Monifa reckoned he’d made the request simply to get her out of earshot so that he could speak quietly to his mother. She wasn’t wrong. For as she was fetching the manila envelope of photos she heard the murmur of their voices and she caught the sound of the name Zawadi, so she knew they were talking about the protection order as well as the passports. She reckoned, then, that Zawadi had made her phone call to Sergeant Nkata, just as he’d spoken about to Tani on the previous afternoon.
She returned to them with the manila envelope, and she drew from it the three pictures she’d been given. She handed them to Alice, saying, “They are my life’s true blessings.”
Handsome and so sweet were the words Alice used. She passed the photos one by one to her son, who also admired them, saying, “That Simisola . . . She’s something special.”
“This is so true,” Monifa said. “Everyone who meets her sees this.”
Nkata was gazing upon the final photo his mother had handed him. He cocked his head as he examined it, but his features became puzzled and his smile faded. He looked up and said to Monifa, “Did she say where these pictures got took?”
“I did not ask,” Monifa replied. “Should I have asked? Is something wrong?”
He drew his eyebrows together, but he said, “No. Nothin’s wrong. Tha’s not it. But c’n I take this? Just this one and I’ll bring it back to you soon’s I can?”
She nodded. She handed him the manila envelope to protect the picture when it was in transit, wherever he was taking it.
His mother said, “There’s something important in the picture, Jewel?”
“Maybe something, maybe nothing,” he told her. “But either way, I got to check it out.”
EEL PIE ISLAND
TWICKENHAM
GREATER LONDON
They arrived quite early in Twickenham and parked directly across the river from Eel Pie Island. An arched footbridge led them to a glassed-in noticeboard at its end, standing at a point where two paved footpaths met. On the noticeboard was pinned a map of the island’s cottages, with the name and the location of each noted. Unfortunately, Mahonia Cottage wasn’t listed.
“Damn and blast,” was Lynley’s reaction to this.
Barbara’s was, “I dunno, guv. How hard can it be? We just need to find the cottage with no name on it, right?”
“Presupposing there’s only one without a name on it, which I doubt.”
They quickly walked the shorter path, which shot off to the right, with cottages strung along the water. All save one of them showed a name, and the nameless one had its windows boarded and a broken-down ramp leading to its door. These suggested there had been no habitant for quite some time, so they returned to the noticeboard and set off along the longer path that curved and disappeared beneath the poplars and willows creating pools of shadow.
They hadn’t got far along when they encountered a cyclist walking his bicycle in the direction of the footbridge. When they asked him if he knew which of the cottages on the island was Mahonia, his response was an unhelpful, “They have names?”
“This one belongs to Philippa Weatherall,” Barbara said.
“Oh! Pips!” He used his thumb to gesture over his back, in the direction from which he’d come. “It’s along the way. It’s got a blue roof. You’ll see it on the right.”
They thanked him and began to set off, pausing when he said, “But she’s not there. She’s on the river. I came off . . . p’rhaps ten minutes ago? She was heading towards the boathouse, but it takes a bit of time to replace everything, so she’s probably still there.” He turned now, using his arm to point in the direction he’d just indicated with his thumb. He said, “Go along and you’ll see it on the left. Can’t miss it. It’s the only one on the island.”
That said, he mounted his bicycle and went on his way, leaving them to sort out which of the buildings they came across served as a boathouse. But it turned out that his description was accurate. They couldn’t miss it, especially since it bore a sign that identified it as the island’s rowing club. Unfortunately, it was also fenced and gated, and the gate bore a lock of the sort that demanded a code. There was nothing for it but to leave and track the surgeon down later in the day or to wait for her to come out of the gate. They chose waiting.
The twenty minutes before the gate opened seemed much longer. And then, it was a young man who came through it.
“？’S Dr. Weatherall still on the river?” Barbara asked him.