Something to Hide, page 64
Havers said, “Not actually, sir. She’s fighting against the way it’s been done, not the fact of the doing in the first place. I say she’s reckoned that, if parents want their daughters cut up, at least she can keep them from having someone incompetent butcher them. Which is also why there’s no bloody way she’d let Mercy Hart do the cutting. But she needed it to look like Mercy was doing it, so I expect she’d show up only when Mercy gave her the word that a cutting was scheduled. Would that be how it was, Dr. Weatherall?”
“I have no comment, no comment,” she said. Her voice was lower now as, moment by moment, she was being bled of bravado.
“Where Mercy fits in is the puzzle piece, though,” Lynley said meditatively. “She had to know what was going on and she had to know it’s against the law.”
“She needs the money, guv. She’s got those kids, no husband or boyfriend to help out, life’s expensive, and all the rest.”
“Yet she’s run an enormous risk. Just for the money?”
“Could be Mercy’s a believer, sir. Not in FGM but in using medicalised FGM to support what Dr. Weatherall’s trying to do for the women who’ve been mutilated by it.”
Dr. Weatherall said nothing at this. But along the lower part of her eyes a liquid brightness appeared. Vivienne Yang spoke quietly in her ear. Dr. Weatherall nodded after a moment. The solicitor said, “We’d like some private time, Detective.”
Back into the corridor they went, after pausing the interview’s recording. Havers left him with, “Got to have a bloody fag or you don’t want to know me,” and went in the direction of the police station’s main door. Lynley checked his mobile phone and saw there were two messages. A text had come from Dorothea Harriman, three words only: It’s China Wharf. The other was a voice message from Daidre. “I’ll be back tonight, Tommy. I’ve missed you terribly. Will you ring me, please?” He did so at once, only to be directed to her own voice mail. His message was brief. They were closing in on the finish of the investigation, he told her, and he added that he was very happy she was due back in town. What he didn’t add was that he hoped she’d resolved all the issues plaguing her siblings. He reckoned she’d tell him when he saw her at last.
Post-cigarette, Havers smelled like the remains of a campfire, but on the other hand, she was in a decidedly better frame of mind. They remained where they were for another quarter of an hour. Vivienne Yang finally opened the door and said, “We’re ready for you now.”
They resumed their seats, and Lynley once again set the recording in motion. Havers reminded Dr. Weatherall she was under caution. She nodded, glanced at Vivienne Yang, drew in a fractured breath, and said, “I’d like to explain what happened.”
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
Winston Nkata first returned Deborah St. James to her car, which she’d left in a car park not far from the Palace of Westminster. He hadn’t gone into any detail with her about why the tenth edition of Standing Warrior in the possession of Leylo was important, and she hadn’t asked. But she wasn’t married to an expert witness in the field of forensic science for nothing. She merely said, “I expect that’s the cake’s icing,” when Nkata fetched an evidence bag from the boot of his car in order to remove the sculpture from the flat in Deptford. He said to her, “We’re hopin’, innit,” and that was the limit of their discussion. Once they parted, he took Standing Warrior to the forensic lab they’d been dealing with during the course of the investigation, and he did his best to charm the technicians into a willingness to put this particular job at the head of the queue. He was told “no guarantees, mate,” but he found hope when the comment was made in a sympathetic tone.
He was walking back to his car when his mobile rang and, when he saw an unknown number and answered, a woman’s voice said, “Is that Winston Nkata?” and when he said yes, she went on to identify herself with the name Zawadi and then to tell him, “Tani Bankole’s told me you have the passports. We’ve the emergency protection order in hand and I need them off you. Stoke Newington Police Station’ll hold them. That’s where the order will be.”
“I got ’em safe,” he said.
“I expect you do, only they need to stay with the protection order so when it’s lifted, if it ever is, the passports can go back to the family.”
He told her they were stowed at his home but he could fetch them, as he wasn’t far. He’d take them to Stoke Newington if that was helpful. She said she’d come to fetch them. She told him that, given the address, she would set off at once.
