Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

“To get everyone’s trust. Mine included. I’ve been a bloody idiot most of my life. But this one . . . I’ve sodding outdone myself.”
    “Why did you never tell me any of this?” Lynley asked.
    “Which part?” Havers asked. “Because the bloody idiot part I would’ve expected you already knew.”
    “The part about Angelina,” he said. “The part about Azhar’s wife, the other children, the divorce or lack thereof. All of that. Any of that. Why didn’t you tell me? Because you certainly must have felt . . .” He could say no more. Havers had never spoken of her feelings either for Azhar or for his young daughter, and Lynley had never asked. It had seemed more respectful to say nothing when the truth, he admitted, was that saying nothing had just been the easier thing to do.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “Yeah. Well, you were occupied anyway. You know.”
    He knew she was talking about his affair with their superior officer at the Met. He’d been discreet. So had Isabelle. But Havers was no fool, she hadn’t been born recently, and she was nothing if not acutely percipient when it came to him.
    He said, “Yes. Well. That’s over, Barbara.”
    “I know.”
    “Ah. Right. I expect you do.”
    Havers turned her tea mug in her hands. Lynley saw it bore a caricature of the Duchess of Cornwall, helmet-haired and square-smiled. Unconsciously, she covered this caricature with her hand as if in apology to the unfortunate woman. She said, “I didn’t know what to tell him, sir. I came home from work and I found him sitting on my front step. He’d been there hours, I think. I took him back to his flat once he’d told me what happened—that she’d taken off and that Hadiyyah was with her—and I had a look round and I swear to God, when I saw she’d taken everything with her, I didn’t know what to do.”
    Lynley considered the situation. It was more than difficult and Havers knew this, which was why she’d been immobilised. He said, “Take me to his flat, Barbara. Put on some clothes and take me to his flat.”
    She nodded. She went to the wardrobe and rooted around for some clothes, which she clutched to her chest. She started to head towards the bathroom, but she stopped. She said to him, “Ta for not mentioning the hair, sir.”
    Lynley looked at her shorn and ruined head. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Get dressed, Sergeant.”
    CHALK FARM
    LONDON
    Barbara Havers felt appreciably better now that Lynley had arrived. She knew she should have been able to do something to take hold of the reins of the situation, but Azhar’s grief had undone her. He was a self-contained man and had always been so in the nearly two years that she had known him. As such, he’d played his cards so close that most of the time she could have sworn he had no cards at all. To see him broken by what his lover had done and to know that she herself should have recognised from their first meeting that something was up with Angelina Upman and with all of Angelina Upman’s overtures of friendship towards her . . . This was enough to break Barbara as well.
    Like most people, she’d seen only what she wanted to see in Angelina Upman, and she’d ignored everything from red flags to speed bumps. Meantime, Angelina had seduced Azhar back to her bed. She’d seduced her daughter into abject devotion. She’d seduced Barbara into unwitting conspiracy through garnering her cooperative silence about everything having to do with Angelina herself. And this—her disappearance with her daughter in tow—was the result.
    Barbara got dressed in the bathroom. In the mirror she saw how terrible she looked, especially her hair. Her head bore great bald patches in spots, and in other spots the remains of what had been an expensive Knightsbridge hairstyle sprang out of her scalp like so many weeds waiting to be pulled from a garden. The only answer to what she’d done to herself was going to be to shave her head completely, but she didn’t have time to do that just then. She came out of the bathroom and rooted for a ski cap in her chest of drawers. She put this on and together she and Lynley returned to the front of the house.
    Everything was as she’d left it in Azhar’s flat. The only difference was that instead of sitting staring at nothing, Azhar was walking aimlessly through the rooms. When, hollow-eyed, he looked in their direction, Barbara said to him, “Azhar, I’ve brought DI Lynley from the Met.”
    He’d just emerged from