“Know what?” Havers asked as she entered the room. At once, she saw the flowers and stopped in her tracks. She stared. She approached her desk as if a cobra were coiled upon it. She said, “What is this?” and looked round at them suspiciously. “Who’s taking the mickey?”
Dorothea said, “They came only just now. Aren’t they lovely? Oh, I do wish someone would send me flowers. It’s such a romantic statement. Open the card, Barbara. There’s a card. You must open it. I have a very good feeling about who sent them.”
Havers looked at the card poking up from among a group of unidentifiable mop-like fiery orange flowers. She said, “Later.”
“But you must open it. You have to open it. You won’t open it now?”
“Won’t. But you’ll be the first to know who sent them once I read the card, which will happen later. Much later. Much, much later. Super much later.”
“Oh pooh, you can’t stand the suspense any more than I can, but I know when you’re being pigheaded.”
That said, she swiveled round on the drawing-pin-size heel of her right stiletto and left them. Havers looked at everyone remaining in the room and narrowed her eyes. “What’d you lot do, take up a collection?”
“For them?” Nkata was the one to speak. “Didn’t happen, Barb. Whoever sent them, it was no one from here. ’F I send flowers, they go to my mum and no one else, not to offend.”
“Hmph,” was her answer. She grabbed the card and opened it. She flushed straight to the roots of her hair, something Lynley had never witnessed. Nor had anyone else, because utter silence fell upon them.
Quickly, she shoved the card into her shoulder bag. She seemed to take such care to hide it that her arm went inside the bag nearly up to her elbow. Her immediate delivery of information on the case told the tale of her not wanting to be questioned. Whether she was pleased or not, it was impossible to ascertain.
Her information was all about the missing sculpture and the conversation she’d had at the gallery in Peckham. After her explanation of the source and the revelation of the limited edition that it was part of, she went on to say that she’d “tried it for size as the cosh and you can tick that box straightaway, cos anyone with two hands could’ve used it: man, woman, child, or organ grinder’s monkey. It’s tall enough and hefty enough, and if it’s not what bashed her, I’ll eat these flowers cos there’s no other reason for it to go missing. She took it with her when she left or she chucked it out of a window so she wouldn’t be caught on CCTV. She either fetched it afterwards and made a wheelie bin its next owner or she’s put it somewhere and we need to find out where.”
“The DCs are looking at charity shops and consignment shops,” Lynley reminded her.
“Wha’ about the lock-up where Mercy Hart’s got the clinic clobber stored?” Nkata said. “We need a warrant to get into it, but tha’s not a problem.”
“Damn thing could be anywhere,” one of the DCs pointed out.
“Could be but isn’t,” Havers said sharply. “Look, we’ve got our suspects. You ask me, we check the boots of their cars, where their spare tyres are kept, the back of their clothes cupboards, under their beds, inside every box we come across. We know it’s a woman, we know—”
“We know Ross Carver claimed it’s a woman,” Lynley reminded her. “It’s only his word telling us what Teo Bontempi ostensibly said when he found her.”
“You’re not saying he’s the one beat in her head, are you?” Havers said. “Guv, he’s got no bloody reason to kill her, not one I can see. If you’re looking for motives, seems to me Rosie has the best: she’s in the family way and Ross is part of that family. Plus, Teo would’ve let her in the building straightaway, no questions asked. What did she have to fear from her own sister, ’specially since Teo hadn’t told her what the surgery was for.”
“Which is, as we know, according to Rosie,” Lynley pointed out. “So let’s get back to what we can see with our eyes. We’ve seen the Streatham CCTV from the night she was attacked. We know there’s a woman in dark clothes and a hoodie who was careful to be unidentifiable from the building’s camera. We know she entered with a group that she was not a part of, and we know she didn’t come out the way she went in. She doesn’t live there or she would have identified herself—or been identified—when the photographs were taken round the building. I think that’s where we start.”