“You’re saying you live as flatmates? Like brother and sister?”
“Like a brother who sleeps with his sister if sleeps isn’t a euphemism for anything else. She wants me to have more with someone, something physical. But she wants it to be with nothing attached. No other involvement. No connection.”
“Just sex?”
“Yes.” Phinney laughed ruefully. He ran his hand along the top of the table, a gesture that stopped him from going on. But he’d not said enough, so he added, “Believe me, I’m completely aware of the irony.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean that I ended up with the connection but not the sex. Not the act of sex. It turned out exactly as Pete feared, but without my having the benefit of sex.”
“She knew that there was an emotional connection between you and Teo?”
“I never told her, but she could see the change in me.” He looked sharply at Lynley, as if to read him before he asked, “Have you ever been nearly mad with love? Do you know what I mean? Have you ever reached the point when you can no longer think straight because the only thoughts you can muster both begin and end with her? Everything else is obliterated from your mind and only she remains.”
“I haven’t,” Lynley said. “I’ve been in love, yes. I’ve badly wanted someone as well. But not driven mad because of it.”
“Lucky you. But I expect that’s owing to your life rolling along on its expected journey. No need to go mad if what you need and what you want are also needed and wanted by the other.”
Lynley didn’t illuminate him on the subject of his life rolling along on its expected journey. From age sixteen, that had hardly been the case. It still wasn’t. He said instead, “Once you had her reassigned to south London, you continued with her.”
“The texts, yes. The phone calls, yes. Teo was the wound I couldn’t stop licking. I wanted to do, believe me. I wanted my entire brain erased so that I could just get on with my life. If there had been a pill I could have taken that would have removed her from memory, I would have taken it. Instead, I kept telling myself that it would be just once more: just one more message, just one more phone call, just one more conversation. Anything, really. A scrap. A crumb. But she didn’t want that. And who could blame her?”
“Your wife must be interviewed, you know.”
“She wouldn’t have raised a finger to hurt her.”
“Perhaps not. But in her mind, she stood to lose a lot. When people are in that position, they’ll often do whatever it takes to keep what they have.”
MAYVILLE ESTATE
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Monifa Bankole’s husband answered the door to Nkata’s sharp knock. He held a washing flannel to his forehead, and both the front of his white shirt and his khaki trousers were speckled with blood. Nkata had his warrant card in hand, so although it was unnecessary at this point, he still lifted it and said, “Metropolitan Police.”
“You’re back, eh?” Bankole remarked. “She rang you, did she? Yes. I see this. What else is there to do on her journey of ruining lives?”
Nkata said, “Happens no one rang me ’t all, but looks like someone should’ve.” Beyond the man, Nkata could see a shadowy sitting room where furniture lay in disarray. “I got to speak with Missus Bankole.”
“Not here.” Bankole began to shut the door.
Nkata stopped him, his hand flat on the wood. “I got to say it, Mister Bankole. Could be you’re not telling the truth. So I’ll jus’ have a look round, eh?”
Bankole turned from the door, leaving it open. Once Nkata had stepped over the threshold, Bankole shouted, “Monifa! You are wanted. Copper’s here.”
There was no reply and no sound of movement, but that didn’t mean no one else was in the flat. Nkata said, “Like I said, I’ll have a look,” and went in the direction of the kitchen first and from there to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Bankole was telling the truth, it seemed. He was alone.
Still, he hadn’t overturned furniture on his own, and it wasn’t likely he’d hit himself on the forehead with the steam iron that lay discarded on the floor near an armchair. The question was whether the blood on him belonged to him, his wife, or someone else.
“Where’s she gone to?” Nkata asked him.
“I don’t know, do I.”
“Wha’ happened here, then?”
“My worthless son attacked me. A son. His father. If not for me, that son of a whore would not even exist.”