“What were you working on?” Lynley asked. Project suggested something ongoing, possibly of long duration.
“Abuse of women,” Phinney said. “But primarily FGM. She was passionate about rooting it out and putting a stop to it. Well, of course, anyone would be. But the difficulty was that she insisted on forging ahead, in whatever direction took her fancy, in an investigation that’s monumentally difficult to run anyway.”
Lynley took up his own croissant and broke off a piece. It was, he found, actually quite good. As was the coffee. “I can understand her passion,” he said.
“Right. Of course. As a woman, she—”
Lynley cut him off with, “She was more than merely a woman in this particular situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“She herself was badly mutilated. It was discovered in autopsy. I can’t think she would have told anyone about it save her husband.”
Mark’s gaze dropped as his mouth opened. But he made no sound for several moments, into which a boisterous group entered the Orbit, apparently on their way to their elevenses. He finally managed, “No, of course she never told me.” He nodded at the folders that Lynley was carrying. He went on with, “You said it was bad?”
“Infibulation.”
“Jesus.” Liquid came into Phinney’s eyes. He raised a hand as if to shield them from Lynley’s view. Because of the project he was heading, he obviously knew exactly what infibulation was.
Lynley said, “According to the Home Office pathologist, it would have been done many years in the past, possibly when she was an infant. All we know is that it was badly done. At some point she’d been almost completely sewn up.”
Mark raised his other hand to indicate no more. Lynley couldn’t blame him. The woman had been his colleague. The surprise of learning, the horror of knowing. And Mark Phinney himself had been the one to force her transfer. As if he’d read Lynley’s mind, Phinney said, “I would never have transferred her. Why the hell didn’t she tell me? She could have told me why she . . .” He seemed at a loss.
“Why she didn’t play by your rules?”
“Everything would have been different had she only told me.”
“You would have had to have her wholehearted trust for her to tell you, I daresay,” Lynley pointed out. “After what had been done to her, it stands to reason that she probably trusted very few people.” He picked up his coffee, finished it, and stood. He said, “We’ll need to take a look at everything she’s done on your team and everything she may have done on her own. That means her files, her notes, her computer, her reports on her actions, digital photos, digital recordings, and anything else she may have documented and given to you or squirreled away. I’ll need to talk to her colleagues as well.”
“Aside from myself, we have only two DCs and Teo’s replacement, DS Jade Hopwood.”
“Four people in total?” Lynley was incredulous. “How do you intend to put an end to the abuse of females with only one sergeant and two DCs?”
“That’s all the Met would give us,” Phinney said. “So I expect you see the difficulty we face.”
NEW END SQUARE
HAMPSTEAD
NORTH LONDON
DS Winston Nkata knew that one of the reasons he’d been tasked with telling the family of Teo Bontempi that she had been murdered was that he was Black, as had been the detective sergeant herself, as would be her family. He didn’t mind this, although he did wonder if his guv—Lynley—thought that hearing horrible news from a person of the same race somehow would make the blow less grievous. But he accepted the assignment without question or remark, although he didn’t relish it. No one ever truly wanted to be the carrier of this sort of news.
He was surprised by the family’s address in Hampstead. Hampstead meant money by the bucketful and money by the bucketful meant either an inheritance that the death duties hadn’t completely eaten up or employment with serious remuneration. Having grown up on a housing estate in an area of south London still waiting to be called fashionable, he was used to immense tower blocks, multiple ethnicities, gang warfare among youths who were often Black, and parents—his own, especially—who allowed him out of their flat during his childhood only if he had a destination he could name and a path to that destination that didn’t take him onto anyone’s declared turf. That hadn’t mattered much. He’d been recruited into the Brixton Warriors anyway, just as had been his brother, Harold, who was languishing in prison at the monarch’s pleasure and would be doing so for at least seventeen more years. Winston had been plucked from the Warriors through the kindness and interest of a cop—Black like the Nkata family—and he had ventured onto a new path as a result. And although his life had altered radically over the years, he’d long ago concluded that the only members of his race who ended up living in Hampstead were celebrities: film stars, well-paid athletes, and the like.