Carver took up his mug of coffee and walked out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. He went to the balcony but did not step outside. He stood there looking down at the lane and at the miniature farm beyond it. He said, “Most of the time, she hid that well, what you’re saying. It was a part of her—that rupture in her spirit—that I thought might be repaired.”
“D’you mean through some kind of counselling?”
“Counselling, yes. But also physically. I’ve already told you this: I wanted her to see someone. She wouldn’t. She kept saying ‘What’s the point?’ It was part of why I couldn’t stop insisting and she couldn’t take it from me any longer.”
Barbara twigged what he might have meant. She said, “We’re back to evaluation, then, what was written in her diary for July 24.”
Carver turned from the window. “Could she possibly have seen someone about what had happened to her?”
“You said earlier that she rang you and wanted to see you. Could that be why?”
“Because she’d been to a surgeon? But if that’s what evaluation means, why did she wait all those days to tell me? If that’s even what she wanted to talk about.”
“Could be she wanted to have a word about Rosie, then, about you putting Rosie up the spout. Or both, eh? Along the lines of ‘I did this for you, I did this for us, and all the time you were bonking my sister.’？”
“I didn’t want to. I didn’t intend to. I—”
“Right-oh. But why do I think Rosie didn’t tie you down and have her way with you? How’d Teo sound on the phone?”
“She didn’t ring me. She texted.”
“Was that normal?”
“No. Why? What’re you thinking? I mean, the text did come from her phone. You’re not implying someone else . . . The phone was there in the bedroom. I saw it.”
“We can’t find it.”
“What about cell towers?”
“That takes time. We’re on it, but . . .” She lifted her shoulders. “It’s a case of wait in line.”
“What about records of her calls?”
“We’re onto that as well.” She fished round in her shoulder bag and brought out one of her business cards. She said, “I expect you watch telly, so you know the routine well enough: You think of anything, you see anything, you hear anything—and believe me, I don’t bloody care what it is—you ring me. You hear from her sister, I want to know. You hear from her parents, I want to know. You recall a detail you haven’t mentioned, I want to know. D’we understand each other?”
He took the card from her and put it in his pocket. He said, “Yes. We do.”
KENNINGTON
SOUTH LONDON
Deborah felt uneasy, her mind running away with thoughts that had the power to intrude upon her work. In this case, those thoughts had to do with the discussion-cum-argument she’d had with her husband and her father, followed by a late-night phone call she had received from Narissa Cameron.
Deborah had thought she intended to talk about her documentary, but as it turned out, Narissa was ringing for another reason entirely. She’d been rumbled by her parents, Narissa said. The police had come calling, having been alerted by a neighbour. She’d got home from Orchid House to find a note on her door in her father’s handwriting. Seven words: Come above please. The police have been. When she read this, she knew she’d been discovered.
“It was that bloody kitten,” Narissa said. “I knew this would happen once I heard about the kitten.”
Knowing that the police would hardly have come calling about a kitten, Deborah put the pieces together in short order, aligning them with the hushed conversations she’d heard Narissa and Zawadi having. She said to Narissa, “You’ve got Bolu Akin.”
“They weren’t supposed to know. Or, at least, I didn’t want to tell them.”
“Your parents?”
“I didn’t want to risk anything that might get me thrown into the street. But, once the cops left, my dad went down to my flat—the basement flat?—and he found her. He’d seen the news. My mum as well. So they knew who she was. My dad’s funding the major part of the documentary, and he’s made it clear that he’ll pull the plug on the project if I don’t sort this out. Deborah, I bloody well hate to ask this, but—”
“She won’t be safe here,” Deborah told Narissa. She detailed her father’s news-viewing habits as well as his opinions on the subject of Boluwatife Akin’s disappearance. She went on to explain her husband’s position in the matter: this is something for the police to handle. “If you bring her here, one of them will ring the local station. I swear it, Narissa. My dad believes Charles Akin, start to finish. My husband doesn’t want us involved in what he sees as a police situation. I hope you know I’d take her in an instant, but I can’t get either of them on board with the idea of her actually being in danger.”