Something to hide a lynl.., p.57
Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel, page 57
part #21 of Inspector Lynley Series
He picked up on this as a gentleman would do. “You must take care, then. Soon you will be covered in flowers.”
“Which’ll wreak bloody havoc with my allergies.”
They laughed together. Barbara kept up the pretence for another very long minute. For his part Salvatore seemed to do the same.
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
When Winston Nkata arrived at Loughborough Estate, he sat in his car for some ten minutes, adjusting the seat to recline a bit, using the headrest, and closing his eyes. He was dead knackered. Who, he thought, would’ve predicted that watching footage from a plethora of CCTV cameras would have affected him in such a way that it seemed his head was splitting in two? In other circumstances, what he would do was swallow two paracetamol tablets and wait for relief and hope it would come quickly. In other circumstances, he would have retreated to his bedroom and sunk directly onto the mattress with his head embedded in the pillow. He might have joined his parents for dinner later. He might not have joined his parents at all. However, aside from being free to swallow as many tablets as he liked, he could do none of this. He had no bedroom at the moment, and having brought her to his parents’ home, he couldn’t avoid seeing to Monifa. All he had was these few minutes, and he would take advantage of them.
At least the efforts of his DCs and himself had not been entirely in vain. Although there was more footage to view, they’d managed to find Teo Bontempi—in African dress—on the pavement in Kingsland High Street. Indeed, they even had footage of the detective sergeant crossing the street to walk towards the clinic. It didn’t look as if anything sinister were happening, though. Continued viewing of the CCTV footage from several other nearby shops had found Teo Bontempi ringing a buzzer next to the door to the building in which the clinic did its business. That might have been argued away as inconsequential—despite there being no businesses in the building aside from the clinic—but additional viewing of the footage in question showed the door opening and someone in the shadows giving the detective sergeant access to the place. It wasn’t enough to tie Mercy Hart to Teo Bontempi, but it was at least a start.
When he could stand the idea of moving his body, Nkata opened his car door and unfolded his long legs. He set off in the direction of his parents’ flat and was approaching it when his mobile rang. A glance told him the caller was Barb Havers. Her first words to him were, “I bloody well want to bloody well know if you’re in on it.” He could tell she was in a serious lather.
“Say wha’, Barb?” he asked her.
“You know what I mean, Winston. Don’t pretend you don’t. Are you in on it? Simple question with a simple answer of yes or no.”
“Must be no then cos I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You swear? Swear. Swear that you don’t.” She sounded on the verge of tears. “I just made a sodding fool of myself. One of you or the whole lot of you set me up, and I want to know who.”
He couldn’t work anything out of what she was saying. He gave her the only response he could. “Swear, Barb. You all right, there?”
“Of course I’m not all right. Do I sound all right? I just rang Salvatore Lo Bianco. I could ’s well have pulled down my knickers in public.”
“Inspector Lo Bianco? I di’n’t know he was still in London. I only met the bloke one time, Barb, at that tap-dancing event. You want to tell me wha’s happenin?”
What she apparently wanted was to cut off their conversation, which she did. He was left saying her name several times, then punching her mobile number, then ringing her landline and leaving a message. He texted her Ring if you want to talk more and then he went to his parents’ flat.
Inside, he heard their voices first: his mother’s rhythmic pattern of speaking and Monifa’s hesitant responses. He found them in the kitchen where the scents were of beef and chicken and three pots were covered both with foil and then with lids. His mother saw him first and said, “Monifa’s done us ewedu soup, Jewel. And Buka stew. She’s also made fufu. The fufu is cassava, but Monifa says it can be made from . . . what did you say, Monifa?”
“Many things,” Monifa said. “Plantains, cassava, yams . . .”
“Can he look, Monifa?” Alice asked. “He won’t have ever seen fufu before.”
Monifa nodded and offered a smile. “Yes, yes,” she said. She lifted the lid of one of the pots.
Nkata checked out its contents. The fufu turned out to be a cream-coloured loaf that wasn’t bread, that wasn’t potatoes, that wasn’t anything but fufu. It was, Alice explained to him, used to dip into or to scoop up soup. No cutlery allowed, she informed him. And if you eat it the way Monifa says it’s eaten, you don’t chew the fufu but swallow it whole.
That sounded like their pudding was guaranteed to be the Heimlich manoeuvre. Monifa apparently read this from his expression and said, “No, no. You must chew if you have never eaten fufu before now.”
Nkata was ready to try nearly anything that was presented to him—he had skipped lunch although he wasn’t foolish enough to let Alice know it—so he went for the paracetamol, downed two, and rejoined his mother and their guest. His dad would eat when he arrived home from his late shift on the Number 11 bus.
He found that several sheets of paper from a yellow pad were folded lengthwise in half and tucked to one side of his plate. He sat and unfolded them. He quickly saw what they were.
She’d written the history of her dealings with Women’s Health of Hackney. She identified the individual she had met there: Mercy Hart posing as Easter Lange. She explained why she had taken her daughter to this place. What she described was what was being called medicalised FGM in those countries where doctors had begun offering the procedure in a sterile setting. Still, what she described was illegal in the UK no matter how it was performed or by whom. Finally, then, the Met had what it needed to finish off Mercy Hart and seal her fate.
