“I thought you might want this conversation to be more private.”
Mark took the detective into the kitchen, the room farthest from where Pete and Robertson were finishing up with Lilybet. The plan had been to strap her into her wheelchair for an outing that morning. It was Mark’s hope, now, that the outing would take place sooner rather than later. Pete intended to take her to Hackney Downs, where a path along the edge of the park made manoeuvring the wheelchair easier than in other locations.
He cleared the table of its unwashed crockery and stacked everything on the worktop. This was cluttered already with a coffee maker, a microwave, an upright mixer, and an unwashed blender along with four boxes of cereal, a bunch of overripe bananas, and a large plastic container of milk. At one side of the room stood a rubbish bin that needed emptying as well as a black rubbish bag containing used nappies. These were lending the air a sharp and unmistakable odour. Without wanting to, Mark saw the kitchen as the urbane and well-dressed detective no doubt saw it. He couldn’t imagine Thomas Lynley ever having lived in a circumstance even remotely like this.
He offered a coffee, which Lynley declined. He did accept, however, the offer of a chair. He was carrying with him a large manila envelope. From this he took the same two photographs that Mark had seen on the internet via his smartphone. These pictures, however, were far clearer. Someone in digital technology at the Met had vastly improved them since they had been released to the media and used by the tabloids. He wondered as he looked down at them whether that had been a deliberate choice by the Met: to release something too grainy to be useful in order to soothe the photographic subjects into believing they were unrecognisable.
Lynley disabused him of this notion by saying, “These came in quite late last night, which is why they haven’t yet been released.”
Mark raised his head. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat opposite Lynley. He drew both pictures towards him in a show of giving them his full consideration. He then said, “Is it your thought that I might be able to assist you?”
“You’ve been to Teo Bontempi’s flat. You might well have seen one of these two individuals.”
“It seems to me—” Mark had to stop to clear his throat. “It seems to me that you’d get a far better response were you to take these round the flats themselves.”
“That’s being done,” Lynley noted. “In the meantime, do you recognise either of these people? At least one of them appears to be a woman.”
He looked at the pictures again. He said, “Why might I know them? Are the photos from the night Teo was hurt?”
“We’ve backed up a few days. These are from two days before,” Lynley said. “They’re enlargements of the originals, obviously. The originals feature Teo as well. She’s at the building’s door.”
“With these two?” he gestured to the pictures.
“Speaking with each of them in turn. It appears that in both cases, they rang the entry buzzer. But rather than let them into the building, she came down for a word.”
“And then let them in?”
“It doesn’t appear that way. But we do need to find them because it’s clear each of them went to see her.”
Mark shook his head. “I wish I could help,” was what he said. “Your trip would have been more worthwhile.”
“As to that . . .” Lynley gathered the pictures and returned them to the envelope. He didn’t go on.
“Yes?” Mark prompted.
“You have a valuable piece of evidence, and it’s that that I’ve come for, actually.”
Mark felt a rush of hot, then cold. “What might that be?”
“Her mobile phone. You have it. Or your wife has it. Or the gentleman who arrived just now to help out has it. The final time it pinged, the mobile was in this area. Of everyone remotely connected to Teo, yours is the address closest to the mobile phone tower that caught her phone’s signal. Considering her husband’s declaration that the mobile was recharging on her bedside table when he left her, considering that you were the person to find her several days later, and considering that mobile phone tower, it stands to reason that you have the phone. The only real question is when you took it: before the arrival of the ambulance or once Teo was in hospital.”
Mark knew that if he denied it, Lynley’s next step would be a search warrant. He also knew that he should have tossed the phone in the rubbish and he would have done had he not been such a fool. He said, hearing the heaviness in his voice, “I took it directly I phoned for an ambulance.”