Something to hide, p.49
Something to Hide, page 49
“Generally, they’re good about that kind of thing. They may need them again at some point, so best leave them be till we get everything sorted.”
“It’s too late for that,” he told her. “I’ve already unpacked them. They’re back in place now. But one of them is missing.”
MAYVILLE ESTATE
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Sophie had wanted to come with him, but Tani wasn’t about to let her. There was no way of knowing what he’d find when he arrived at his family’s flat. He hoped it would be his mum with her suitcase packed, but if she was still reluctant to make a move, he wanted her to know that Simi was safe, that Abeo would never be able to find her, and that she did not need to remain there for the sake of either of her children. As for Abeo, Tani reckoned his father wouldn’t be at the flat, having long since returned to Lark.
He was about to open the flat’s door when Mrs. Delfino called out to him quietly from several floors above, her ragazzo, ragazzo telling Tani who was speaking before he stepped back and saw her gesturing at him. It was an unmistakable come here movement of her right arm that was impossible to ignore. He went to the lift and rode it up. When its door opened, there she was.
He comes for his mama, yes? she said, and when he nodded she informed him, “She leaves Mayville Estate with a Black man very tall.” Mrs. Delfino was returning from Ridley Road Market when she’d seen them, she told Tani. They weren’t coming from the Bankoles’ flat, however. Mrs. Delfino thought they were coming from one of the other buildings on the estate.
She seem very bad, Mrs. Delfino told him, and then after a moment, she corrected herself with, “She look very bad, yes? She look like someone hitted her and the Black man help her to walk. She lean on him, on his braccio”—here she pointed to her arm—“and he has a car and he carries her away.”
“What’d he look like, this bloke?” Tani asked her.
She repeated, “Very tall. Black. He wears a suit. And his face . . . I remember . . . his face is bad with this . . . this mark down one side. Someone with a knife . . .”
Tani needed no further details. It was the copper who’d been there already. He thanked Mrs. Delfino and she patted his cheek, telling him, “You are a good boy, love your mama. All is good when you love your mama.”
Tani wanted to believe that, but he had reached a point from which he reckoned love wasn’t going to make anything good. He rang for the lift and went down to the family’s flat. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He swung it open and stared at what lay before him.
A rampage had occurred after his departure. It had worked destruction upon the kitchen and the lounge. From where he stood it seemed that every piece of crockery and every drinking glass was broken. The cooker was dented. The cast-iron pan that had done the denting was on the floor. Pots and pans lay helter-skelter, and blanketing some of them were pages of his mother’s cookbooks.
In the lounge, the television’s screen was shattered and a small table was discarded in front of it. Two lamps had been destroyed and three head wraps were pulled to pieces. In the midst of them, though, Tani saw his mother’s mobile. He picked it up and shoved it into his pocket.
He reckoned he knew where the passports were because his father kept a locked fireproof box beneath the bed he and Monifa slept in. Along with the locked box were several plastic containers with Monifa’s cool-weather clothes. Tani decided he would take these as well as the passports, so that when he finally saw his mother, he’d be able to encourage her not to return to Mayville Estate.
When he opened the door to his parents’ bedroom, what he saw forced him to set aside his plans. Abeo was on the bed. He was fully clothed, asleep, and snoring.
At the sight of his father, Tani’s first inclination was to leave at once. But no, he decided. He was done harbouring fear of this man. So he approached the bed, knelt at its side, and found the box where it had always been kept, its key in the single lock.
With his gaze fixed on his father’s face, Tani pulled the box slowly from beneath the bed. He turned the key and began sorting through the box’s contents as quickly and silently as he could. Inside, he found birth certificates, some paperwork relating to Into Africa and the butcher shop, receipts for rental payments made for Lark’s flat in Pembury Estate and this flat in Mayville Estate, and old photographs. He found no passports, and all the family money was gone.
