Something to hide, p.50
Something to Hide, page 50
“Well, yes. Right. But you see that puts Rosie straight into it, don’t you? She’s up the spout, she has expectations, and Teo’s about to bollix up everything. She knows—Rosie does—that you’ve done right by Colton even if you didn’t want to marry his mum. She knows you love and haven’t got over Teo. And Teo’s about to walk back into your life in the way you’ve always wanted her. Which, let’s face it and all things considered, makes the situation look bleak for our Rosie.”
He looked skyward, through the smog-stained air. He closed his eyes. He seemed to be trying to make a decision about something, and he finally did just that. He said, “There’s something else.”
“Something else Rosie knows about you?”
“Something I haven’t told you.”
“When?”
“When we talked about the night I found Teo. She . . . she said something to me when I got her to her feet. She said, ‘She hit me, Ross.’ ”
To which Barbara sighed and said, “Bloody goddamn hell.”
CHELSEA
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
Deborah was working again on choosing portraits, and she had Simi with her as her “assistant.” They were on the fifth-floor workroom of the house, Simi perched on one of the room’s tall stools, with Deborah next to her but on her feet. They were going through a series of portraits of a thirteen-year-old called Jubilee. Her picture was going to do double duty: as part of the booklet Deborah was assembling for the Department for Education and as one of the images in the larger photo book that she hoped would be her next project. Simon was below, holed up in his study with a colleague from a new independent forensics lab hoping for a contract with the Met. Her father was in a room off the kitchen where he was employing his recently acquired toy—an impressive rotary steam iron—upon freshly laundered sheets, pillowcases, table napkins, and a tablecloth. This was his new and favourite occupation. He would have ironed the carpets if given his way.
Simisola put her index finger on the edge of one of the portraits and said, “This one. She’s pretty, she is.”
“I think you’ve found the best one,” Deborah agreed. “She’s back with her parents now, and I expect they’ll like a copy of this.” She glanced at Simi and saw her fingering her spiky hair and looking thoughtful. “She’s thirteen years old, is Jubilee, just a bit older than you are, Simi. And the way she’s back with her parents? That’s what you’ll be doing when everything’s taken care of: going back to your parents. You do know that, don’t you? You’ve nothing to fear on that score.”
Simi gazed at her with her wide dark eyes. She said, “Will Mummy come for me?”
“That’s something I’m not sure of. I think we must wait for news. No one wants you going anywhere you won’t be safe.”
A sudden commotion reached them from down below. Peach barking, footsteps in the entry, a door closing, another opening and closing, voices, and more barking from Peach. Deborah didn’t like the sound of this, so she helped Simi from her stool and took her into the darkroom. There was a large cupboard where she’d once stored chemicals, empty now and the perfect size for an eight-year-old girl. Deborah told Simi to scoot inside and make no sound. “It’s probably nothing,” she murmured to the girl. “But we don’t want to take chances.”
She was on the third-floor landing when she recognised Narissa Cameron’s voice. She hurried down the stairs as Simon came out of his study, along with his colleague. Deborah’s father had apparently been the one to answer the door. The entry was, as a result, a real mash-up of humanity, because in addition to Narissa, both Zawadi and Tani were there. Who wasn’t there was the mother he’d gone to his family’s home to fetch.
She said, “What’s happened? Tani, has something happened to your mum?”
Zawadi said to her, “You allowed him to go?” She sounded incredulous.
“Zawadi, she can’t tie him to a chair,” Narissa countered.
Tani answered Deborah. “She was gone. I got told by a neighbour she left with a copper. It’s the same one came to talk to her af’er she got arrested. So now she’s arrested again and I don’t know where she got taken and I got to find her.”
“Let us deal with that.” It was Simon speaking. “If she’s with a policeman, we can sort that quickly enough.”
Deborah added, “Simon knows all sorts of police, Tani. He’ll start ringing them. We’ll find her, and I expect it won’t take very long. You need to trust us.”
