Nkata said, feeling hollow, “I bloody don’t know. She’s got a cousin in Peckham she might’ve gone to and Tani’s checkin’。 But . . .”
“It’s unsettling,” Lynley said.
“Wha’s happenin’ with Weatherall? Anything?”
“She’s giving a statement. She could have come up with a dozen tales, hoping that Mercy would keep silent as she’s done so far. But she couldn’t explain away the tenth edition of Standing Warrior. You did good work there, Winston.”
“Barb did the work, guv. I jus’ saw the picture Deb St. James took.”
“Nonetheless,” Lynley said. And then, “Stay in touch regarding the Bankole woman. Check with Belgravia. She may have gone there to give a statement.”
Nkata thought that unlikely. But he agreed, although he knew he couldn’t do anything until he’d had the necessary word with Zawadi. He rang her again, and this time she answered. She was there in Brixton, she told him, wandering round Loughborough Estate and, “Where the devil are you?”
He said that he would come to her straightaway and where was she? She identified her location as “some kind of bloody crescent,” which was unhelpful as there were streets named crescent in every direction. Send him a photo of the nearest building, he told her. That should do it.
It did. He hadn’t a clue what she looked like, of course, but when he saw the woman on the corner of St. James’s Crescent and Western Road, he recognised Zawadi by what telegraphed her impatience: crossed arms, tapping foot, glances at the watch on her wrist, fingering a necklace of African beads. He introduced himself.
She gave a nod, said her own name, and then, “The passports?”
“They’re gone, Simisola’s and her mum’s and her dad’s. I’ve still got Tani’s. But tha’s all.”
She stared at him, her expression altering from blank to incredulous, as if he’d suddenly sprouted another head. “How’re they bloody gone?” she demanded.
“Monifa . . . Simisola’s mum. I think she took them. I can’t see anyone else doin’ it.”
“You didn’t keep them with you? Once you had them, you didn’t lock them up? What in God’s name . . .” She clenched her fists in front of her. Nkata reckoned she wanted to punch him and he couldn’t blame her. She said, “Without a protection order, the girl’s not safe. And without the passports and a protection order, she can be carted off to Nigeria as soon as there are tickets available. You stupid, bloody . . . Are you a cop or not?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I di’n’t think—”
“Too right, that. You didn’t think. I’m dead glad we’ve established that. So does Monifa have any clue where we’ve put Simisola and Tani?”
Nkata could feel himself cringe inside. He was only happy he didn’t do so outwardly. He said, “She knows, yeah. She fetched Simisola from there.”
“Bloody God. How did she discover where they were?”
It was worse and worse, but he owned it, so he told her. Monifa knew where Simisola was because he’d taken her there once she’d done her part in a murder investigation the Met was conducting. She’d written a statement about a clinic that the coppers had shut down in Kingsland High Street. She’d confessed that she had intended to have Simisola cut there, but to have it done medically.
“And that didn’t tell you anything?” Zawadi cried. “She’s been showing her intentions from the very first, you fool, and it’s down to us to stop her.”
ISLE OF DOGS
EAST LONDON
“People say, ‘We’re ending this,’ and they set off on a crusade,” Philippa Weatherall said. “They believe that they can stop the tide. But they can’t. No one can. This thing that some of them still do to girls . . . ? It’s a remnant of their culture and that’s how it’s defended. Well-meaning individuals, the law, courts . . . nothing stops it. Do you know where we are with this now, today, here, at this point in time, Detective Lynley? Mostly it’s done in infancy now, only occasionally is it still done to a prepubescent girl. An infant can’t speak, she can’t report what’s happened or what’s being threatened. She can’t tell a schoolteacher, the police, anyone. She’s pre-verbal and pre-memory. What I’m saying to you is that the entire ugly business of cutting girls has been driven deeply underground.”