He sat with his arms on his legs and his hands dangling between them. This gave Barbara a view of his package that she would have preferred not to have, so she moved her own chair to a position that kept his jewels from view. He said without preamble and without waiting to hear the reason for her call upon him, “My wife doesn’t know Angelina and I were involved. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I wouldn’t place money on that,” Barbara told him. “Women aren’t stupid, as a rule.”
“She’s not quite a woman” was his reply. “That was part of the problem. Have you spoken to her?”
“Not yet.”
“There’s no need. I’ll tell you what you want to know. I’ll answer your questions. But leave her out of this.”
“‘This’?” Barbara asked.
“Whatever this is. You know what I mean.” He waited for Barbara to say something. When she gave him no assurance of any kind, he cursed and said, “Come with me.”
He led the way out of the dance studio and across the lobby. He opened the other door and jerked his head in a way that told her she was to look inside. There she saw Dahlia Rourke with a group of some dozen little girls at the barre. She was attempting to position them gracefully, one arm curved above their heads. It looked hopeless to Barbara. Nice to know, she thought, that there appeared to be no real, natural grace in life. As for Dahlia, she was skeletally thin, more X-ray than human. Perhaps feeling she was being watched, she turned towards the door.
“Daughter’s a potential for ballet,” Castro said to her, in reference to Barbara. “She wanted a look.”
Dahlia nodded. Her gaze took in Barbara but it seemed to be without speculation. She gave a hesitant smile directed at them both and then went back to her work with the nation’s future ballerinas. Castro led the way back to his own studio. He closed the door and said, “Her body functions only as a ballerina’s. Nor is she interested in its functioning as anything other than a ballerina’s.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she ceased being a woman some time ago. That’s largely why Angelina and I became involved.”
“Are there other reasons, then?”
“Have you met her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know. She’s lovely. She’s passionate. She’s alive. That’s very appealing. Now what the hell is going on and why are you here?”
“Have you been out of the country in the last month?”
“Of course not. I’m in the middle of choreographing Wind in the Willows. How could I possibly leave? And let me repeat: What the hell is going on?”
“No quick trip for a weekend in the sun somewhere?”
“Like where? Spain? Portugal?”
“Italy.”
“Of course not.”
“What about the wife?”
“Dahlia’s doing Giselle with the Royal Ballet. And she’s got her classes here. She has no time for anything other than soaking her feet at home when she isn’t working. So the answer is no and no again and I’m not saying another word until you tell me what the hell is going on, understand?” To emphasise this point, he got to his feet. He strode into the centre of the room and stood there with his arms crossed on his chest and his legs spread. Very manly pose, Barbara thought. She wondered if it was deliberate, full of the knowledge, perhaps, of how to use what he had.
She said, “Angelina Upman’s daughter was snatched from a marketplace in Lucca, Italy.”
Castro stared at her. His mind appeared to be coming to terms with this and with what it meant that the police had come calling upon him. He said, “And what? D’you think I did it? I don’t know her daughter. I never met her daughter. Why the hell would I want to snatch her?”
“Everything has to be checked out, which means everyone whose life touches Angelina’s has to be checked out. I know she dropped you without a word, just disappeared from your life. You might have taken a bit of offence at that. You might have wanted to do something to smack her round a bit—figuratively speaking. You might have wanted to play mind games with her the way she played mind games with you.”
He laughed shortly. “That’s going nowhere, Sergeant . . . ?” He paused.
“Havers,” she said. “Detective Sergeant, actually.”
“Havers,” he said. “Detective Sergeant, actually. She didn’t play mind games. She was here, she was gone, that was it.”
“And you didn’t wonder where she’d gone off to?”
“I didn’t have the right to wonder. I knew that and she knew I knew it. Our rules were simple: I wasn’t going to leave Dahlia for her. She wasn’t going to leave Azhar for me. She’d disappeared once before for a year, but then she’d returned and she and I more or less resumed meeting. I’ve assumed this is the same sort of thing.”
“You mean you’ve reckoned she’ll be back.”
“That’s how it was in the past.”
“So you knew all along about Azhar? During the entire time you were involved with her?” It was germane to nothing, but Barbara had to know, although she would have preferred it if it made no difference to her.
“I knew. We didn’t lie to each other.”
“And Lorenzo Mura, her other lover? What about him? Did you know about him?”
