Something to hide a lynl.., p.15
Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel, page 15
part #21 of Inspector Lynley Series
“They both—”
“Ross—”
Solange and Rosie had spoken at once. Rosie was the one to complete her thought. “They both wanted it,” she said. She kept her gaze fixed on Nkata as she spoke, and her parents kept their gazes fixed on her.
Nkata said, “She seeing anyone?”
“She could have been, but Teo never talked to me about private things. Perhaps that was due to the difference in our ages? She’s seven years older.”
“Her husband, then? He seeing anyone?”
This question was met with silence until Solange said, “You speak of Ross?” as if her daughter had practised polyandry and Ross Carver was only one of her many. She looked at Cesare, then at Rosie. Then back at Nkata when she said, “We see Ross occasionally, but this is something he wouldn’t have told us.”
“Because . . . ?”
“I expect he wouldn’t have wanted Teo to know. As they were still married.”
That made not a jot of sense to Nkata. They were divorcing. They’d been apart two years. What difference could it have made if Teo Bontempi had been told the truth about her estranged husband? He stirred restlessly for a moment as he studied them until he could feel it straight to his fingertips: he wasn’t close to the truth with these people. Something was going on in the family, something more than the death of one of the daughters.
He let a silence hang, as he’d learned from observing Lynley. Most people, he knew, couldn’t cope with silence. But these three, he discovered, were not most people.
Cesare finally said, “I have fatigue. I leave you now,” and his wife was on her feet at once to help him to his.
She said to Nkata, “If you don’t mind, Sergeant? Belle, please give him our mobile numbers. You’ll want them, won’t you, Sergeant?”
He acknowledged this and watched as she helped her husband from the room. He could hear the murmur of their voices. A door opened and shut in another area of the house and they were gone.
Rosie, however, was very much there. He had a feeling about her, a basic uneasiness telling him she was good with secrets: her own and others’. She knew far more than she was saying, he reckoned. What he couldn’t work out was whether what she knew was about her parents, her sister, or her sister’s husband.
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
His employer had told him to take a few days, which was why Barbara Havers found Ross Carver at home. She’d not needed to beat any bushes to locate him. She rang the mobile number next to his name in one of the files and there he was. Could she speak with him about the death of Teo Bontempi? she asked. She could meet him somewhere or she could come to him, wherever he happened to be.
There was a significant pause before he said heavily, “Teo?” with what sounded peculiarly like resignation. And then, “Of course.” He gave Barbara his details and she set off.
It turned out that he had a flat in a large block that was part of a collection of similar blocks running the length of Goldsmith’s Row, in Hackney. Most of these displayed bleak visages of dreary and long-unwashed London brick. Only one, however, appeared to be of more recent vintage and its concrete façade hadn’t yet fallen victim to exhaust fumes, dust, and other grime.
This being London, there was, of course, no place for her Mini. Indeed, for reasons obscure, all traffic into Goldsmith’s Row had been blocked by means of three bollards. One could walk or one could bicycle in the lane. But that was the extent of it. So she pulled onto the pavement alongside a wrought-iron fence nearly overtaken by shrubbery, and she fished in her rat’s nest glovebox and found her police placard, dog-eared though it was. She positioned this to be clearly seen by anyone peering into the windscreen. She did hope that noticing the placard would preclude anyone’s noticing the plethora of takeaway cartons on the floor of the car and an overfull ashtray in need of clearing. She reckoned she could get away with the Cadbury wrappers that she habitually tossed over her shoulder.
Out in the air, she was immediately assailed by the stench of manure. Lots of manure. The area was a veritable manure-palooza that the summer heat seemed to be cooking into a grossly malodorous stew. That, together with the crowing of an overstimulated rooster, the quacking of many ducks, and the braying of a donkey, told her she was in the near vicinity of Hackney City Farm. Indeed, when she peered through the shrubbery on the other side of the fence, she found herself looking into a ramshackle flower and vegetable garden, beyond which she could make out the top of a barn. As she observed the garden, two young women entered from the barn side of it, wearing tall gumboots on their feet and sun hats on their heads. They carried gardening tools with them and trugs as well. Harvesting time, Barbara thought. Doubtless Hackney City Farm put its copious manure to very good use.
The smell didn’t fade as she walked along Goldsmith’s Row, checking addresses. She couldn’t imagine living directly across the lane from the farm. One probably couldn’t open a window ten months of the year.
Ross Carver’s block of flats was nearly at the end of the lane, but its position didn’t do much to improve the air. She found that she was trying to hold her breath. The stench was so bad that she reckoned breathing through her mouth might expose her to two dozen forms of bacteria previously unknown to science.
A buzzer releasing the lock gave her access to the building. She took the lift to the topmost floor. Ross Carver, she decided, must have been watching for her. She had barely lifted her hand to knock before the door swung open and a nice-looking but swarthy man—Carver himself, presumably—was standing before her.
