Something to hide, p.60
Something to Hide, page 60
“Yes,” she said. “I would have tried for a meeting during the day, but she had none. She had only the evening, so that’s what I took and that’s where I’ve been when I said I was with Greer. I made the appointment at the same time and on the same day as I’d meet with Greer. I told her—Greer—that I couldn’t manage meeting her for a while, at least not in the evening and not while you were so busy. She doesn’t know where I’ve been, though. You mustn’t think she ever did.”
This wasn’t getting them closer to the truth, though. He pressed her with, “The police know you’ve been to Streatham. You’re on CCTV where Teo lived. She came to the door to speak with you. At some point you’re going to have to tell the truth. I’d be that grateful, Pete, if you’d start with me.”
She was silent. She lowered her head and seemed to be studying the tops of her white trainers. Finally, she said, “I know I told you that I wouldn’t be bothered by it, by what you did because of how I am. But I found that wasn’t the truth.”
“You must mean with my finding someone for sex, that you wouldn’t be bothered by that.”
She nodded. Still she didn’t look at him. She said, “At first I wasn’t. How could I be? That wouldn’t have been either right or fair. And how could I be angry and how could I blame you when I’d told you to take care of yourself. I just didn’t think, ever, that . . . Then there she was and I knew everything was different and it would stay different unless I did something.”
“About Teo?” His throat was tight. It was difficult for him to manage the words. The music resumed in the sitting room. The audiobook, it seemed, had very brief chapters. He was suddenly afraid that she might walk out, leaving him once again in the dark so that she could see to Lilybet, but she didn’t move.
Instead she said, “About me, not Teo. This therapist, Mark. It’s . . . She’s the kind of therapist who takes people with problems . . . with issues. Like mine. Your mum found her.”
“My mum?”
“She knew. She knows. You must have said something at some point and I don’t blame you for that. Because that’s what sent your mum on a”—she looked up and gave a small, sad smile—“a mission, I think. She gave me the name and the number and she said not to worry because she would pay and if I could ever return the money, that was fine, and if I could never return the money, that was also fine. So I rang for an appointment but she—the therapist?—only sees people whose problem isn’t physical. I mean, it doesn’t have a physical cause. If there’s a physical cause, she won’t take the patient. So one sees a GP first and if there’s nothing physically wrong, one is referred. It’s not on NHS, though. Your mum knew that. Well, it wouldn’t be, would it.”
He put together everything she’d said since they’d first begun talking. That his mother knew, that his mother wanted to help make it more understandable. He said, “Pete, are you seeing someone about sex?”
She dropped her head again. But having done so, she also nodded. She was fingering the seam on her jeans, working a thread loose, pinching and tugging it. She looked small and sad and tired, like someone who’d been carrying a burden alone, unwilling to ask for help. He felt what he hadn’t expected to feel as the outcome of this conversation. He felt his heart open, and something of himself flowed towards her. He couldn’t identify what it was, exactly. Love? Empathy? Sadness? Loss? He only knew she’d been by herself in the dark, while he’d been too consumed not only by need but also by a hundred and one unspoken feelings, the existence of which he’d long denied.
He said to her, “Pete, you never had to—”
“I know that.” She looked up then. “But I just didn’t want to be that person any longer. I wanted to stop being so afraid all the time. It’s eaten me up inside till there’s almost nothing left of the me who was me, the woman you loved. It’s felt like a slow disappearing, and I was just so tired—”
He crossed to her. He touched her hair. “Loved and still love, Pete,” he said. When she didn’t move away, he put his arms round her and drew her to him.
She rested her head against his chest. “I’m trying to find the way back to you,” she told him.
“Ah, girl,” he said in return. “Good God, Pete, what courage you have.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Let’s find our way back to each other, Pete. Let’s discover together if we can do that.”
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
All the way back to New Scotland Yard from Bethnal Green, they talked about the case: the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the evidence, the lack thereof, the suspects, the motives, and the question of access. During all this, Barbara waited. She wanted to see if Lynley was going to bring up the subject that needed to be brought up between them. She wanted to know if she was the one who was going to have to broach it. She was about to do so as he pulled into his parking bay, and said, “Hang on, Barbara, if you don’t mind.”
She was desperate for a fag, but she remained in the car. She glanced in his direction and saw that he was watching her, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel of the Healey Elliott. He seemed to be thinking so she let him think.
He finally said, “I want to explain the flowers.”
“No. You want to excuse,” she replied.
“I want to tell you the reason.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Of course there’s a difference. I have no excuse for doing it. An excuse would be ‘I meant them to be sent to my mother for her birthday, but somehow they came here by mistake.’ ”
“With my name on them. Oh bloody yeah, I see how that could’ve happened.”
“I’m just using my mother’s birthday as an example, Barbara. I think you know that.”
“And was it her birthday?”
“No. Of course not. But that’s hardly the point.”
“What is the point, then, when it’s home with its mother?”
