Something to Hide, page 54
And he hoped against hope she would do it soon.
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
Lynley’s second interview with Mercy Hart had not gone well. In fact, it had not gone anywhere. In his experience, most people who proclaimed their innocence of any wrongdoing were only too willing to speak with the police wherever and whenever the police thought it necessary, in order to clear their names. They generally were also happy to do this clearing of their names without the presence of a legal representative since they often believed that the request for a solicitor would make them look guilty, which, admittedly, it sometimes did. Thus, because they had no one present to intervene, the police could veer in any unpleasant or unrelated direction they wished to go. Mercy Hart, however, was not such a person. For their second meeting in an interview room, he found she had—in the American vernacular—lawyered up.
She had not requested the duty solicitor. Instead, she had arranged for someone from a private firm. This person was called Astolat Abbott—one of her parents obviously having been a fan of T. H. White, Thomas Mallory, or Alfred, Lord Tennyson—and she handed over her card for him to study, saying with a meaningful glance at her wristwatch, “We’re within two hours of the twenty-four you can hold my client without charging her, Inspector, unless you’ve come up with something new. I’m fairly certain you would have charged her had you anything additional to use as evidence of a crime in which Mrs. Hart is involved. From what I’ve gathered, however, the only possible charge in this situation is one of using her aunt’s identity at her place of employment and in the purchase of a mobile phone. Would you like to charge her for that so I might arrange for bail, or is there something else my client may do to assist you in your enquiries?”
As Barbara Havers might have said, there was a bloody wheelbarrow of something new, but none of it could so far be supported by anything. Mercy Hart had a motive, certainly. Teo Bontempi had put paid to her source of income, and as members of the team had discussed, she would probably have continued to do so should a clinic be set up in another location. But they could hardly charge Mercy Hart with murder without something to back up that charge, so they were left with either charging her for the crime of FGM or—should that not hold water—practising medicine without a licence. But even there, they had very little to present to the Crown Prosecution Service unless someone was willing to produce a signed statement. Again, as Havers might have put it, they were spitting into a very strong headwind.
So when he arrived at New Scotland Yard, he was the bearer of no good news. There had been nothing for it but to release her once he’d got the word from Winston Nkata that Monifa Bankole was maintaining her silence about the Kingsland High Street clinic.
Everyone was beavering away at their assignments from the previous evening’s meeting of the team. It was the sort of work that took hours of slogging. Phone calls were being made to every charity shop and consignment shop in Greater London in an effort to find the missing sculpture; Winston had sent one of the team’s DCs to speak to the removals men in order to learn the exact location to which they’d transported the clinic’s equipment and furniture so that they could alert the owner to ring the police should those items be removed; he’d also charged another DC with locating the paperwork on the lease agreement for the clinic in Kingsland High Street. Since Lynley had phoned Winston post his extremely brief conversation with Mercy Hart and given him the word, he was now—with the last DC—collecting all CCTV footage in the vicinity of the clinic in an effort to give the lie to Mercy Hart’s declaration that she’d never once spoken to Teo Bontempi: as Adaku Obiaka, as Teo Bontempi, or as anyone else.
He’d just finished speaking with Winston when Dorothea Harriman entered the room. She was carrying an embarrassingly large arrangement of seasonal flowers, which she placed with what appeared to be triumph upon Barbara Havers’s desk. She looked about, saw Lynley, and said slyly, “There’s a card! Shall I . . . ,” with a surreptitious glance for eavesdroppers or spies. “D’you think she’d mind if we sneaked a peek at the card?”
Lynley said, “I daresay we can label that as a less than profound idea, Dee.”
“But I so want to know . . .”
“Know what?” Havers asked as she entered the room. At once, she saw the flowers and stopped in her tracks. She stared. She approached her desk as if a cobra were coiled upon it. She said, “What is this?” and looked round at them suspiciously. “Who’s taking the mickey?”