She knew little about him other than that he was a structural engineer. At the moment, he appeared more like a wannabe rock star. He was unshaven, his sumptuous, dark curls were swept back from his face with some kind of gelatinous substance, and he wore a manbun at the back of his head, two small hoop earrings and a diamond-looking stud in one ear, and that stud’s mate in the other. He had on a waistcoat that had seen far better days on a much larger body, as well as blue jeans. He wore no shirt. Prince Charming he wasn’t.
She said, “Ross Carver?”
He said, “DS Havers?”
Their identities more or less established, he opened the door wide to a flat so meagrely furnished that she wondered if he lived in it at all. An adolescent boy came out of another room as she entered. Behind her, Ross Carver said, “My son, Colton.” She nodded at the boy. He nodded back, did that teenage-boy thing of flipping his overlong hair off his face, and said, “I should go?” to his father.
“Could be for the best,” Carver said. “She’s here to talk about Teo. Ask your mum about the Gibraltar trip. Tell her I’ll give her a bell tonight.”
“She’ll just say no.”
“I’ll try the sweet talk.”
Colton snorted. “As if.” He slouched in the general direction of the door.
When it was closed upon his departure, Carver said to Barbara, “I’m having a lager. You?”
“Too early for me. A glass of water’ll do it.”
“Give me a minute,” and he disappeared round the corner of the room into what she assumed must be the kitchen.
She walked to the window. She wanted to open it as the room was tipping the scale at ten degrees beyond stifling and her deodorant was sending extremely threatening messages from her armpits, but she reckoned the smell from the farm might knock both of them over. She said, “You ever able to open these?” with reference to a set of glass doors to her left. They gave onto a balcony. It held at least two dozen taped-up cardboard boxes, a bicycle, and a set of free weights.
He came back to her, a bottle of water in one hand and a Stella Artois in the other. He said, “I signed the lease in the dead of winter. Rain keeps the smell down at that time of year, and I didn’t notice. I was in a bit of a hurry. And now?” He indicated vaguely towards the south. “I’m going back to Streatham.”
“Back to Teo’s flat?”
“It was ours together when we were together.”
“You’ve been packing.” She nodded at the balcony with its boxes.
“I never unpacked.” He took a swig of his lager. “I always hoped I wouldn’t have to. Teo wanted the split. I didn’t. I hoped she might have me back.” He used the cold of the bottle against his forehead. Barbara wouldn’t have said no to sharing it, if only for that purpose. “You wanted to talk to me about her.”
Barbara plunged her hand into the depths of her shoulder bag to bring out her spiral notebook and a mechanical pencil that she’d nicked from Nkata’s desk. As she did this, she followed Ross Carver to what went for the sitting room: four deckchairs positioned round a card table. He was, she thought, a real minimalist. The only additional piece of furniture was a floor lamp. There were no bits and bobs—presumably they’d never been unpacked—no magazines, no tabloids, no broadsheets, no umbrellas, no discarded shoes or articles of clothing. There were photos, however. Photos galore. Most of them stood along one wall. Some of them looked like wedding shots of him and his estranged wife.
She said, “C’n we sit?”
He said, “Help yourself. The accommodations are spare.”
“Not so the photos,” she noted.
He looked at them, ranked like soldiers at the Trooping of the Colour. He said, “Teo didn’t want them when we split. But I like looking at them. They’re reminders.”
“Of what?”
“Who we were. Happier times. What you will.” He gave the photos a glance. “We grew up together. Our parents were friends from before we were born.”
“How’d they get connected?”
He seemed to think about this for a moment, after which he said, “You know, I haven’t the first clue. It seems like they were always there, Teo’s family. I can’t remember a time when they weren’t. It can’t have been a church thing. My parents—all of us really, and by that I mean my family, not Teo’s—we’re lifelong unbelievers. Teo’s family, they were—they still are—Roman Catholic.”
“Teo herself?”
“Christmas and Easter and only then if she was invited to attend with her parents and her sister. Otherwise, no. Teo doesn’t . . . She didn’t like the trappings of anything.”
“She seemed to like the trappings of a wedding,” Barbara noted, acknowledging that particular set of pictures.
“Most women do, I expect, even if they start out thinking it’s all fuss and nonsense. Besides that, her mum insisted. I would have preferred just the registry office and lunch in a fancy restaurant afterwards. Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. But Solange—Teo’s mum—she likes tradition, and it was easy enough to please her.”
“How’d she react to your split, then?”
“The same as everyone else. Surprised. Sad. We’d been together so long that TeoandRoss had become one word to our families.”
“To you as well.”
He looked at the bottle he held and, after a moment he nodded slowly. “Like I said, I didn’t want the split. But at the end of the day, I’m the one who caused it.”
“Some other woman?”
He shook his head. “There’s always been only Teo for me.”
“But Colton . . . ? Doesn’t he represent when some other woman was just fine for you?”
“Colton was the result of turning competitive ballroom dancing into this-is-meant-to-be. I was eighteen, so was my partner, and we took doing the salsa to a higher level. Latin dancing tends to mess with the mind. At least, it messed with mine. She came up pregnant. She reckoned we would marry. I reckoned different.”
“Did Teo know about Colton?”