“Dorothea’s the point.”
Barbara frowned at him. He had an expression on his face that indicated she was supposed to be following some kind of impeccable logic that he was laying before her.
He went on with, “We talked about it, you and I. You mentioned Charlie temporarily playing the role of your suitor so that Dorothea—”
“My ‘suitor’? We’re not living inside a Jane Austen novel last time I looked, Inspector.”
“A gentleman caller. Your lover. Your boyfriend. Why does boyfriend sound so strange? A new prospect destined to alter your life? We talked about Charlie taking up that role—I mean playing the role—so Dorothea would give you up as a project. Is any of this sounding familiar, Barbara?”
Barbara sighed. She picked up her bag and rooted out her fags and a plastic lighter. She saw his expression, and said, “I’m not bloody stupid.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Dorothea came to me and I could see that she wasn’t about to let anything go when it comes to your love life. So do you see . . . ?”
“You had someone write the note. That was cruel. That was bloody hardhearted. What was I supposed to think once I read it?”
He moved in his seat so that he was facing her more directly. He said, “That was merely to make it authentic but—”
“What a rotten thing to do.”
“Hear me out,” he said. “You were meant to arrive in advance of the flowers. I intended to take you aside and tell you to expect them and to expect the card. But they arrived first. Dorothea brought them to your desk. Then there you were and so was she and I wasn’t able . . . Christ. What a dog’s dinner I’ve made of it.”
“Too right, that,” Barbara said.
“And then you opened the card, and I saw your expression. At that point, I felt that I couldn’t tell you. Not then, at least. I should have, of course. There is no excuse. I have no excuse. But I want you to know that it wasn’t meant to . . . I didn’t mean to . . . It was all in the cause of . . .”
Barbara realised that, in the years she’d known him, she’d never seen Lynley in such a state and she’d never once heard him say anything that was less than well thought out and completely articulate. “Is that all, then?” she said to him.
“No. Of course that’s not all. I want to apologise. I want to admit how utterly stupid I was. Not only did I not think it through, I also didn’t pause to consider the effect the flowers and the card would have on you. I hurt you when I wanted to help you. It just seemed, at the time, the only way to derail Dorothea from her chosen path.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors,” she pointed out.
He thought for a moment before saying, “Yes. I am.”
“That’s somewhat reassuring, Inspector. An imperfection here and there? It always goes miles in making someone look a bit more human. Mistakes do the same.”
“At this point, I daresay you have a catalogue of my imperfections and another catalogue of my mistakes.”
“I could say the same.”
“You could do, yes.” He looked away from her for a moment, at the grey expanse of wall that served the underground car park. “But imperfections and mistakes are only part of the whole, aren’t they. And it’s the whole we connect with although, to be frank, it would be easier if we could pick and choose and build relationships only from the parts we like.” Then he put his frank brown-eyed gaze upon her again. “I’m humbled and contrite,” he told her. “Truly I am. I ask you to forgive me.”
Barbara thought about this. She thought about the damage he’d done. She came to the conclusion that the damage was to her pride alone, and like all the blows to her pride in the past, she’d get over this one if she chose to do so.
“Right,” she said. “Okay. I forgive you. Go in peace. Sin no more.” She opened the car door then and lit up her fag as she was getting out. She’d not lit up since before they’d set off for Bethnal Green. She took four deep and altogether blessed hits of the cigarette.
Lynley, out of the car as well, said, “You’ve got to give that up, Barbara. It’s going to kill you if you don’t.”
“Can’t,” she said.
“Whyever not? I was able.”
“It’s not that,” she said, going for hit number five.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t want to lose any of my imperfections.”
He laughed. Together they headed for the lift, Lynley careful to stay out of the contrail she was creating. She dropped the fag, crushed it out with the toe of her high-top trainer, picked up the dog end, and stowed it in her bag. Lynley’s phone dinged. He took it from his jacket pocket. He read the message and said, “We’re wanted.”
“Oh God, not Hillier,” Barbara said.
“It’s Winston. One of the DCs just texted him. She’s found a bit of CCTV footage. She wants us to take a look at it.”
“Has Winston seen it?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Where is he, then?”
“Coming from Brixton.”
The lift arrived in silence and its doors slid open. Soon enough they were back with the team, and the DC in question—name tag identifying her as June Taylor—was waiting for them. Winston had sent her a message as well, so she was ready with the footage. She said, “It might be nothing at all, but DS Bontempi—in her African clothes—is in it so I reckoned you might want to see it.”
“We do,” Lynley said. “What’s the location?”
“More of Kingsland High Street. It comes from the day the clinic was raided. She must have been watching from somewhere nearby.”
“Close to the clinic?”
“Some number of buildings away, from what I can tell. On the High Street but not terribly close to the clinic.”
“And you’re certain . . . ?”
“Certain that it’s DS Bontempi? Oh yes. I’m totally certain, sir.”
