Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

“
Streptococcus
, Barbara.”
    “What?”
    “This is what we study in my laboratory at University College:
Streptococcus
. Some laboratories study more than one bacteria. We do not. We study more than one strain of it, of course. But only strains of
Streptococcus
. Of personal interest to me is the
Strep
that causes meningitis in newborn infants.”
    “Azhar. You don’t have to tell me this.”
    “The mother, you see,” he said insistently as if she hadn’t spoken, “passes it to the infant as the baby travels through the birth canal. From this develops—”
    “I believe you, Azhar.”
    “—the infant’s meningitis. We’re seeking a way to prevent this.”
    “I understand.”
    “And there are other forms as well, other forms of
Strep
that we study in the lab since the graduate students are working on dissertations and the postgraduates are working on papers to be published. But the one I study . . . It is as I said. And of course Angelina was pregnant so they will ask about this, won’t they? How coincidental is it that I would study a bacteria found in pregnant women? And they will wonder as you are wondering because, after all, I arranged the kidnapping of my own child—”
    “Azhar,
Azhar
.”
    “I did not harm Angelina,” he said. “You cannot think I harmed her.”
    She hadn’t been thinking that. She couldn’t even bring herself close to thinking that. But the truth was that in this entire Italian situation, there was more than one kind of harm, and Azhar knew this as well as Barbara herself. She said, “The kidnapping. Those tickets to Pakistan. You have to see how it’s going to look in conjunction with her death if word gets out.”
    “Only you and I know about these things, Barbara.” His voice was wary.
    “What about Doughty and Smythe?”
    “They work for us,” he said. “We do not work for them. They’ve been instructed . . . You must believe me because if you of all people do not believe . . . I did not harm her. Yes, the kidnapping was a terrible thing to arrange, but how else could she ever be made to experience what it feels like when your child is there one day and gone the next and you have no idea . . . ?”
    “Pakistan, Azhar. One-way tickets. Lynley knows about them. And he’s doing his homework.”
    “You are not thinking,” he cried. “Why would I purchase tickets for July but arrange Angelina’s death in May? Why would I do that when I would have no need of tickets to Pakistan with Angelina dead?”
    Because, Barbara thought, those tickets absolve you of suspicion and I did not see that until this moment because I
couldn’t
see it until I learned how Angelina Upman died. She said none of this, but her silence seemed to tell Azhar that something more was required of him, if not now then the next time Inspector Lo Bianco wanted to question him.
    He said, “If you think I harmed her, you must ask yourself where I got this bacteria. Of course, someone somewhere in England studies it and perhaps in London but I do not know who. And yes, of course, this is an easy enough thing for me to find out. So I could have found out. But so could anyone else.”
    “I see that, Azhar. But you have to ask how likely it is . . .” And here she paused because she had to consider what she owed: not only to Lynley, to Azhar, to Hadiyyah, but also to herself. She said, “The thing is . . . you lied to me once and—”
    “I do not lie now! And when I did lie . . . How could I tell you what I had planned? Would you have allowed me to go forward and kidnap her? No, you would not. An officer of the police? How could I have expected this of you? It was something that had to be done on my own.”
    As murder is generally done, she thought.
    A silence endured between them, broken finally by Azhar. “Is there nothing you are willing to do to help me now?” he asked.
    “I haven’t said that.”
    “But it’s what you think, isn’t it? ‘I must distance myself from this man because if I do not, it could cost me everything.’”
    Which was, Barbara thought wryly, not that far off from what DI Lynley had told her. Everything was on the line for her unless she could think of a way to get herself one step ahead of the Italian police.
    THE WEST END
    LONDON
    Mitchell Corsico was the way, she decided. Once she programmed the phone number of Azhar’s solicitor into her mobile and rubbed it off the stairwell’s wall, she rang the reporter and said, “We need to meet. Angelina