Something to hide, p.30
Something to Hide, page 30
“Sorry again,” Stuart said as he made tracks for the front door. He’d come on his bicycle, which he had left inside the shop only partially out of the way of customers. He swooped his helmet over his thinning hair, put clips on the legs of his trousers, and rolled out of the shop.
“I am,” Paulie said, “a bloody saint to put up with him.”
“What’s he done this time?”
“He breathes.” Paulie looked round the shop with a scowl. “He was meant to put the place in order. Do some dusting up. Hoover. Sweep. Instead he takes two hours for lunch and claims he’s been to the dentist about his ‘roots.’ The man talks crap, I swear. If he wasn’t Eileen’s baby brother, I would have put my booted foot into his bum crack long ago.”
“Ah well. You’re a softy, you are, Paulie. Always were.”
“Bloody too true, that.” Paulie set about closing up the shop, beginning with lowering the window blinds and removing jewellery from the cases in the windows. It always seemed sad to Mark, people pawning their wedding rings and engagement rings and bracelets and medals and whatnots. Paulie had told him long ago that most of these objects were never redeemed, but instead they were purchased by someone hoping to find a bargain. Paulie’s prices were always fair. He wasn’t greedy and never had been.
Mark watched him and made no move until Paulie had the jewellery stashed in the safe that stood behind the curtain to the back room. He followed that up with the money from the till. He came back out front and leaned against the glass counter. The odd piece of silver was displayed in this case: serving pieces, snuff boxes, card cases, powder jars.
“So,” Paulie said. “Another visit to Massage Dreams? I c’n ring ’em. Do you remember her name?”
Mark said, “Not here for that.”
“No? I wager you’re due. Am I right?”
Mark avoided answering by taking from his pocket the beige ticket he’d found inside Pete’s wallet. Its companion would be in this shop or in Phinney Pawn at the bottom of The Narrow Way. Paulie looked down at it then up at Mark. His expression was blank, neutral. Mark wanted to see wariness in his brother’s eyes but he saw nothing.
Mark said, “What did she pawn?”
Paulie said, “No.”
“No she didn’t pawn a thing, no you won’t tell me, or no this ticket isn’t one of yours?”
“You know the rules, Boyko. It’s confidential.”
“As a policeman—”
Paulie barked a laugh. “Don’t try that. First you need a warrant, which no one is going to give you. Second, what I said before and what you know because you worked at the other shop summers and so did I when we were in school.”
“In this case, that can’t matter. It’s important, Paulie. Pete hid it from me and it could mean something crucial.”
“Crucial to who, Boyko? Crucial to what?”
Mark couldn’t bring himself to tell him. He just needed to know what his wife had pawned. The date on the ticket was August 3. That might have been insignificant were it not the day after he’d found Teo unconscious in her bed.
When Mark didn’t speak, Paulie went on with, “You want to know details, Pete’s the person to give them.”
“What she pawned, though. It’s here? It’s in this shop? If I have a look round, will I see it, Paulie?”
“You asking me to play cold-warm-hot with you? That what’s going on? Boyko, it’s not going to happen.”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m your brother.”
“Not likely I’ll forget it.”
“So you’ve got to—”
“Boyko, I’ve got to nothing. She trusted me and I’m not breaking that trust and that’s where we are. Now. Want to go over to Mare Street for a pint? Or something stronger if that suits you? I’m paying the tab.”
Mark shook his head. A drink with his brother was the last thing he wanted from him. What he wanted was the truth but he knew he wasn’t going to get it.
