Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [290]
How they had all been duped and used, Barbara thought. And what, what, what was Hadiyyah going to think and feel when she began to understand that she had been ripped away from the father she adored and the only life she had ever known? To be taken …? Where, Barbara thought, where?
No one vanished without a trace. Barbara was a cop, and she knew very well that no one ever managed to flee without a single clue being left behind. She said to Azhar, “Take me to the flat.”
“I cannot go in there again.”
“You must. Azhar, it’s the route to Hadiyyah.”
Slowly, he got to his feet. Barbara took his arm and guided him along the path to the front of the house. At the flagstone area before the door, he stopped but she urged him forward. She was the one to open the door, though. She found the lights and she switched them on.
Illumination revealed the sitting room, altered by Angelina Upman’s impeccable good taste. Barbara saw the alteration now for what it was and for what it had been, which was just another way to seduce. Not only Azhar but Hadiyyah and Barbara herself if it came down to it. What fun we shall have doing it, darling Hadiyyah, and how we shall surprise your father!
Azhar stood there between the sitting room and the kitchen, immobile and ashen. Barbara thought there was every chance the man might simply pass out, so she took him into the kitchen— the room least altered by Angelina— and she sat him at the small table there. She said, “Wait.” And then, “Azhar, it’s going to be all right. We’re going to find her. We’ll find them both.” He didn’t reply.
In his bedroom, Barbara saw that all of Angelina’s belongings were gone. She couldn’t have packed everything and taken it off in suitcases, so she must have shipped things on ahead with no one the wiser. This meant she’d known where she was going and, possibly, to whom. An important detail.
On the bed, a strongbox lay, its lid open and its contents dumped out. Barbara looked through all this, noting insurance papers, Azhar’s passport, a copy of his birth certificate, and a sealed envelope with Will written on the front in his neat cursive. As he had said, everything relating to Hadiyyah was missing, and this state of affairs was underscored by the little girl’s bedroom.
Her clothing was gone with the exception of her school uniform, which lay on the bed, spread out as if in mockery of tomorrow morning when Hadiyyah would not be there to don it. Also still there was her school rucksack, and inside her schoolwork was neatly placed within a three-ring binder. On her little desk, tucked beneath a window, her laptop was in position and sitting on top of it was a small stuffed giraffe that, Barbara knew, had been given to Hadiyyah by a good-hearted girl in Essex the previous year, in Balford-le-Nez on the pleasure pier. Hadiyyah, Barbara thought, would want that giraffe. She would want her laptop. She would want her school things. She would want— above everything else— her father.
She returned to the kitchen where Azhar sat, staring at nothing. She said to him, “Azhar, you’re her father. You have a claim upon her. She’s lived with you since she was born. You’ve a building full of people right here who’re going to testify to that. The police will ask them and they’ll say you’re the parent of record. Hadiyyah’s school will say that as well. Everyone— ”
“My name is not on her birth certificate, Barbara. It never was. Angelina would not put it on. It was the price I paid for not divorcing my wife.”
Barbara swallowed. She took a moment. She forged ahead. “All right. We’ll work with that. It doesn’t matter. There are DNA tests. She’s half you, Azhar, and we’ll be able to prove it.”
“In what manner without her here? And what does it matter when she is with her mother? Angelina defies no law. She defies no court order. She does not fly in the face of what a judge has told her must be the way in which Hadiyyah is shared. She’s gone. She’s taken my daughter with her, and they are not returning.