Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

turned from the view and took from his jacket pocket the copy of the greeting card that Salvatore Lo Bianco had sent to him. He handed it over to Barbara. She said, “What’s—” but her words faded as she read what was on it.
    Lynley said to her, “Earlier, you told me that
khushi
was unfamiliar to you. This was found where Hadiyyah was kept hidden. Azhar has confirmed, by the way, that this
khushi
was his pet name for Hadiyyah. You’ve known the two of them how long, Barbara?”
    “Who?” she asked, although she seemed to have some trouble with the word.
    “Barbara . . .”
    “All right. Two years this month. But you know that, don’t you, so why’re you asking?”
    “Because I find it impossible to believe that in that time you never heard her father call her
khushi
. And yet that’s precisely what you asked me to believe. That and other things as well.”
    “Anyone could have known—”
    “Who, exactly?” Lynley felt the first piercings of an anger he’d been holding at bay since this entire miserable affair had begun. “Do you want to argue that Angelina Upman arranged for the kidnapping of her own daughter? Or Lorenzo Mura? Or . . . who else is there who ‘might have known,’ as you say, that her father called her
khushi
? An unidentified schoolmate, Barbara? A fellow nine-year-old with kidnap on his mind?”
    “Bathsheba Ward would have known,” Barbara said. “If she posed as Azhar in emails to Hadiyyah, she would have called her
khushi
.”
    “And then what, for God’s sake?”
    “And then kidnapped her to hurt Angelina. Or to hurt Azhar. Or to . . . Bloody hell, I don’t know.”
    “And she managed to duplicate his handwriting as well? Is that part of what you wish to argue? I’d like to hear the full story of how it all played out, from the moment that child went missing in Lucca to the moment her mother ended up in a grave.”
    “He didn’t kill her!”
    In frustration, Lynley walked away from her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He wanted to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to break one of the thirteenth-floor windows. Anything other than to have to continue this conversation with a woman so deliberately blind to what was before her. “For the love of God,” he tried a final time, “Barbara, can’t you see—”
    “Those tickets to Pakistan,” she cut in. He could see that her upper lip had begun to sweat, and he reckoned she had her hands so tightly fisted in order to keep them from shaking. “They tell you that. Because why the bloody hell would Azhar purchase one-way tickets to Pakistan if he knew Angelina was going to be dead and Hadiyyah would be returned to him permanently?”
    “Because he knew very well that when it came down to it, when everything finally met the light of day, you’d be standing there doing exactly what you’re doing: refusing to see what’s in front of your eyes. And you have to ask yourself why you’re doing that, Barbara, why you’re throwing away your career on the off chance that the rest of us won’t eventually hunt down every single detail that proves Taymullah Azhar was involved in each aspect of what’s happened to his daughter and what happened to Angelina Upman.”
    At that, for a moment, he believed he’d got through to her. He believed that she would make a clean breast of everything she knew and everything she was hiding. She would do it, he thought, because she’d worked at his side for years, because she’d borne witness to what had led to the death of his wife and to what had followed, because she trusted him to have her best interests at heart, because she knew what was demanded of anyone who carried a warrant card and had a place at the Met.
    She went back to the window and her fist pounded lightly on its sill. She said, “Those tickets to Pakistan suggest things. I see that, sir. As far as the kidnapping goes, those tickets and when they were bought and the fact that they are one-way only . . . They make things . . . difficult for Azhar. But
you
have to see they also eliminate him as a suspect for Angelina’s murder. Because with Angelina dead, he’d have no need to run to Pakistan with Hadiyyah. She’d been given back to him.”
    “Which was his intention all along. And into Pakistan he could disappear with her if Angelina’s death was discovered as not an unfortunate and unexpected termination to a trying time but instead a carefully planned murder.”
    He saw her swallow.