The footage was high quality, identifying itself as having come from one of the Met’s security cameras. DC Taylor had stopped it and refocused it on two figures in a conversation. They spoke for two minutes and forty-three seconds, DC Taylor said. This particular still shot of their talking was fifty-two seconds into it.
DS Bontempi, operating as Adaku Obiaka, was unmistakable not only by her clothing and her headgear but also by her height and stature. She was caught in the act of speaking to the other figure in the footage, another woman. She was dressed in black, she was much smaller than the detective sergeant, and she was white.
Barbara leaned into the screen as did Lynley. Lynley asked DC Taylor to move the footage slowly forward, which she was able to do. A woman with a toddler in a pushchair glided by, as did three men dressed for a building site. Teo Bontempi and her companion moved out of their way, and in doing so the companion’s face was captured perfectly by the CCTV camera.
Barbara drew a breath and said, “Bloody hell in a bun.”
“Do you recognise her?” Lynley asked.
“That’s Philippa Weatherall,” she said.
15 AUGUST
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
The plan for the day was, as before, that Monifa would go with Alice to the café. There were several recipes that interested Detective Sergeant Nkata’s mother, and she believed they would be popular with those of her customers who were African born. She had the ingredients for at least four snack dishes. They could, she told Monifa, begin with alkaki. She revealed that in anticipation of this, late the previous afternoon while Monifa was visiting her children, she had prepared the wheat and the yeast, and the mixture had sat—covered—for the required ten hours. She happily continued, saying that she also wanted to learn how to make donkwa. She’d read about its popularity as a street food, and since Alice N’s offered takeaway food, she believed this too would be something that would sell quite well.
Monifa had no doubts about Alice’s enthusiasm. Indeed, she could almost picture herself joining Alice N’s as a permanent part of the establishment. Alice had, after all, suggested cooking lessons as a way for Monifa to establish a new life for herself and her children. But Alice was of a different culture, so things that seemed simple and logical to her were neither simple nor logical for a woman like Monifa.
Still, Monifa agreed to the plan. There was little else she could do at this juncture. She was in a waiting mode and had no power to change that. She did say, however, “These are so simple, alkaki and donkwa. You do not need me to guide you, Alice.”
“But I want you to guide me,” Alice responded. “Tabby and her mum will watch as well. We’ll sell them from the market stall at first and if they can be made at home—”
“They can. They are so very simple.”
“—then Tabby’s mum can have them ready when she opens the stall in the mornings. Jewel, is it safe for Monifa to be at the café today?”
“Long ’s Abeo’s being held, yeah.” He was just coming out of the bedroom Monifa was using, where he’d excused himself from their breakfast to dress for the day since Benjamin Nkata was working an extra shift in less than an hour and had taken up occupancy of the bathroom. “But charges need to be filed to keep him there, innit.” The detective sergeant gave Monifa a meaningful look. He said to her, “We need to talk that over, you ’n’ me.”
Monifa had known this would be coming. She was the only person Abeo had touched at the St. Jameses’ house. Even if she made a report, though, she had no idea if Abeo would be charged for what he’d done to her, his wife. Since his assault of her had ended within seconds, was there truly anything sufficient to keep him out of her way and away from Tani and Simisola? And if she did agree to make a report against her husband, what would he do in return? And who would suffer afterwards?
She nodded, though, and kept her thoughts to herself. She said, “Yes. I understand.”
Nkata smiled and nodded in turn, then said, “Tha’s good. Now, have you shown Mum those pictures of your kids? I ’spect she’d like to see ’em, specially Simisola,” and to his mother, “Deborah St. James—you recall her, yes?—she did three pictures that Monifa’s got. I want to see ’em ’s well.”
Monifa reckoned he’d made the request simply to get her out of earshot so that he could speak quietly to his mother. She wasn’t wrong. For as she was fetching the manila envelope of photos she heard the murmur of their voices and she caught the sound of the name Zawadi, so she knew they were talking about the protection order as well as the passports. She reckoned, then, that Zawadi had made her phone call to Sergeant Nkata, just as he’d spoken about to Tani on the previous afternoon.
She returned to them with the manila envelope, and she drew from it the three pictures she’d been given. She handed them to Alice, saying, “They are my life’s true blessings.”
Handsome and so sweet were the words Alice used. She passed the photos one by one to her son, who also admired them, saying, “That Simisola . . . She’s something special.”
“This is so true,” Monifa said. “Everyone who meets her sees this.”
Nkata was gazing upon the final photo his mother had handed him. He cocked his head as he examined it, but his features became puzzled and his smile faded. He looked up and said to Monifa, “Did she say where these pictures got took?”
“I did not ask,” Monifa replied. “Should I have asked? Is something wrong?”
He drew his eyebrows together, but he said, “No. Nothin’s wrong. Tha’s not it. But c’n I take this? Just this one and I’ll bring it back to you soon’s I can?”
She nodded. She handed him the manila envelope to protect the picture when it was in transit, wherever he was taking it.
