Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

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 café 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 happy, she and I. We had each other and we had Hadiyyah. She’d said at first that marriage was something unimportant to her. But then it changed. Or she changed. Or I did. I don’t know.”
    “She might not have changed at all,” Lynley told him. “Could it be that you never really saw her well? People are sometimes blind to others. They believe what they want to believe about them because to believe something else . . . It’s far too painful.”
    “And you mean . . . ?”
    There was no choice but to tell him, Lynley thought. He said, “Azhar, she had another lover, Esteban Castro, while she was with you. She asked me not to tell you, but we’re at the point where every possible avenue needs to be travelled and her other lovers comprise one of those avenues.”
    He said stiffly, “Where? When?”
    “As I said, when she was with you.”
    Lynley saw him swallow. “Because I would not—”
    “No. I don’t think so. I think, perhaps, she preferred things this way. Having more than one man at a time. Tell me. Was she with someone else when you first met her?”
    “Yes, but she left him. For me. She left him.” But for the first time, he sounded doubtful. He glanced at Lynley. “So you’re saying that now if there’s another man, beyond Lorenzo, and if Lorenzo knows this, has discovered this . . . But what has any of this to do with Hadiyyah? That I do not see, Inspector.”
    “Nor do I, at the moment. But I’ve found over time that people do extraordinary things when their passions are deeply involved. Love, lust, jealousy, hate, the need for revenge. People do extraordinary things.”
    Azhar looked into the town beneath them. He was quiet, as if in prayer. He said simply, “I just want my daughter. The rest of this . . . I no longer care.”
    Lynley believed the first. He wasn’t sure about the second.

25 April
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    T he television appeal made the story enormous. Missing children were always news in any of the Italian provinces. Missing attractive children were significant news. But missing attractive foreign children whose disappearances brought to the doorstep of the Italian police representatives from New Scotland Yard . . . This was enough to attract the attention of journalists from far and wide. Shortly after the television appeal, they set up shop in what for them was the most logical location, as close to the
questura
as they could get since the action in the case was most likely to occur there. They blocked traffic on the way to the train station; they blocked the pavements on both sides of the street; they generally made a nuisance of