“Looks like he might’ve got the worse of it, eh?” Nkata said with a gesture at the blood on Bankole.
“He thinks he’s far away from the age for discipline. He is not. Now you have seen no one is here, leave me in peace.”
“You hurt your wife, Mister Bankole? ’S some of that blood hers?”
“I rule here. That woman does not. No woman will rule here while I live.”
Nkata couldn’t help himself. He said, “How d’you ’spect that’ll work out for you?”
Bankole said only, “Go.”
There was nothing to be gained from staying, whether he taunted the man or not. So Nkata left and was checking his mobile phone for potential messages—he’d given his card to Monifa Bankole, after all—when he heard “Ssssst! Policeman! Sssst!”
He looked up. No one was nearby. He gazed round till he saw a woman hanging out of a gaping window on the third floor of Bronte House, some distance from the Bankole’s flat. He walked back and stationed himself beneath her. He raised his hands as if saying, “What is it?”
She held up a finger in the universal sign of wait a moment. He did so, and in about thirty seconds she was back. She held something in her hand, which she tossed down to him. He caught it and saw that she’d wrapped a piece of paper round a hairbrush. He unwrapped and read the message she’d written. It was the name Halimah Tijani and the words Lydgate House. A three-digit number accompanied this. Nkata raised his hand and gave the woman a quick salute, leaving the hairbrush on a nearby step for her to collect later.
He went to the map of Mayville Estate to locate Lydgate House, then made his way there and to the flat numbered 501. A sharp knock on the door brought no response. When he said, “Missus Bankole? Winston Nkata. We spoke before. Metropolitan Police,” he heard the murmur of voices.
A bolt was drawn back on the inside of the door, and it was opened by a woman he assumed was Halimah Tijani. She gestured him inside quickly, looking beyond him as if to make certain he hadn’t been followed. The flat was unbearably hot and equally stuffy, its closed curtains and windows preventing the relief of air that was fresh if not cool.
Monifa Bankole sat on a plump ottoman in front of an armchair. Nkata blew out a breath when he saw her swollen face and the dark bruises beneath her eyes. When she rose, she did it so carefully that he reckoned chances were good that several of her ribs were broken as well. She said nothing, merely looked at him briefly, then lowered her head.
“He said it was your son he beat,” Nkata told her.
She said, “It was. This is . . . Me, this is before.”
“You got to come with me, then.”
“I cannot. I do not know what Abeo will do to Tani now. But Simisola he will take to Nigeria if I cannot stop him.”
“We work this one step at a time, Missus Bankole,” Nkata told her. And to Halimah, he said, “She comes with me. No one goes back there. Un’erstand?”
Halimah nodded. She said, “Her things? Clothing?” And to Monifa, “What else is there, Monifa? Have you medicines?”
Monifa said, “I can’t. Tani will return with another order and I will not be there and then I will not know where he is and where Simisola is. Please, you must understand.”
“What I un’erstand is that bloke’s goin to kill one ’f you. I saw there was something had hit him in the forehead. I clocked an iron on the floor. Did you do that?”
She looked away, made no reply.
“Got it,” Nkata said. And then to Halimah, “Give us a minute?”
Halimah nodded and took herself into a corridor and from there into what he assumed was a bedroom. She shut the door.
From his jacket pocket, Nkata took the real reason he’d come to speak to Monifa again: a photocopied page from the clinic’s appointment book. He unfolded it, sat in the armchair, smoothed the page across his knee. He said, “I got to ask you to look at this. It’s your name, see. And next to your name, there in brackets is another, Simisola, like you just mentioned. You see this?”
Monifa looked dutifully. She nodded in reply to his question.
He said, “What you tol’ me before is that you were there to get some money back. You never did explain what that money was for.” He didn’t wait for her to respond, instead going on with, “But with this name—Simisola’s—in brackets next to yours, looks to me like she was who was havin’ something done. I got tha’ right?”
Monifa said nothing, directing her gaze once more to her lap.