Zawadi rolled her eyes at this but said nothing.
“How do you come to have Tani with you?” she asked both Zawadi and Narissa.
Simon left them then and returned to his study. Deborah heard him say, “. . . some associates of Deborah’s,” before Narissa claimed her attention, explaining she and Zawadi had gone to north London to make the usual, formal call upon the parents of a girl—in this case Simisola—who was being sheltered by Orchid House. “I went with her because there was no available social worker and no way did I intend to let her go alone, not after what we saw yesterday when Tani showed up at Orchid House with—”
“Wait!” Deborah realised all of a sudden that Simisola was still hiding in the darkroom. “Simi will want to know Tani is well.” She ran up the stairs to fetch her.
In very short order, the siblings were reunited, with Simisola dashing down the stairs to fling herself at her brother. She cried, “Did he hurt you more, Tani? Did Papa hurt you?”
Zawadi said in an altered tone, “Opposite’s more like it, girl.”
Narissa added, speaking to Deborah, “We pulled him off the father. Please don’t let him go back there.”
“Did he manage to get the passports?” she asked. Then to Tani, “Did you find the passports?”
He shook his head.
Simisola cried, “What about Mummy? Tani, where’s Mummy?” and when he said that he didn’t know, she began to cry. She buried her face into his stomach.
“I’ll find her, Squeak,” Tani told her, his hands on the back of her head.
“You,” Zawadi said to him, “are to stay well away from both of your parents. After today”—she wore an expression that Deborah couldn’t interpret until she went on—“what’s next is a protection order. I see that. And, believe me, that doesn’t make me happy. But till it’s done, you stay right here in this house, Tani. Simisola as well.”
“No way is Pa obeying some protection order,” Tani said with considerable scorn. “I thought he would. I got talked into it by Sophie. But he won’t obey it.”
“You listen,” Zawadi told him, “because this order that we’re going to file, it’ll be delivered by a cop and that person—I’m meaning the cop—won’t leave the premises without passports. D’you understand me? Your dad’s not taking Simisola out of the country and he’s not hurting her inside the country. We’ll see to that. Now you promise me—you give me your word right here—that you won’t go back there. Full stop.”
“Wha’ about Sophie?” he asked. “He knows her name. He knows where she lives. I don’t know how but he knows. And he’ll turn up at her house, he will. Then what?”
“First, you’re going to give her a bell and tell her what’s happened. Your dad shows up, she’ll ring the police straightaway if she has any sense and she seemed to have sense when I met her.”
“An’ what about my mum?” he asked.
“We’re going to find her,” Deborah promised. She sent a prayer heavenward that they could.
THE NARROW WAY
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Mark decided to take a sick day. He knew that the team could function perfectly well on their own. All he had on was a meeting with them in the late afternoon, so he rang DS Hopwood, gave her the word, and told her he’d be back the following morning. Anything you need? was her only question.
Rest is the key, he told her. It was just a summer cold and sore throat.
Lots of fluids, she informed him.
Exactly what he had in mind, he said.
What he also had in mind was Pete: the contradiction that seemed to exist between what she was doing and what she said she was doing. He had to sort it out. Otherwise, the torn-up feeling was only going to become less endurable every day.
He began in their bedroom, and it didn’t take long. Pete had never been one for personal enhancements She used no makeup other than lipstick. She wore no jewellery other than her wedding ring and a pair of cultured pearl earrings. She dressed identically every day: white on top and blue denim on the bottom. But as there was always a chance that something more was going on than he was privy to, he quietly went through her drawers, the pockets of jeans and jackets hanging among her clothes, and the medicine cabinet. He advanced to the airing cupboard and from there to the kitchen. But nothing was missing and nothing had been added to their meagre possessions.
She was reading to Lilybet as he did this, children’s verses by the sound of it. Robertson was running the hoover. No one was attending to his own activities. As he had given Pete the excuse of a cold, he was free from his duties to Lilybet as well. She couldn’t afford to be exposed to anything that might complicate her already compromised condition. So when he called to her, “I’m stepping out, Pete. Need anything from the chemist?” she said that nothing at all was required but to please make certain he stocked up on whatever he needed for that sore throat.