This brought them no closer to making an arrest in the investigation of Teo Bontempi’s death. But it needed doing.
He looked up from reading it. He saw that Monifa was watching him. Her expression was earnest and he knew what she wanted: his assurance that she would be taken to her children or that her children would be brought to her.
“Is this . . .” Monifa gestured towards the papers he held as Alice brought the fufu and the stew to the table. “Do I write enough? For Simisola? For Tani?”
He said, “I ’spect you have done, but I got to clear it with my guv. This Mercy Hart? She’s on the pitch for more ’n one investigation, see. What you wrote here . . . ? This hammers down the first and gets her hauled back to the nick and charged. But the other we’re needing more time to wrestle to the ground, an’ I can’t do somethin’ might jeopardise where we are.”
“You will ring him, though? You will ask him tonight? You can ring him.”
“Can an’ will,” he said. “Af’er I see what this fufu is like.”
Alice had fetched the ewedu soup, which she began to dish up to each of them. Monifa presented him with his own small mound of fufu, placing it next to the other food while Alice added stew to his plate. She did the same for Monifa and then for herself and then joined Nkata at the table.
“You sure I c’n chew it?” Nkata asked Monifa. “I mean the fufu. I’m thinkin’ I can chew the stew. But the fufu? It’s not some kind of taboo, is it? I mean chewing it b’fore I swallow.”
Monifa assured him with, “It is not a taboo and as you’ve never encountered a swallow before, yes, yes, you must chew it as you will.”
“This lady here, Jewel,” his mother said as she broke off a portion of the fufu and used it as a scoop, “she cooks like a dream. I maintain she should offer lessons. You taste it an’ try to tell me I’m wrong.”
He did as she asked. Alice wasn’t wrong. But even if she had been straight out of her mind when it came to the food, Nkata knew the wisdom of not saying so.
14 AUGUST
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
While Lynley understood the importance of the Press Office, and while he was on board with all attempts to manage how information was presented to the press—not to mention which information was presented to the press—he hated being part of the show. He knew his presence was considered a necessity, especially now he was standing in for DCS Ardery while she was on the Isle of Wight. In her place as the putative leader of any investigation under what would have been her purview, he was meant to have his fingers on every beating pulse, and it was expected that he’d be able to relay how many beats per minute each of those pulses was exhibiting. So on the previous day when he’d arrived for his afternoon colloquy with AC Hillier and Stephenson Deacon, head of the Press Office, he should have known what was coming. But with other things on his mind, he had not. Judi MacIntosh’s direction—that he was to meet the assistant commisioner and chief press officer in a location that was not Hillier’s office—didn’t even get through to him. He was inside the large conference room and confronted by the sight of at least twenty journalists, three camera crews, and a dais on which Hillier and Deacon were seated behind a long table before he twigged that he’d been tricked.
“Ah yes. Here he is now. Detective Chief Superintendent Lynley will be able to amplify on all of this.” Hillier made the proclamation with a meaningful affability that signalled an unspoken order for Lynley to cooperate. At his words, twenty other heads swung in his direction, along with cameras, and his every move was documented as he proceeded unsmiling to the dais.
In very short order he discovered the reason behind the hastily called news briefing. On the table in front of Hillier and Deacon lay the country’s most scurrilous tabloid, The Source. It was apparently flame-fanning through the use of an enormous IS THIS WHY? headline, a photograph of Teo Bontempi that took up most of the front page, a subheading reading Racial Bias = Lack of Progress, and a paragraph beneath this, the subject of which was beyond doubt. The story made a jump to page three, where doubtless there were more photos and further stories. Racial divisions when it came to policing was a topic that The Source would be only too happy to exploit.
Lynley’s reply to the first question had neither endeared him to anyone nor appeased anyone. “That’s rubbish,” was not what the reporters were seeking. And “Do you honestly believe the Met would drag its feet on the murder of one of its officers?” soothed no feathers whatsoever. Indeed, it opened the door to the policing of Black-on-white murders versus Black-on-Black murders. Did the DCS have any comment he wished to make about the scrutiny given to one and not to the other? And then followed the relative rates at which cases were closed, the relative rates at which the CPS took up the prosecution of offenders, the rates of conviction, and the rates of incarceration.
By the time the press briefing was over, Lynley’s jaw was clenched so tightly that his ears had begun to pound. He said nothing till he, Hillier, and Deacon were out of the room and on their own. Then it was, “If you ever do that to me again—”
Which Hillier cut off with a sharp, “You’d do well to remember who you’re talking to.”
To which Lynley concluded with, “—I’ll walk off this job so quickly, your head will spin.”
“Now see here,” Stephenson Deacon began.
At which point, Lynley had walked away. But it had taken two doses of the Macallan and a deep immersion into Tchaikovsky before he’d felt capable of speaking to another soul. And even then, it was only Charlie Denton with whom he’d been willing or able to exchange words. Did he want wine with dinner? Denton wanted to know. It was boeuf bourguignon.
