“That’s rather a leap, isn’t it?” Lynley asked.
“Why?”
“It seems you would have concluded there was someone else, a lover, before you jumped to the idea of her stalking Teo Bontempi.”
“It just didn’t seem likely to me: that she’d taken a lover. She gave no sign of that, and I reckoned there would have been signs. A new way with her hair? More makeup? Hasty phone calls? Messages on her phone? And she was so consumed—she is so consumed—with Lilybet. I couldn’t see her having something on the side. But, on the other hand, she knew there was something between Teo and me, so I thought . . . Like I said, I didn’t know. I thought she might have gone to Streatham. If she’d been doing something else—taking a class, perhaps? visiting the library? joining a choir? God knows what—why wouldn’t she have told me? But she’d never once said a word other than she was having a night with Greer. So when she left me—Greer, I mean—I rang Paulie. He stayed with Lilybet and I used his motor. I went to see if Pete had gone to Teo another time.”
“So Teo told you your wife had been there once before?”
“She had done, yes. But you know that, don’t you. You’ve her photo from the CCTV film. You’ve known it was Pete since you saw her that morning.”
Lynley didn’t reply to that, merely saying, “Why didn’t you just ring her mobile?”
“I did. But she’d turned it off, so I didn’t have a clue. I still don’t have a clue.” Phinney turned to look at the view. For a moment, he spoke to it, rather than to Lynley. “While I was there, waiting in Paulie’s car and thinking what to do next, Ross Carver turned up. I’d seen photos of him. I’d . . . I’d looked him up on social media and whatnot when Teo and I first became, you know, involved. He let himself into the building, and that was that.”
“He had a key, then. Did you?”
“Never. Like I told you, I had to ring the concierge when I went there to see why she hadn’t reported for her new assignment.”
“How long did you stay there? Parked, I mean.”
“Probably a quarter-hour. Bit less, p’rhaps. I waited to see if Pete would emerge. I couldn’t think she’d want to stay there once Carver arrived.”
“Did she emerge?”
“No. And as far as I could tell, she hadn’t been there in the first place. By the time I got back home, she was in bed and Paulie was gone. Asleep or faking it, I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her where she’d been, on the following day?”
He looked down at his feet. He shook his head. “I reckoned Greer would tell her that she’d been rumbled and she’d come to me and . . . What do I call it? Confess? But she didn’t. I suppose I don’t really want to know where she was. And the fact is . . .” He looked up at Lynley. His face bore a look that suggested the pain he’d been carrying round for so long.
“The fact is . . . ?” Lynley prompted him.
“I never saw the car. I mean our car. It wasn’t nearby and, believe me, I looked. I can’t see her hiding it. Why would she have done? She wouldn’t have known Greer blew the gaff. She wouldn’t have known I’d show up in Streatham. She had no reason to hide the car, did she.”
On the other hand, Lynley thought, she was a copper’s wife. She’d know the game better than most. And there was another consideration as well. She could have gone to Streatham and left Streatham in the time that it had taken her husband to arrange borrowing his brother’s car and driving to south London himself. He didn’t point this out to the DCS, however. Phinney wasn’t thick. He would have already worked this out.
“We’re going to ask for her fingerprints, Mark,” Lynley said. “DNA as well. If she did get into Teo’s flat somehow, no matter what occurred between them that night, we’ll need to eliminate her from the list of possible suspects.”
Phinney nodded. His expression was bleak. “I’ll let her know. But please understand. She wouldn’t have hurt Teo. That’s not who she is. That’s not her way.”
Lynley made no response to this. It was, after all, what most husbands would say.
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
Monifa knew there was only one real choice. She could cook a thousand dinners for the Nkata family. She could add twenty Nigerian dishes to the menu at Alice N’s Café; she could add fifty Nigerian dishes if she thought that might work. She could join Alice there as a cook or she could teach Alice and her assistant Tabby how to go about creating the Nigerian dishes themselves. But none of that was going to get her closer to Simisola and Tani.