Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

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 café 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