To this, Castro said nothing. He walked back to the chair on which he’d been sitting. He dropped into it and gave a sharp bark of a laugh. He shook his head. Barbara got the point. He said, “So she was . . . what? Fucking all three of us?”
“It’s looking that way.”
“I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
He rubbed his hands through his hair. He squeezed a handful of it as if this would drive more blood to his brain. He said, “It’s this. Some women are driven by excitement. Angelina’s one of them. To settle into life with one man? Where’s the excitement in that?”
“She appears to be with one bloke now, though: Lorenzo Mura in Italy.”
“Appears is the operative word, Sergeant. She appeared to Azhar to be with Azhar. Now she appears to him to be with this Italian.”
Barbara thought about this in light of her knowledge of Angelina. The woman she knew was a consummate actress. She herself had been completely taken in by Angelina’s air of friendliness and her spurious interest in Barbara’s own life. Was it out of the question, then, that she’d managed to bamboozle everyone else around her as well? While Barbara couldn’t quite get her mind round the idea of having it off with three blokes at once, she had to admit that anything was possible. She herself would worry about mistakenly shrieking the wrong name in the height of passion. On the other hand, heights of passion weren’t regular occurrences in her life.
She said to Castro, “How long did your affair with Angelina last?”
“Is that important?”
“Matter of curiosity, I suppose.”
He glanced at her and then away. “I don’t know. A few years? Two or three? It was always off and on.”
“How often did you meet when it was ‘on’?”
“Generally twice a week. Sometimes three.”
“Where?”
Another glance. He gave her a speculative head to toe. “What does it matter?”
“Another point of curiosity. Love to know how the other half lives, if you wouldn’t mind telling me.”
He looked away, his gaze settling across the room where he was reflected in the mirror. “Anywhere,” he said. “In the back of cars, in a taxi, here in the studio, backstage in a West End theatre, at my place, at her place, at a particular lap dancing club.”
“That must have been interesting,” Barbara commented.
“She liked risk. Once we did it in the pedestrian tunnel to Greenwich. She was creative, and I liked that about her. Passion drives her. And what drives passion is excitement and secrecy. That’s who she is. That’s how she is.”
“Seems to me that she’s the sort of woman a bloke would want to hang on to, then,” Barbara not
ed. “You know what I mean, I expect. Any time, any place, dressed, undressed, standing, sitting, kneeling, whatever. Don’t blokes get off on that kind of thing?”
“Some do.”
“And are you ‘some’?”
“I’m Latin, Sergeant. What do you think?”
“I think it would be tough to replace her,” Barbara pointed out, “once she was gone. Could have been a real heartbreaker for you.”
“No one replaces Angelina,” he said. “And like I told you, I expect her to be back.”
“Even now?”
“With her in Italy?”
“With her living with Lorenzo Mura.”
“I don’t know.” He looked at his watch and got to his feet, ready to resume rehearsal. “I suppose I should be glad it lasted as long as it did,” he added. “Come to think of it, so should Mura.”
24 April
HOXTON
LONDON
Bathsheba Ward was next on Barbara’s list. Since the wily cow had lied to her about her sister—and this was looking more and more like a bloody family trait, wasn’t it?—Barbara was determined to show her no pity. She was also determined to give DI Stewart and Detective Superintendent Ardery no further ammunition to fire upon her. For both of these reasons, she rose in what for her were the wee hours of the morning and headed to Hoxton. She bought a takeaway coffee on her way and used it to wash down a gratifyingly extra-large bacon butty. She was more than ready to take on the world when she arrived in Nuttall Street, where Bathsheba and her husband Hugo Ward lived in a flat on a very nicely kept estate of buildings fashioned from London brick.
No one was up and about on the estate when Barbara arrived, but that was no surprise as it was a quarter past six. She found the Ward flat with no trouble at all, and she leaned on the external bell for as long as it took until a man’s voice demanded, “What in God’s name do you want? Do you know what time it is?”
“New Scotland Yard,” Barbara told him. “I need a word. Now.”
This was greeted by silence as the man—presumably Hugo Ward—thought this one over. She gave him five seconds and then rang the bell a second time. He buzzed her inside the place without another word, and she made her way to the flat on the second floor.
