Something to Hide, page 59
For her part, Sophie came to join their little group. Monifa wanted to push her away, but she knew the wisdom of saying only, “I give you thanks.”
“I’m that happy to help,” Sophie said, and she added, “I’m glad to help all of you.”
“Sophie’s special,” Simisola said. “She took pictures of Tani after what happened so we could get a . . .” She screwed up her face in confusion and said, “Tani, what’d we get?”
“An urgent protection order, Squeak,” Tani told her. He then said to Monifa, “So your name doesn’t have to be on it, Mum. If anyone takes a fall from this, it’ll be me and I’ll make sure he knows it.”
Monifa didn’t want this. Tani had been through too much already. Simi had been through too much as well. She—Monifa—was meant to take the steps necessary to send her children somehow into a future that was bright with promise.
“Where’re you staying, Mummy?” Simi asked her. “Have you come to stay here?”
“I am with Sergeant Nkata’s family,” Monifa answered.
“Can’t you be with us? Deborah’s ever so nice. Oh, and this is Peach, Mummy. Tani’s been teaching her how to fetch. And I think Alaska’s in that tree. Least, that’s where he was. Alaska’s a cat. Can you stay, Mummy?”
Deborah St. James said, “You’re very welcome to stay, Mrs. Bankole.”
“Oh please, Mummy. Please.” Simi clasped her hands together beneath her chin.
The detective sergeant interposed. “Not jus’ now, Simisola. She’s teaching my own mum how to do Nigerian food, she is. We need to keep her for a bit.”
“But that’ll take forever,” Simisola said in protest.
“My mum learns real fast,” he said affably.
“And in the meantime . . .” Deborah said. “I’ve something to give your mum, Simi. D’you want to fetch it? D’you remember where it is?”
Simi gave a little gasp, loosed her grip on her mother, then clamped her hand over her mouth. Monifa could see she was stifling a smile. She couldn’t, however, quite stifle her giggle.
“Oh yes!” she cried. “Sh’ll I . . . now?”
“Please,” Deborah said. “We’ll wait right here.”
Simi trotted off in the direction of the stairs. She hopped down them and the basement’s door banged shut behind her as she entered. Deborah said to Monifa, “I’ve made something for—”
Which was when it happened. The gate swung open with a bang against the garden wall. An inarticulate cry cut into the neighbourhood’s stillness. It came from the man who charged across the lawn in their direction. Abeo had found them.
“Where is she?” he roared. He grabbed Monifa. He punched her fiercely in the temple. He dragged her in the direction of the gate. “Where’s Simisola?” he shouted. “Where’ve you taken Simisola?”
All of it happened in a matter of seconds. DS Nkata sprang into action. Three steps and he’d overtaken Abeo. He said quite clearly, “We’re not havin’ that, man,” and Monifa felt Abeo release his hold on her. Deborah and Sophie raced to her side. Tani was advancing on his father. But Nkata still had Abeo in a grip round the neck and he kept it there till Abeo sank to the ground.
Nkata fished in his pocket and brought out keys, which he passed to Tani, saying, “Red Fiesta. Jus’ up by the church. Glove box’ll have plastic cuffs inside.”
As Tani dashed out of the garden, DS Nkata brought out his mobile and punched in three numbers. Nine-nine-nine, Monifa thought. But he was the police, so—
“Mummy? Mummy!”
Simisola was back, a manila envelope dangling from her fingers. Abeo could not be allowed to see her, but Simisola saw him and she stopped in her tracks. Sophie was the one to take quick action. She raced to Simisola, scooped her up, and carried her down the stairs and into the house as DS Nkata identified himself into his phone and said, “Got a bloke with me just assaulted a woman . . . Can you . . . Yeah. Got it,” and he recited the address of the house.
Abeo stirred. He opened his eyes. He began to rise. The detective was too quick for him, though. He grabbed both of Abeo’s arms and had them behind him before Abeo had got to his knees.
