Something to hide a lynl.., p.67
Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel, page 67
part #21 of Inspector Lynley Series
He said quietly, “Daidre.” He waited. He said her name again. And then a third time until she raised her head to look at him. “I am,” he told her, “gravely at fault here. Please know that I finally see it. You are in no way to blame for my failure to understand before now what you’ve been trying to tell me from the moment we met. I’m so bloody sorry for what I’ve put you through. Truly, I am.”
He fished in his pocket and brought out the key she’d given him. He recalled that he’d asked for the key. He recalled that at first she’d hesitated, but then she’d complied. Even that memory seared his conscience. Twenty-five different ways he’d been a fool.
He handed it to her. He closed her fingers round it.
“Know that I love you,” he said. “You, Daidre, here and now, as you are. When you can—if you can—welcome me into your life, I’ll be waiting. I’ll hope that time comes, but if it doesn’t, please believe I shall do my best to understand.”
16 AUGUST
NEW END SQUARE
HAMPSTEAD
NORTH LONDON
On this, his third trip to the Bontempi house, Winston Nkata felt a weight on his shoulders like a yoke worn by an ox. He’d been up all night, not because he was at work but because he was waiting for word about Monifa Bankole. None had come.
The only person who seemed to feel worse than he did about her disappearance was his mother. She blamed herself for not asking more questions of Monifa and for not ringing her son at once to explain what was going on. And she could have done that, she kept insisting. All she’d had to do was ring him and ask him to check with the Belgravia police about the release of Abeo Bankole. But she hadn’t thought to do that because she’d not seen a reason that Monifa would lie. Nor had he, he reassured her. He’d been taken in by the Nigerian woman’s apparent helplessness. He reckoned he wasn’t the first person to find himself in that position.
Now pulling into New End Square, the idea of being taken in seemed to have a second application. He’d not wanted to think of Rosie Bontempi as responsible in any way for her sister’s death, and he had to admit that a large part of his disbelief had to do with Rosie’s beauty and sensuality. And the truth was that she wasn’t responsible for Teo’s death. What she was responsible for was leaving the flat without ringing 999 to ask for assistance. With her sister unconscious and the discarded sculpture lying nearby, Rosie hadn’t had a single reason for walking away and leaving her on the floor. Yet, she had done so. The why of it needed to be admitted to and explained.
He arrived early, as before. His ostensible reason was to let the family know that Teo’s body would be released to them, and the arrangements for her funeral could now be made. But his other reason was the conversation he needed to have with Rosie. And that was something he wasn’t anticipating with the slightest degree of pleasure.
As before, Solange Bontempi opened the door to him. Unlike his earlier visits, however, she was not wearing professional attire. Rather, she was in linen: navy trousers and a bright pink top, colour-blocked with navy and grey. Her feet were bare, but her toenails were the pink of the top she wore. Her only jewellery consisted of her wedding ring, a gold chain with a navy stone held by gold filigree, and small gold hoops for earrings. Seeing him, she smiled and said, “Detective Sergeant. Good morning. You have arrived just as we were setting off. Cesare insists that he return to the hospital today.”
“He’s had a turn?” Nkata asked her.
She gave a charming laugh and said, “No, no. I mean the animal hospital. I have agreed to this, and as I have two days away from my own work, I’m taking him, watching him, and generally hovering over him. He will not like this, of course, but as he cannot drive to Reading on his own, he must either call a car service or have me as his driver. He—wisely, may I say—chose me. Please come in.”
She directed Nkata to the sitting room, where he found Cesare Bontempi sitting in an armchair, casually dressed, like his wife, but in jeans and jumper. He had a Zimmer with him, but he also had a medical walking stick. Nkata reckoned having both constituted a compromise he’d reached with his wife.
“What have you to tell us?” Cesare demanded in the same brusque manner he’d used before. “Can you tell us about our Teo or not?”
“I can do,” Nkata said. “ ’F Rosie’s here, she’ll want to hear as well, I ’xpect.”
“Let me fetch her,” Solange said. “Please. If you will sit . . . ? It will be a moment only.”
Once she had left them alone, Cesare turned to Nkata and said, “It is over, this? Are we having our Teodora back? You come here in person with news, no? Otherwise you do not return.”
“Tha’s right,” Nkata told him. “An’ your news is you’re returning to work, innit?”
“I am. Enough of this at-home time. I am needed elsewhere, and between you and me, I wish to be elsewhere for at least part of every day. Me, I love my family, yes? But not twenty-four hours every day and every week and on and on. That? It makes me . . .” He pointed to his head and rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Hear you,” Nkata said. “I ’xpect tha’s the case for most people, eh?”
Solange reappeared at the doorway. She said, “Rosie is coming. She works earlier today so she was just dressing. Can we begin without her?”
“Can do, yeah. But I got to say: Rosie’s needed to clarify a few details.”
“Rosie?” Solange asked.
Cesare added, “Why? What is this she clarifies?”
