Something to hide, p.13
Something to Hide, page 13
Havers voiced what he was thinking. “Someone’s done something they’re about to regret. That is, if they don’t already.”
Lynley said, “I’ll put you in the picture as soon as I’m in it,” and he set off to the Assistant Commissioner’s office.
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
Lynley had not been out of their presence for ten seconds before Dorothea turned to Barbara, giving her T-shirt a critical eye and doing much the same to her trousers and her trainers. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other and said, “Barbara . . .” in a tone that Barbara knew presaged a lengthy sartorial conversation that she didn’t wish to have. She said hastily, “I know, I know. I’ve got a change of clothes in the car. I was out running earlier and this was what came to hand.”
“You were out running,” Dorothea said. “D’you expect me to believe that? And why did you not show up for tap dancing last night?”
“Ingrown toenails?” Barbara said with hope.
“Unamusing. Next week I intend to drag you by your hair if necessary. How much weight have you lost?”
“Don’t know,” Barbara said. “The bathroom scales and I have not been intimate lately. But I’ve probably lost nothing, Dee. Whatever I lose, I make up by eating curry for the rest of the week. And naan. Absolute piles of naan.”
“Oh bother,” Dorothea said. “You’re impossible.”
“That sounds good.”
“Don’t cross me, Barbara. I simply refuse to let you cross me. Now. Let’s get to a computer. I’ve found something spectacular for us.”
To Dorothea spectacular meant having the potential to line herself up—and, unfortunately, Barbara as well—with a man. In this case, however, it appeared that her intention was to line them both up with herds of men. It was a website called GroupMeet, and Dorothea brought it up on Barbara’s computer the moment they reached her desk.
“This is simply the bee’s knees,” Dorothea said.
The bee’s knees? Wasn’t that something from . . . Barbara wasn’t sure. The 1920s? Dee had been watching period television again.
“What is it?” Barbara asked over Dee’s shoulder. Bright colours, photos of laughing, smiling, chortling, giggling people from thirty-five to seventy engaged in various activities. Men with women, men with men, women with women, old with old, young with young, older men with younger women, younger men with older women. They were all playing tennis or boating or working in gardens or riding horses or attending the opera or the ballet. And everyone was having a smashing good time. “What the hell, Dee?” Barbara repeated. “This isn’t some dating site, is it?”
“Lord, no,” Dorothea said. “Heaven forfend and all that. This is an activity site. What one does is scroll through the various activities—Look! Here’s one for tap dancing!—and click on whatever appeals. That takes you to where the next round of that activity will be taking place. Here, let me do it.”
As Barbara watched, Dorothea clicked on Rambling. Up popped various photos of ramblers along with a list of upcoming rambles. Dorothea then clicked on Pub Rambles, which took them to a dozen different walks to and from pubs that were scheduled in various parts of England. She clicked on Oxfordshire and found two rambles listed, both to take place in the following week. She chose one of them and a list of names popped up. “One adds one’s name to the list and then just shows up for the activity,” she announced. “Isn’t that brilliant? Name the activity and there’s someone doing it. Look.” She took them back to the main page and began reading off the various activities: Sketching, Plein Air Watercolours, Rock Climbing, Crewing, Ballroom Dancing, Amateur Theatricals, Choirs, Chinese Cookery, War History, Architecture, Inigo Jones Landscapes. “It goes on and on,” Dorothea told her. “We must do one of these together, Barbara. It sounds like such fun.”
It sounded to Barbara like various levels of the Inferno.
Dee was going on, however. “Of course, we still have our tap dancing, you and I. But there’s more to life than that.”
“Right. There’s curry after tap dancing as well.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m signing us up for something.” She peered at the terminal’s screen again. “Sketching,” she decided. “I’m signing us up for sketching. I’ve always longed to sketch, haven’t you? Never mind. You’ll just say you’ve never given sketching a thought. But I know you better than you know yourself, so sketching it is. And, oh! Look at this, Barbara. There’re language groups as well. French, German, Cantonese, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Finnish—heavens, does anyone actually speak Finnish these days? Are you interested in Italian at all, Barbara? It can be a very useful language when one travels, you know. Conversations with the locals and all that.”
Barbara narrowed her eyes. Dee was very clever. She was leading to a topic that Barbara had been avoiding for weeks. Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco of the Lucca police had been in England since early July—was still in England, as far as she knew—to study the language, and Dorothea had decided straightaway upon meeting him that he was the answer to a young girl’s dreams, or at least to Dorothea’s dreams for Barbara. Only Barbara wasn’t a young girl with dreams nor had she considered Salvatore as someone she might set her cap at. Whatever setting one’s cap meant and from where on earth had she dug up that expression? Possibly one of her Regency romance novels. Time to switch genres, she told herself. Horror, perhaps. Yes. Horror sounded good.
She said, “Two dinners at a wine bar in Holland Park. European cheek kisses at the end of the night.”
Dorothea blinked. “What?”