Dorothea said, “They came only just now. Aren’t they lovely? Oh, I do wish someone would send me flowers. It’s such a romantic statement. Open the card, Barbara. There’s a card. You must open it. I have a very good feeling about who sent them.”
Havers looked at the card poking up from among a group of unidentifiable mop-like fiery orange flowers. She said, “Later.”
“But you must open it. You have to open it. You won’t open it now?”
“Won’t. But you’ll be the first to know who sent them once I read the card, which will happen later. Much later. Much, much later. Super much later.”
“Oh pooh, you can’t stand the suspense any more than I can, but I know when you’re being pigheaded.”
That said, she swiveled round on the drawing-pin-size heel of her right stiletto and left them. Havers looked at everyone remaining in the room and narrowed her eyes. “What’d you lot do, take up a collection?”
“For them?” Nkata was the one to speak. “Didn’t happen, Barb. Whoever sent them, it was no one from here. ’F I send flowers, they go to my mum and no one else, not to offend.”
“Hmph,” was her answer. She grabbed the card and opened it. She flushed straight to the roots of her hair, something Lynley had never witnessed. Nor had anyone else, because utter silence fell upon them.
Quickly, she shoved the card into her shoulder bag. She seemed to take such care to hide it that her arm went inside the bag nearly up to her elbow. Her immediate delivery of information on the case told the tale of her not wanting to be questioned. Whether she was pleased or not, it was impossible to ascertain.
Her information was all about the missing sculpture and the conversation she’d had at the gallery in Peckham. After her explanation of the source and the revelation of the limited edition that it was part of, she went on to say that she’d “tried it for size as the cosh and you can tick that box straightaway, cos anyone with two hands could’ve used it: man, woman, child, or organ grinder’s monkey. It’s tall enough and hefty enough, and if it’s not what bashed her, I’ll eat these flowers cos there’s no other reason for it to go missing. She took it with her when she left or she chucked it out of a window so she wouldn’t be caught on CCTV. She either fetched it afterwards and made a wheelie bin its next owner or she’s put it somewhere and we need to find out where.”
“The DCs are looking at charity shops and consignment shops,” Lynley reminded her.
“Wha’ about the lock-up where Mercy Hart’s got the clinic clobber stored?” Nkata said. “We need a warrant to get into it, but tha’s not a problem.”
“Damn thing could be anywhere,” one of the DCs pointed out.
“Could be but isn’t,” Havers said sharply. “Look, we’ve got our suspects. You ask me, we check the boots of their cars, where their spare tyres are kept, the back of their clothes cupboards, under their beds, inside every box we come across. We know it’s a woman, we know—”
“We know Ross Carver claimed it’s a woman,” Lynley reminded her. “It’s only his word telling us what Teo Bontempi ostensibly said when he found her.”
“You’re not saying he’s the one beat in her head, are you?” Havers said. “Guv, he’s got no bloody reason to kill her, not one I can see. If you’re looking for motives, seems to me Rosie has the best: she’s in the family way and Ross is part of that family. Plus, Teo would’ve let her in the building straightaway, no questions asked. What did she have to fear from her own sister, ’specially since Teo hadn’t told her what the surgery was for.”
“Which is, as we know, according to Rosie,” Lynley pointed out. “So let’s get back to what we can see with our eyes. We’ve seen the Streatham CCTV from the night she was attacked. We know there’s a woman in dark clothes and a hoodie who was careful to be unidentifiable from the building’s camera. We know she entered with a group that she was not a part of, and we know she didn’t come out the way she went in. She doesn’t live there or she would have identified herself—or been identified—when the photographs were taken round the building. I think that’s where we start.”
“But we’ve been there, sir,” Havers said. “And everything you just said applies perfectly to Rosie.”
“I think we’re missing something,” Lynley told her. “Our remit now is to uncover what the something is.”