“Inside the house,” the detective said to Monifa. He began to haul Abeo towards the garden gate. By the time he’d reached it, Tani was back. The last Monifa saw of them, Tani was helping put the plastic handcuffs round his father’s wrists.
CHELSEA
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
Deborah found Sophie and Simisola huddled next to the basement door when she and Monifa went inside. They’d not made it even into the kitchen. Simi was weeping as she clung to Sophie’s arm and Sophie herself looked like someone who’d managed to walk away unscathed from an accident fatal to everyone else.
Monifa grabbed her daughter, saying, “It’s over, Simi. He will not hurt you. He will not take you.”
Sophie covered her mouth with her hand. Deborah saw the girl’s gaze move towards the door to the garden and said to Monifa, “Is Tani all right?”
“He did not touch Tani. Tani helped Sergeant Nkata. The police are coming. We are . . . all of us. We are safe.”
Sophie’s voice broke as she said. “I was so careful . . . How could he have . . . He must have followed me. But I never saw him. I didn’t think. I’m so sorry, so sorry. He wanted the passports, didn’t he. He must have known. Why didn’t he just snatch them from me?”
“He wanted Simisola,” Monifa said. “The passports, of course. But they are useless to him without Simisola.”
The door opened and Tani entered. He said, “He’s in the front. The detective . . . Sergeant Nkata’s got him. They’re waiting for the police.”
Monifa said, “But he is the police. Why can he not . . . ?”
“He said it’s safer for a patrol cop to do it,” Tani said. “But I think he doesn’t want to leave us.”
They were indeed alone in the house, or at least as alone as five people could be, Deborah thought. Simon wasn’t there and neither was her father. And although there were five of them should something more happen at this point, they’d all just had their nerves shattered by Abeo’s sudden appearance in the garden and by his attack upon Monifa. She was grateful that Winston had taken the decision to stay with them.
Still, she excused herself for a moment and rang Simon, merely to have the comfort of his voice. He’d left them that morning for a meeting to do with the family’s business in Southampton. His intention had been to spend two nights in order to see his brothers and their families as well as his mother.
“I’ll come home straightaway,” he told her now, as soon as she told him what had happened. “Where’s your father?”
“No, no,” Deborah said. “No need to come back. We’re fine now, Simon. Dad’s not here. I think he’s doing the shop for dinner. But Winston’s with us—he’s just outside waiting for the police to come for Simi’s father—and if we’re not safe with Winston, we’re not safe with anyone. I . . . it’s childish. I just wanted to hear your voice.” She added after a brief pause, “I do love you, Simon.” It seemed silly but at the same time necessary to tell him so.
They both knew the underlying truth of the matter although neither of them would ever speak it. Had he been with them, there was very little he could have done to stop a man like Abeo Bankole—in a rage that gave him enormous strength.
He said, “And I you, always. Will you ring your father? I’ll be easier about what’s happened if I know he’s with you.”
She promised she would do, and they rang off after promising to speak later. She heard Nkata’s deep voice from the kitchen, then, and he sounded so calm, so reassuring, that everything felt as it had been before Abeo’s sudden arrival.
He was saying, “. . . busy for a bit of time, that will. Good I was here, though.”
“He’s gone?” Deborah said as she rejoined them. They were gathered round the central chopping table.
“He’ll be ’xplaining himself at Belgravia Station for a bit, he will.”
“He followed me here,” Sophie said. “Tani, I’m so sorry. I thought I was careful. I tried to be careful. I—”
Tani went to her, put his arm round her waist, kissed the side of her head. He said, “He worked out I took the passports to you. It’s my fault, not yours. If I’d kept them once I had ’em off Lark . . . It was an excuse to see you. And even when Zawadi texted me, I could’ve told her to fetch them from you.”
“Tha’s what this ’s ’bout?” Nkata said. “Beyond ever’thing else this is also about?”
“There’s a protection order now,” Deborah told him. “When it’s served on Tani’s father, he must hand over the passports so he can’t take Simi out of the country.”