“Dee, please. I know you better than you know yourself, as someone once said to me. You want to know if I’ve seen Salvatore Lo Bianco since he’s been here—other than at our dance concert, although to call it a dance concert makes it sound like we actually were able to dance—”
“Which we absolutely were and you know it.”
“Right. Whatever. So I’ve had dinner with him twice, once with Lynley and Dr. Trahair, so that barely counts.” That had been the limit of her intercourse with the Italian policeman, and Barbara intended to keep it that way. But Dorothea was nothing if not determined to move a man into Barbara’s future as well as into her own. “And anyway, I already know Italian,” Barbara added.
“Oh my God! You do?”
“Ciao, grazie, pizza, and prego, but don’t test me on what any of that means. Except pizza, of course. I’ve got that one bloody well down.”
“Very funny,” Dorothea said. “Hilarious. I’m bursting my buttons. I’m also signing us up for sketching. If you don’t behave yourself, I’ll sign us up for Chinese cookery as well.”
“Fine. Wonderful. A-okay and all the rest,” Barbara told her. “Look up sketching and tell me what you discover. I’ll start pinching paper and pencils.”
She wasn’t long at her desk when Lynley returned. He was carrying a small stack of manila folders. He indicated with an inclination of his head that he wished to see her in his temporary office. He gestured at DS Winston Nkata as well. Nkata appeared to be buried deeply in the mind-numbing boredom of a CCTV film taken inside Gloucester Road tube station. He also appeared to be barely able to keep his eyes open for whatever it was for which he was meant to search. Barbara had to call his name three times before he looked up. Then she did the same as Lynley, inclining her head in the general direction of his office.
Winston rose from his desk. He was quite tall, six foot five, so standing from a seated position required some adjusting of his spine. As soon as he was on his feet, Barbara set off towards Lynley’s office. If Lynley wanted to see them both, chances were good that the game was afoot.
As she entered, she noted that the acting DCS—Lynley—had still done nothing to alter the office. Its usual occupant—DCS Isabelle Ardery—was on personal leave for at least eight weeks, taking the cure on the Isle of Wight. The state of the office served to indicate Lynley’s confidence in Ardery’s ability to get herself in order regarding drink before she bollixed up her life for good. Personal items—like photos of her twin boys—had been removed by the DCS herself. Everything else was as it had been. Even the furniture had not been moved so much as an inch.
Lynley gestured to the circular table at one side of the room. He said as he did so, “Dorothea was correct. We’re dealing with something from Empress State Building.”
“Something dodgy happening there, sir?” Barbara asked.
“A murder,” Lynley told her.
“Why’s the Press Office involved?”
“The usual: to keep things quiet, calm, and, they hope, out of the papers for as long as possible.”
EMPRESS STATE BUILDING
WEST BROMPTON
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
Empress State Building stood massively on Lillie Road, not far from West Brompton underground station, as well as the lichenous Victorian monuments of Brompton Cemetery. The building was staggeringly tall, vaguely clover-shaped, and dressed in the uninspiring grey-and-glass of so many of London’s modern buildings. Like New Scotland Yard, it was heavily protected. One didn’t simply wander in off the street to chat with the local bobby.
Lynley was expected. After a five-minute wait opposite Peeler’s Café, a ginger-haired man of middle age came out of one of the lifts and then through the turnstile, saying, “DCS Lynley?”
“Thomas,” Lynley said. “And the DCS is acting only. I’ve been asked to step in for a few weeks while my guv’s on leave. You’re DCS Phinney?”
“Mark.” He offered his hand. He had a firm grip, Lynley noted. Phinney said, “They’ve given you a visitor’s badge, I see. Good. Come with me. We’re on the seventeenth but I’ll take you to the Orbit. Spectacular views up there.”
He badged Lynley through the turnstile and led the way to a bank of lifts that went only to the upper floors of the building. It was a quick trip. The lift was fast and silent.
The Orbit turned out to be part lounge and part café, with the cooking done in the middle area, which would be the spine of the clover. The views were just as Phinney had described them: spectacular. Lynley felt as if he could see straight into to the Home Counties in every direction.
He accepted Phinney’s offer of coffee, and he found a vacant seating area close to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. These encircled the entire Orbit and it wasn’t long before he realised that the lounge itself rotated slowly. Sit long enough and one would see the entirety of Greater London as one inched by it.
Phinney returned with two cups and two croissants. He placed these on a coffee table and sat opposite Lynley, saying, “What can I do for you, Thomas?”
“You can tell me about Detective Sergeant Bontempi.”
“Teo?” he said. “She’s on the upswing, isn’t she? I’ve not heard.”
An odd response, Lynley thought. He said, “When did you last see her?”
“I saw her in hospital. Three nights ago.”
“Had the hospital rung you?”
“No. Where is this heading, Thomas?”
“I’m afraid she’s dead.”
Phinney stared at him, as if an attempt he’d made to read Lynley’s lips had come to nothing. “How can that be?” He could easily have been speaking to himself. Before Lynley responded, he said, “I saw her. She was very much alive. I found her.”
“Where?” Lynley asked.