Instantly, Tani felt a burning leap of fire within him. He got to his feet. He stared down at his sleeping father. He realised then that he’d always hated Abeo Bankole. He simply had not allowed himself to feel the strength of it.
Tani took up the fireproof box, stood over his father, and emptied its contents on him. Abeo awakened with a start. He clocked Tani at once, but he didn’t seem concerned about his presence, even when Tani snarled, “What’ve you done with them, you fucking bastard?”
Abeo smiled slowly. “I have learned she is called Sophie Franklin. I am told she’s an English whore.”
“Where are the passports?”
“Stoke Newington, I’ve been told. Once I learned her name, this was not difficult, Tani, especially when someone has not bothered to take care.”
“What d’you think you can do to her? Or to her family? Her mum, her dad, her sister, her brothers? D’you really think any of that lot’ll stand round with their mouths hanging open when you try to bully them? Not bloody likely, Pa.”
Abeo brushed the various documents and photos from his body. He said, “You should have been left in Nigeria. When I saw you, I knew you were not my son.”
“Wishing that doesn’t make it true,” Tani said. “If it did, I would’ve been out of here first time you put a hand on me. I would’ve got myself a ticket to Nigeria and searched him out, whoever my ‘real’ dad’s supposed to be in this fucking fantasy you’ve got in your head about Mum doing it with . . . Who? Her brothers? The postman? Her own dad? You’re pathetic, you are. You’re so sodding transparent I feel sorry for you.”
Abeo fixed his gaze on Tani. Tani saw one of his fists slowly clench.
He went on, heedless of everything other than what he needed to say. “You could’ve had a decent family, Pa, but you didn’t want that, did you. You didn’t want a wife. You didn’t want children. You wanted a servant and two slaves to do whatever you said. Well, you’ve lost us all, you have. And you’re never going to find Simi, so give it up.”
“Evering Road,” Abeo said. “You do nothing, Tani, that I do not know.”
He rose, but Tani pushed him back onto the bed. “I want those fucking passports! You’re not taking anyone anywhere. I’m not going with you to Nigeria and Simi sure as hell isn’t going with you. Fact is, you’re not ever seeing Simi again. And you’re not seeing Mum because she’s gone. She left th’estate with that Black detective. An’ who can blame her, eh? He’s ten times the man you’ll ever be and way I hear it, he’s lookin for a woman. An’ Mum? Well, you can be sure she’s lookin for a real man.”
Abeo surged up at that. He drew back his fist.
Tani at last had what he’d so long wanted. He punched his father fully in the face. He’d never enjoyed the pain of his knuckles striking someone’s bone as he did when he heard the crack of his father’s nose. The force of the blow whirled Abeo round. Tani grabbed him then, his arm locked round Abeo’s throat. He began to drag him towards the bedroom door and out of the room. But his father was strong. He wasn’t going anywhere willingly. He kicked and thrashed. He freed himself. He charged at Tani and knocked him onto the bed. But before he could throw himself on top of his son’s body, Tani rolled away so that Abeo’s velocity would throw him onto the bed as well, on his stomach this time.
Tani attacked. He straddled his father. He forced his head into the bedding and the mattress beneath it. He held him there. He shouted, “How does it feel? How’s the power now? How’s the control? You’re shit, you are. You’re what gets stuck on the soles of shoes. And now . . . now . . .” It felt so very good. It felt like being reborn as who he was meant to be from the first: the new flesh of him, the new muscle of him. Such exultation as the body of his father began to go slack, so slack, so justifiably slack . . .
Tani felt himself being lifted away. He swung round to strike whoever would stop him from doing to this man what he so deserved.
For a moment, he was clueless as he stared at the two women who’d pulled him from his father. Who the bloody hell . . . ? But then he recognised them from Orchid House. The one was Zawadi who directed the place. The other was the filmmaker whose name he could not recall.
