Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

stand warned. My timbers are shivering. Now we can talk.”
    “I have no intention of—”
    “Talking to me? Oh, I think you’ll reconsider that one. You lied to me. I don’t like that as a general rule. When a kid’s been kidnapped, I like it even less.”
    “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
    “You’re in this up to your earlobes. Hadiyyah’s been missing in Italy for more than a week, and since you were in on things with your sister from the get-go—”
    “
What?
” Bathsheba peered at Barbara as if trying to take a reading from her face. She shoved her hair behind her ears and strode to a dressing table, where she sat on its stool. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “That particular kite’s going nowhere this time.” Barbara leaned against the bedroom door and gave Bathsheba a long and steady look. She said, “You lied to me about not having seen Angelina in donkey’s years. You wrote emails to Hadiyyah pretending to be her dad, all nicely set up from University College by who the hell knows.
And
you gave your sister your passport to travel to Italy last November when she left Azhar.”
    “I did nothing of the sort.”
    “As it happens, Angelina’s given you up. On all fronts.” This last was a lie. The business about the passport was a long shot. But Hugo’s denial that his wife had been out of the country was helpful in the matter, so as far as Barbara was concerned, a good bluff was in order.
    Bathsheba said nothing for a moment. Anyone with a true knowledge of how the police worked would have asked then and there for her solicitor, but in Barbara’s experience people so seldom did. This had always been remarkable to her. In their position, she’d shut it in an instant until she had an attorney alternately massaging her temples and holding her hand. She said, “So?” to Bathsheba Ward. “Want to explain?”
    “I have nothing more to say. Angelina
may
have ‘given me up,’ as you put it—and one wonders where you police get your colourful use of language, frankly—but as far as I know I’ve committed no crime and neither has she.”
    “Travelling on someone else’s passport—”
    “I have my passport. It’s in a strongbox in this very flat and, shown a court order, I’ll be more than delighted to share it with you.”
    “She would have posted it back to you as soon as she was safe. She would have taken her own with her but travelled on yours.”
    “If that’s what you think, I daresay you have ways to uncover this. So phone up border control. Phone up customs. Phone up someone. Ring the Home Office. I couldn’t care less.”
    “This whole bit about disliking her . . . You didn’t, did you? You don’t. Because if you did, why would you help her?” Barbara considered her own question in light of what she’d learned about the Upman family. There was little enough to go on, but one glaring detail explained a lot. “Unless,” she said, “it was about getting her away from Azhar. A Pakistani rolling round your sister’s knickers? Your parents certainly didn’t like this. What about you?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. If Angelina was stupid enough to involve herself with a Muslim—”
    “And several other blokes at the same time, as it happens,” Barbara told her. “Did she tell you that? Or did she just tell you that she’d seen the light and had to get away from the ‘filthy Paki.’ That’s what your dad called him, by the way. What did you call him?”
    But Bathsheba was looking at her oddly, Barbara saw. She was looking like a woman who’d just had a bit of a surprise sprung upon her. Barbara went back over what she’d just said to sort out what this surprise might have been, and she excavated it quickly enough in the idea of Angelina’s other involvements. She said, “Esteban Castro was one of her lovers. So was a bloke called Lorenzo Mura. She’s with him now. Lorenzo. That’s where she was going. She told you that, didn’t she? No? You didn’t know it? How could you
not
know it? You told me yourself that she’d probably be with a man.”
    Bathsheba didn’t reply. Barbara thought about this. She thought about twins and how these particular twins had grown up hating the whole idea of twinship. She considered how hating the idea of twinship could morph into hating the other twin herself. If that was the case—that Bathsheba indeed hated Angelina—then it stood to reason that she would help her only if she saw