Something to hide a lynl.., p.3
Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel, page 3
part #21 of Inspector Lynley Series
“Can’t believe that place is still here,” Paulie commented as they passed. “The grandkids must be running it by now.”
“Must be,” Mark said. They walked by the café and then through the far exit from the churchyard, which took them into Sutton Way, where Paulie snatched up a discarded cigarette packet and shoved it into his pocket. They went not to Paulie’s house among the string of 1960s-looking structures, but to the house in which they had grown up. It was across the street and down the way a bit, in a terrace of soot-soiled brick houses in need of a thorough scrubbing. They were all identical. Each had three floors, a slightly recessed arched doorway, fanlights above the doors, doors themselves painted ebony. Wrought-iron railings defined the house fronts; two windows on each floor gave an idea of size. Nothing distinguished one from another except the window coverings and the brass door knockers, their originals having been replaced over the years by whatever the occupants fancied. In the case of Mark and Paulie’s childhood home, the knocker of choice was a brass jack-o’-lantern, and the window coverings were the creation of Paulie’s kids, with assistance from their gran, who’d supplied the paints. There was a primitive charm to the finished product, as long as one didn’t attempt to identify the animals that the kids had decided to depict.
Paulie didn’t use a key as the door was seldom locked during daylight hours. He opened it, shouted, “Hiya! The conquerors have arrived!” and dropped to one knee to receive the embraces of his offspring, who came storming towards him. Yells accompanied the pounding of their feet. “Dad’s here!” “Mummy! Gran!” “Granddad, Dad’s here! So’s Uncle Boyko!”
Mark looked for his godchild among them. His niece, Esme, was his favourite. She was also his wound. Two weeks younger than Lilybet, she offered a contrast between them that had always been a rapier to his heart.
Chaos tsunamied round them as the kids demanded “something special from the shop, Dad!” This would be the odd item never redeemed by its owner and, as it happened, not particularly sellable either. Today there was only one object, a dull-edged and tarnished cigar cutter. Paulie handed it to his oldest boy. He told all of the children that they each got one guess as to what it was. Write it on paper and deliver it to your dad, were the rules. Whoever got it on the money would also get to keep it.
His and Mark’s own dad was in the sitting room, watching telly with an enormous set of earphones on his head to save the rest of the household from whatever headache the telly’s intense volume would otherwise cause them. He waved a hello at his sons; they waved in turn. They went on to find their mother in the kitchen. Paulie’s wife, Eileen, was stirring something in a large pot on the stove while their mother, Floss Phinney, was engaged in tossing a salad.
Eileen came at once across the room and wrapped her arms round Paulie’s neck. Paulie squeezed her bum as they shared the kiss of lovers who’ve been apart years instead of ten hours. Mark looked away. Floss was watching him. She smiled fondly. Paulie and Eileen broke it off and Paulie went to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot steaming there. He sniffed. He said, “Jesus in a handcart, Mum. You’ve not let our Eileen do the cooking, have you? This smells like something she’d make.”
Eileen slapped his hand away, saying, “We’ll have none of that, you,” while Floss turned her attention to Mark. “Pietra’s not with you, Boyko?”
“She may be along later,” Mark told her. Paulie went to the refrigerator and did what he’d done since childhood: opened the door and stared into it like someone divining the future from the various leftovers of previous meals. Mark said to his mother in a lower voice, “She’s interviewing.”
“Is she indeed?” Floss asked. “Well, that’s good, eh? We can hope things turn out a bit different this time.” She looked past him to where Paulie was still inspecting what was on offer inside the fridge. She said, “Paulie, fix us a beverage, there’s my boy. Eileen, make sure he’s not stingy with the ice this time round. I hate a beverage that’s overwarm, I do.”
The kids were raising a ruckus in another part of the house and Paulie shouted at them as he went to the sitting room’s drinks cart to make his mother her favourite, gin and tonic, very light on the tonic. The kids’ voices lowered—it wouldn’t be for long as it never was—and during the relative peace and semi-quiet, Esme slid into the room. She came to Mark and slipped her hand into his. She leaned her head against his arm. She said just above a whisper, “Passed my maths test, Uncle Mark.” She was the only family member, aside from his wife, who didn’t call him Boyko.
“That’s grand, that is, Esme,” he told her.
“Lilybet would pass it if she could,” Esme replied. “She’d prob’ly do better’n me.”
He felt a tightness round his eyes. “Yes. Well,” he said. “Perhaps someday, eh?”
Floss asked the girl if she wouldn’t mind laying the table for everyone. Esme pointed out that her mother had already done it, Gran. “She did, did she?” was Gran’s response. She smiled fondly at the girl and said, “Then c’n you give me a moment with your uncle?”
Esme looked from Mark to his mum, back to Mark. She said, “That’s why you asked me to lay the table, Gran. It would’ve been okay for you to ask me direct.”
“I stand corrected, darlin’. Sometimes I forget you’re quite the big girl now. I’ll be d’rect with you from now on.”
When Esme nodded and left them, Floss said to Mark, “How many this time?”
“Applicants?” He shrugged. “I’ve not asked her. She does her best, Mum.”