So he went home to his parents’ flat. No one was there, but no one would have been there at this time of day. His dad was at the wheel of a Number 11 bus while his mum would be at Alice N’s, probably doing the post-lunch clean-up with Tabby and Monifa.
He’d left the passports in the breast pocket of the jacket he’d worn on the previous day. He went to his bedroom, where a set of perfectly folded sheets and another of towels formed a neat stack at the end of the bed Monifa was using. Inside the clothes cupboard, his jacket hung. He took it out and slipped his hand into the jacket’s inner breast pocket. But what he brought forth was a single passport where there should have been four. He opened it to see it belonged to Tani. He looked through the other pockets in the jacket, and, finding nothing, he frowned and returned to the cupboard, where he looked on the floor although he couldn’t work out how the other passports might have fallen there. He could, of course, have somehow dislodged three of the documents when he placed his jacket in the cupboard, although he didn’t see how. Nonetheless, he checked the floor to make sure they weren’t lying in the shadows.
They weren’t. He lowered his head. He thought back carefully. He knew he’d been given all four. Deborah St. James had wiped each off individually once she’d removed them from the wrapping that had protected them at the bottom of the cat’s litter box. She’d given all of them to him and he’d put all of them into his jacket. He’d known they’d be perfectly safe there. Abeo Bankole was in the hands of the Belgravia police at that point, so it was impossible that he’d somehow not only concluded that Nkata—whose name he did not even know—had the passports, but that he’d also managed to discover where Nkata lived, broken into this flat, and found the passports without leaving the slightest indication that he’d been there in the first place. Even had that been the case, it stood to reason that only two passports would have been missing: his and Simisola’s.
In his peripheral vision, Nkata saw those sheets and towels, and he considered them in an entirely different light. He’d concluded at first that his mum had left them for Monifa’s use later that night, but now he saw them as something that could be quite different. He went to the head of the bed, pulled back the thin, striped summer duvet, and saw that the bed had been stripped. He touched the towels and found them still slightly damp from use. He moved them, examined the sheets, and realised they’d been used as well.
He fumbled for his phone and punched in the familiar number. Tabby answered at the café. He asked for his mum. In a moment, he heard her say, “Jewel, you all right, love?” and his mouth was like a sandpit when he replied. “ ’S Monifa with you, Mum?”
“She’s left to fetch Simisola, love,” Alice said. “She had a phone call. She was told that Abeo—that’s her husband’s name, yes?—had been released. She was in such a state that he’d go straight down to Chelsea that I arranged a taxi for her. To fetch Simisola here, that is. She was meant to come back directly, Jewel. Hang on, love. Let me ask Tabby . . .”
Nkata heard his mother ask Tabby if she recalled the time that Monifa had left the café. Tabby could only guess at it. They’d been so busy with the lunch crush, hadn’t they. He knew how it was at the café during lunch: packed with people eating in with a queue for takeaway meals stretching out of the door and down the pavement past at least two shops.
“It’s been several hours, Jewel . . . Oh, Lord. Now I think, Abeo could have managed to get to Chelsea before her . . . What, Tabby?”
As Nkata felt the sweat break out on his forehead, Tabby said something he couldn’t hear. Alice filled him in with, “Tabby thinks she got the phone call round half past twelve?” There was a pause and then—as if she’d looked at the wall clock or her watch—“Oh dear. She should have been back before now. I let you down. Jewel, I hope . . . If the husband did get to her, I’ll never forgive myself. I am so, so—”
“ ’S’okay, Mum,” Nkata told her. “I ’spect he didn’t get to her.”
They rang off on that reassurance. It was, Nkata knew, absolute. Still, he proved this to himself by ringing the Belgravia station. Yes, he was told, Abeo Bankole was still in custody. If no charges were filed, he would be released at the end of the twenty-four hours they were allowed to hold him.