THORNTON HEATH
GREATER LONDON
“Flats,” he said. “They’re to run the gamut, in accordance with the council’s wishes. So it will be council flats on the ground floor and floors one, two, and three, with luxury on the upper floors. All the mod cons in each flat no matter the floor it’s on, and on the premises an indoor pool, a gym, laundries on every floor, parking beneath the building, bicycle lock-ups, extensive garden behind the building, a children’s play area, a pitch for games, space allowed for a day care centre should that be desired by residents.”
“In other words, gentrification,” Barbara said.
“I don’t think of it that way,” Ross Carver told her.
“Looks to me like a rose by any other name, Mr. Carver. Someone makes a pile of it off buyers and, presto, long-time residents of the area are out on their collective ear.”
“I wouldn’t have signed on should that have been the desired outcome.”
“Right-o. But you’ll be long gone before the ‘desired outcome’ shows its face. Your part is only the structure, eh? Once it’s up, you’re finished with the project.”
“When all is said and done, we’ll meet here—you and I—and see which one of us is correct.”
They were in the sales office where Ross Carver had told Barbara he would meet her. He couldn’t take time away from the job. If she wouldn’t mind coming to Thornton Heath . . . ? Barbara hadn’t been chuffed by the idea—Thornton Heath was nearly the distance to Croydon—but when she arrived, she espied a Domino’s in the High Street. A smallish takeaway (tomato, cheese, mushrooms, and black olives, thank you) was something she could knock back in a tic. Which she did, accompanying it with a Fanta pineapple, enjoying her luncheon as she watched the action in and out of Zenith Halal Butchers.
Now, after a pleasurable smoke as she’d looked for Ross Carver’s workplace, she was gazing at an impressive model of the building that would house Thornton Luxury Flats. Nearby on the walls the various floor plans, styles, and sizes of these flats were displayed, while in another room were posted the differing types of lino, carpet, and tiles being offered. All of it was very impressive, and the project was replacing no housing at all but rather an abandoned factory that had been a long-time eyesore in the neighbourhood.
Before committing herself to the journey, Barbara had quizzed Ross Carver about the missing sculpture. As far as she knew, there had been a good number of sculptures taken by the scenes-of-crime officers from Teo Bontempi’s flat, so how the devil had he known one was missing when he unpacked them?
The answer to that had been simple: He knew it was missing because he’d given it to Teo.
“Couldn’t she have tossed it? Given it to Oxfam or to a consignment shop?”
“She didn’t do that and she wouldn’t do that,” was how he had replied.
Right, Barbara had thought as they spoke. But, she pointed out to him, there were times when a relationship was done for and the aggrieved party—
“She wasn’t the aggrieved party,” he protested. “If anyone was, it would’ve been me. I’ve told you all this. She wanted to separate. I went along with it because what else was I supposed to do? Take her prisoner?”
Stranger things had happened, Barbara thought. She said, “There are times, though, when people decide that a thorough housecleaning of the heart is in order. Everything connected with the relationship is given the ceremonial heave-ho, preparatory to setting it on the barbecue and firing the thing up.”
“That didn’t happen.”
Barbara was curious about his certainty. She said, “How can you know that?”
“Because I gave her three sculptures and only one of them has gone missing. The other two are still with the rest.”
“Ah. Well, that colours things a bit differently, that. You’re seeing it as the cosh, are you? Teo gets clubbed in the heat of the moment? No attack was planned.”
“I don’t know how else to see it,” he replied. “Do you?”
Barbara scratched her head, considering this. “If someone knew about those sculptures . . . ?”
“Like who?” he asked. “Who could possibly have known they were in the flat?”
Barbara gave him a look but said nothing. He could work out the answer to that on his own. It wouldn’t involve any heavy mental lifting. She said, “Or it could be the entire evening was planned down to the last detail, and the sculpture was taken to throw us off the scent, not having been used at all. But again, that would only have been if the killer knew about the sculptures in the first place. Where’d you get it, anyway?”
