Something to Hide, page 63
He collected Havers, who asked him sardonically if he had the first idea how many docks and piers there were along the river. Dozens, he expected. But if the DCs perused the map and made contact with their colleagues at Wapping River Station, that should go some distance towards telling them which of the piers and docks were most easily used by casual boaters. She passed the information along to the DCs and joined him at the lift.
They set out in Lynley’s car. It was midafternoon and neither of them had taken time for lunch. Havers fished in her bag, saying she was bloody well famished. After a dedicated search, which involved removing an astonishing number of belongings from her shoulder bag, she brought forth a Twix and, after casting a speculative glance at him, handed over half of it. They munched companionably, after which she dug a flapjack from among her belongings, and they munched again. She followed this up with a packet of custard creams. She was again generous with it, and he half expected her to produce a Pop-Tart next. It certainly wouldn’t be something more wholesome like—in an utter change of culinary character—a piece of fruit. She didn’t disappoint, although it turned out that, post custard creams, she had only four Starburst sweets left in her cache, two of which had come unwrapped and bore a disturbing fur-like evidence of this. He demurred on these as his teeth were beginning to ache, and although he assumed this was psychosomatic, he thought it best to heed their warning. By the time they reached the station in Westferry Road, they admitted to each other that short of murder, they would both do anything for a cup of tea. Havers’s suggestion was stopping at “the nearest wherever, guv,” as she put it. For Lynley’s part, he said with certainty that the station would doubtless have a suitable canteen that would be available to them.
The station was large, its entrance taking up a street corner, the wings of the building stretching in both directions. Once they parked and made themselves known at reception, a uniformed constable came to fetch them. All was ready, they were informed.
They went first to the canteen—called Peeler’s, what else?—where they ordered three cups of tea to take away. Havers availed herself of the opportunity to replenish her stock of pre-packaged comestibles, after which they followed the constable to the interview room that had been set aside for their use.
She was waiting inside, and she wasn’t happy.
She said, “You two. I should have guessed. Is this really necessary?”
“You’ve not asked for a solicitor?” Lynley asked. He and Havers took seats opposite Dr. Weatherall. He switched on the tape recorder, gave the time and each of their names, and repeated his question as Havers passed one of the three takeaway teas to the surgeon. She’d also stowed several thimbles of milk and four packets of sugar in her bag, which she also produced.
“D’you know that I was about to begin a reconstruction?” Dr. Weatherall said. “That I was told by two completely indifferent constables it would not be allowed? I was informed that, surgery or not, I must come at once. And now I’ve been sitting here in this goddamn bloody room for”—she glanced at her wristwatch—“the same amount of time it would have taken me to perform most of the surgery in the first place.”
“Which type of surgery would that be?” Lynley asked her.
“What is that supposed to mean? You know exactly what I do. And if, for some reason, you do not understand it, there are enough details available through any number of internet sources to clarify matters.”
“Yes, we’re familiar with that. But it’s the other procedures we’re interested in.”
“It’s a women’s clinic. I deal with women’s health issues. I don’t intend to sit here and list them for you. We’ve been over this already. I assume your sergeant has all of this in her notes.”
“She does indeed,” Lynley said. “But we’d like to expand on what you’ve told us. Are you certain you don’t want a solicitor? We can easily have a duty solicitor brought in for you.”
Her eyes narrowed. Lynley had kept his voice as affable as possible, but this repeated offer of a solicitor was sending her a message, and he could see she didn’t like it one bit. He waited. Ultimately, she refused his offer of a solicitor once again. Next to him, Havers brought forth her tattered spiral notebook and a mechanical pencil. This second item he recognised as belonging to Winston Nkata. He looked from it to her. She produced an innocent smile. She was, as always, incorrigible.
He said to the surgeon, “A woman called Leylo was one of your patients, I understand. Is the name familiar?”
“Of course it is. She underwent a successful reconstruction not long ago. She’d had a good result. Is this about her?”
“We’ve learned that it’s your practice to give a gift to each woman who undergoes the surgery. Was this true for Leylo?”
“I give them a token,” she said. “It may be hard for you to believe, but having the surgery after what’s been done to them takes a great deal of courage, Detective Lynley . . . Sorry, I can’t remember your rank.”
“Detective is fine,” Lynley told her. “What sort of token?”
“What?”
Havers said, “You said you give them a token. What would that be? Box of chockies? Stationery? Lotion? Scent? A scarf? Gift certificate to McDonald’s?”
“It varies.” She reached for her tea for the first time. She added two thimbles of the milk. There was nothing with which to stir it, so she swirled the liquid in the cup.
“But that’s a bit odd, isn’t it,” Havers said. “I’d think it would go th’ other way round. Them giving you a gift and not the opposite. I mean, you’re saving them, right? You’re improving their lives. Why wouldn’t they want to thank you with a gift?”
Dr. Weatherall lifted a shoulder in reply. “It’s odd to you, perhaps. But you’ve never been in their position. They’ve been betrayed by the people they love. These are people they trusted, the people who were supposed to protect them. They’ve been failed by their entire society, so when they decide to hand themselves over to me—a complete outsider and a white woman—they’re engaging in an act of trust. For some of them, this is the first time they’ve trusted anyone since they were cut. So the gift I give them . . . it’s a reward. It’s a thank-you from me for the privilege of helping them.”