Yes, Lynley wanted wine. He probably could do with an entire bottle.
He’d managed to recover his equilibrium by morning. He was rather later than usual to New Scotland Yard, a very long hot shower followed by a very brief cold shower having eaten up a good bit of time, so everyone was assembled when he arrived. They’d divided into two groups. Nkata was talking to some of them while Havers was talking to the others.
His “Where are we?” brought them into order.
The first report concerned Standing Warrior. All consignment shops had now been contacted, and the bronze sculpture was not in any of them nor had it been in the weeks between Teo Bontempi’s death and now. This proved true for all the charity shops as well. To this Barbara Havers added that all owners of the other twelve editions of the warrior were still in possession of them. It was only number 10 that remained missing, the sculpture that Ross Carver had given his estranged wife. That would be before the estranged bit, she added. She said all this in an unusual tone, Lynley thought. He looked at her curiously and caught her in the midst of what he could only receive as a hostile glare, directed at him.
“Is there something else?” he asked her.
“It can wait,” she said shortly.
Nkata’s group of DCs had been busy, both with CCTV footage and the location of the lock-up to which Women’s Health of Hackney’s contents had been taken. They also had made contact with the building’s owner and uncovered the lease on the clinic. The name on the lease was Easter Lange. It turned out that Easter Lange had also signed for the storage unit. She’d paid in cash as well, for three months of storage. They would need a search warrant for Mercy Hart’s lock-up, then, Lynley told them. If Standing Warrior had not been found in any of the shops, that was where it well might be, tucked into everything that had been removed from the clinic.
“Monifa Bankole’s given us a statement, as well.” Nkata handed a manila folder to Lynley. “She’s fingered Mercy Hart, guv. She admits it was FGM she was there for.”
Lynley took his spectacles from his jacket, opened the folder, and gave it a look. He read a bit of it and then flipped to the final page, where he saw her signature and the date. “We’ll want her picked up again,” he said. “Mercy Hart, that is. Arrange for that, Winston. If we can get her into a custody suite closer to town, that would be helpful. I expect her solicitor would appreciate that as well.”
Nkata nodded and then said, “She’s asking to see the kids, Monifa Bankole, guv.”
“Arrange that, then. But the kids stay where they are for now. There’s no telling where she’ll disappear to if she’s allowed to take them, and we’re going to need her. The CPS is going to need her as well.” To the rest of them, he said, “All eyes on the CCTV footage, then. We want anyone Teo as Adaku speaks to in Kingsland High Street. I daresay that footage remains the best route to her killer.”
He left them to it and headed for his office.
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
Barbara followed him. She’d been shooting daggers at him from the second he’d walked into the meeting. She knew he’d seen them hurled in his direction. She knew he was aware that something was off with her. Now she was going to let him know exactly what it was.
He hadn’t sat down at his desk before she was on him with, “I want a word with you. Now.”
He set the manila folder with Monifa Bankole’s statement on his desk. He said, “Something’s happened.”
“Oh, too right, that. Something’s bloody well happened. I thought you would probably want to know how it all turned out.”
Frowning, he gestured to one of the two chairs in front of the desk. He would, Barbara knew, never take a seat himself while she was standing. His sodding lordship was too infinitely well bred for that. If he sat, he’d be struck by lightning. A meteor would fly through the office window and obliterate him. The hand of God would pinch off his head. Not that she would mind that last one. Or, really, any of the others.
He said, “I’m not certain what you’re talking about, Barbara.”
“Bugger that for a lark. You’re not only ‘certain,’ you’re about to be chuffed straight out of your mind. And that’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”
He said nothing. She wanted to pull out his eyeballs with her fingernails.
“Stupid me,” she said. “I took it seriously. I actually thought . . . But we both know I’ve got bubbles for brains, eh? And you . . . You couldn’t stay out of my life, could you? You couldn’t stand to pass by a chance to play me for the complete fool that I am.”
He cocked his head and Barbara saw his eyes go quite dark. His lips parted, he let out a breath upon which she thought she heard him say, “Good Christ.”
So she said, “Yeah. That’s it. Good Christ. And let me tell you, it worked such a trick it would’ve got him down off the Cross just to listen in. You understand that?”
“Listen in to what? Barbara, I’m—”
“I rang him, all right? I thanked him. I made a loon-job of myself and it’s down to you that I did it. It’s. Down. To. You. The note? Oh, that was a brilliant touch. And you knew just enough—didn’t you—to use the right words.”
He lowered his head. He put the tips of his fingers on his desk. He said, “You might want to close the door, Barbara, if we’re going to have this conversation.”
“Oh, we’re bloody well having this conversation, Inspector Lynley, and I don’t care who hears what I’ve got to say. Because if you think from your high, mighty, and silver-spooned mouth you can possibly produce words to excuse yourself for invading other people’s lives and playing puppet master to watch everyone—like me, like miserable little me—dance to your tune, you’re—”
“Mixing your metaphors,” he said.
“Shut up! I don’t care! I’ll mix my metaphors and be happy as the dickens to shove them straight up your—”
“Guv?”
