At least the efforts of his DCs and himself had not been entirely in vain. Although there was more footage to view, they’d managed to find Teo Bontempi—in African dress—on the pavement in Kingsland High Street. Indeed, they even had footage of the detective sergeant crossing the street to walk towards the clinic. It didn’t look as if anything sinister were happening, though. Continued viewing of the CCTV footage from several other nearby shops had found Teo Bontempi ringing a buzzer next to the door to the building in which the clinic did its business. That might have been argued away as inconsequential—despite there being no businesses in the building aside from the clinic—but additional viewing of the footage in question showed the door opening and someone in the shadows giving the detective sergeant access to the place. It wasn’t enough to tie Mercy Hart to Teo Bontempi, but it was at least a start.
When he could stand the idea of moving his body, Nkata opened his car door and unfolded his long legs. He set off in the direction of his parents’ flat and was approaching it when his mobile rang. A glance told him the caller was Barb Havers. Her first words to him were, “I bloody well want to bloody well know if you’re in on it.” He could tell she was in a serious lather.
“Say wha’， Barb?” he asked her.
“You know what I mean, Winston. Don’t pretend you don’t. Are you in on it? Simple question with a simple answer of yes or no.”
“Must be no then cos I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You swear? Swear. Swear that you don’t.” She sounded on the verge of tears. “I just made a sodding fool of myself. One of you or the whole lot of you set me up, and I want to know who.”
He couldn’t work anything out of what she was saying. He gave her the only response he could. “Swear, Barb. You all right, there?”
“Of course I’m not all right. Do I sound all right? I just rang Salvatore Lo Bianco. I could ’s well have pulled down my knickers in public.”
“Inspector Lo Bianco? I di’n’t know he was still in London. I only met the bloke one time, Barb, at that tap-dancing event. You want to tell me wha’s happenin?”
What she apparently wanted was to cut off their conversation, which she did. He was left saying her name several times, then punching her mobile number, then ringing her landline and leaving a message. He texted her Ring if you want to talk more and then he went to his parents’ flat.
Inside, he heard their voices first: his mother’s rhythmic pattern of speaking and Monifa’s hesitant responses. He found them in the kitchen where the scents were of beef and chicken and three pots were covered both with foil and then with lids. His mother saw him first and said, “Monifa’s done us ewedu soup, Jewel. And Buka stew. She’s also made fufu. The fufu is cassava, but Monifa says it can be made from . . . what did you say, Monifa?”
“Many things,” Monifa said. “Plantains, cassava, yams . . .”
“Can he look, Monifa?” Alice asked. “He won’t have ever seen fufu before.”
Monifa nodded and offered a smile. “Yes, yes,” she said. She lifted the lid of one of the pots.
Nkata checked out its contents. The fufu turned out to be a cream-coloured loaf that wasn’t bread, that wasn’t potatoes, that wasn’t anything but fufu. It was, Alice explained to him, used to dip into or to scoop up soup. No cutlery allowed, she informed him. And if you eat it the way Monifa says it’s eaten, you don’t chew the fufu but swallow it whole.
That sounded like their pudding was guaranteed to be the Heimlich manoeuvre. Monifa apparently read this from his expression and said, “No, no. You must chew if you have never eaten fufu before now.”
Nkata was ready to try nearly anything that was presented to him—he had skipped lunch although he wasn’t foolish enough to let Alice know it—so he went for the paracetamol, downed two, and rejoined his mother and their guest. His dad would eat when he arrived home from his late shift on the Number 11 bus.
He found that several sheets of paper from a yellow pad were folded lengthwise in half and tucked to one side of his plate. He sat and unfolded them. He quickly saw what they were.
She’d written the history of her dealings with Women’s Health of Hackney. She identified the individual she had met there: Mercy Hart posing as Easter Lange. She explained why she had taken her daughter to this place. What she described was what was being called medicalised FGM in those countries where doctors had begun offering the procedure in a sterile setting. Still, what she described was illegal in the UK no matter how it was performed or by whom. Finally, then, the Met had what it needed to finish off Mercy Hart and seal her fate.