She didn’t strike Nkata as the grieving mother. He wondered about that. Then he wondered about himself for wondering that. Because of his job, he well knew that people had different ways of grieving. He asked himself if he was doubting her because she was white. Probably, he decided.
Before he could answer, Rosie said, “Does Papá need help?”
“Yes, but don’t offer, Belle. Today, it is . . . as it has been.” And then to Nkata, as if she’d read his doubts about her. “Cesare—my husband—is taking Teo’s death very hard. Rosie and I try not to burden him further with our own loss. And just now it seems less than real, as if it has happened to someone else. And no one will give us permission for her body.”
“Tha’s due to the postmortem exam. I ’spect it’ll be a bit ’f time yet.”
“This is something I do not understand,” Solange said. “And no one will tell us anything.”
“That’s why he’s here, Maman. This is Sergeant Nkata from the Met.”
“And why has this Sergeant Nkata from the Met come to see us?” A man speaking this time, another accent that was not English. It was also not French. He was coming from the same direction his wife and daughter had used, but with a difference. His progress was quite slow and he used a Zimmer frame. One of his legs, Nkata noticed, did not work well.
“It’s about Teo, Cesare,” Solange Bontempi said.
Cesare Bontempi said to Nkata, “I do not understand why we’re forbidden from bringing her home. We want a funeral. We want our friends around us. We want our priest to—” He stopped himself. He waved away more words.
“Papá, sit,” Rosie said. “Please. Here. Let us help you. Maman?”
He flung out an arm to keep them both at bay. He continued his agonised progress into the room. There was sweat on his forehead and his upper lip. They waited in silence until he joined them. He collapsed into—rather than sat upon—one of the sofas. He shoved the Zimmer frame to one side.
He said to Nkata, “Why can we not have our daughter returned to us?”
Nkata waited for the women to sit. They didn’t appear to want to. Indeed, Rosie looked like someone wishing to flee: she kept glancing in the direction of the open front door. He gestured to two of the armchairs. He sat at the other end of the sofa from Cesare. He said, “？’S not good news. I’m sorry to have to tell it to you.”
“There is something more?” Solange’s hand crept to her throat in that defensive manoeuvre some women employed, but her gaze went quickly to her husband. “Cesare, perhaps—”
“No! You tell it, Mister Sergeant Whoever You Are.”
“Nkata,” he said, “Winston Nkata. I’m come to tell you tha’ looks like she was murdered, your daughter. Which is why, see, they won’t r’lease her body to you.”
“Murdered?” Cesare said. “Teo is murdered? She was police. Who murders police?”
Solange got to her feet and went to him. He waved her away again. Solange said, “Cesare, please. You must—”
“What must I? Stay calm? Teodora is murdered, and I must be calm?”
“You are not well, my dear. Rosie and I are afraid for you.”
Cesare cast a glance at Rosie. Her head lowered, her gaze on her lap, on her hands clasped tightly.
Solange said to Nkata, “I do not understand. Who has decided she was murdered? And why? And how?”
Nkata explained how it would probably have happened, based on the report Lynley had shared with him and Barbara Havers. He did not rehash the details that they would already know: the discovery of Teo Bontempi by an officer she worked with; the hospitalisation; the examination, the scans, and the X-rays revealing the epidural haematoma; the futile effort to save her by drilling into her skull to reduce the swelling; the autopsy conducted by a Home Office pathologist once it was determined that she couldn’t have injured herself in the way that she’d been injured. He spoke merely of the conclusion that the pathologist had reached. All of this would soon be presented before a coroner’s jury, he said. But everything about her injury, her subsequent coma, and her death suggested murder.
The three of them remained silent. They appeared stunned, each trying to work out how this could have happened. Solange was the one to break the silence.
“Who would have wanted to do this to Teo? And why?”
“Tha’s what we’ll be working on,” Nkata told her. “Tha’s part ’f why I’m here. We start with who.”