“Best give them to me, then,” Nkata said. “I’ll see they go where they’re meant to go and meantime—even if Belgravia doesn’t hold him for twenty-four—he’s not coming to Brixton to fetch ’em, I ’xpect.” He added with a quick smile, “Even I wouldn’t want to tangle with my mum.”
Deborah agreed with Nkata’s plan. It made much more sense that he would have the passports. She said she would ring her dad to learn where he’d hidden them.
This was a process that took very little time since Deborah didn’t tell her father anything other than Winston Nkata being with them and asking for the passports in order to give a protection order against Abeo Bankole its full weight.
“Fixed up Alaska a nice place to do his business,” Joseph Cotter replied.
Deborah said, “You’ve put them in the garden?” to which he said with a chuckle, “Didn’t use the garden when he was a kitten, did he? Check under the sink in the old scullery, Deb.”
She did so. Admittedly, it was—as her father had told her—an excellent place to hide something. The old litter box had been unearthed from wherever her father had stored it and, ever economical, he’d apparently kept fresh litter as well. He’d even added two patches of water so it appeared that the box had been recently used.
Deborah dug through all this and at the bottom beneath the litter, she found the passports, well wrapped individually in cling film and put together inside a plastic freezer bag. She removed them from the bag, washed her hands of the dust, and took the passports to Winston.
“Good hiding place like he tol’ us?” Tani asked.
“Oh yes,” Deborah said. “Only a very brave heart would have found them. I’d no idea my father was so ingenious.”
Nkata put the passports into the inner pocket of his jacket. He also fished out one of his cards and handed it to Tani. If Tani would ring the woman with the protection order and tell her the coppers—in the person of Nkata—now had the passports . . . ?
Tani promised to do so.
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Their conversation was overdue. He had been avoiding it despite his mother’s direction to ask Pete if he wanted to know why she had pawned some of Floss’s Art Deco jewellery. So when he arrived in Lower Clapton—earlier than usual for once, and wasn’t that a blessing—he took a moment to gather his thoughts. He forced those thoughts to remain on a single topic. Why had his wife wanted or needed money?
Greer had said that Pete had called off their weekly girl encounters some time ago. Yet she was going somewhere and doing something once each week. After Teo’s death, his own guilt in the matter of their affair had led him to assume Pete had merely been waiting for the perfect moment to put a plan into action that would rid her life of the worry that her husband might leave her for another woman. But there were other reasons—and certainly more likely ones—that Pete was engaging in a secret activity.
It wasn’t probable that she was hiding an addiction from him: heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, one of the pain medications that were as addictive as they were deadly. The mental picture of his wife lolling about on a mattress in a den of addicts or making clandestine drug purchases under a railway arch was as inconceivable as it was laughable. Besides, even if she was using something, Robertson would have picked up on it, wouldn’t he? Unless, of course, she’d been using something for so long that how she was when she was using looked perfectly normal to the male nurse. That certainly ruled out heroin and the various pain medications that could render users virtually immobile. And meth would have long begun to exact its price as well.
An affair didn’t seem likely, considering Pietra’s fears. But then, that would be an affair with a man, wouldn’t it? An affair with a woman seemed much more possible. But it would have to be a woman completely unknown to him, because as far as he knew, the only woman his wife saw was Greer, who was either very good at demonstrating confusion or not at all involved in whatever Pietra was up to.
Gambling? he asked himself. Could she have taken up gambling in one of the many forms it took in London? He couldn’t picture her in a William Hill or one of London’s casinos, so his thoughts took him to bingo. But . . . bingo? Of course, there were people who played it religiously, but again he had a difficult time visualising Pete lining up twenty bingo cards, hot upon winning. She could be purchasing lottery tickets, of course, but why would that take her out at night?
No, he had to go back to the idea of Pete meeting someone. It was someone she hadn’t wished to speak about to him, so aside from an affair, that left what?
