“Did. And either he’s treading the boards as Hamlet in his free time or he hadn’t a clue she was in the club.”
“Do we know if they were actually lovers?” Lynley asked, setting aside a magnifying glass he’d been using to study areas of a picture he was holding.
“Like I said to Winnie. He admits to engaging in the plunge-o-rama with her. But he claims she kept after him. He didn’t really want to do the business with her—so he says—but she wouldn’t take no for an answer and finally, he could resist no more. He says she told him she was taking precautions. He says he told her he only had eyes for Teo, but she didn’t mind and she was happy to play Teo if that suited him. Anyway, he seems to believe it’s entrapment.”
“I got the ’pression Rosie sees it different,” Nkata said.
“What d’you think, then, Winnie? Rosie seem like the type who could whack her own sister in the head?”
“Tha’s a hard call, innit,” Nkata said.
“Take a chair, Barbara.” Lynley moved six of the photographs so that she could see them.
“CCTV stills?” she said before she sat. Then, having looked at the pictures, she went on with, “These are rubbish. What’re they filming with over there? One pixel an inch? I can barely make out the time stamps.”
“They’re the best we’ve been able to come up with so far,” Lynley told her.
Nkata added, “Equipment’s ancient, is what it is.”
“It’s what’s going on that caught Winston’s attention,” Lynley said. “It’s not who’s doing the what’s going on. Admittedly, that part of the equation looks hopeless at the moment.”
“Then what . . . ?” Barbara studied the pictures. While four of them showed people who entered the building alone—and, really, one had to assume the killer was alone—two of them showed a woman who’d come to the building’s door to speak to the person ringing for her flat, in each case another woman. “Is this . . . Are you saying this is Teo at the door?”
“We think so. The film’s gone out to digital forensics. That lot’ll work it over and see what kind of improvement can be made. In the meantime, this is what we have to work with. Assuming the woman at the door is Teo—”
“Big assumption, you ask me. She looks more like a blob.”
“—we’ve been mulling over the possibilities attendant to her coming to the door to speak with those two women instead of merely ringing them in.”
“Could be she didn’t know them?” Barbara offered. “Could be she knew them but didn’t trust them?”
“Could be there was someone already inside her flat she didn’t want these two to know about?” Nkata pointed out.
“Could be there was something inside her flat she didn’t want these two to know about,” Barbara added. “Also could be we bin the whole lot of these because, face it, they don’t prove anything.”
“Right. But there’s this as well.” Lynley set aside the pictures that were potentially of Teo at the door speaking to the two women. He brought forward the other pictures he and Winston had chosen. He placed them in front of Barbara.
She saw that in the first of the photos, four people were at the entry to the building, ostensibly waiting to gain admittance. In the second, three of the four people turned as if hearing something or someone behind them. In the third they were joined by an individual in a hoodie who made them five, although it was impossible to tell if the person was male or female. In the last, reduced to four again, they were departing, but without that individual who had entered in their company.
Barbara looked up from the pictures to Lynley, saying, “I’m missing something if I’m supposed to be gobsmacked, sir. Five go inside. Four come out. Could be that Hoodie lives in the building and gave them a shout that prompted them to wait for him. Or her. They all go inside and then along on their separate ways. Four come out again but isn’t that explained by what I said: Hoodie lives in the building and had no reason to leave it again?”
“It’s possible,” Lynley said. “Most anything’s possible. But look at the figure closely.”
“Look at what’s being carried, Barb,” Nkata added.
Barbara reached for Lynley’s magnifying glass and looked at the photo. She saw that Hoodie was carrying something that looked like a messenger’s bag. It bore a light horizontal stripe that could well have been fluorescent at night.