Before she could knock, he had the door open. Despite the hour, he was dressed for the day in complete business regalia: three-piece suit, crisp shirt—although hideously two-toned with white collar and blue body—striped tie, and professionally polished shoes. He said, “You’re the police?” in apparent confusion. Barbara reckoned it was her trainers, which apparently were causing him undue concern. She showed him her police identification. He admitted her into the flat.
“What’s this about?” he asked, not unreasonably.
“A word with your wife,” Barbara told him.
“She’s asleep.”
“Wake her up.”
“Are you aware of the time?”
She wore a wristwatch, and she shook it next to her ear and squinted at it.
“Damn,” she said. “Mickey’s gone belly up.” And to Hugo Ward, “You’ve already mentioned the time, Mr. Ward. And I don’t have a hell of a lot of it to waste. So if you’ll fetch your wife . . . ? Tell her it’s Sergeant Havers, here to share a morning cuppa with her. She knows who I am. Tell her it’s about her trip to Italy last November.”
“She didn’t go to Italy last November.”
“Well someone did. And on her passport.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Believe me, Mr. Ward. In my line of work, you suss out pretty fast that anything’s possible.”
He looked disturbed by the information. That was good. It meant he would be inclined to cooperate. His glance went from Barbara to the corridor behind him. They stood in the small square entry of the flat, where a mirror on one wall reflected a pricey-looking piece of modern art on the other. It was all lines and squiggles suggestive of nothing. But even at that, it did look as if the painter had known what he was doing, although Barbara couldn’t reckon why this should be the case.
She said, “Mr. Ward . . . ? I’m short on time here. D’you want to rouse her from her beauty whatevers, or do you want me to do the honours?”
He said, “Just a moment, then,” and told her to wait in the sitting room, which he called the reception room like some estate agent getting ready to sell the place. This was just off the corridor and like the entry, it was hung with a plethora of modern paintings and decorated with furniture that bore the look of Bathsheba’s distinctive design style. On tables here and there were framed photographs, and Barbara sauntered over to give them the eye as Hugo Ward disappeared to fetch his wife.
She saw that the pictures were of the happy, extended Ward family: the two adult children and their spouses, a winsome grandchild, the beaming paterfamilias, the devoted second wife hanging upon him. They were in various poses on various occasions, and they all reminded Barbara of a quotation that she couldn’t identify but knew that Lynley could have: Someone was protesting too much. In this case it was all about Aren’t we a happy, handsome group? She gave a snort, turned away, and saw that Hugo Ward had come to the reception room’s door.
“She’ll see you when she’s dressed and had her coffee,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” Barbara told him. “Where is she?” She crossed the room and went into the corridor, heading towards three closed doors. “Bedroom’s this way?” she said. “Since it’s just us girls, she won’t be showing me anything I don’t own myself.”
“You bloody hang on!” Ward demanded.
“Love to but you know the situation with time and tide. Is it this door?”
She opened the first that she came to as Hugo Ward blustered behind her, protesting every inch of the way. The first room was a study, beautifully appointed. She gave it a look, clocked more paintings and even more family photos, and went on to the second door, which she opened, singing out, “It’s wakey-wakey time. Early bird, the worm, and you know the rest.”
Bathsheba was sitting up in bed, a cup of coffee on the table next to her, and three newspapers spread out across the covers. So much for her having been asleep, Barbara thought. She eyed Hugo Ward and said, “Naughty, naughty. It’s not nice to lie to the rozzers, you know. Gets right up our noses, that does.”
He said, “Sorry,” to Bathsheba. “She charged in, darling.”
“I can see that,” Bathsheba replied tartly. “Honestly, Hugo. Would it have been too difficult . . . ?” She tossed a paper to one side and reached for her dressing gown.
Barbara said to Hugo Ward, “It’ll be just us girls, like I said,” and closed the door in his face. She could hear him engaged in more blustering on the other side.
Bathsheba rose from the bed and worked her way into her dressing gown. She said to Barbara, “I’ve told you what I know, which is absolutely nothing. The fact that you’ve come to my home before dawn—”
“Open the curtains, Bathsheba, and have a surprise. Sun’s up, birds are twittering, and the worms are dead worried.”
“Very amusing. And you know what I mean. You’ve come at a deliberately ungodly hour to rattle me and there’s nothing to rattle. This might be how the London police are used to operating, but it is not how I am used to operating, and believe me, I’ll be talking to someone about you and your methods the moment you leave.”
“Fine. I 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 shove
d 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?”
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