Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

tell Lorenzo about my lover,” she said.
    Lo Bianco released a nearly silent whistle of air. Lynley glanced at him.
Le donne, le donne
, his expression said.
Le cose che fanno
.
    “D’you mean another man?” Lynley clarified. “Other than Azhar.”
    Yes, she said. One of the teachers at the dancing school where she took classes. A choreographer and an instructor. At the time of her meeting Lorenzo Mura, this man had been her lover for some years. When she left Azhar to take up life with Lorenzo, she also left this man.
    “His name?” Lynley asked.
    “He’s in London, Inspector Lynley. He’s not Italian. He doesn’t know Italy. He doesn’t know where I am. I simply . . . I mean I should have told him something. I should have told him anything. But I simply . . . stopped seeing him.”
    “That wouldn’t have prevented him from trying to find you,” Lynley pointed out. “After several years as your lover—”
    “It wasn’t serious,” she said hastily. “It was fun, a release, excitement. Between us, there was never any plan to be together permanently.”
    “In your head,” Lo Bianco pointed out. “
Ma forse . . .
” This was true. Perhaps in the head of her lover an entirely different idea existed. “He was married?”
    “Yes. So he wouldn’t have expected me to hang about in his life and when I left him—”
    “It works not in that way,” Lo Bianco told her. “There are men, for them marriage equals not a thing.”
    “I do need his name, Angelina,” Lynley told her. “The chief inspector’s right. While your previous lover could be completely uninvolved with what’s happened here in Italy, the fact of him in your life means that he needs to be eliminated from the enquiry. If he’s still in London, Barbara can handle this. But it has to be done.”
    “Esteban Castro,” she finally said.
    “He’s from Spain?”
    “Mexico City,” she said. “His wife is English. Another dancer.”
    “You were also . . .” Lo Bianco searched for the word, but Lynley was fairly certain where he was heading, so he cut in, saying, “You were acquainted with her?”
    Angelina dropped her gaze again. “She was a friend.”
    Before either Lynley or Lo Bianco could comment on these facts or ask further questions, Lorenzo Mura arrived at Fattoria di Santa Zita and entered as the others had done: through the ground-floor door that brought him along the dark passage and into the kitchen. He dropped an athletic bag on the tiles and came to the table. He kissed Angelina and asked what was going on among them. Clearly, he was fully capable of reading the atmosphere in the room. “
Che cos’è successo?
” he demanded.
    Neither of the detectives spoke. It was, Lynley felt, for Angelina to tell her current lover—or not to tell him—of the subject they’d been discussing. She said to them, “Lorenzo knows about Esteban Castro. We have no secrets from each other.”
    Lynley doubted that. Everyone had secrets. He was beginning to conclude that Angelina’s had deposited her into the position she occupied at the moment: mother of a missing child. He said, “And Taymullah Azhar?”
    “What about Hari?” she asked.
    “Sometimes relationships are open,” Lynley said. “Did he know about your other lover?”
    “Please don’t tell Hari,” she said quickly.
    With a grunt, Lorenzo pulled a chair from the table. He sat, grabbed a glass, and poured himself some wine. He tossed it back—no thoughtful sipping and evaluating here—and cut a wedge of cheese and a hunk of bread. He said fiercely, “Why do you protect this man?”
    “Because I’ve dropped an explosive into his life and that’s
enough
. I won’t have him hurt more.”
    “
Merda
.” Lorenzo shook his head. “This makes no sense, this . . . this care you have for this man.”
    “We have a child together,” Angelina said. “When you have a child with someone, it changes things between you. That’s how things are.”
    “
Così dici
.” Mura’s voice was gentler when he said this, but still he didn’t appear to be convinced that having had a child by Taymullah Azhar was significant enough a reason for Angelina to wish not to devastate the man further. And perhaps, Lynley thought, it was not enough reason. Perhaps had Azhar ended his marriage instead of merely leaving his wife, things would have been much different for Angelina Upman. And, perhaps, Lorenzo Mura knew this. No matter the situation at present or in the future, a