At the edge of what he wanted to think about was that Teo had died. Pete had discovered the woman with whom her husband had fallen in love, and she’d traced her to where she lived. There, she’d spoken to her. While he wanted to believe that was the end of the story, the money received for his mother’s jewellery made another claim. What was to prevent Pete from hiring someone to do what had been done to Teo?
But that, too, seemed absurd. He was going to have to speak with her and both of them were going to have to be truthful.
He’d arrived at The Mothers Square earlier than usual. DS Hopwood had been engaged in speaking with five DCs of colour—two of them women—about her design for working with and upon the attitudes of Nigerian and Somali immigrant men instead of confining their efforts to women. As Mark left, he’d seen all of them gathered in the conference room, and the detective sergeant was using a PowerPoint projection.
When he put his key in the lock of the door, he could hear music coming from within. He recognised it as part of the recording of a children’s book about polar bears that Lilybet was fond of listening to. Each chapter was broken by cheerful music and song.
Inside, he went to the sitting room. There, Pete and Robertson had Lilybet up on her feet “dancing.” This consisted of both of the adults holding her upright and swaying to the beat of the music as they sang along with it. Lilybet was smiling. She emitted the gurgle that was her laugh. It was blisteringly hot in the room, however, and Mark watched the three of them: the adults sweaty, rings of perspiration on their shirts; Lilybet scantily clad in diaper and overlarge T-shirt.
Robertson saw him first and gave a nod in his direction. Pete then looked his way and said, “Here’s Daddy! Here’s Daddy!” to urge Lilybet to look at her father. But the story had begun again, and Robertson lowered Lilybet to her chair while Pete came to his side, saying, “You’re so early. I’d no idea. I’ve not even popped out for the makings for dinner.”
“I’ll fetch us takeaway,” he told her. “But before that, I need a word, Pete.”
He set off to their bedroom. He didn’t look back to make sure she was following. He reckoned she would follow due to the tenor of his voice, and he was not wrong. When she was in their bedroom with him, he shut the door.
He said to her, “Mum’s decided to keep your secret. At least, that’s how I interpret what she’s said to me.”
Pete looked so confused by this that he knew his mother had not phoned her in advance to give her time to cook up a story. “Sorry?” she said.
“The Art Deco jewellery Mum gave to you. You know my dad gave it her over the years, only when he could afford to set a piece aside instead of putting it on display when its time ran out. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t ask your mum for it, Mark. She wanted me to take it.”
“But she didn’t need the money it would bring. You did.”
She faced him squarely but didn’t look at him directly. She spoke to whatever she could see beyond his shoulder: most probably the curtains. “I wasn’t going to use it. But your mum said I must. She said if nothing else I must at least try. She said it wasn’t fair as things were, not to Lilybet, not to me, but most of all not to you. She asked me how long I expected our lives to go along the way they were going along. She said everything’s a matter of time, even this. Especially this.”
Mark could see how miserable this little speech made her. But he couldn’t tell if the misery rose from guilt or simply from being caught out. He said to her, “I’m in the dark, Pete. I’d rather not be. When I found the claim ticket in your bag, I didn’t know what to think. But I did know we own nothing worth pawning. If I hadn’t seen the one piece of jewellery in the shop window, I still wouldn’t know what was going on. And as it is, I know half only. Or perhaps two thirds. Mum gave you the jewellery and that silver calling card tray in order to pawn them. You pawned them, but the money wasn’t for her.”
She rubbed her hands down the front of her jeans. She pushed her dark hair away from her face and behind her ears. She finally said, “It’s therapy.”
“Therapy?” In the way of a mind hopping quickly from one idea to another, he went first to physical therapy and he thought she intended it for Lilybet, save for the fact that when Pete was gone from home, Lilybet wasn’t. Then it was physical therapy for herself because she wouldn’t want him to know if she’d hurt herself lifting their daughter’s dead weight. And that certainly made sense since Pete was forever lifting Lilybet instead of waiting for him or Robertson to help her.
