WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
“So she’d gone there for an exam,” Barbara Havers said. “Hence ‘evaluation’ written in her appointment diary. She wanted to know if reconstruction was possible.” She had the last custard cream from the packet she’d bought on the Isle of Dogs, and she dug this out of her shoulder bag and delicately set it on her desk, a precious item she would see to momentarily.
“And was it possible?” Lynley had rolled a chair over to join her and Nkata. The four DCs on the team were sitting where they could or otherwise leaning against the nearest wall, notebooks in hand.
“Superficially, it seemed to be,” Barbara said. She gestured to the folder of patient information that Dr. Weatherall had printed for her. “She was in excellent health—no surprise there—so there wouldn’t have been any problems with the procedure. I mean, she was good for anaesthesia and all that. Good heart, good lungs, blah blah blah.” She handed the folder to Lynley, who brought his reading glasses from his jacket pocket.
He said as he opened the folder, “And the phone calls from the surgeon to her?”
“They seem on the up and up. She phoned on the twenty-fifth to ask were there any questions that Teo had once she’d been told she was good for the surgery. She said she always does that with the women who come to her. She said Teo seemed troubled, though, right from the start. So she phoned later, on the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth. She wanted to reassure her, she said, in case Teo was afraid to go through with it. It’s not likely that things actually could’ve been made worse down there, she told me, but on the other hand, there was also the possibility that things wouldn’t’ve been improved much either.”
“Wha’s that mean, Barb?” Nkata asked. The faint sound of scribbling came from the DCs.
Barbara explained the situation much as Dr. Weatherall had explained it to her: nerve endings and physical sensation. The rebirth of the latter depended on the presence of the former, and that wasn’t guaranteed.
“You think that’d be ’nough to put her off?” Nkata asked.
“I s’pose it’s the difference between hanging on to hope and having hope dashed to bits, eh? On one hand, Teo could keep telling herself maybe. On the other, all the maybes could’ve been done for. Anyway, the real point is—according to Dr. Weatherall—that Teo finally did decide to have the surgery. All she needed to do was arrange for someone to be her driver to and from the Isle of Dogs and Bob’s your uncle. Or he would have been your uncle had things not gone south directly she made her decision.”
“Someone stopping her from having the surgery?” Lynley took off his specs and handed the medical folder back to Barbara.
“I wager her sister wouldn’t’ve been chuffed to know about Teo getting operated on,” Barbara said.
“？’Xcept the sister never knew in the first place that Teo’d been cut,” Nkata pointed out. “Either that or she was putting on a bang-up performance when she got told by her mum.”
“That seems like a good possibility, considering what you’ve told us about her,” Barbara noted. “Can we look it that way?”
“How do you see it?” Lynley asked her.
“Ross Carver believes he drove Teo off because he couldn’t stop banging on about sex, surgery, sex, repairs, sex, sensation, and everything else related to the above, including sex, and she reached the point where she couldn’t cope. So . . .” Barbara had ticked items off on her fingers and she went on with, “Teo asks him to leave, and her sister sees the opening she’s been waiting for, and she makes her move.”
Nkata went on with, “She snares the bloke, she comes up pregnant—”
“And the rest is the rest is the rest,” Barbara concluded. “And then she discovers that her sister’s having surgery, which puts Ross into a picture that Rosie doesn’t much want to look at.”
“So she clubbed her own sister?” Lynley said.
“Worked for Cain and Abel,” Barbara pointed out.
“Yes. But, on the other hand, Rachel didn’t kill Leah, and one might say she had far greater cause.”
“Who?”
“Ah. Your biblical education didn’t stretch far, I see.”
“I lost interest with all the knowing and begetting. It was too bloody exhausting. I’m lucky to know who Cain and Abel are, guv.”
“Indeed.” Lynley looked round at the group. “So Rosie Bontempi remains a suspect. Pietra Phinney denies she was there at any point on the day or night Teo died, although she won’t say where she was. What else have we? Winston? Where are we with Monifa Bankole?”