9 AUGUST
NEW END SQUARE
HAMPSTEAD
NORTH LONDON
Winston Nkata arrived at the Bontempi home before seven in the morning. It had been years since he’d engaged in an all-nighter at work, and he was fairly done-in despite the three cups of coffee he’d had before leaving New Scotland Yard. These were in addition to the numerous coffees he’d had while gazing at the Streatham CCTV footage along with the two DCs that Lynley had borrowed from DI Hale. The result of their efforts consisted of nineteen images they’d captured of individuals who’d either aroused their curiosity or, on the day or the night of her attack, had needed to ring the buzzer in order to enter the building in which Teo Bontempi lived. The images weren’t great. They weren’t even particularly good. But they were the best he and the DCs could come up with until such time as the Met’s tech wizards were able to improve them. Before he left New Scotland Yard, he instructed the DCs to sleep for two hours and then get on to their next activity, tracking down the patients whose files Lynley and Barb Havers had taken from the clinic in Kingsland High Street.
When he pulled his car in front of the Bontempis’ impressive house, he felt that a kip wouldn’t go amiss, but instead he finished listening to the weather report, which was promising more of that which the country had been enduring for weeks. At least, he thought wryly, the railway hadn’t yet shut down. It was known to do so for any number of weather-related events including—memorably—an excess of autumn leaves on the tracks one year. But the trains were running nicely for now, albeit not exactly on time. And although the Circle Line was down for work on a section—but, really, when was the Circle Line not down for work on a section? he wondered—all the rest of the London Underground lines were operational as well.
He took a moment to ring his mother, who by now would have risen, made coffee, and begun to wonder why he hadn’t shown his face at her breakfast table. When she learned he’d spent the night at work, she wasn’t happy—“You are eating properly, are you, Jewel?” being her first question—but once he assured her that he’d have a hot lunch in place of the hot breakfast at home that he missed, she was happy. At that, he got out of the car into the morning air. It was still cool, and it smelled of lawn clippings from an adjacent property whose owner was either ignoring the hosepipe ban or somehow using dish or laundry water to keep the grass growing.
The pedestrian gate was off the latch, so he entered and went to the door. He carried with him the stack of images from the CCTV footage. He rang the bell and waited for a bit before he rang it again, twice this time. He heard footsteps on the entry floor, bolts being drawn back, and then he was face-to-face with Solange Bontempi, dressed neatly in a slim trouser suit, a conservative blouse buttoned to her throat. Her hair was neatly done as well, a bun from which no hair escaped, low on her neck.
Solange looked surprised to see him, but she seemed to realise what his visit could imply because she quickly said, “Detective. You have brought us news?”
“Got a few questions only, ’m afraid,” he replied. “C’n I come in?”
She held the door open. “Yes. Of course. I’m assembling a breakfast tray for Cesare. Is it Rosie you wish to see? Me? My husband? Come with me, please.”
Nkata followed her into the kitchen, where several packages wrapped in butcher’s paper sat on the worktop along with a bowl of fruit, a large wedge of cheese, and a basket of hard bread rolls. A quite small, strange-looking double-decker coffee pot sat on a burner of the stove. It was hissing and emitting steam, so he reckoned Solange was cooking up an espresso.
She pulled a tray from a nearby cupboard and said, “Cesare, he has never become English when it comes to his breakfast. Well, come to think, he has never become English in his eating at all.” She began to take some unidentifiable and presumably Italian meat from the butcher’s wrapping and she placed this on a plate along with a slice of extremely aromatic cheese that, to his surprise, caused Nkata’s mouth to water. She took a tin from inside the unlit oven, opened it, and removed what looked like a poppy seed cake. This she sliced, shot Nkata a glance, and sliced a second piece for him. Then came the bread—two rolls—both for Cesare. She raised an eyebrow at Nkata but he demurred. Once she had added fruit to the tray, she covered the entire thing with a tea towel and looked at the clock. “His carer is late,” she said. “Usually she comes at half-past six. I thought it was she at the door, having forgotten her key.” She turned off the heat beneath the strange coffee maker, but she left the pot where it was although she fetched a small jug and filled it with milk. She said, “He won’t use the milk but if I don’t include it, he will wonder why.” She sighed. “Men. Now tell me your questions.”
“You don’t want to take the tray . . . ?” He tilted his head the way they’d come, which would give her access to the stairs.