Nkata didn’t need to answer because he could hear Rosie coming down the stairs. The sound suggested she was in her stilettos and ready to leave. He stood as she entered the room, as striking a woman as he’d ever seen and today was no different. She wore a fashionably tailored coverall in pumpkin orange with a forest-coloured cardigan over her shoulders. The stilettos were, as before, a few strips of leather that left most of her weight balancing on her toes.
“Maman says you need me. So there’s news?”
“We’ve made an arrest and we’ve got a confession,” he said. “Your sister was gone after by a woman called Philippa Weatherall, who was due to repair her FGM damage.”
This was met by silence. All of them looked stunned to varying degrees. It was Solange who said, “But Teo had already been repaired. What was this?”
“Teo’d been cut open,” Nkata said. “But tha’s diff’rent from being repaired. Repaired means getting her close to what she was, or ’least as close as possible. So she got examined by a surgeon and she got the go-ahead. Only problem was the surgeon was performing FGM on the side to make money to help with the cost of women getting repaired. Teo worked that out after she’d seen her to be checked for surgery. She wanted to stop her doing FGM, but the surgeon didn’t want to be stopped. And there wasn’t any way she wanted to be struck off, which was what would’ve happened if Teo turned her over to the police.”
Solange raised her fingers to her lips. Against them, she murmured, “Did no one know?”
“Which part?”
She shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know which part I mean.”
Cesare said, “She tells no one about this? That she will have surgery to be . . . what?”
“Made normal-looking far as a surgeon could make her. Made so she could feel something again if that was possible.”
“What is this ‘to feel something’?” Cesare asked. “How did she not feel something?”
Solange looked as if she wanted to ask the same question. As for Rosie, her gaze was on her stiletto-shod feet, which suggested she knew exactly what ‘to feel something’ meant.
“To enjoy herself more,” was how Nkata put it. “Seems she never enjoyed it at all.”
“Sex,” Rosie finally looked up and spoke to her parents. “I think he means that Teo couldn’t enjoy sex with Ross.”
“This was why they divorced?” Solange said.
“They hadn’t divorced, Maman. You know that. They hadn’t even begun the process. If you ask me, they never would have. They would have continued in some sort of mad limbo with neither one of them wanting to escape.”
“But . . . You and Ross? What was that?” Solange asked.
“What’s this of you and Ross?” Cesare said. “How do we have a you and Ross?”
Rosie looked to her mother, and it was clear to Nkata that the news about the coming grandchild via Rosie and Ross had not reached Cesare. He wondered why mother and daughter were keeping it from him. Would he react with too much passion? Too much emotion? Too much of something that might bring on another stroke? They were afraid to tell him, and Nkata could see it. He reckoned it was not his place to shed any light on the subject.
He said, “We’ll need to know where you want her body taken. To prepare her for . . . whatever you’re considering. You c’n ring me to let me know or you can ring the morgue.” He’d written down both numbers on a page from his notebook and he handed this over to them. Solange took it, folding it neatly in half.
She said, “Ross. What does he know?”
“My colleague’s informing him of ever’thing jus’ like I’m informing you.”
Rosie said, “I should ring him, then. He’ll be quite upset.”
“Af’er I have a word with you,” Nkata told her.
“With me? Why?”
“Toss it round your head and I ’xpect you’ll work that out,” he told her.
STREATHAM
SOUTH LONDON
Barbara Havers had rung him on the previous evening, so she knew that Ross Carver had completed his move back into his former home. Over the phone she’d told him that they’d made an arrest and they had a confession. Any more than that, she said, she would prefer to tell him in person. So after leaving her Mini in front of Maxwell Brothers Funeral Directors, she crossed the road and used the buzzer next to the name Bontempi on the building, giving thought to when he would change it from Bontempi to Carver once again.
He said, “Sergeant Havers?” through the intercom.
“With bells on,” she replied, and he buzzed her in.
She found him dressed for work but having a final cup of coffee. He offered her one from what looked like a new espresso-and-everything-else maker, but she shook her head. She said, “It was the surgeon, I’m sorry to say. The woman who was on board to repair her.”
He’d been lifting his coffee to his mouth, but he lowered it. He gestured her to the table where they’d sat before. She noted that the tenth edition of Standing Warrior had not been returned yet. So that was where she began.
“We found Standing Warrior. Teo’s edition of it, I mean. It had been given to a woman who was one of the surgeon’s patients. We saw it in a photo, went to check it out, and there it was. That took us straight to the surgeon. It’s with forensics now.”
“Why?” he said. “Why the hell did she club her?”
“Teo discovered she had two clinics, not just one: a clinic where she performed repairs and another where she practised FGM.”
“What the . . . ? What was she doing? Lining up future patients for repairs?”
Barbara shook her head. She said, “Mind if I open . . .” and gestured to the balcony and its door, to which he said, “Have at it,” so she did. Despite the fact that it was still early morning, the sunlight streaming through the balcony doors and the dining-room window had already transformed the flat into a sauna. She returned to the table, saying, “It’s called medicalised FGM in some countries. FGM performed with all the mod cons of an operating theatre—like general anaesthetic—and post-surgery care. In some countries, it’s actually legal. Here, no. Teo had been watching a clinic in Dalston. When she’d seen enough, she had the local coppers shut the place down. She was there when it happened.”