THE NARROW WAY
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Lynley’s part was to speak with Paul Phinney, whose car was among those seen on one of the CCTV cameras in Streatham High Road on the evening of the day that Ross Carver had gone to his estranged wife and found her collapsed on the floor. Paul was the older brother of Mark Phinney, so the box to tick off was who, exactly, was using the car that evening. That detail seemed the connection that wanted making, unless this was the investigation’s first indication that Paul Phinney—as well as his brother—knew Teo Bontempi.
When Lynley reached Paul Phinney’s place of employment, the pawnshop was locked. There was, however, a hand-lettered Be Back Directly sign posted in the window, so Lynley walked across to the McDonald’s on The Narrow Way and purchased a coffee—so scaldingly hot that its scent was cleverly disguised by the amount of steam rising from the brew—which he took to one of the few tables inside the place. This allowed him to sit at the window, from which he could see the comings and goings at Phinney Pawn.
Directly did not, apparently, mean what it implied when it was used in the language of Paul Phinney, as Lynley discovered. His coffee had cooled enough to drink by the time the pawnshop showed a sign of life. This sign of life, however, wasn’t the return of Paul Phinney. Rather the sign of life belonged to a woman, and she was leaving the shop, not returning to it.
Lynley could see that behind her, still in the shop itself, was a man, and the two of them shared a laugh and a quick kiss at the door. The woman went up The Narrow Way after that. Lynley watched her till she reached what looked like an old church tower. There she turned right and disappeared from view.
He tossed the remainder of his coffee into the bin and crossed over to Phinney Pawn. He entered and was struck by the strong scent of peach air freshener. He caught sight of Paul Phinney, who was employing it more liberally than one would have considered strictly necessary unless the rotting corpse of something had this morning been discovered in the storage room. It was from there that Phinney seemed to be laying a trail of the stuff into the shop.
When Lynley said his name, Phinney stopped his spraying, stood straight, hastily rearranged his hair, and said, “Sorry. Didn’t hear you. Can I help?”
“I’ve been waiting for your return,” Lynley told him. “Across the way at McDonald’s.” He took out his warrant card and presented it, adding, “I hope this is a convenient time.”
Phinney gazed upon the card and said, “Sorry about the wait. My wife stopped by for a quick . . . conversation. About our son. I expect you know how these things can go. Families. Discussions. Matters can get bloody well heated, eh? Well, they tend to do with me and Eileen. Heated. You know.”
The fact that he was explaining at all suggested to Lynley that whoever the woman was, she and Phinney had not been engaged in earnest conversation about anyone. But he wasn’t here to deal with the ins and outs of the Phinney marriage. Instead, he said, “Your car was captured by CCTV camera on Streatham High Road as it drove by a block of flats across the way from a funeral director’s. A police detective was attacked in her flat in the building. This was on July thirty-first. Can you tell me anything about that?”
“I don’t know any police detective,” Phinney said. “I mean, not a woman detective. What was the date you said?”
Lynley repeated it. Phinney frowned. He said, “We none of us have a reason to be in Streatham, far as I know. ’Course, my Eileen could be having it on with some bloke over there, but that’s not likely. That was her leaving just now, like I said, and she and I . . . ? We keep each other fairly busy in that department, plus we’ve got four kids in the bargain. She’s not got much free time. Hour here, half hour there. I don’t see her driving to Streatham and I sure as bloody hell’ve never been there myself. I probably couldn’t get there even with a road map. Or a GPS, for that matter.”
“Someone else with access to your car?”
“My mum has a set of keys. She and Dad live across from us, they do. She knows she can take the car if she needs it, but even then, I can’t think why she’d be going to Streatham. And she’d ask me or Eileen first anyway.” He was quiet, frowning down at a glass display case holding a large collection of hand-painted enamel trinket boxes. He’d remembered something. Lynley could see it in the way he pressed his hand, fingers splayed, against the glass.
