Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

best she could do. She thought she could manage this manoeuvre if she explained to Azhar that her job was virtually on the line. The only question for her was whether she could live with herself after she had done so.
    She hadn’t spoken to Azhar since learning from Dwayne Doughty that all of the information collected by the investigator and his assistant regarding Angelina Upman’s whereabouts had been handed over to him in January. If this was true, it held up to doubt everything the Pakistani professor had said and done from that point forward. And if everything he had said and done from that point forward was one variation or another on a lie, then Barbara wasn’t sure what she would do about that fact or to whom she would give that information.
    The only answer seemed to be food. When she arrived home, she gobbled down a double takeaway portion of haddock and chips and followed this with treacle tart and a side of Victoria sponge. She quaffed a bottle of lager as she ate and finished off her meal with a cup of instant coffee. Accompanying this, she dipped into a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps, after which a virtuous apple assured her that her arteries would be thoroughly cleansed if she munched upon it hard and long enough.
    Then, no longer could she put off the phone call to Italy without putting herself into some sort of caloric stupor. She lit a fag and punched in Azhar’s number. She’d never dreaded a phone call so much in her life. She was going to have to tell him everything: from the Love Rat Dad story to the claims made by the private investigator. In neither instance did she see that she had any choice.
    She wasn’t prepared for where she found Azhar when she rang his mobile. He was at the hospital in Lucca. Angelina, he told her, had been taken there both at the insistence of Lorenzo Mura and the advice of Inspector Lynley. She’d been ill for two days with a variety of worrying symptoms that she believed were related to the morning sickness she’d been experiencing, but her condition had worsened and both Mura and Lynley were convinced this could be an indication of something more serious.
    Barbara hated where her thoughts went immediately upon hearing this news: to how the information could best be used to appease Mitchell Corsico. A story about the mother of the kidnapped child in Italy being admitted into hospital in an emergency situation . . . possibly on the brink of losing her unborn child . . . overwrought and making herself ill because of the kidnapping of her daughter . . . desperate for the Italian police to do something—
anything
—to find her while all the time they were sitting round drinking copious amounts of vino . . . That story was a real gem, wasn’t it? That exposé was certain to tug at heartstrings. Of course, it depended upon the journalist and the readers of
The Source
having hearts in the first place, but surely it was better than a front-page piece in which Azhar answered pointed questions from Corsico and ended up throwing even more mud on his own reputation. She said, trying not to sound too hopeful, “What d’you mean, ‘not right with the pregnancy’?”
    “Her symptoms are, according to Mr. Mura, severe and worrying,” Azhar told her. “The doctors here are concerned. Dehydration, vomiting, diarrhea.”
    “Sounds like flu. Maybe a virus? Or that super-serious kind of morning sickness?”
    “She’s very weak. It was Inspector Lynley who rang me with the news. I came at once to see if there was . . . I do not know why I came.”
    Barbara knew why he’d taken himself to the hospital. He loved the woman and had always done so. Despite her sins against him and especially the sin of removing from him the daughter he lived for, there was something that remained strong between them. Barbara didn’t understand this kind of bond between people, and she reckoned she never would.
    “Have you seen her?” she asked. “Is she . . . I don’t know. Is she conscious? Is she in pain? What?”
    “I have not yet seen her. Lorenzo . . .” He paused, seemed to think, then changed tack. “She might be having tests just now. There are a few specialists she’s seeing, I believe. This could all be related to the stress of Hadiyyah as well as to the pregnancy . . . I know very little at this point, Barbara. I hope to learn more if I remain here.”
    So that was why he was there, she thought. Lynley had given him the news, but Lorenzo Mura wasn’t about to let