“Mercy Hart claims the clinic’s not hers, either.”
“Who?”
“Mercy Hart. As you volunteer there, surely you know Mercy Hart, Dr. Weatherall.”
“I do not,” she said. “I’ve never heard of her. And now I’m going to shower and change as this conversation has gone on quite long enough.”
“You probably know her as Easter Lange,” Barbara said.
“Easter? Yes, I do know Easter. It’s Easter’s clinic. She’s how I came to be there in the first place. She read about my work—and don’t ask me where or how because I don’t know—and she rang me about volunteering a bit of time if I could. She called herself Easter. But you’re saying she’s who?”
“Mercy Hart. Easter Lange is her aunt.”
“So between the two of them—Mercy Hart and Easter Lange—is where the answers to your questions lie. Either Mercy Hart is using the name Easter Lange or Easter Lange is behind whatever is going on in that place that got it shut down.”
“FGM got it shut down,” Barbara said.
The surgeon’s mouth opened then shut. She seemed to take a few moments to put herself back together before she said, “That has to be nonsense.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not,” Lynley told her. “We’ve a statement from the mother of a prospective patient confirming it.”
“And you’re thinking that I’m involved with cutting? I’ve been working for years repairing the damage done to these women through FGM.” She raised her hands as if to ward off anything else they might want to say. “Please leave now,” she said. “As I told you, I want to shower and get to the Isle of Dogs. You’ve kept me from both of those objectives quite long enough.”
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
“Seems like they were on the same side, guv,” Havers said as they walked to their cars. They’d come separately, each of them from their homes to Twickenham. “Seems they were going after FGM each in her own way. And what she said makes sense. She didn’t know Teo Bontempi was a detective working on a special team. Seeing her out of place like that—in her African togs as well—she would’ve been surprised, wouldn’t she? By the coincidence if by nothing else.” She lit up a Player’s. He gave her a look. She said, “We’re outdoors.”
“You might have waited till you were in your car,” Lynley pointed out.
Havers said to the sky, “Reformed smokers are the worst, aren’t they?” No answer came from above, so she went on with, “If she’s also counselling women in the Kingsland clinic, she’s in a position to talk down FGM ’s well. I can see her doing that, especially on the sly when Mercy’s busy with something else.”
“And yet she claims to know nothing about it at the same time as Mercy claims she was merely an employee of the place, and that someone else was cutting girls.”
“D’you believe her? Mercy, I mean. Not Dr. Weatherall.”
“She’s willing to be inside Bronzefield Prison rather than open up further. What does that tell us?”
“Tells me she’s worried about being banged up for a bucket of offences, after which she goes back to Bronzefield to while away a few years perfecting her macramé. What’s it tell you?”
“Perhaps she’s afraid.”
“Right. She’s afraid of ending up in the dock. She has motive, guv. In spades. In diamonds. In what you will. No wonder she doesn’t want to talk to us or to anyone else within reach of the silver bracelets.”
They separated then and headed in the direction of central London. It was still fairly early, so the traffic had not yet begun its sluggish crawl. They made good time, but only till they reached the Great West Road, where the battle with buses, taxis, and cars daily tested one’s patience, endurance, and driving skills.
Lynley lost sight of Barbara’s Mini in Chiswick. But however she had managed it, she pulled into a parking bay beneath New Scotland Yard moments after he emerged from the Healey Elliott, its copper paint job still pleasingly unscathed.
They went up in the lift together, Havers reeking of cigarette smoke and completely unapologetic about it when he cast an unappreciative look at her. There was no point to commenting upon the possibility of spraying herself with air freshener, so he said nothing save good morning to Dorothea Harriman as he followed Havers to join the others.
They were gathered round Winston Nkata’s desk, passing among themselves what appeared to be a photograph. There was a decided air of something in the room. Under other circumstances it might have been an air of excitement had there actually been something about which one could get excited at this point.