Nkata rang the St. Jameses next. He spoke briefly and as calmly as possible to Joseph Cotter. From him, he gathered the limited information that Monifa had come for Simisola. When he asked to speak with Tani, he learned the rest from the boy, and it was the same as he’d learned from his own mother. Monifa had been there, and she’d told them about Abeo’s release. Tani knew his father would never give up a single one of the plans he had for them, so he’d remained behind to face off with Abeo once he showed up, while Monifa hid Simisola away. But Abeo hadn’t returned to Cheyne Row, at least so far he hadn’t.
Did Tani know where Monifa had intended to take Simisola? Nkata asked him.
“To Brixton, was what she said. She tol’ me my dad wouldn’t know how to find her there.”
“An’ if she didn’t go to Brixton?”
“But she did. Tha’s what she told us, me an’ Mr. Cotter.” His voice altered then as he seemed to understand that something had gone wrong and perhaps badly so. “Wha’s . . . Did he get her?”
“Let me check on all that,” Nkata said.
“But did she go to Brixton like she said?”
“Lemme check on that ’s well, Tani. You stay with Mr. Cotter, yeah? Is Mrs. St. James back?”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. St. James?”
“No. But—”
“Okay, then.” Nkata cut in. “You all stay there in Chelsea. I got to make some phone calls. I’ll be in touch soon ’s I know something ’bout where your mum is. Just in case, any place else she might go?”
“We got cousins in Peckham.”
“You ring them and check for me, eh?”
Nkata rang off quickly before the boy could ask more questions that he couldn’t answer, with either truth or falsehood. He did have phone calls to make, though, and the first of these went to Zawadi in order to give her the news. She didn’t answer her mobile phone, which told him she was as good as her word: she was on her way to Brixton for the passports. He left her a message to ring him as soon as she could, and then he connected to Lynley. Before he could explain what had happened, Lynley told him that China Wharf was the location on the South Bank that the DCs had marked as having the highest potential for docking a motorboat. It was just east of Tower Bridge, with easy access from the river to its bank via steps at either end of the wharf. There was CCTV across the street on a building not far from a tunnel that gave access to the river. The tunnel itself was between China Wharf and Reeds Wharf, both of which were situated in Bermondsey Wall. As the warehouses in the location had long since been converted to flats, there was every chance that more CCTV cameras would be located there for the buildings’ security.
Nkata hoped the good news Lynley had imparted would outweigh the bad news about the missing passports. He shared the information and then went on to explain what had occurred at his mum’s café.
He ended with, “Tabby—tha’s mum’s helper in the caff—says there was a phone call that Monifa took, giving her the information that her husband’s been let go. Only that call wasn’t from the Belgravia cops, cos Abeo Bankole’s there till half past three if no one wants charges filed against him.”
Lynley said nothing. Nkata could hear voices in the background. After a few moments for thought, Lynley said, “So it could be she’s taken the girl back to . . . what was the name of the housing estate?”
“Mayville. But why tell Tani she was bringing the girl to Brixton, guv? And why’d she take those passports with her?”
“Does she have a credit card?” Lynley asked. “Access to cash? Enough to take the girl somewhere out of the country?”
Nkata said, feeling hollow, “I bloody don’t know. She’s got a cousin in Peckham she might’ve gone to and Tani’s checkin’. But . . .”
“It’s unsettling,” Lynley said.
“Wha’s happenin’ with Weatherall? Anything?”
“She’s giving a statement. She could have come up with a dozen tales, hoping that Mercy would keep silent as she’s done so far. But she couldn’t explain away the tenth edition of Standing Warrior. You did good work there, Winston.”
“Barb did the work, guv. I jus’ saw the picture Deb St. James took.”
“Nonetheless,” Lynley said. And then, “Stay in touch regarding the Bankole woman. Check with Belgravia. She may have gone there to give a statement.”
Nkata thought that unlikely. But he agreed, although he knew he couldn’t do anything until he’d had the necessary word with Zawadi. He rang her again, and this time she answered. She was there in Brixton, she told him, wandering round Loughborough Estate and, “Where the devil are you?”