“He’s been part of my life since he was born. I rejected his mum—I’m not proud of that, by the way—but never him. Teo knew all that.”
“Where’s his mum now?”
“Hammersmith. Married, two other children, and perfectly happy with her life.” He tipped his bottle and took several more gulps of beer. “I’m just guessing that last part,” he admitted. “But I can’t see why she wouldn’t be happy. Colton never reports otherwise, and he and Kieran—that’s the stepdad—get on well. He’s quite a decent bloke is Kieran.”
“Did Teo never feel betrayed?” It all seemed so adult to Barbara, so au courant, if that was the term, although it could well have been a la mode, she reckoned.
“Because of Telyn’s pregnancy? She wouldn’t have done. She’s three years younger, Teo is. She was only fifteen when all this happened—when Telyn and me happened—and we’d not yet ever been a couple, me and Teo. Then once we were, I never looked at another woman. I never wanted to.”
“If that’s the case—you never doing the dirty outside your marriage—how were you the one to throw a spanner?”
“I loved her too much.”
“Too much?”
“One can do that, you know.” He looked towards the doors onto his balcony as if what he wanted to say resided outside. He settled on, “It’s like overwatering a plant. One means well, but the plant can’t cope and it dies.”
That, Barbara thought, was a strange analogy since Teo Bontempi—Teo Carver who had been—was at the present moment awaiting burial. She said, “When did you last see her?”
“It would have been two nights before she went into hospital.”
“Where?”
“In Streatham. At the flat.”
“Your idea or at her invitation?”
“Her invitation. She said she needed to speak with me.”
“Needed?”
“Needed. Wanted. I suppose both add up to the same thing: conversation. She asked me to come over for a word. So that’s what I did.” He paused, drawing his dark eyebrows together as if trying to recall his wife’s exact words. “She wanted to . . . ‘go over a few things’ was how she put it. She asked if I would come to Streatham. I had nothing on, so that was fine with me. When I arrived, though, she didn’t bell me into the building.”
“So you left?”
“I had a key so—”
“Had she given you a key?”
“I’d never given up the one I had. When we split up, I made four trips? Five? To fetch my clobber. She never asked me for the key because she wouldn’t always be home when I needed to stop at the flat.”
“You never handed it over once the move out was finished?”
“Didn’t. So that night I let myself into the building. I reckoned she’d only stepped out, gone to the shops or something. She knew I was on my way, so I decided I’d wait as I never knew when I’d have another chance.”
“For what?”
“To see her.” He drained the bottle of beer. He said, “I’m having another. You don’t want one?”
Barbara demurred. When he returned, however, he brought two bottles. He set one in front of her, already opened, “Just in case,” he explained. He sat. He was silent. Barbara reckoned that fetching the beer had been intended to buy him time.
She said, “Have you any clue what she wanted to talk to you about?”
Before he could answer, his mobile rang. He dug it out of the back pocket of his jeans and looked at the screen. He said to Barbara, “Sorry. I’m meant to take this.”
She nodded with a gesture towards the mobile. He said into it, “Yeah?” and mostly what he did after that was listen. He rose, mobile pressed to his ear, and went to the balcony’s door, which he opened. He stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and continued listening. Barbara saw his expression change. He looked at her, saw her looking at him, turned, and, head lowered, seemed to speak. It wasn’t a long call, less than two minutes. When he came back into the flat, his expression was grim.
He said to her, “She was murdered? When the hell were you planning to share that detail?”
“Who gave you the information?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Since it’s a murder, yeah, it does.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Sergeant . . . What was your name again?”
“Havers.”
“Sergeant Havers. Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on? Teo was in hospital. She was—”
“—in a coma after a blow to her head.”
That stopped him for a moment. Then, “A blow to her head? A bloody blow to her head?” He glanced at his mobile but it seemed the look was inadvertent.
“Who was on the phone?”
“Teo’s sister. Rosalba. She said the police had called in and had given them the news. Why wasn’t I told? Because we’re estranged? Because you think I did something to her? Is this what you were leading up to? You listen to me, eh? I let myself into her flat. I found her on the floor in the loo. She’d been sick into the toilet. She said she’d been nauseous and dizzy. I wanted to take her to A and E, but she wouldn’t have it. She said she just needed a lie-down, so I helped her to bed.”
“Documents indicate she was in her night gear. Is that how you found her when she was in the loo?”
He swigged down more lager. He said, “No. I . . . Look, I undressed her, but it’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“That this was some kind of sexual thing. My taking advantage of her. It wasn’t. That was over. That was how she wanted it. But I cared for her, so I got her into her night things. I fished two paracetamol from the medicine cabinet, gave them to her, and put her into bed.”
“And then you left? You were never able to learn from her why she wanted to see you?”
“No.”
“Which is it? No, you didn’t leave, or no, you weren’t able to learn why she wanted to see you?”
“She never told me what it was she’d wanted to talk about.”
“And once she was tucked up in bed, you left?”
“I didn’t. I spent some of the night with her.”
“You spent some of the night with your estranged wife.”