“She needs time to herself now and then.”
“She does take time, some two hours every week.”
“That’s hardly taking time, is it. She can’t keep going along this way. If she tries that, she’ll be dead before she’s fifty and then where will Lilybet be? Where will you be?”
“I know.”
“You have to insist, Boyko.”
As if he hadn’t, Mark thought. As if he hadn’t and hadn’t and hadn’t till the words were rote and their meaning long robbed of importance. He said, “Pete wants to do right by her.”
“Well, of course she does. And so do you. But you must also want to do right by yourselves, eh?” She stirred Eileen’s concoction and then turned back to him, wooden spoon in hand. She observed him in the way only a mother observes: a silent comparison of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become. Clearly, she didn’t like what she saw. She said, “When was the last time you two had relations?”
She’d never gone in this direction before. Mark was taken aback. He said, “Jesus . . . Mum . . .”
She said, “You tell me, Boyko.”
His gaze slid away from her to the open window upon which a line of terracotta pots grew the fresh herbs she liked to have on hand. He wanted to ask when they’d been last watered. The basil was looking a bit limp. He said, “Last week,” and prepared himself for the moment when she accused him of lying, which indeed he was. He didn’t know the last time they’d had relations. He only knew it could be measured in years, not in weeks. For this, he couldn’t possibly blame Pete. Even when she was there, she wasn’t there, so what was the point? Every sense she possessed was tuned into Lilybet’s small bedroom and the noises emanating from it on the baby monitor: the hiss of oxygen, the puff that indicated the rise and fall of Lilybet’s chest. One couldn’t make love to a woman who isn’t there, he wanted to tell his mother. It’s more than mere friction, two bodies rubbing together in a growing frenzy of pleasure that would lead to release. If that’s what it was, anyone would do. An anonymous foreign “masseuse” would do. Hell, a blow-up doll would suffice. But that wasn’t what it was. Or at least that wasn’t what he wanted. If nothing else, his interlude this day at Massage Dreams had demonstrated that. Orgasm? Yes. Connection? No.
Floss regarded him with sadness in her eyes. But all she said was, “Oh, lad.”
“It’s fine, Mum,” he replied.
KINGSLAND HIGH STREET
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Adaku Obiaka had dressed to blend in, and she blended in well. Where she stood, she was anonymous, forgettable, and largely out of sight. She’d taken up a position in the recessed entry of Rio Cinema from where the smell of popcorn and coffee—what a strange combination, she thought—fought for neighbourhood dominance with odours wafting from across the street. There, Taste of Tennessee was belching forth a mixed miasma of scents: cooking oil, fried chicken, ribs, and burgers. The very air felt greasy with the smell.
She had been there coming up to three hours, watching the action along the street in general, watching the lack of action in one set of disreputable-looking flats in particular. These were positioned above what once had been Kingsland Toys, Games, and Books, an establishment announcing itself with a garish violet sign wearing equally garish letters of twelve different colours. The business was no more, and nothing had taken its place although the coming soon sign lent a hopeful air to the empty storefront.
The defunct shop stood directly between Taste of Tennessee and Vape Superstore, and like most of the businesses along the street, it possessed two doors. One of them gave customers access to the shop. The other, always locked unless one possessed a key, gave inhabitants access to the flats above. Six decrepit windows marked the position of these flats. There were two on each floor. The top-floor windows showed bright lights behind dingy curtains. The middle floor seemed dark behind Venetian blinds. The first floor stared blankly out at Rio Cinema, reflecting its marquee, which promised yet another tired, dystopian universe that had to be restored to decency by a cinematic adolescent heroine, preferably one with white skin and blond hair.
During her three hours on watch, no one had entered or left through the locked door giving access to the flats. But Adaku had been told confidentially that someone would, and it was that prospect that had kept her there past the rumbling of her stomach longing for dinner. It had taken her far too long expending far too much energy in order to dig up Women’s Health of Hackney. Although she could easily have come back another day to position herself in the cinema’s entry, the lights in the uppermost flat told her someone was there. All she had to do was to wait them out, even if it took till morning.
In the time Adaku had maintained her position, the street noises had altered from pedestrian chatter and crying babies and children shouting as they zipped by on scooters to what they were now: rumbling traffic, violin practice coming from a flat somewhere, a busker playing the accordion in front of Snappy Snaps, a few paces away from a Paddy Power betting establishment, the busker no doubt hoping that some lucky punter had a few extra pound coins to toss in his direction after a successful day at the races.
Adaku wished she’d brought a sandwich along. Even an apple and a bottle of water sounded good. But she’d not thought to stock up on provisions. Nor had she the time. A phone call leaving the message “She’s there” had taken her from West Brompton underground station to the Rio Cinema, and only another phone call would change her location till she saw someone emerge from the building across the street.
Her fourth hour was ten minutes old when her long observation was finally rewarded. The lights in the topmost flat were extinguished and in a minute the door leading to the flats above Kingsland Toys, Games, and Books opened. A woman stepped out. Unlike Adaku she dressed English in close-fitting trousers and a thin jersey, white with horizontal red stripes and a boat neck. She wore a red baseball cap at a jaunty angle, and she carried a shopping carrier bag over her shoulder.