Lynley was struck by this. She was utterly sincere, and he could feel it. This was her passion. She’d probably spent her professional life putting all she had and all she was into it. Which made everything else so much more difficult to understand. Out of the manila envelope into which it had been put, he brought the photo that Deborah St. James had taken of Tani Bankole. He laid it on the table and slid it to Dr. Weatherall. She looked at it, drew her eyebrows together, then looked at him.
“Am I meant to know this young man?”
He shook his head. “If you look beyond him, you can see there’s a sculpture on the table that stands next to the sofa.” He waited for her to note this and acknowledge its presence. She did so. He went on with, “Leylo has identified the sculpture as the gift you gave to her, the thank-you for placing her trust in you.”
To this, she made no immediate reply, but she dropped her gaze to the photo and said hesitantly, “It could be the same.”
“You did give her a sculpture, did you not?”
“I did. But this photo—”
“Yeah, it’s a bit blurry, eh? I expect this’ll help.” Havers took a folded paper from the back of her notebook. It had become dog-eared, but when she unfolded it, she smoothed its edges with some ceremony before she slid it next to Deborah’s photo of Tani Bankole. It was the picture of Standing Warrior that Ross Carver had produced from the internet. “Would this be it?”
Lynley watched Dr. Weatherall as she gazed at it. He could tell she was considering her answer. The alternatives she faced were tricky. She could brazen it out with a denial that could easily be checked or she could brazen it out with an admission that could cause her infinite difficulties. The nature of these difficulties constituted the unknown for her. So she was going to have to go with her gut.
She made her choice. “Yes.” She gestured to the printed copy from the internet. “This is very similar to the piece I gave her.”
Lynley said, “Thank you,” and then to Havers, “If you will, Sergeant . . .”
Havers recited the caution. Dr. Weatherall—he could tell—knew at once she’d made the wrong choice. She said, “What’s going on?”
Lynley said, “You’ve been told that anything you say can be used as evidence against you. At this point, let me ask you again: Would you like a solicitor?”
“Why would I need a solicitor? I’ve done nothing. This is absurd. What’s my crime supposed to be?”
“Are you again refusing a solicitor?”
“I am. I have no idea what I’m doing here, and I’m beginning to think you’ve no idea either.”
Lynley raised his fingers from the table, accepting her allegation as something that could be true. He said, “Where did you get the sculpture you gave to Leylo?”
“I don’t recall. I purchase items to use as gifts for my patients whenever I happen to see them. This could have come from anywhere. A street market, a secondhand shop, a car boot sale, a charity shop.”
“Teo Bontempi’s flat?” Lynley asked.
“What?”
“Teo Bontempi had a collection of African sculptures,” Lynley said.
“And you’re implying . . . what? That I stole this from her to give to Leylo? I haven’t the first idea where Teo Bontempi lived.”
“Except that wouldn’t be the case, would it?” Havers pointed out. “You’ve got every one of her details in her file.”
“I’m not sure what that signifies, Sergeant. I don’t memorise my patients’ files. And even if I went to call upon her, which I did not, why on earth would I take one of her sculptures?”
“Once you brained her with it, you didn’t have any other choice.”
She stared at Havers. Then she moved her gaze to Lynley. She said, “That’s completely mad.”
“What’s been challenging is to work out why,” Lynley said. “We’ve got the how sorted. You told us yourself. You don’t own a car, and you come here to the Isle of Dogs by motorboat. That explains how you managed to get to Teo Bontempi’s flat without a car of yours being caught on CCTV in Streatham High Road. From the Isle of Dogs you motored to the dock or pier closest to a route to Streatham. By taxi or minicab you went from that dock to Streatham High Road. Then back to the pier by cab. Once into the boat, you motored on the river to Eel Pie Island. We’ll find the relevant CCTV eventually. We’ll do the same with the cabs.”
She said, “These are fairy stories. I’d like a solicitor now.”
“Your own or will the duty solicitor do?”
She accepted his offer of the duty solicitor. This was quickly arranged, although they had to wait forty minutes for the duty solicitor’s arrival. She was young, Chinese. She hid her youth by wearing a grey pinstriped trouser suit, a severe white blouse so starched it might have stood up on its own, and very large black-framed spectacles. She needed the air of gravitas these items lent her. Dressed otherwise and without the glasses, she easily could have been mistaken for an adolescent. Vivienne Yang, she introduced herself. She would, she told them, need some private time with her client before they resumed their questioning.
Lynley gave her his mobile number and he and Havers returned to Peeler’s. They had just sat at one of the tables when his mobile rang. Havers was saying, “That was bloody fast,” when Lynley saw it was Winston ringing him. He had the bronze sculpture in hand, he said, suitably placed in an evidence bag. It was definitely the one they’d been looking for. He was taking it to forensics in hopes it could go to the top of the stack of jobs awaiting results. He did not, however, sound particularly hopeful. To the naked eye, the piece looked quite clean.
