Something to hide a lynl.., p.31
Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel, page 31
part #21 of Inspector Lynley Series
Solange, Nkata saw, had closed her eyes. She was sitting in the same position, save for her right hand, which she’d raised to her forehead. She murmured, “Rosie. Mon dieu, Belle.”
“What?” Rosie demanded. “Ross and I are giving you the grandchild you want and don’t lie and say you don’t want grandchildren because I know you do. Ross’s parents are just the same and they’ll be over the moon once we tell them.”
“What did you say to her?” Solange asked her daughter. She dropped her hand from her forehead.
Rosie replied with, “Maman, she was dangling out hope to him. That’s what she does. I wanted her to stop it, so I told her. What difference does it make? She didn’t love him. She didn’t want him. She didn’t want a baby with him, she—”
“Of course she wanted a baby with him!” Solange cried. “They tried and tried but she was damaged. She’d been damaged for nearly thirty years.”
Rosie stared at her mother. She looked at Nkata. He kept his face without expression. Rosie said, “What do you mean, damaged?”
Solange began to weep. She tried to speak. Failing, she got to her feet and hurried from the room.
Rosie turned to Nkata. “What did she mean?”
He saw no purpose in keeping her in the dark, so he said, “Your sister got cut bad b’fore you were born. In Nigeria.”
“What d’you mean, cut bad?”
“She got circumcised. Or whatever you want to call it. Serious bad, this was. I expect they”—with a nod at the door to indicate her parents—“di’n’t want you to know. Or she di’n’t want you to know.”
Rosie swallowed. Her lips looked quite dry. “You’re lying,” she said. “That’s what the police do. They lie to people to get them to talk about things they don’t want to talk about.”
“Not the case,” he said. “On the telly, p’rhaps, but not for real. And with this, there wouldn’t be any need to lie.”
“But Ross never said. He would’ve said. He would’ve told me.”
“Could be he di’n’t want you in his private business. I mean his business with your sister. Could be he knew she di’n’t want you told. Could be he respected that.”
“She didn’t want him. He was over her.” Her gaze dropped from Nkata’s face to the floor. She added, “Oh . . . please.”
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Changing the soiled sheets on Lilybet’s bed gave Mark Phinney the opportunity he wanted. It was always a two-person job, this morning made exigent because of the foul-smelling excretion that had seeped from Lilybet’s body and her nappy during the night. So disgusting was the odour that he found he could not breathe through his nose. Pete managed to, despite the smell. He couldn’t understand how she was able. But then, she had always been a woman fully capable of rising to whatever occasion needed her to be involved in it.
She looked as she always looked, despite the early hour. She was calm and composed, her white T-shirt tucked neatly into her blue jeans and her hair swept back and fixed behind her ears. There were grey strands in it here and there. She would never be bothered to colour them.
They’d done the cleanup of Lilybet together, one of them stripping her of her pyjamas and nappy as the other held her upright. He had sponged off the residue of her accident—as they always called it—while Pete murmured and comforted her with a soft song comprising nonsense words set to “Con Te Partiró” by that blind Italian bloke whose name he could never recall. After the sponging, they transferred Lilybet to the bath, and they were in the midst of washing her from head to toe when Robertson arrived. He called out a hello, to which Mark responded, “In here,” and the nurse searched them out. Mark heard him pause at Lilybet’s bedroom door and say, “Oh dear,” and then call to them, “Shall I handle this or help with the bath?” It didn’t matter to Mark as both needed to be done. It mattered to Pete, who said, “The bed please, Robertson,” because she didn’t want Lilybet to be humiliated by what was going on despite no one knowing if humiliation was in her repertoire of reactions.
It was fine with him, Mark thought. It gave him more time to consider what Pete might have taken to one of Paulie’s two pawnshops. It also gave him more time to consider why she’d needed—or wanted—to pawn anything in the first place. He didn’t know which worried him more: the what of it or the why.
He asked himself if he truly needed or even wanted an answer to either of the questions. Was it any of his business? Under normal circumstances he might have said it was not. Under the circumstances of her having known about Teo and having also communicated with Teo, he had to say it was.
He knew the physical part of his relationship with Teo would not bother her. Whether it comprised actual intercourse or something short of intercourse, she would not worry. She’d been encouraging him for years to find—as she put it—a release. And while she didn’t know that the way he’d wanted Teo and fantasised about Teo had come to very little in the end, what she’d apparently worked out was exactly to what extent his heart—rather than his body—was compromised. Here was her terror set before her: that her own encouragement of his sexual infidelity may have led him to find someone with whom he could have a complete relationship, that he might then leave her—Pete—because he’d come to see that the half life she offered was far less than what he’d thought he could endure. He knew that the fear of desertion had long been the reason that Pete shouldered most of the burden of caring for their daughter. More than anything, she wanted to seem fully capable of handling everything so that he wouldn’t leave.
“Up?” Pete was saying to Lilybet. “Ready to get out of the bath, my love?” She lifted their daughter, who was mostly dead weight. The years had made Pete quite strong.