“At her flat. I went inside and found her in bed. I couldn’t rouse her, but . . . Christ, she was absolutely breathing. I rang 999. When they finally showed up—”
“Finally?”
“It was at least thirty minutes. They took her vitals, got her on a drip, put her on a stretcher, and took her to hospital. I followed in my car.”
“Were you able to speak with her at all?”
He shook his head. “The last time I saw her, they were taking her into A and E. I waited for word but there was none. After two hours, all I was able to learn was that they’d moved her from A and E into Critical Care and they’d contacted her next of kin. I don’t know whether that was her husband, her parents, or her sister, although I reckon it was her husband. I left before any of them arrived.” He got to his feet. He walked to the window and placed his hand on it, his palm flat against the glass. He said to his dim reflection, “She was in bed when I found her. She was in her nightclothes. How could she have died?”
“How did you manage to get into her flat?” Lynley asked.
Phinney turned from the window. Lynley noted that his ruddy face had become quite pale. He said, “I showed the concierge my warrant card and explained the situation.”
“Which was . . . ?”
“What?”
“The situation. What took you to her flat in the first place?”
One of Phinney’s hands made a fist and gently hit his other palm as he spoke. “She’d recently transferred to one of the MITs in south London, but she’d requested some days off before starting there. When she was due to begin, she failed to turn up. I was called for confirmation that the date of transfer was correct. It was and as Teo—DS Bontempi—was nothing if not dedicated to her job, it made no sense that she’d failed to turn up. I thought at first something had happened to her father. He had a stroke earlier in the year. But when I rang her parents, all was well. So I began to ring her mobile at intervals. There was no reply. After a few hours, I went to her flat.”
“There was no one more local that you could have rung?”
“Probably. Of course. But I didn’t think to search anyone out. I just made my way there and got the concierge to let me inside the place.”
“You knew where she lived? Had you been there before?”
“I drove her home one night after something of a booze-up that the team had at our local. A morale-boosting thing. She had no car, and, as I’d had only a glass of wine, and as it was late, I thought public transport might not be the best idea.”
“She was drunk?”
“Tipsy, but not drunk. Look, what’s actually going on? Why’s the Met become involved in this?”
Lynley saw no point in obfuscation. “She was murdered, I’m afraid.”
“Murdered.” Phinney said the word in a manner that managed to be both numb and disbelieving simultaneously. Then, “Murdered? In hospital?”
“She died in hospital, but the cause of her death seems to have occurred in her flat.”
His brow furrowed. “How is that possible? What happened?”
“Epidural haematoma,” Lynley said. “A blow to the head had fractured her skull. She was in a coma when you found her. Hence the reason you couldn’t rouse her.”
“You said murder, though. But she must have fallen and caused the fracture herself. What I mean is, she was in her nightclothes. She was in bed. And there was no sign. I mean, there was no indication of a blow. There was nothing to suggest . . . Who else knows?”
“That it was murder? The family only know she’s died, as they authorised her being taken off the respirator. And that she died was actually all anyone knew prior to the post mortem examination. I’ve officers heading out now to tell her relations that it wasn’t a natural death.”
“But murder . . . ? With no overt sign of a blow to her head?”
“The blow was on the back of her head, so you wouldn’t have seen it, and it didn’t break the skin. There was also a weapon. The skull fracture indicated that.”
“What was it?”
“We don’t know just yet. Everything that could have been used is being removed from her flat by SOCO to go to forensics. If nothing among all that would have served, it’s safe to assume that whoever hit her also brought the weapon to do so. And took it away afterwards.”
“Then why do you assume she was hit and not . . . ?” He answered the question he hadn’t bothered to finish. “The autopsy, of course. As you said. There would have been one. My God, I could have done something for her. I’m trained to see things, and I saw nothing.”
“You couldn’t have known what had occurred, Mark. As you’ve said, she was in bed, she was in her nightclothes. What were you supposed to think? The DS herself probably didn’t know she was so badly wounded. She was given a blow, but it’s altogether possible that she didn’t actually lose consciousness immediately. Or if she did lose consciousness, the regaining of it would have made her think it had been a glancing blow, and that’s all. She might have been dizzy. She might have had something of a headache, for which she took paracetamol. Or she had no immediate memory of what had happened in the first place. She got herself into bed without a complete understanding of the danger she was in. Then her condition worsened, she lost consciousness, she went into a coma. The only way she could have been saved was if someone had found her in time to get her to hospital so the pressure on her brain might have been relieved. That didn’t happen, and it’s not the fault of anyone who knew her, save her killer.”
“You’re saying she knew her killer, then?”
“If she’d been attacked in the street or in another public place, she would have been quickly found. The fact that she wasn’t suggests that she admitted her killer into her flat.”
“Or the killer was someone who had a key.”
“Or that. Yes.”
“Her family might have keys. Her parents, her sister. Perhaps even her husband. Ross Carver.”
“ ‘Even’?”
“They were separated. Two years? Perhaps longer? But they’d lived together in the flat during their marriage. He may still have a key.”
