Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

are you here?”
    She took a moment before she replied. He looked about as bad as Azhar, she thought. Sleepless nights, too much daytime labour, insufficient food, forcing himself to move forward through every day, grief . . . These would take the stuffing out of any man. But so would a bout with
E. coli
, she thought. He looked shaky, and his colour was pasty. The port wine stain on his face appeared deeply purple.
    She said to him, “Have you been ill, Mr. Mura?”
    “My woman and our child are in a
cimitero
five days,” he said. “How you think me to look?”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “For what’s happened, I’m sorry.”
    “There is no sorry for this,” he replied. “What want you here?”
    “I’ve come for Hadiyyah,” she told him. “It’s her father’s wish that—”
    He swiped the air with a chopping motion of his hand that stopped her words. He said, “Do
not
. There are things we not know. One of them is Hadiyyah’s father. Angelina said Azhar but me she tells it can be another.” And taking a moment to register the expression on Barbara’s face at this bit of news, he added, “You did not know. It is among many things you do not know. Taymullah Azhar was not the . . .” He looked for the word. He settled on “the solo man when he and Angelina first become lovers.”
    “I know Angelina slept round like a ten-quid tart, but I expect that’s not exactly where you’d like this conversation to head. Past actions tend to indicate future actions, if you know what I mean, Mr. Mura.”
    Colour swept his face.
    Barbara said, “So that knife cuts in both directions, doesn’t it? You hooked yourself up with a woman with a colourful past, and for all we know till the day she died she had a colourful present as well. Now, I expect you’d like Azhar to doubt Hadiyyah is his, and I expect Angelina would’ve liked that also, all the better to keep her from him. But you and I both know what a DNA test can prove and, believe me, I c’n arrange for one as fast as you can ring up your solicitor and try to stop me. Are we clear on this?”
    “He wants Hadiyyah, he comes for her himself. When he’s able to come,
certo
. Meantime—”
    “In the meantime, you have a British subject in your digs, and I’m here to collect her.”
    “I telephone her grandparents to come for her.”
    “And her grandparents are going to do what? Cooperate with that idea? Fly over, scoop her up in their arms, and take her home to a bedroom they’ve just redecorated in her honour? That’s not bloody likely. Believe me, Lorenzo, they’d never even seen Hadiyyah before Angelina died, if they saw her then. Did they come to the funeral? Yes? It was probably to dance on Angelina’s grave, that’s how much of a nothing she was to them once she got herself involved with Azhar. They’d’ve seen her death as her finally receiving what she deserved for getting herself pregnant by a Pakistani Muslim in the first place. I’d like to see Hadiyyah now.”
    Mura’s face had darkened to nearly the colour of his port wine birthmark during Barbara’s speech. But he seemed unwilling to argue further. After all, he had work to do on the crumbling villa, and his hanging on to Hadiyyah was only intended to thrust the sword deeper into Azhar’s chest, as was handing her over to her grandparents.
    Barbara said to Mura, “So . . . are you and I finished here, Mr. Mura?”
    Mura’s expression indicated that he would have liked to spit on her shoes, but instead he turned and headed into the villa. He didn’t go up one of the curving stairways to the loggia, though. Instead, he ducked beneath a mass of honeysuckle that arched over a weathered door at ground level. Barbara followed him.
    She was surprised at the condition of the place, considering Angelina Upman had lived within it. The villa was decrepit, a relic from the distant past, and when she saw its wreck of a kitchen—so dimly lit that its higher calling clearly was to be turned into a dungeon—she reflected on how Angelina’s first move upon returning to Azhar the previous year had been to redecorate his flat to her own standards. She’d not bothered with that here. Nor, it seemed, had she bothered to clean the place. Dust, grime, cobwebs, and mould appeared to define it.
    Barbara followed Lorenzo Mura through several rooms, all of which seemed part of the kitchen. Eventually, they climbed a stone stairway and emerged into some kind of huge reception room with