Mark reached for the big towel in which they wrapped her post-bathing. It was a childish thing with a duck’s head and the fixings to turn it into a cape. While Pete held Lilybet steady, he tucked the towel round her thin body and plopped the duck upon her head. “Look at you!” he said, striving for lightness.
“We forgot her chair,” Pete said to him. “Can you fetch it, Mark?”
He could and he did. Robertson was just finishing up the bed, and when he saw what Mark had come for, he said, “Let me do it. You’ve work today, yes?”
“Eventually,” Mark said. “No rush.”
“Then you get yourself something to eat. Set yourself up proper for a long day, eh?”
Mark agreed. He went to the kitchen. He put on coffee and brought cereal from the cupboard. He set everything necessary on the table.
As he went through these motions, he asked himself what truly would have happened had Teo not died. Would he have left Pietra? Would he have eventually harboured a terrible hope that Lilybet might die so that he could leave Pietra? He didn’t want to believe that he ever would have come to that: wishing for his daughter’s death so that he might be free for a woman other than her mother. But the truth was that he didn’t know. Nor had he been tested because Teo had never asked a single thing of him.
Perhaps, he thought, the reality was that Teo was and always would have been a mere fantasy. Perhaps she was, during his worst moments, merely a way to occupy his mind with stories drawn from his image of what a life with her would have been like: the two of them, deeply and permanently in love, setting out on the great adventure of openly being a couple, this stunning woman on his arm and all eyes turned towards them as they . . . what? Took a skiing holiday? Dined in expensive restaurants in town? Walked in any number of London’s public parks? Supported each other, listened to each other, developed interests that they could share? Men who saw them together would feel desire. Women who saw them together would experience jealousy. His family would embrace her for her warmth. Her family would embrace him for his devotion. They would have a house in town and a cottage in the country where they would . . . what? Raise vegetables? Walk their dogs? Go to the village fete hand in hand and greet their neighbours? Set off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night? He’d entertained himself with all of these possibilities and more, because in the end it was all about what he wanted and never about what Teo was suffering. And why was that? Because he hadn’t known she was suffering, because she hadn’t told him she was suffering, because while he could easily imagine every one of his dreams being fulfilled by her, he never once asked himself what her dreams were or even if he was remotely capable of fulfilling them.
He became aware of a conversation Robertson and Pete were having. Robertson’s voice came to him first, saying, “You got to watch that, you do. Could be she’s building an intolerance to something and not the reverse, eh? What does the GP say?”
“I’ve not phoned him.”
“Well, you best do it before things get worse. That’s what you got to keep in mind, Pete. With special conditions like this one, things c’n always get worse.”
Mark understood that they were talking about Lilybet and that he hadn’t a clue what their concern was. In this too, he was at fault. He hadn’t been paying close attention to anything beyond himself for at least a year. His sin hadn’t been the act of wanting something, though. It had been the act of blindly wanting something, which rendered him ignorant of everything else.
He needed to speak to Pete directly, he thought. He needed to read her face for the truth or a lie. Pete didn’t lie well—in his experience hardly anyone did save psychopaths—so if he spoke to her, he would know both the what of it and the why. Even if it took them to the truth of his feelings about Teo. Even if it took them to the truth of what could happen to destroy their world, as pathetically small as it was.
“Here we are, Daddy!” Pete called out as she rolled Lilybet into the kitchen. “Someone wants scrambled eggs and toast this morning. With butter and strawberry jam. Doesn’t that sound good? Can you make that for this someone, Daddy? Or I can do it. It’s easy as anything. Matter of fact, you sit down. Just cereal for you? That’s not good. Let’s have a real breakfast for once, all three of us together. Robertson too, if he wants. Robertson,” she called in the direction of Lilybet’s bedroom. “Eggs and toast? Strawberry jam?”
“Let me do it, Pete.”
“Nonsense. You’ve always done more than your share. Hasn’t he, Lilybet? Hasn’t your daddy always done more than his share?”
Lilybet lolled in her wheelchair. She waved her hands.
“She’s clapping!” Pietra said. “She understands.”
“Pete, we need to talk,” Mark said.
“But look at her clapping! She’s clapping! She’s never done that.”
“Robertson?” Mark called. “Will you join us?” And when the man appeared in the kitchen doorway, laundry bundled against his stomach, “I must speak to Pete for a moment. Will you see to Lilybet?”
“ ’Course,” Robertson said. “She c’n help me make scrambled eggs, can’t you, Lily?”
Lilybet waved her hands.
Mark took his wife’s arm and led her to their bedroom. He closed the door. He faced her.
“Can we talk about the pawnshop?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “What about the pawnshop? What pawnshop? One of your brother’s?”
“I expect it’s the one Stuart runs in The Narrow Way. You know him, Pete: Paulie’s brother-in-law. Paulie runs the shop at the bottom of the street; Stuart runs the shop at the top.” Mark was carrying the pawn ticket in his trouser pocket, and he brought it out, centred on his palm, and showed it to her. “I’ve been wondering what it is that you pawned. I’ve also been wondering why you pawned it.”
She stood quite still with her gaze on the pawn ticket. He waited. She said nothing at all.
