Free Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George Page A

up with this man”—a cursory glance at Azhar—“we ended our relationship with her. She would not see reason. So we would not see her.” She addressed Azhar then with, “Has she left you at last? Well, really, what else would you actually expect?”
    “She has left me before,” Azhar said with some dignity. “We have come to see you because it is my earnest wish to—”
    “Has she indeed?
Has
she left you once before? And yet you didn’t dash over here then—whenever it was—to enquire about her. What brings you now?”
    “She has my daughter.”
    “Which one would that be?” And then, reading something upon Azhar’s face, Ruth-Jane Upman added, “Yes, Mr. Azhar. We know all about you. When it comes to you, Humphrey did the homework and I graded every one of the papers.”
    Barbara said impatiently, “Angelina has taken Hadiyyah with her. I expect you know which one of Azhar’s daughters Hadiyyah is.”
    “I assume she’s the . . . one . . . Angelina gave birth to.”
    “She’s also the
one
,” Barbara said, “who probably misses her dad.”
    “Be that as it may, I have no interest in her. Nor have I interest in Angelina. Nor have I, frankly, interest in you. Neither her father nor I have any idea where she is, where she might be going, or where she might end up in the future. Is there anything else? Because I’d like to finish decorating my Christmas tree, if you don’t mind.”
    “Has she contacted you?”
    “I believe I just said—”
    “What you said,” Barbara interrupted, “was that you have no idea where she is, where she’s going, or where she might end up. What you didn’t say was whether you’ve spoken to her. During which conversation, we can both assume, she wouldn’t necessarily have to say where she is.”
    Ruth-Jane said nothing to this. Barbara thought, Bingo. But what she also thought was that there was no way in hell that Angelina Upman’s mother was going to give them a thing to go on. She might have spoken to Angelina at some point; she might have been the recipient of a telephone message, a text message, a letter, a card, or whatever else of the “I’ve left him, Mum” variety. But, no matter the case, she wasn’t about to admit that to Barbara.
    “Azhar wants to know where his daughter is,” Barbara told Angelina’s mother quietly. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
    She seemed completely indifferent. “Whether I understand or not makes no difference to anything. My answer remains the same. I’ve had no personal contact with Angelina.”
    Barbara brought her card from the pocket of her jacket. She held it out to the woman. She said, “I’d like you to ring me if you hear from her. It being Christmastime, you may well do.”
    “You might like me to do that,” Ruth-Jane Upman said. “But granting your wishes isn’t one of my powers.”
    Barbara laid her card on a table nearby. She said, “You think about that, Mrs. Upman.”
    Azhar looked as if he wanted to make some sort of appeal, but Barbara tilted her head towards the doorway. There was no point to further discussion with the woman. She might let them know if she heard from Angelina. She might not do so. It was not in their hands to bend her will to theirs.
    They headed for the door. In the corridor leading to it, the walls bore pictures, three of them black-and-white shots of a spontaneous nature. Barbara paused to look at them. They were all, she saw, of the same subjects: two girls. In one they were at the seaside building a sand castle, in another they rode a merry-go-round with one of them on the high pony and the other on a low one, in the last they stood holding out carrots to a mare and her adorable foal. What was interesting was not the expert nature of the photographs, however. Nor was it notable how they’d been framed and mounted. What would cause any viewer to stop and give the pictures a thorough study was the girls themselves.
    They would be Angelina and Bathsheba,