Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

woman as Angelina Upman whom a man like Azhar looked upon and made decisions about, the sort of decisions that brought worlds to an end.
    “I’m sorry about all of it,” Barbara said. “Not about Hadiyyah, though. I don’t expect you’re sorry about her either.”
    “Of course I am not,” he said.
    “So where do things stand? You paid Doughty for his time and efforts and now what?”
    “He tells me that she will surface eventually. He tells me that in anticipation of this, it would be wise for me now to pay a call upon Angelina’s parents. He says that she will turn to them at some point in time because people rarely cut themselves off from their families permanently when there is no longer a reason to do so.”
    “That reason being you, you mean?”
    “He says that if Angelina being dead to them was predicated from the first on her affair with me and on my refusal to marry her once she was carrying my child, then I should go to the parents and I must declare my desire to marry her and all will be forgiven.”
    Barbara shook her head. “What in God’s name is he basing
that
advice on? A ouija board?”
    “Her sister. He points out that, as far as the parents are concerned, there’s no she’s-dead-to-us about Bathsheba despite her having done the same as Angelina: having had an affair with a married man. He claims the reason is that the man in question married Bathsheba. His conclusion is that my own declaration of an intention to marry her will position the parents to tell me whatever they know about her disappearance. Whether they know something now or learn something in the future.”
    “What makes Doughty think they might know something now?”
    “Because no one disappears without a trace,” Azhar said. “The fact that Angelina appears to have done so indicates someone helped her do it.”
    “Her parents?”
    “The way Mr. Doughty put it was this: They’re the sort of people who turn a blind eye to adultery as long as adultery leads to the altar. He said I must use that fact. He said I must get used to using people.”
    He looked at her, half of a sad smile on his face and his eyes so tired that Barbara wanted to put her arms round the poor bloke and rock him to sleep. Using people wasn’t large in Azhar’s skill set, even in a situation in which he desperately wanted the return of his child. She wasn’t sure how he was going to manage it.
    She said, “So. What’s the plan, then?”
    “To go to Dulwich and speak to her parents.”
    “Let me go with you, then.”
    His entire face softened. “That, my friend Barbara, is what I so hoped that you might say.”

19 December
    DULWICH VILLAGE
    LONDON
    B arbara Havers had never been to Dulwich before she went there in the company of Azhar, but the moment she clapped eyes on the place, she reckoned it was the part of town to which she ought to be aspiring. Far south of the river in the Borough of Southwark, Dulwich bore no resemblance to that part of the inner city at all. It was the embodiment of the term
leafy suburb
, although the trees that seemed to line every street were leafless now. Still, they grew the sort of branches that indicated the deep shade they would provide in summer and the rich colours they would offer in autumn, and they stood near pavements that were wide, spotless, and utterly devoid of the remains of chewing gum that polka-dotted the pavements in central London.
    Houses in this part of the world were distinguished: large, brick, and pricey. Shops on the high street ran the gamut from ladies’ boutiques to actual “grooming establishments” for men. Primary schools were housed in well-kept Victorian buildings, and Dulwich Park, Dulwich College, and Dulwich Picture Gallery all spoke of an environment in which the upper middle class mingled over cocktails and sent their children into the world with educations courtesy of nothing less than excessively costly boarding schools.
    Fish out of water
did not do justice to how Barbara felt as she drove her ancient Mini through the streets of this place. With Azhar manning the A-Z in the passenger seat, she only hoped that when they finally found where the Upmans lived, she would have a bit of luck and discover that their home didn’t make her feel so much like a recent arrival from a war-torn country, her car a donation from a well-meaning Christian organisation.
    She had no luck in this matter. The house that matched Azhar’s quiet “This appears to be the place,