Something to Hide, page 27
She concluded by saying, “Leylo’s husband has never seen the damage, you know. It’s not unusual for women to be unwilling to allow it. In Yasir’s case, he knows what was done to his wife and what the physical results were. But as to the visual, no.”
“D’you find that common?”
“Very. The women are often both shamed and ashamed. The shaming is done by those people within their culture who tell them they have to be cut. Then they become ashamed.”
“Of their bodies.”
“Yes.”
“Even though it’s not their fault? I don’t expect any one of them has chosen to be cut up.”
“It has nothing to do with choice. It has to do with comparison, and comparison starts when they finally see what a whole woman looks like.”
EMPRESS STATE BUILDING
WEST BROMPTON
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
After the team’s regular morning meeting, Mark Phinney went up to the Orbit. His claim was a belated breakfast. He knew that he would be believed because the other officers were aware of Lilybet’s disabilities and how often her condition called for an alteration in his daily schedule, with breakfast being part of that schedule. Thus when he told DS Hopwood, “You’ll know where to find me, Jade,” she looked up from her computer and gave him a friendly nod. “I could do with a coffee when you’ve finished,” she told him. “No hurries, though, guv.”
He offered a smile. It was a weary one, produced with effort. He liked Jade. It was not her fault that she did not match up to who Teo had been.
He had no real appetite, but for appearances, he bought a mass-produced biscotti wrapped in plastic that he could pretend he intended to open. Along with it, he purchased a coffee: nothing fancy, nothing possessing a foreign name, but a good old coffee—white—into which he dumped a packet of sugar. He took this to one of the windows, and he tried not to think of the last time he’d been here with Teo. He failed at the effort.
He’d brought her up from the seventeenth floor to unveil the news of her transfer. He’d done so with the belief—foolhardy as it might have been—that she would not do what she could have done, which was to turn him over to those who dealt with allegations of sexual harassment, sexual impropriety, sexual anything at all as long as the adjective sexual was applied to it. He would have been guilty of every single term she might have chosen to use. The fact that he could not and had not been able to escape sexual when it came to Teo was largely why he knew he had to pull whatever strings necessary to place her far, far away from him.
From the first, it had been impossible for him to ignore her sensual power, although she never used it. She had, in fact, done absolutely nothing but her job. She was a member of his team and she was passionate about their work, full stop. But she was not passionate about her superior officer, and he fully intended to keep his distance from her. He told himself he could admire her: the skin, the hair, the eyes, the hands, the arms, the legs, the lips, the . . . He couldn’t, he couldn’t think of her breasts and the dip of her waist and the shape of her arse. He couldn’t think of what he didn’t have with Pete and what he wanted and what it meant about him if he made the wrong move.
And yet he finally did just that: he made the wrong move. It was an after-hours knees-up at the local, something he occasionally suggested for everyone on the team, plus a few extras from Empress State Building joining them. Teo went along. He hadn’t sat with her, nor had he sat near her. Neither of them ended up drunk. They’d become tipsy, perhaps, but not to the degree that one’s laughter was a bit too loud, that an inappropriate joke or comment seemed perfectly in order. Neither of them was tipsy enough even to place a hand on a shoulder, let alone to put it where it never would have been mistaken for a gesture between friends. The hour was late, though, and as Teo didn’t have her car and as her journey to Streatham from West Brompton on public transport would be a long one, and as he did have a car, it seemed polite to tell her he would drive her to her flat. It was not a problem, he did say, despite the fact that he lived in the opposite direction.
So he’d taken her there, to Streatham, to her flat. They’d spoken on the way and they’d spoken upon their arrival. All of it was business . . . until it wasn’t. And that was down to him. She was so intelligent, she was so beautiful there in the darkness with part of her face lit from a street lamp near the car, she was so female, she was . . . she simply was. Still he intended nothing.
After a few minutes of business talk, she’d thanked him graciously for seeing her home, she’d said goodnight, she’d reached for the door handle, and he said her name. Just “Teo . . . ?” and she turned back to him and he felt something break inside his mind and attack whatever sensibility he had left. He had a moment of do not do this, but like all moments, it did not last.
He kissed her. She let him. The kiss went on. He had to touch her. Just her breast, he thought, just long enough to feel the gratifying sensation of her nipple hardening beneath his fingers. Would that be doing too much or asking too much or wanting too much in a situation like his in which he had nothing? Or so he asked himself.
These sorts of things never ended well. He knew that now and he’d known that then, but he had not cared to speculate upon the fact. He’d only acknowledged that he wanted her and he’d convinced himself that if he had her just once in the way he wanted to have her, that would be enough.
It might have been, but she would not allow it. He’d assumed—like the idiot he was—that her refusal was about power and control. If she did not submit, she had the power, and as such, she controlled whatever happened between them, no matter what his passion dictated or where his animal instincts tried to lead. In all of this, he’d seen only his need and her determination—as he named it—not to meet his need. In all of this, he’d completely failed to see that there was something she did not want him to know, let alone to see or to touch. It was only in her death that he understood, and only her murder had made it possible.