He assured her that he would and set out. Not for the chemist, but for The Narrow Way. There, he went to the pawnshop at the top of the pedestrian street. He looked at the window display before going inside. It comprised, as usual, largely rings, necklaces, brooches, and watches. And of course, none of it had once belonged to Pete because Pete had never owned any in the first place.
One piece, though, caught his eye. It was an intricate, elongated, tear-shaped pendant strung upon a silver chain, something quite easily mistaken for costume jewellery. It shone splendidly beneath the special lighting in the shop window—all jewellery did—and while it might have been a marcasite piece complemented by a large teardrop blue stone and two others fashioned as sashes, Mark knew this was not the case. It was Art Deco, it was white gold, and the stones were diamonds and sapphires. Its value was beyond several thousand pounds. And it belonged to his mother.
He entered and walked directly to the counter, calling out for Stuart. He had to call out two more times when Paulie’s brother-in-law did not quickly appear. Finally, he emerged from the back of the shop, a mug of tea in one hand and a piece of well-buttered toast in the other. Without preamble, Mark said to him, “Bring me the jewellery and silver she pawned. I want to see it. And don’t mess me about, Stuart. I’m not in the mood.”
Stuart didn’t bother with a hem or a haw this time. Instead, he nodded and went to the back. He was gone for more than five minutes, which made sense. He would have to remove everything from the shop’s safe. He knew what he had—or at least Paulie damn well knew—and while the pendant in the window might be mistaken for something else, there was no way Paulie would risk the entire collection in that way, on view to anyone who happened to walk by.
Mark knew there were fifteen pieces in his mother’s collection. She always chose from among them what to wear on special occasions: weddings, christenings, out to dinner for their anniversary, the ballet once a year, the opera twice. His dad had given them to her throughout the years. Mark didn’t want to consider how they’d ended up in this shop.
Stuart had four other pieces: a pair of geometric earrings fashioned from platinum and decorated with seven diamonds each; a platinum ring with a large oval jelly opal set between two chevrons fashioned with diamonds; a platinum bracelet with jade and diamonds; an azure-blue aquamarine in an emerald cut, set with diamonds in a platinum ring.
As it turned out, the piece of silver was a small, late eighteenth-century tray, of the sort upon which the well-to-do left their cards when they went calling and found the master or mistress of the house not at home. This, too, belonged to his mother. He couldn’t begin to guess what it was worth.
He said to Stuart, “This is the lot, then?”
Stuart nodded.
“Pete brought it to the shop?”
Stuart swallowed, the sound so loud that a frog could have been croaking on the floor nearby. That was acknowledgement enough.
“You didn’t ask her . . . ? You didn’t wonder . . . ? Jesus, Stuart. What’s wrong with you? Put the lot of it back in the safe—including the pendant in the window—and don’t sell any of it. I don’t care if the bloody Prince of Wales walks in and wants to strike a deal. Understand me?” And when Stuart nodded, “And don’t tell Paulie I was here.”
Stuart nodded again, and Mark left the shop. He walked the length of The Narrow Way to St. Augustine Tower. There he turned into the route that led across the gardens within St. John at Hackney Churchyard. It was blazing hot, so there was little movement within the garden and the only sound was the voices of children at play—heroically, considering the temperature—beyond the wall that sheltered the church. He went past the café, where the air was redolent of frying meat, and from there into Sutton Place.
His mother answered his knock at the door. She smiled, saying, “Boyko! I thought I heard something. I’d just come inside for fizzy water or I would have missed you altogether.” She inclined her head towards the back of the house, saying, “We’re just in the back garden, Esme and I. She’ll be that happy to see you.”
“No Dad?” he asked.