“It can wait a few minutes. He’s still asleep. Or he was when I left the room. What is it you wish to ask me?”
“When the last time was you talked to Teo.” He consulted his notebook to make sure of the details. “You said she came here three weeks past to visit her dad. Did you talk to her af’er that?”
Solange glanced at a calendar on the wall, hanging above a telephone. She said slowly, “Yes, but the answer is more difficult. I cannot be sure . . . I think ten days ago?” Solange explained that while Teo had made an effort to see her father once or twice each week since his stroke, there had been times when she couldn’t because of her work. But whether she was coming to Hampstead or not, she generally rang once a day. “We worried when we did not hear from her in the days that followed her last visit. There was only one phone call. And then we discovered why.”
“When she was found in her flat, you mean?”
“Yes. You did not know her, of course,” Solange said with a small sad smile, “but Teo was the daughter any parent would want.”
“An’ did you?” Nkata asked.
“What?”
“Did you want her?”
Solange drew back, and her expression was clearly confused. “I am not sure what you mean,” she said. “Of course we wanted her.”
“But th’way I un’erstan’ things, you wanted a baby to adopt but you ended up with more ’n’ that. So I’m wond’ring if tha’s something you could’ve done without. An older girl.”
“Oh no,” Solange replied. “No, no. We wanted a baby, of course, and we learned the baby we’d arranged to adopt had an older sister. We were hesitant about that at first. But then we met her—Adaku, as she was called then—and really, to meet her was to be immediately enchanted, and even if that hadn’t been the case, we wouldn’t have separated the girls. They’d already lost so much: their mother, their father, their aunt, their cousins. It would have been cruel to take from either one of them the last blood tie they had.”
“Di’ she know that?” he asked.
There was a door to the outside at the far end of the kitchen and it had opened as Nkata was speaking. In came a young woman whom Solange greeted with, “Here is Katie at last,” to which Katie responded, “I am so sorry, Madame. Please. Let me take over.”
“We are lucky he’s not roaring by now.” Solange took a smallish china coffee pot and into this she poured a viscous brew that resembled long-exhausted motor oil. This she put onto the tray, which Katie then took and, with a friendly nod at Nkata, left the kitchen.
“Your question again?” Solange said to Nkata.
“If Teo knew she was wanted.”
Solange placed a cube of sugar into a cup and poured another espresso. She offered it to Nkata, but he had no intention of downing any more caffeine. She stirred the espresso and said, “We told her often. I am certain she knew. And she was the very heart of Cesare. They were . . . that expression . . . thieves in the night? No, no. That is not it.”
“Thick as thieves?”
“Yes, this is the one. But I have never understood what it means.”
He smiled. “Nothin’ far as I know. But I get your meaning.”
“Yes, they were very—”
“Maman!” Rosie burst into the room. She said something to her mother in rapid French as she more firmly belted the yellow dressing gown she was wearing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Apparently understanding the implication, Solange said, “I did not wake you because the detective asked to speak with me.”
“Wanted to bring your mum into the picture of where we are in the ’vestigation,” Nkata said. “I been asked to keep you in the picture. The family, I mean.”
Rosie said, narrowing her eyes, “And where are you, then?”
“Your mum’s been telling me how you and Teo got adopted. And I got to say: Seems like you been interpreting things a bit wrong.”
Nkata saw a pulse beating in her temple. He decided she was trying to test the wind: like which direction was it blowing and how strongly and was there anything she ought to be doing before it turned into a gale. Finally, she said, “Have I? How odd.”
“We c’n agree on that. So I’m wondering why you tol’ me that your parents were forced to take Teo when all’s they wanted was you. How’d that get all mixed up in your mind?”
“Heavens, Rosie,” this from her mother. “How could you ever have thought that? Did Teo think that? Did she say something to you?”
“We can talk later,” Rosie said. “I have to get ready for work just now.”
“Can’t let you do that till we’ve talked, you ’n’ me,” Nkata told her. He handed her the stack of photos he’d brought. “Anyone here familiar to you?”
