“I’ll come home straightaway,” he told her now, as soon as she told him what had happened. “Where’s your father?”
“No, no,” Deborah said. “No need to come back. We’re fine now, Simon. Dad’s not here. I think he’s doing the shop for dinner. But Winston’s with us—he’s just outside waiting for the police to come for Simi’s father—and if we’re not safe with Winston, we’re not safe with anyone. I . . . it’s childish. I just wanted to hear your voice.” She added after a brief pause, “I do love you, Simon.” It seemed silly but at the same time necessary to tell him so.
They both knew the underlying truth of the matter although neither of them would ever speak it. Had he been with them, there was very little he could have done to stop a man like Abeo Bankole—in a rage that gave him enormous strength.
He said, “And I you, always. Will you ring your father? I’ll be easier about what’s happened if I know he’s with you.”
She promised she would do, and they rang off after promising to speak later. She heard Nkata’s deep voice from the kitchen, then, and he sounded so calm, so reassuring, that everything felt as it had been before Abeo’s sudden arrival.
He was saying, “。 . . busy for a bit of time, that will. Good I was here, though.”
“He’s gone?” Deborah said as she rejoined them. They were gathered round the central chopping table.
“He’ll be ’xplaining himself at Belgravia Station for a bit, he will.”
“He followed me here,” Sophie said. “Tani, I’m so sorry. I thought I was careful. I tried to be careful. I—”
Tani went to her, put his arm round her waist, kissed the side of her head. He said, “He worked out I took the passports to you. It’s my fault, not yours. If I’d kept them once I had ’em off Lark . . . It was an excuse to see you. And even when Zawadi texted me, I could’ve told her to fetch them from you.”
“Tha’s what this ’s ’bout?” Nkata said. “Beyond ever’thing else this is also about?”
“There’s a protection order now,” Deborah told him. “When it’s served on Tani’s father, he must hand over the passports so he can’t take Simi out of the country.”
“Best give them to me, then,” Nkata said. “I’ll see they go where they’re meant to go and meantime—even if Belgravia doesn’t hold him for twenty-four—he’s not coming to Brixton to fetch ’em, I ’xpect.” He added with a quick smile, “Even I wouldn’t want to tangle with my mum.”
Deborah agreed with Nkata’s plan. It made much more sense that he would have the passports. She said she would ring her dad to learn where he’d hidden them.
This was a process that took very little time since Deborah didn’t tell her father anything other than Winston Nkata being with them and asking for the passports in order to give a protection order against Abeo Bankole its full weight.
“Fixed up Alaska a nice place to do his business,” Joseph Cotter replied.
Deborah said, “You’ve put them in the garden?” to which he said with a chuckle, “Didn’t use the garden when he was a kitten, did he? Check under the sink in the old scullery, Deb.”
She did so. Admittedly, it was—as her father had told her—an excellent place to hide something. The old litter box had been unearthed from wherever her father had stored it and, ever economical, he’d apparently kept fresh litter as well. He’d even added two patches of water so it appeared that the box had been recently used.
Deborah dug through all this and at the bottom beneath the litter, she found the passports, well wrapped individually in cling film and put together inside a plastic freezer bag. She removed them from the bag, washed her hands of the dust, and took the passports to Winston.
“Good hiding place like he tol’ us?” Tani asked.
“Oh yes,” Deborah said. “Only a very brave heart would have found them. I’d no idea my father was so ingenious.”
Nkata put the passports into the inner pocket of his jacket. He also fished out one of his cards and handed it to Tani. If Tani would ring the woman with the protection order and tell her the coppers—in the person of Nkata—now had the passports . . . ?
Tani promised to do so.
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Their conversation was overdue. He had been avoiding it despite his mother’s direction to ask Pete if he wanted to know why she had pawned some of Floss’s Art Deco jewellery. So when he arrived in Lower Clapton—earlier than usual for once, and wasn’t that a blessing—he took a moment to gather his thoughts. He forced those thoughts to remain on a single topic. Why had his wife wanted or needed money?