“There’s a gallery in Peckham. They do African art. The piece that’s missing from Teo’s collection is called Standing Warrior. I can’t remember the artist’s name just now, but all three of the pieces I gave Teo have something like a signature on them.”
“Are all three from this Peckham gallery?” And when he nodded, “I’ll need the name of the place.”
“Padma,” he said.
“Got it,” she said. “By the way, when I spoke to Rosie this morning, among other delights, she also told me that Teo ‘gave her blessing’ to the two of you. According to her way of telling of it, Teo was dead chuffed to know that you put our Rosie up the duff. Couldn’t wait to be called Auntie by your little bundle of whatever.”
“Then that’s why she wanted to see me,” Carver said, more to himself than to her.
“Teo? Possibly. But there’s something else, and Rosie may have known about it.”
“You can’t be thinking that Rosie—”
“Let’s keep the horse, the cart, and the market where they belong. Teo saw a plastic surgeon. That was what evaluation in her appointment diary meant. She had an appointment to be checked over in the cause of repairing the damage done to her. She kept that appointment. She was told the results as well. She needed a driver to and from if she was going to have the procedure, so she asked Rosie. But then, well, you know the rest.”
He was shaking his head as he took in the information. “Teo didn’t tell me,” he said. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Could be that was what she wanted to speak with you about and she wanted to give you the news when you were face-to-face. Could be that was why she asked you to come to the flat. ’Course there’s also a bloody high probability that she only wanted to talk to you about Rosie and to give her blessing to this whatever-it-is between you two. Which do you reckon?”
He looked down at his shoes. Barbara could hear him swallow. He said, “I don’t know. I wish to God I did. I wish she’d said something, given me a clue, anything. Are you sure she meant to have the surgery?”
“The surgeon herself gave me the word on that. Evidently, it took her—Teo—a little time to decide because the repair didn’t mean things would automatically change much for her. Sexually, I mean. As far as her enjoyment went, I mean. She would’ve needed nerve endings intact for that, and there was no way to tell if there were any unless and until scar tissue was removed. But she was willing to risk it.”
“Risk what?” he asked, raising his head to look at her.
“Risk being disappointed.”
Three people entered the sales office then, two nicely dressed women and an equally nicely dressed man, who looked at Barbara and Ross Carver curiously. One of the women said, “I’ll be just a moment to help you two,” which indicated to Barbara that she thought they were a couple eager to buy a flat. This made her lips twitch. What it apparently made Ross Carver do was to say to her, “We ought to . . . ?” and indicate the door.
When they were outside again, he said, “I’ve made a bloody mess of everything: my life, her life, and now this with Rosie. I should never have . . . And here we are.”
Barbara excavated this and came up with Ross, Rosie, and the pregnancy. The news of it must have devastated Teo. She knew that she was meant to say to Teo’s estranged husband, “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t possibly have known how things would play out,” but the truth as she saw it was that he could have known and he should have known. She said, “Rosie’s misinformed my colleague about Teo’s adoption by the Bontempis. She’s given more than one reason why she and Teo were arguing. She plays fast and loose with the truth when it suits her. That being the case, I’m not on board with the idea that Teo didn’t tell her what the surgery was for, once she asked her to take her to and from this clinic on the Isle of Dogs where she was meant to have it. But that’s what Rosie wants me to believe. What do you think?”
He pressed his fingers to his temples as if this would help him straighten out his thoughts. He said, “I just don’t . . . Why did she decide to have it now? Why wouldn’t she have it earlier? I’d told her surgery existed. I kept asking her to have someone examine her, at least. To talk to a surgeon, if nothing else. To try anything and everything because together we could find someone . . .”
“Seems she wasn’t ready then,” Barbara told him. “Seems by the time she was ready, circumstances made it seem too late.”
“Unless it wasn’t,” he said. “Unless she decided it wasn’t too late and it was worth trying.”
