knew how hope grew dimmer as each day passed. But that hope could be renewed in an instant. All it would take was a single person making a connection with something he’d seen or heard, without even knowing before the television appeal that he’d seen or heard it. That was the nature of an investigation. A memory got jogged along the way.

He told all this to Hadiyyah’s father, who nodded again. Then he said to Azhar, “None of us knew she’s pregnant. Now that we do know . . .” He hesitated.

Azhar had no expression on his face. He said, “Yes?”

“It’s something that has to be taken on board. Along with everything else.”

“And the relevance . . . ?”

Lynley looked away. The cafe was situated on one of the ramparts of Lucca’s wall, and beyond it a group of children kicked a football on the lawn, shoving one another and laughing, slipping in the grass, shouting out. No adult was with them. They thought they were safe. Children usually did.

He said, “If, perhaps, it’s not Lorenzo’s child . . .”

“Whose else would it be? She left me for him. He’s giving to her what I would not.”

“On the surface it seems so. But because she was with Mura while she was with you, there’s a chance that now she’s with him, perhaps another man exists for her.”

Azhar shook his head. “She would not.”

Lynley considered what he knew of Angelina and what Azhar knew of the woman. People didn’t change their colours rapidly, he knew. Where she had strayed once for the excitement of having a secret lover, she could stray again. But he didn’t argue the point.

Azhar said, “I should have expected this.”

“Expected . . . ?”

“The pregnancy. The fact that she left me. I should have understood that she would move on when I did not give her what she wanted.”

“What was that?”

“First that I divorce Nafeeza. When I would not, then that Hadiyyah could at least meet her siblings. When I would not allow that, then that we should have another child. To these things I said no and no and absolutely no. I should have seen what the result would be. I drove her to all of this. What else, really, was she to do? We were