“Pete?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know what that pawn ticket’s for or where it came from. I haven’t pawned anything. What on earth do I have to pawn?” She gestured round the room, by which he took it that she meant the entire flat. “Honestly, Mark. I mean it. What have I to pawn?”
“If you needed the money, why didn’t you come to me? I’ve never held back, have I? When you’ve needed something, when Lilybet’s needed something . . . Pete, d’you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s ‘going on,’ ” she said, making inverted commas in the air as she used his own words. What could possibly be ‘going on’?” The air-sketched inverted commas again. “And when on earth would I have time to go to one of the pawnshops anyway?”
“This was in your purse,” he said.
“Are you actually going through—”
“I told you. I was pinching a couple of notes from your wallet. That’s where I found the ticket.”
“So why didn’t you ask me straightaway?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? And he knew the answer well enough: he hadn’t actually wanted to know. So why was that, Mark? he asked himself. Are you afraid of something, mate?
He said, “I didn’t think to. But now I’m asking.”
“You’re asking about nothing,” she replied. “I’m going back to the kitchen now, Mark. I’m needed to help with Lilybet’s breakfast.”
She turned to leave him then, with the pawn ticket feeling like something that was searing his palm. Before she was out of the room, however, he spoke.
“Your secret’s safe with Paulie,” he told her. “He wouldn’t tell me. Does he know why you’ve pawned something, then?”
She shook her head. “I’ve pawned nothing, Mark.”
She did leave at that point, but not before he asked himself why she hadn’t once looked at him directly after he’d produced the pawn ticket for her to see.
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
“I’ve told you everything, Sergeant. There’s nothing more that I can add.”
“Happens that’s probably not true. Can I come in?”
“Have you any idea what time it is?”
“Look. I’m as cheesed off about this as you are, Mr. Carver,” Barbara Havers replied. She looked over her shoulder. From the farmyard across the lane, a rooster was raising absolute bloody hell. She said, “You don’t actually sleep through that, do you?”
“Silicone earplugs. They were my first investment when I took the flat.”
“I hope your second was incense,” she said. “Now. Again. Can I come in? I expect you don’t want the neighbours to see me. They might get ideas and then—whoops—your reputation goes straight down the drain.”
So far, Barbara thought, the only good thing about her morning was that she’d actually been able to sink her gnashers into a Wildlicious Wild!Berry Pop-Tart. Well, two of them if she was being brutally honest about her caloric intake. She went for two in order to make up for time lost, and she served them to herself alongside a very powerful cup of PG Tips. She’d had to eat the Pop-Tarts on the way to Hackney, though, while most of her mug of tea got spilled onto the Mini’s floor. The fact that she hadn’t spilled tea on herself was mildly cheering, however.
Her mobile had rung as the two Pop-Tarts were coming out of the toaster, filling her cottage with the scent of a thousand and one browned preservatives. So she’d been able to wrap them up in a kitchen towel and grab her tea once Winston Nkata had filled her in on the subject of his early day chin-wag with Rosie Bontempi and her mother. It was this conversation, as reported by Nkata, that had set her on the journey to have another natter with Ross Carver. As the hour was ungodly, she reckoned she’d find him at home, which she had done. And he’d been busy since they’d last spoken. The number of cardboard boxes on his balcony had been reduced by half, no doubt due to the others’ being delivered to the Streatham flat.
He said to her, “As I’m up and regrettably awake, you may as well come in,” and he left her in the doorway as if allowing her time to make up her mind.
Aside from a pair of sweatpants that hung rather too loosely round his waist, Carver wasn’t yet dressed. He had the sort of upper body that came from weight training, though. It was swoon-worthy, as Dee Harriman probably would have put it. He went into the bedroom, but Barbara reckoned she wasn’t meant to follow him there. She heard a drawer open and then shut and in under a minute he was back with her, having changed into blue jeans and a T-shirt with the London Marathon’s logo on it. His feet remained bare, and his disarranged hair fell in curls about three inches below his ears.
Since the flat was small, the kitchen was three and a half steps from the sitting room. He went to the sink and filled an electric kettle. He grabbed a mug from the cupboard and asked Barbara if she wanted a coffee. She said that she was actually more of a tea girl and wouldn’t say no if he had any to hand. He said it would have to be Yorkshire. She said she doubted that a single cup of that would put hair onto her chest, although as far as her armpits went, one never knew.
He opened the fridge and grabbed a large jug of milk. She could see that nearly everything inside consisted of prepared meals. He took one of these, dumped its contents onto a plate, and shoved the plate into a microwave. After he’d set the time, he said to her, “Well? You’ve not come on a social call. And like I said, I’ve told you what I know.”
“You might have done,” Barbara acknowledged. “But does that mean you don’t know about Rosie?”
He looked immediately wary. “What about Rosie? Has something happened to her?”
“Yes and no. Depends on how you look at happen. She hasn’t shared the happy news with you?”
The microwave dinged and he removed the plate. He jerked open a drawer, took out some cutlery, and ate standing up, his arse against the worktop. “What’re you on about?” he asked her.
