“On this matter, I have no comment,” Mercy said. “I’ve done nothing wrong, have I. Nothing wrong to anyone, including this . . . this Monifa Bankole.”
“But someone’s done serious harm to you,” Lynley said. “She’s called Teo Bontempi and she’s responsible for the raid on your clinic and any unpleasantness that followed.”
“Teo who? I don’t know any Teo.”
The ash was growing on her cigarette. Lynley wondered what she would do when it wanted knocking off. He said, “She called herself Adaku Obiaka. She went to the clinic to make an arrangement with you. But she was a police detective and she had no real arrangement to make.”
Mercy was motionless. Lynley waited. Nkata altered his position, leaning his shoulder against the wall. He still held his pad and mechanical pencil. He looked interested in what she had to say. Moments ticked by during which children’s voices came to them from the garden, one of them calling out, “I wan’ to be Mummy! Keisha, tell her I’m the mummy! She’s too little anyway!”
Lynley said, “Teo Bontempi robbed you of your livelihood, didn’t she? You may have walked out of the Stoke Newington police station, but now you were on their radar. More important, you were on the radar of the team Teo Bontempi worked on, investigating and making arrests of parents and practitioners of FGM. Did you see her in the street on that day the clinic was raided, Mrs. Hart? Did you work it out that she had to be the one who turned you in?”
“I make no comment,” she told him. She rose at that, coming down the stairs. She opened the front door and then the porch door. She said, “You c’n go,” and as if to demonstrate the direction she wished them to take, she threw her cigarette towards the street.
Lynley stepped outside. Nkata followed. But just as she was about to shut both of the doors upon then, Lynley said, “As a point of curiosity, where did you do your medical training, Mrs. Hart?”
“I make no comment,” was her reply. She began to close the first of the doors, but Lynley put his hand upon it.
“Are you certain you wish to make no comment?” Lynley asked her. And when she made no reply, he said, “That’s unfortunate. Winston, are you happy to do the honours?”
Nkata nodded. “You’re being arrested, Missus Hart,” and he went on to recite the official caution.
“You can’t arrest me if I didn’t do anything,” Mercy cried. “Nothing, nothing!”
“Performing FGM is hardly nothing,” Lynley told her.
“I didn’t! I never!”
“And performing any kind of medical procedure without a licence, a degree, or anything else is also hardly nothing.”
“I never!”
Nkata said, “Far ’s I know, murderin a cop doesn’ work as nothing, either. An’ jus’ now, Missus Hart? You’re looking good for that as well.”
HAMPSTEAD HEATH
NORTH LONDON
Barbara Havers discovered it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as she’d anticipated. While Nkata had managed to talk to Rosie Bontempi outside her place of employment—Selfridges in Oxford Street—Barbara was not going to have the same luck. When she rang her, Rosie explained it was her day off work, so if the detective sergeant did want to meet up with her for conversation, it was going to have to happen in Hampstead. She was at this very moment walking across Hampstead Heath, and she’d be quite happy to see DS Havers at the Ladies’ Pond, where she intended to have a mid-morning swim. The detective sergeant could join her if she wished. It was already quite a warm day, so doubtless she’d find the water blissfully refreshing.
Putting herself into a swimming costume for a round of blissful refreshment was so far down on Barbara’s bucket list that she knew she’d never get to it in her current lifetime, so she told Rosie that while she’d meet her at the Ladies’ Pond, they’d have to have their conversation upon dry land. To Rosie’s “How sad,” Barbara informed her that water was not conducive to note-taking. Nonetheless, a plan was laid.
She had no intention of hiking across Hampstead Heath in search of the swimming ponds. What she knew of them—very little—told her they were on the Highgate side of the heath, so she checked the location and saw that parking in the area where Fitzroy Park met up with the far north point of Millfield Lane would put her quite close to a path that should take her to the Ladies’ Pond.
Traffic to Highgate wasn’t too much of a nightmare, although parking where she’d intended to park required the use of her police placard and the fervent hope that a passing vehicle didn’t crush the side of the Mini, although, when she thought about it, crushing the Mini’s side might make an improvement to its overall appearance.