Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act Read Online Free PDF

Nafeeza and the children live with my parents.”
    “Could Angelina have gone to them?”
    “She has no idea where they live, what their names are, anything about them.”
    “Could they have come here, then? Could they have tracked her down, perhaps? Could they have wooed her out there?”
    “For what purpose?”
    “Perhaps to harm her?”
    Barbara could see how this was entirely possible. She said, “Azhar, that could be it. She could have been taken. This could look like something it isn’t at all. They could have come for her and taken Hadiyyah as well. They could have packed everything. They could have forced her to make that call to me.”
    “Did she sound like someone under duress in the phone message, Barbara?” Lynley asked her.
    Of course, she had not. She’d sounded just as she’d always sounded, which was perfectly pleasant and completely open to friendship. “She could have been acting,” Barbara said, although even she could hear how desperate she sounded. “She fooled me for months. She fooled Azhar. She fooled her own daughter. But maybe she wasn’t fooling at all. Maybe she never intended to leave. Maybe they came for her out of the blue and they’ve taken her somewhere and she had to leave that message and they forced her to sound—”
    “You can’t have it both ways,” Lynley said, although his voice was kind.
    “He is right,” Azhar said. “If she was forced to make a phone call, if she was taken from here—she and Hadiyyah—against her will, she would have said something in that phone call to you. She would have left a sign. There would be some indication, but there is not. There is nothing. And what she did leave—Hadiyyah’s school uniform, her laptop, that little giraffe—this was to tell me that they are not returning.” His eyes grew red-rimmed.
    Barbara swung to Lynley. He was, she had long known, the most compassionate cop on the force and quite possibly the most compassionate man she’d ever met. But she could see upon his face that what he felt—beyond sympathy for Azhar—was knowledge of the truth in front of them. She said to him, “Sir.
Sir
.”
    He said, “Aside from checking with the families, Barbara . . . She’s the mother. She’s broken no law. There’s no divorce with a judge’s decree and a custody ruling that she’s defying.”
    “A private enquiry, then,” Barbara said. “If we can do nothing, then a private detective can.”
    “Where am I to find such a person?” Azhar asked her.
    “I can be that person,” Barbara told him.

16 November
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    A bsolutely not” was how Acting Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery greeted Barbara’s request for time off. She went on from this to demand an immediate explanation for the headgear Barbara happened to be wearing. This was a knitted cap of the sort skiers wore, complete with pompom on the top. On the fashion side of things, it scored a zero. On the police side of things, it was into negative numbers. For prior to its ruin, Barbara’s hair had been cut and styled upon the strongest recommendation of the acting detective superintendent herself, and since her strongest recommendation was first cousin to an order, Barbara had complied. Thus, its ruin smacked of defiance, which was exactly how Isabelle Ardery was going to see it.
    “Take off that hat,” Ardery said.
    “As to time off, guv . . .”
    “I’d like to remind you that you’ve just had time off,” the superintendent snapped. “How many days were you at the beck and call of Inspector Lynley while he was on his little sojourn up in Cumbria?”
    Barbara couldn’t deny this. She had just finished assisting Lynley in a private endeavour in which he’d been engaged. He’d been tapped by Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier for a hush-hush matter near Lake Windermere, and Isabelle Ardery had discovered Barbara’s involvement in the matter. She’d not been pleased. Thus, she was going to embrace the idea of