She looked at the first and the second and frowned. “I don’t see how anyone could be identified from these.” She squinted at them, as if that would make the photos sharper. After she’d gone through them all, she shook her head and passed them back to Nkata with a “sorry,” to which he said, “Tha’s fine, innit. We’re working on making the images better. Takes time, that. You can give another look when we get better ones.” He took note that she didn’t appear excited by the prospect. He said, “I need to know bit more ’bout your thing with your sister.”
“What ‘thing’ is this meant to be?” she asked him.
“Well, seems to me you’re not telling the story of you an’ Teo the way it’s meant to be told. If tha’s the case, somethin’s going on. ’Specially in light of the row you two had.”
He gave Solange a glance. “Seems things ’tween Rosie and her sister weren’t like how she wanted them to look. Seems like Rosie’s not telling the story like it should be told. That the case, something’s going on. ’Specially since they had a row heard on all sides of Teo’s flat.”
“A row? Rosie, what is this?”
“Rosie tol’ me it was ’bout Teo not coming round to see their dad often enough. But from talking to you, seems like that’s not the case, either.”
Solange took a step back from the worktop where she’d been standing since Katie’s arrival. She said, “Rosie, did you . . . ?” And then after a moment for thought, “Whyever would you lie to the police, Belle?”
“Because,” Rosie said, “what Teo and I talked about was none of their business. She’d thrown him away, Maman. She didn’t want him. All she wanted was Africa. Africa. And whatever else Ross ever was to her, he wasn’t Africa and he couldn’t begin to pretend he was. That mattered to her. It didn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to me and it never will.”
“What do you mean with this ‘doesn’t matter to me’ you speak of, Rosie?”
“Reckon it goes back to her sister’s marriage and to her splitting up with her husband,” Nkata said.
“Is that true?” Solange asked her daughter.
“He was over her,” Rosie said. “She didn’t want him, and he was finally over it, he was over her. I wouldn’t ever’ve thrown him away. He knew that and he still knows it. We’re together now and she can’t abide that. She didn’t want him but I wasn’t meant to have him, either. Only it doesn’t matter now because it’s too late.”
Solange went to the table beneath the kitchen window. She sat. Nkata remained where he was, leaning against the stainless-steel cooker, his arms crossed. Rosie clutched her dressing gown at her throat. She said, “I loved him first, Maman. He saved me. Remember? I would’ve drowned in the sea, but he saved me. He saw and he came into the water and I was floundering and no one saw but him. And he said ‘No worries, Rosie, I’ve got you,’ and from there, he saved me. I knew we were meant, after that. From that moment, I knew.”
Solange said, “You were six years old, Rosie. Everyone went into the water to help you. Ross got to you first. That’s all.”
“No! It was Ross. We were meant, him and me. And then Teo got in the way and she didn’t even love him. She never loved him and he threw away all his love on her. But that’s over now and I’m here, and I’m with him, and she can’t stand it. She never loved him but she doesn’t want me to love him either. But she’s too late to stop us from what we want, Ross ’n’ me. I can do what she can’t and what she never could and what she didn’t want to do anyway.”
Nkata looked from Rosie to Solange and then back to Rosie as Solange said, “What did Teo not want to do?”
With a glance at Nkata—perhaps evaluating his response to what she would say—she said, “I’ll tell you but we meant it for later, after all this, after Teo . . . It’s got all mixed up. We were both going to tell you. Me and Ross together. Ross and me with you and Papá. Teo didn’t want a baby, not Ross’s baby, not anyone’s baby. But I did and I do and it’s finally happening and that’s what I went to tell her.”
Nkata said, “You went to tell Teo that you and Ross’re having a baby?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I did.” Rosie gave a defiant toss of her head, of the sort one saw in television dramas. It seemed more for effect than anything else. She said, “She was going to know sooner or later that Ross and I are together. We’ve been together for months and months. I wanted him. He wanted me. I’m giving him the baby he wanted from her.”
