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.