The woman had probably changed in one of the flats above for her work that day. There, she would have worn garments that looked more professional, as a way to reassure her clients. Dressed appropriately, all will be well would be her unspoken message. Wasn’t it the truth, Adaku thought with a derisive shake of her head, that desperate people are ready to think and believe exactly what others tell them to think and to believe?
The woman headed briskly north in the direction of the railway station. This suggested that she might not live nearby. That being the case, Adaku needed to make her move in advance of her quarry’s catching a train. So she crossed the street quickly, and once on the pavement, she picked up her pace. Soon enough she drew even with the woman. Adaku slid her hand through the other’s arm, saying, “I must speak with you.”
The woman’s lips formed a perfect O. Then, her words naming the UK as the land of her birth, she said, “Who’re you? What do you want?” and she tried to pull away.
“As I said, I need to speak with you. It will not take long,” was Adaku’s reply. “I was given the name of this place. It is Women’s Health of Hackney, yes?”
“No one stops me on the street like this. What d’you want from me?”
Adaku looked round for listeners and lowered her voice. “I was told only the location. Coming upon you like this was the only way I had. I don’t have a phone number that I could ring. So it was this or nothing. Will you speak with me?”
“’Bout what? If you’re hoping for medical advice handed out on the pavement, you definitely got the wrong idea.”
“I want only five minutes of your time. There’s a Costa Coffee just along the high street. We can go there.”
“D’you need to have your hearing checked? I just said—”
“I have money.”
“For what? Is this a bribe? D’you have the slightest idea what you’re about?”
Adaku said, “I have money with me, here in my bag. I’ll give it to you.”
The woman laughed. “You’re that daft, aren’t you? Like I said, I don’t even know you, and I sure as bloody hell don’t talk ’bout medical matters on the street.”
“I’ve fifty pounds with me. I can bring more later. Whatever you say.”
“Whatever I say, eh?” The woman gazed long at Adaku before looking left and right as if trying to decide if this was some sort of trick. She finally said with a sigh, “All right. Grand. Let me see this fifty.”
Adaku reached into her shoulder bag, more a carrier for groceries than a secure container for her possessions. She brought out an envelope, half crumpled, with a coffee ring on it. She opened it and took out the money, which the other grasped quickly between her fingers. Fifty pounds did not comprise many notes. Still, the woman made much of counting it.
She looked up and said shrewdly, “Five minutes. It will be two hundred fifty more if you want anything from me other than five minutes of my time.”
Adaku wondered how she was going to come up with two hundred and fifty pounds while still keeping her plans a secret. She also wondered what it would gain her, when all she actually wanted was allowance to step into the inner sanctuary above the erstwhile Kingsland Toys, Games, and Books. She said, “What will I receive for this three hundred pounds I’ll be giving you?”
The other woman frowned. “Receive?” she asked. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Is it a deposit, this money?”
“For what? This is a women’s health clinic. We care for women’s physical problems. We’re paid to do so. When you got the additional funds, we’ll see you. Bring your medical records along.”
“Why do you need them?”
“You want a medical service, don’t you? Isn’t that why we’re talking? Or is there some other reason?”
“It’s the matter of paying so much in advance.”
“Well, I can’t help with that. It’s how we do things.”
“But will you guarantee—”
“Listen to me. You just used up your five minutes, and we’re not speaking of anything further standing here on the pavement. You gave me fifty pounds. You can top that up to three hundred when you have it.”
Adaku felt the sweat on her back. It was dripping to her waist. But she nodded. Then she said to the woman, “I don’t know your name.”
“You don’t need to know it. You won’t be writing me a cheque.”
“What do I call you, then?”
The woman hesitated. Trust or distrust. She finally chose. She dug a card from her bag and handed it over. “Easter,” she said at last. “Easter Lange.”
25 JULY
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Mark Phinney was awakened by Pietra’s voice. She was murmuring darling, darling, darling, and these words had intruded on his dream: her finally willing body beneath his, and himself so ready that his bollocks ached. But as he swam to full consciousness, he realised the aching bollocks had to do solely with his morning erection, and Pete’s words came from the baby monitor as she talked to Lilybet in the next room. As he lay on his side beneath a single sheet—the thin blanket having been kicked off sometime during the night’s unremitting heat—Pete began to sing quietly. His wife had a genius for making anything into a song. She never used the same tune twice, and she managed to make up rhymes on the fly.
He could tell from the accompanying sounds exactly what Pete was doing as well: changing out Lilybet’s oxygen tank, after which she would see to her nappy. He remained in bed till the nappy song began, at which point he threw off the bed sheet and rose as Pete sang gaily: “Oh we’ve got a stinky mess, yes we do, yes we do . . .”
Mark smiled in spite of himself. He so admired her. His wife’s devotion to Lilybet had never wavered in the ten years of their little girl’s life. She was attentive, educated, and unceasing in her efforts to help their daughter, especially to give her more of a life than the mess of her birth had condemned her to. He was sick at heart about what amounted to his own devotion to the girl.