He’d tried to explain to her that her transfer from the job she loved and did so well had nothing to do with her unwillingness to give him access to her body in the way he was desperate to have. It was her very presence, he’d said. It was the fact that he couldn’t think straight, that when she was in the room with him or when they were in a meeting together or when he saw her at her desk or speaking to someone on the phone or standing at the copier machine or anything at all, he could no longer properly do his job. He’d asked her to try to understand what it was like for him. He had not bothered to advance his own knowledge about what it was like for her.
She’d said, “Why don’t you request a transfer, then? Having me transferred is sexual harassment, Mark.”
He’d replied, “You can go that route. I hope you don’t, but I know you can.”
She’d said, “It would be a completely different situation if I had you in my bed, wouldn’t it? There’d be no transfer.”
He’d said, “Teo, please. Try to understand.”
To which she’d bitterly replied, “I’d’ve had you in my bed and you’d’ve had what you want. And off you’d’ve gone to your wife afterwards and what sort of life would either of us have then?”
What he’d thought then was how it always came down to this moment when one strayed outside the culturally and religiously imposed boundary of marriage. It always came down to one of the individuals wanting more and the other unwilling or unable to give it. What he’d told himself was that he should have known it would come to this moment, and he’d put his entire career on the line, and if he couldn’t somehow smooth over the entire situation he would have thrown everything away because he’d wanted her in a way that she clearly did not want him. He’d been and he still was a fool.
She’d left him then—alone in the Orbit as he was now—and he’d waited for her to make a move against him. But instead she’d departed quietly, as he’d obliquely requested. She’d given him that. She’d worked to bring Jade up to speed, she’d completed the action she’d begun in Kingsland, and after requesting a few days to sort herself out before reporting to her new job, she’d gone from his life.
Only she hadn’t, apparently. Not entirely.
He set his smartphone on the coffee table and he stared at it for a very long moment before he accessed his texts. He saw the trail he hadn’t wanted to see, one he hadn’t wanted to believe might even exist.
I think of you. It’s mad. I can’t stop
It can’t be over. I know how you feel. I know how I feel
I dreamed of us. I was searching for you. I couldn’t find you. Please. Will you see me?
Darling to be inside you once more once more
She’d not responded to any of them. But in the end, that had not mattered.
From his pocket he removed the rectangular, sturdy little ticket that he’d found. He placed it next to his smartphone. He’d needed some money that morning and he’d not had the time to stop at a cashpoint. So he fished in Pete’s bag, calling to her as she changed Lilybet’s nappy that he was taking two twenties. She called back to him, “That’s fine, Mark. You know where to find them,” and so he had. The ticket was tucked at the back of the notes.
He’d known at once what it was. He’d seen tickets such as this one all his life. Beige, they were, printed with a row of four numbers, serrated at the top for easy removal from a companion ticket upon which would be written a name, a date, an amount, and a generic description. Neatly filed away, this would be. Easy to locate when called upon to do so.
He wanted to rip it into pieces and to toss those pieces into the rubbish. It would be so easy to do it, there in the Orbit, which was, he forced himself to admit, what he’d intended to do when he’d come up to the building’s top floor with its spectacular views of the city he had bound himself to protect and to serve, as one among many, some of whom had given their lives doing their duty.
He took the ticket from his pocket, and he felt its near weightlessness in his palm as well as the burn of its presence. He considered the possible implications attendant to where he’d found it. He thought about loyalty. He thought about obligation. He compared both of these to responsibility.
Finally he stood and took up his smartphone. He put it into his pocket, and he left the Orbit. The ticket and what it meant went with him.
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
When Barbara Havers arrived at New Scotland Yard from her meeting with Ross Carver, she joined Lynley and Nkata in the former’s office. It turned out that Lynley had managed to corral two DCs from one of his colleagues, in this case DI Hale. This was all done on the down low, he explained to Barbara and Nkata. Assistant Commissioner Hillier was of the belief that having two detective sergeants—Barbara and Winston—should equate to having four DCs, and four DCs should be more than enough to deal with this matter of murder. This, from a man who’d never investigated a murder in his entire career.
Lynley assigned the DCs to Nkata. They would join in the thankless and wearisome task of viewing the CCTV footage. Their objective: to isolate the images of any faces of individuals ringing for entry into the building in which Teo Bontempi had lived, as well as to note down the number plates on cars captured by CCTV on the two closest businesses across the road from that building. Had there been an ANPR camera in the immediate vicinity, this would have been the easiest of all their activities relating to the death of Teo Bontempi, as the ANPR system offered real-time data on cars and their number plates. Since they had only CCTV available, however, the number plates would be sent to Swansea for identification. It was anyone’s guess whether joy would be produced from faces seen on CCTV or number plates captured by the camera, but watching what was available from the cameras had to be done.
For his part, Lynley had finally dug up a name that went with the mobile number given to him by DS Jade Hopwood at Empress State Building. The phone was the possession of one Easter Lange.