“Someone else, then,” Lynley said. “It’s only just come to you. I do need the information, Mr. Phinney. This is merely a clearing of the books.” Which wasn’t strictly true. But it was inclined to encourage admissions.
Phinney said, “My brother borrowed it, now I think of it. His wife—Pietra—had taken theirs to meet up with a mate of hers. He needed a car so he asked could he borrow mine and would I stay with Lily till he returned.”
“On July thirty-first,” Lynley clarified.
Paul Phinney shook his head. “I couldn’t say exactly. I wasn’t paying attention. It was a simple enough request.”
“Was he gone long?”
“That I wouldn’t know,” Phinney said. “Pete got back before Mark, so I left. The car wasn’t there when Eileen and I tucked up the kids and . . . well, did a little personal business in the bedroom. But it was back there in its usual spot in the morning.”
“Did he tell you why he wanted to borrow it?”
Phinney shook his head slowly. “He may have done, but I’ve no memory of that. You’ll have to have a chat with him.”
Lynley’s intention was to do that, at once.
He knew Paul Phinney would ring his brother the moment he himself was out of sight, however, giving the DCS time to prepare mentally for what was coming. There was no help for that aside from tying and gagging the man. It was also pointless to ask him not to notify his brother, for the fact that they were brothers made an enormous difference to how they cooperated with the coppers.
PEMBURY ESTATE
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Tani knew what the real danger was, and this knowledge took him to Hackney. All three of the white people tried to talk him out of it, but he held up his mobile phone and reminded them that Joseph Cotter had made certain that Tani had the number of his own mobile. Tani set it up so that it was ready to send a message to the man with one tap of his finger, and if he sent that message, it would mean he was in danger. Joseph Cotter would ring the police.
Tani said to them, “It’s the passports. We got to get them. They got to go with the protection order. ’F we don’t snatch them away from him, no one’s safe.”
“But you’re not safe if you go back there,” Deborah St. James had said. “At least let Dad go with you.”
“That’s a good idea, Tani,” Deborah’s husband said. He gestured to his leg. Tani had already seen the metal bar that went through the heel of his shoe. It was obviously connected to a leg brace of some kind that made him walk unevenly, and the poor bloke probably couldn’t run at all. Simon went on with, “Obviously, I wouldn’t be much help if you ran into your father again. But Joseph would be.”
Simi watched them all from the lowest step on the stairs. They were in the entry of the house, and Tani had his hand on the doorknob. She said, “Please don’t go, Tani. I’m scared something bad’ll happen.”
The three white people looked at him meaningfully. Tani turned to his sister and he felt himself weakening. But this one last action had to be taken. All of them knew it at one level or another, even Simi. If someone didn’t put hands on the passports, their father’s power over them would never end. Tani said to his sister but also for the benefit of the white people, “By the time I get there, he’ll be in the market, Squeak. You know that. He lef’ the shops alone yesterday, but no way he’s doing that two days in a row.”
“Oh, please, please.” Simi clutched her hands prayerfully at her chest. From where Tani stood, he could see that her eyes were brimming.
“I got to, Squeak. An’ I’ll have my mobile. See?” He held it up for her. “I c’n get help easier ’n anything if I need it. But I’m not going to need it. He got what was due from me yesterday anyway. He won’t try again.”
Simi looked to the white people beseechingly. Joseph Cotter said, “Best idea’s for me to fetch you there and back. You got to know that, lad.”
He did and he didn’t. He understood better than any of them that his mission could turn tits-up in a very bad way. But he also understood that having a white person with him was the perfect match to set fire to the box of tinder.
They finally reached a minor compromise. Deborah would drive Tani to the underground at Victoria Station. If he took the tube north from there, he would have to change only once for the overground rail to take him to Hackney Central. The trip would be quicker.
Aside from having to cope with the hordes at Victoria Station, the journey was easy and uneventful. Tani disembarked at Hackney Central. Up The Narrow Way a few minutes from the station and he was looking at Pembury Estate.