“So she saw the surgeon there?”
“More or less, that. This’s a woman called Philippa Weatherall. She—the surgeon—wasn’t in the clinic when the local cops arrived, so that was why she didn’t get arrested. But she came along directly and Teo saw her. She put it together, and she let the surgeon know she put it together. Once Teo turned her in, that was going to mark the end of her career—Dr. Weatherall’s, I mean—and she couldn’t let that happen. She rang several times to try to speak to Teo about it.”
He dropped his gaze to the coffee cup. He swirled the coffee within it, but didn’t look like a man who wanted to swill it down. He said, “Why the hell did Teo let her into the building? At that point, she must have known the risk. She wasn’t a fool.”
“She didn’t let her in,” Barbara said. “We’re fairly sure Dr. Weatherhall managed to get inside the place with a group who were entering. I’ll be taking her picture round when I leave here. Someone is going to recognise her.”
“But even the flat . . . I don’t understand why Teo let her in?”
“She might’ve been surprised to see her, but obviously, she didn’t think Dr. Weatherall was dangerous. And according to the surgeon, she came only to talk to her again. But she got desperate when Teo refused to give in. She whacked her with the bronze piece before she had a chance to think it through.”
“Then why not finish her off? She’s a doctor, after all. She’d check for vital signs, wouldn’t she?”
And here they were, at the tricky part. Barbara hated what she had to tell him.
NEW END SQUARE
HAMPSTEAD
NORTH LONDON
“You knew she was hurt,” Nkata said to Rosie. They’d gone outside, into the large garden at the front of the house. He’d led her down the steps from the porch, beneath the massive wisteria vine, and along a path that edged the lawn. Midway was a weathered teak bench spotted with lichen and growing grey moss. He’d gestured to it and she’d sat cooperatively. So had he. “The sculpture was on the floor, and she was unconscious, and tha’s how you let her stay.”
Rosie met his gaze with her own although she didn’t reply.
He said, “What I can’t work out is why you di’n’t ring 999.”
She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He’d brought a copy of the shot they had from the digital film, catching her as she exited the building. He said, “I ’xpect you know what night this was taken.”
She took it from him and examined it. She said, “I don’t, actually. Why don’t you tell me?”
“The night she got the cosh on her head is when. Tha’s when this was taken. DS Havers—you met her already—she’s taking a copy of this round the flats in Streatham. Tha’s just a formality, though. You were there and you saw her on the floor.”
“If she was unconscious, isn’t that going to be difficult for you to prove?”
“Would’ve been,” he admitted. “But happens Teo wasn’t alone. The woman who coshed her with the sculpture was still in the flat.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re trying to—”
“She heard you knock, Rosie. Then she heard the door. Then she heard you come in, but by then she’d got herself into the bedroom and hidden herself. She heard you come upon Teo and then she heard you say her name, couple of times this was. What she di’n’t hear was a call being made to 999. What she di’n’t hear was you doing anything at all to help your sister. What she did hear was you leaving. Which is wha’ she did herself soon ’s you were safely gone, cos she di’n’t want to risk someone else walking in on her.”
“Even if I did that, even if I left Teo where she was, it wasn’t a crime.”
“Not coming to someone’s aid? You’ve got tha’ right, you do. I’s not a crime, that. But I got to say it takes a special kind of person to leave someone—an’ a sibling at that—like you did. It makes me wonder what you were . . . I dunno . . . afraid of? I got guesses but not much more ’nless you tell me.”
Rosie looked away from him then. She raised her hand to acknowledge the greeting of another inhabitant of New End Square. She finally said, “She was going to have him back. How d’you think that felt?”
“You’re speakin’ of Ross Carver?”
“Who else?”
“An’ how did you know this? She tell you ’s much?”
“I could tell.”
“From her?”
“From Ross. She texted him that she wanted to speak to him and I could see everything on his face. I could see that the moment she crooked her finger, he would go to her and that was how it would always be. She knew I was pregnant by him, and she was intending to destroy my life. So yes, when I saw her on the floor, I left her there and allowed fate to decide things.”
“You got lucky, then, di’n’t you? Very badly wrong is what it was and the luckiest part of all for you was that Ross Carver di’n’t understand what was happening to Teo cause she came round when he found her. ’Nstead of calling emergency, he helped her to bed. An’ the rest is the rest.”
“I didn’t hurt her,” Rosie said. “I didn’t even touch her.” She reached for his hand and covered it with her own. “I didn’t want her to die. How could I have done? She was my sister.” Her voice quavered and he reckoned her eyes were about to drop tears down her cheeks and onto her coverall. He found that he felt stony at this. He didn’t like what this said about him: that someone’s anguish did not touch him.
Then she cleared his conscience with a single question, “You won’t tell my parents what I did, will you?” and he knew that the quaver in her voice and the tears in her eyes were part and parcel of the performance art at which she so excelled.