It hadn’t taken him long to work out why this name sounded familiar, he told them. Easter Lange was also the name of the woman who had been arrested in Kingsland when the Stoke Newington coppers had descended upon Women’s Health of Hackney. Easter wasn’t a name one stumbled upon often. So when the putative owner of a mobile having a number that Teo Bontempi had passed along to Jade Hopwood turned out to be someone called Easter Lange, Lynley had sought out the reports made by the officers who’d arrested the two women at the clinic. There she was at the top.
She’d been taken to the Stoke Newington police station in the company of a woman called Monifa Bankole, who’d been present with her daughter at the clinic when the police had arrived, Lynley explained. Both Easter Lange and Monifa Bankole had undergone a few hours of questioning, but this had proved useless. However, now this same Easter Lange had a connection to a dead woman, and that needed to be dealt with.
“How have you done with the CCTV footage so far?” he asked Nkata, who was leaning against the door jamb.
“Frozen treacle,” was how he put it. “Don’t think this’s the best use of my time, guv.”
“Leave it to the DCs, going forward.” Lynley looked over the top of his reading specs. “You’re going to be needed elsewhere.” He gestured to the report and said, “Monifa Bankole, address in Dalston. Since Teo Bontempi was gathering information about this clinic prior to her transfer, Monifa Bankole wants talking to.”
Nkata took the address with a grateful nod. He said, “Anything else as to the CCTV?”
“Have the DCs send any moderately decent images to tech for improvement. Otherwise everything remains the same.”
“Will do,” he said, and began to leave when Barbara interrupted with, “Hang on. I’ve met Rosie Bontempi.”
She gave them chapter and verse on her encounter with Ross Carver and his sister-in-law. She pointed out the two facts that she saw as salient: Rosie appeared to have taken issue with her brother-in-law’s spending the night with her sister. And somehow Rosie had known that Ross would be at the Streatham flat that morning. Barbara concluded with, “She tells the same story she told Winston about the argument heard by Teo’s neighbours, sir, but I’m smelling something and it isn’t roses.”
“You’re thinking the two of them might be involved?” Lynley asked.
“Not necessarily with the murder.”
“With each other? The husband and the sister?”
“If they’re not, I wager she wants them to be. Why else give a toss that he spent the night there? Why give a toss where he spent the night at all?”
Lynley looked at Nkata. “What do you think?”
“We prob’ly need to have another go,” he said. “I don’ like to think she killed her sister, though.”
“Did she get to you?” Barbara asked him, and, as he began to reply, “I’m not accusing, by the way. I’ve got the feeling she’s on autopilot when it comes to pulling men.”
“She is, that,” Nkata agreed. “But I don’ see as she has a reason to hurt her sister. They were splitting up, Teo an’ Carver. He was due to be a free man, innit.”
“Except according to Carver, Teo wanted to have a natter with him,” Barbara said. “That’s why he went there.”
“But we jus’ got his word on that, right?”
“Right. Yes. Till we put our hands on her mobile. But the fact is, we’ve just got everyone’s word on everything, don’t we?”
“No one’s been crossed off the list,” Lynley noted. “Back to business, then. Barbara, you’ll come with me.”
THE NARROW WAY
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
They were stretched thin as it was, so Barbara wondered why Lynley wanted her company. When it turned out they were headed for a Marks & Spencer, though, she reckoned his lordship was in terror that his very lordshipness would not survive the polluting atmosphere of that establishment should he go inside solo. At least, that was the thought with which she entertained herself. And she needed something for entertainment, not to mention distraction. For Lynley’s motor—circa 1948—had no air-conditioning to ameliorate the summer heat, and he’d given her the stink eye when, despite knowing full well the answer in advance, she’d asked him if she could have a smoke as they drove.
Once those issues had been dealt with, he asked her how the sketching was going.
At first she was clueless until she recalled GroupMeet or GroupGrope or whatever the bloody hell it was called, along with Dorothea Harriman’s intention to involve her in it. The sketching, she informed Lynley, wasn’t going at all. At least not yet. To this she added, “And if I have my way, it never will. Why does she think I need a love life, sir? Do I look like I need a love life? And what does someone who needs a love life look like anyway? And how the bloody hell is sketching supposed to lead to a love life?”
“I wouldn’t presume to answer a single one of those questions,” Lynley admitted. “Obviously, I have difficulty enough in the love-life area myself.”
Barbara harrumphed. “I need someone to pose as my lover, I do.” She thought of her acquaintances, most of whom were her fellow cops. Then she had it. “What about Charlie Denton, sir? D’you think he’d be up for the job? It could take a massive amount of acting, ’course. But on the other hand, there’s every chance that a little sighing along with flowers and boxes of chocolates and looking at me with cow eyes could do the trick. Dee’s not met him, has she? He’s not been round to see you at work, right? Of course, there is the problem of Denton not being my type, but p’rhaps we can get round that some way.” When Lynley didn’t reply, she went on with, “I mean, you do agree, right? Denton isn’t my type.”