“Our Eileen’s taken him to be fitted for hearing aids, thank the Lord. If I had to spend another week shouting at the man just to be heard I might have murdered him. Go on out to say hello to Esme. I’ll fetch you a fizzy water as well.”
“That can wait,” he said. “It’s you I’ve come to see.”
“Me?” Clearly, she read something in his expression because she said, “It’s not Lilybet, is it?”
“It’s Pete,” he said.
Her hand went to her throat. He wondered if all women did that when preparing for what they expected to be bad news, as a way of warding off a coming blow. “She’s not . . . ? What’s happened?”
“She’s taken some of your jewellery: five of the Art Deco pieces. I mean to get them back for you. Considering what she probably got for them, it’ll take some time but—”
“You’re not thinking Pete has stolen from me.”
“She’s taken the jewellery and that silver calling card tray to Paulie’s upper shop in The Narrow Way. I’ve just been. I’d found a pawn ticket in her bag, see. I wanted to know . . . I had some ideas . . . It doesn’t matter. Stuart showed me.”
“He shouldn’t have done. That’s very naughty of him.”
“I didn’t give him much choice, Mum.”
“Still, he shouldn’t have told you or showed you. It’s a private matter.”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“Obviously, I knew she’d taken the pieces to the shop.”
“You knew?” He frowned. “Are you in trouble, Mum?”
“What sort of trouble would I be in?”
“Money trouble, you and Dad.”
Her gaze shifted from him to the window. Through its panes he could see Esme spooning compost into a pile of potting soil that stood on the outdoor table. She used a trowel to mix it well, and then began loading a clay pot with the enriched soil.
Mark said, “Look. If there’s money trouble, Mum, I can help out. We’ve not got a pile of ready cash, but there’s no need to pawn your jewellery. Besides, Dad gave it you. It’s got sentimental value as well. And you meant it all to go to Esme eventually, didn’t you?”
She said, “It was just time. Everything has its season, Boyko.”
“So it is money trouble.”
Floss licked her lips and turned her gaze back to him. She said, “There’s no money trouble. And there are pieces left for Esme. You’re to have no fears on either score.”
“Then why did Pete . . .”
He watched as misshapen red blotches began to appear on his mother’s throat and on her chest where her flowery summer blouse was open at the collar to form a V. He said, “Pete needed the money, not you.”
She said nothing. She merely rolled one of the bottles of fizzy water against her palm. Esme, Mark saw, was heading for the door, no doubt wondering why her gran was so long about fetching the fizzy water. He needed to finish this conversation before she came into the house.
He said, “What was it for? Mum, why did Pete need money? Why would she come to you and not to me?”
The door was opening as Floss Phinney said quickly, “I phoned her. We spoke. I gave it to her. More than that, Pete will have to tell you.”
“Uncle Mark!” Esme cried as she stepped inside. “Come and see what Gran and I are planting. It’s gonna be gor-gee-us in October, isn’t it, Gran?”
“Not if we don’t get it all planted,” her grandmother replied. “Nothing grows where nothing’s planted. Best remember that, Esme.”
DEPTFORD
SOUTH-EAST LONDON
To Tani’s surly, “Where’re we going, then?” Deborah responded with, “Deptford.”
“Wha’s in Deptford? No. Don’t say. I c’n answer. Nothing’s in bloody Deptford.”
Simisola said, “Tani, that’s rude!”
“We need to find Mum,” was his reply.
He wasn’t happy and Deborah couldn’t blame him. Not only did he find himself part of a household of white people, he also didn’t see his remit as swanning about with some white lady in her nearly new Vauxhall Corsa. He saw his remit as finding his mother. Anything short of that rendered him impotent. Deborah would have left him in Chelsea, but Simon had departed for Middle Temple to meet with a silk who was doing duty as the Crown Prosecutor, and her father had gone to do the shop for dinner. She knew it was a fairly sure bet that if Tani had remained in Chelsea with only his promise to stay where he was, he’d vanish five minutes after her departure with Simisola.
