Lynley apologised for the local police, who were already understaffed and certainly outnumbered by teenagers up to mischief of an evening. He went on to tell Easter Lange that he and Barbara were there to talk to her about her mobile.
She looked as astonished as a peeved woman could, saying, “Wha’s Scotland Yard got to do with my mobile?”
“A police detective had your mobile’s number,” Lynley explained.
Barbara added, “A police detective who’s now dead.”
Easter had been crouched in front of a wall display of bras in a multiplicity of riotous colours, but now she stood upright, one hand on her hip. She said, “I don’ know about tha’， do I. I don’ know any police detective at all, I don’t.”
“This is someone you may have known as a Nigerian woman called Adaku Obiaka. You might not have known her as a police detective.”
Easter gave a half snort, half laugh. “As to that,” she said. “I definitely don’ know some Nigerian woman called . . . What did you say?”
“Adaku,” Barbara put in. “Surname Obiaka. Or she might have been calling herself Teo Bontempi when you met.”
“I never talked to any Nigerian woman or Nigerian police detective or any police at all or anyone like it.”
“But you probably would have done before you were arrested and taken in for questioning,” Lynley pointed out. “And Adaku—Teo Bontempi—was the person who gave the police information about the clinic that brought the local police to it.”
Should Easter Lange’s eyes have been on springs, capable of bouncing out of and back into her head, they no doubt would have done so when Lynley spoke. She said, “What’re you lot on about? I never’ve been arrested in my whole life. And I don’ know one thing at all ’bout some clinic. Clinic? Why’d I supposedly get arrested at a clinic, eh? And where’s this clinic anyways? What the bloody hell is this? I never even got a parking ticket.”
Barbara exchanged a look with Lynley. Easter Lange was righteous indignation made flesh and given voice. Lynley produced the card on which the mobile number had been written and apparently intended for Adaku Obiaka. He said to Easter, “Is this not your mobile number?”
She gave it a look and shook her head. “Uh-uh. No it most certainly i’n’t.”
“If it’s not the number of your mobile—”
She turned back to her work and set upon it with even more industry than she’d shown before. “You c’n ring it yourself an’ see, but it i’n’t mine.” She glanced in their direction and said, “Go ’head and ring it. It’s like I said and you’ll see that soon ’s you punch in the numbers.”
“Mrs. Lange, the phone’s registered to you.”
“There’s no mister. Never been, never will be.”
“Miss Lange, as I said, the—”
“Ms. Lange,” Barbara put in. “There’s a policewoman dead. She gave this number to another detective. Whoever this number belongs to is someone using your name. We need to know who she is.”
“Using my name, you say? Ah. Tha’s quite another thing. Tha’s Mercy, that is. And that’s her mobile number, I expect.”
“Mercy?” Lynley said.
Barbara took out her notebook and waited for more details. “My niece, she is. Did it once before: using my name. Don’ ask me why she did it with a mobile cos I don’ know and, believe me, I don’ want to know. But tha’ girl? Mercy? Swear to God, she’s been trouble for years she has, an’ sent her mum to an early grave. Forty-five, she was. Dropped dead in the launderette. Rest ’f the family, we thought that sorted Mercy. An’ it did for a while. She went to school and got herself a first in some kind of science. She was meant to take up nursing las’ time I heard. She’s got a good head on her, so she prob’ly did jus’ that. Off she went into her life and I never talked to her since. But I ’spect for sure she’s the one you want to talk to about that mobile. Prob’ly ’bout the arrest ’s well cos it wasn’t me got hauled off to the nick.”
“Do you have her details?” Lynley asked.
“Full name’s Mercy Hart.”
“Her address?”
“I got an old one I can give you. Happy to do it. But you got to know she prob’ly i’n’t there. She never liked one place long. Said she got bored of it, is what she said. But she’ll be in London if she was working in . . . What sort ’f clinic was this and why’d she get arrested for workin’ in a clinic anyways?”