“There might well be DNA still on it: Teo’s or Dr. Weatherall’s,” Lynley said. “And there are other facts about that piece that will prove impossible to argue away. So long as we have Standing Warrior in hand, we’ve got more than one route from it to the person who wielded it.”
Within twenty minutes after his exchange with Nkata, Lynley received the message from Vivienne Yang. They returned to the interview room, where Lynley once again engaged the tape to record their interview, formally reminding Dr. Weatherall that she was still under caution.
He said, “As we’ve established on your own word, the sculpture depicted in the photograph taken in the home of your patient Leylo is the one you gave to her.”
“I said the sculpture in the picture is very like, Detective Lynley. I have no way of knowing if it’s the actual one that I gave her.”
“Are you suggesting that she has another identical to it? Or that she bought another somewhere in order to have a matched pair?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely saying that what’s depicted in the picture is very like what I gave to her. You yourself can see that the midpoint of the photo isn’t perfectly sharp. And the background of it is merely shapes.”
“Hmmm. Yes. That’s largely why I sent my sergeant to have a look at the piece himself. He’s confirmed that it’s Standing Warrior. He’s also confirmed it was once in the possession of Teo Bontempi.”
“That’s absurd. He has no way of confirming that, and you know it.”
Lynley said, “I’m afraid that’s not the case. The statue’s on its way to forensics, and what will come of that is something we won’t necessarily know for a few days. A few weeks, even, depending upon the laboratory’s workload. However, there’s another way that the sculpture can be placed inside Teo Bontempi’s flat. It was a gift from her estranged husband, and when he returned to the flat, he saw that it was missing.”
“You and I both know that she could well have rid herself of it. She could have given it away as a gift. She could have tossed it in the rubbish. There are dozens of explanations, Detective. And even if it was missing as you say, you can hardly claim that the piece missing from the woman’s flat somehow ended up in the hands of one of my patients.”
“And yet it did.” Havers was tapping her pencil against her pad, and her tone was impatient. “It made a direct journey from Streatham to Deptford, and it was in your possession nearly all the way.”
“I don’t see how—”
“It was number ten,” Lynley cut in.
“What?”
“Standing Warrior is a limited edition of fifteen bronze sculptures, Dr. Weatherall. Ross Carver—that’s Teo Bontempi’s husband—bought edition number ten of the twelve that have been sold from a gallery in Peckham. The artist numbered it when she signed her name. She does this, apparently, on the bottom of her pieces, so unless you looked for it, you wouldn’t know it’s there.”
The surgeon said nothing at this. Vivienne Yang folded her hands on the table. Voices came from the corridor. Above their heads, the whir of the building’s ventilation system sent a sudden blast of icy air into the room.
Lynley said, “So far, Mercy Hart has been holding her tongue, but you can’t expect her to do that much longer no matter what you’re paying her, which I expect is quite a bit. When we go to Bronzefield Prison to have another word with her—”
Dr. Weatherall’s glance sharpened when Lynley said Bronzefield Prison, but she still didn’t speak.
“—there’s a very good chance she’ll explain your association with the Kingsland High Street clinic once we tell her you’re in custody.”
“I have no further comment,” Dr. Weatherall said.
“You don’t need to comment at this point, do you?” Havers asked her. “Aside from that tenth copy of Standing Warrior—which is going to make things bloody difficult for you—and aside from Mercy Hart’s decision to loosen her lips—which is going to happen once she learns you’ve been arrested and charged—we’ve got the phone calls you made to Teo Bontempi after she confronted you on the day the clinic was raided. The first of those calls was made that very evening. And all the rest lead directly up to the night she was attacked.”
“When you phoned Teo, you were trying to persuade her not to report you,” Lynley said.
“Report me for what? Helping mutilated women become whole again? Has that become illegal, Detective?”
“We thought at first it was Mercy Hart doing the cutting on little girls and using the name Easter Lange. But it wasn’t, was it? It was you and you were on your way there—to the clinic—when Teo Bontempi in her African clothing saw you. I expect she was shocked at first, trying to work out what you were doing in that part of town. But it didn’t take long for her to reach the only conclusion possible. It was where you performed medicalised FGM.”
“I have no comment, no comment,” Dr. Weatherall said. And to Vivienne Yang, “Do I have to sit here and listen to this?”
Vivienne Yang murmured the answer that Lynley and Havers already knew: exactly how long they could hold her before they charged her with a crime. It was a stretch of time that the surgeon more than likely did not want to spend with the likes of them.
“Not all women you operate on can pay for the reconstruction, can they? And the sort of surgery you offer isn’t covered by the NHS. You need a reliable source of funding to keep your health centre going here on the Isle of Dogs and to pay Mercy what I expect is a hefty wage. It’s likely you receive contributions from anti-FGM organisations and from individuals, but Women’s Health of Hackney is how you top up your income. What I don’t understand—and I wager Sergeant Havers doesn’t understand this either—is why you chose medicalised FGM as a means of supporting your work. Not only is it against the law, but it’s the very thing you’re fighting against.”