He said that he would come to her straightaway and where was she? She identified her location as “some kind of bloody crescent,” which was unhelpful as there were streets named crescent in every direction. Send him a photo of the nearest building, he told her. That should do it.
It did. He hadn’t a clue what she looked like, of course, but when he saw the woman on the corner of St. James’s Crescent and Western Road, he recognised Zawadi by what telegraphed her impatience: crossed arms, tapping foot, glances at the watch on her wrist, fingering a necklace of African beads. He introduced himself.
She gave a nod, said her own name, and then, “The passports?”
“They’re gone, Simisola’s and her mum’s and her dad’s. I’ve still got Tani’s. But tha’s all.”
She stared at him, her expression altering from blank to incredulous, as if he’d suddenly sprouted another head. “How’re they bloody gone?” she demanded.
“Monifa . . . Simisola’s mum. I think she took them. I can’t see anyone else doin’ it.”
“You didn’t keep them with you? Once you had them, you didn’t lock them up? What in God’s name . . .” She clenched her fists in front of her. Nkata reckoned she wanted to punch him and he couldn’t blame her. She said, “Without a protection order, the girl’s not safe. And without the passports and a protection order, she can be carted off to Nigeria as soon as there are tickets available. You stupid, bloody . . . Are you a cop or not?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I di’n’t think—”
“Too right, that. You didn’t think. I’m dead glad we’ve established that. So does Monifa have any clue where we’ve put Simisola and Tani?”
Nkata could feel himself cringe inside. He was only happy he didn’t do so outwardly. He said, “She knows, yeah. She fetched Simisola from there.”
“Bloody God. How did she discover where they were?”
It was worse and worse, but he owned it, so he told her. Monifa knew where Simisola was because he’d taken her there once she’d done her part in a murder investigation the Met was conducting. She’d written a statement about a clinic that the coppers had shut down in Kingsland High Street. She’d confessed that she had intended to have Simisola cut there, but to have it done medically.
“And that didn’t tell you anything?” Zawadi cried. “She’s been showing her intentions from the very first, you fool, and it’s down to us to stop her.”
ISLE OF DOGS
EAST LONDON
“People say, ‘We’re ending this,’ and they set off on a crusade,” Philippa Weatherall said. “They believe that they can stop the tide. But they can’t. No one can. This thing that some of them still do to girls . . . ? It’s a remnant of their culture and that’s how it’s defended. Well-meaning individuals, the law, courts . . . nothing stops it. Do you know where we are with this now, today, here, at this point in time, Detective Lynley? Mostly it’s done in infancy now, only occasionally is it still done to a prepubescent girl. An infant can’t speak, she can’t report what’s happened or what’s being threatened. She can’t tell a schoolteacher, the police, anyone. She’s pre-verbal and pre-memory. What I’m saying to you is that the entire ugly business of cutting girls has been driven deeply underground.”
They were back in the interview room. They had more tea and Havers had decamped briefly to Peeler’s, where she also purchased two bowls of cut-up fruit, four bananas, and four sealed packages of cheese and biscuits. The surgeon was delineating the why of how she’d been making herself “useful” to the mothers who continued to believe and to insist that their daughters would be able to marry only if they were clean and pure, with their virginity not only guaranteed but forcibly maintained.
A great deal of what she’d said so far had made perfect sense, at least to her. The hideous practice of mutilating girls was not going to end simply because there were people who wanted it to end. She’d learned as much after she’d begun to study with the French surgeon who’d developed a way to restructure the genitals of FGM’s victims. She learned his technique and brought it to London, but she’d soon realised she could do more than merely reconstruct what had been badly, incompetently, and gruesomely damaged. She could prevent irreparable harm in the first place, by circumcising the girls herself so if, in the future, they wanted the surgery to reverse what had been done to them, the work involved would not deprive them of a sexual life that offered them more than pain.
