“When’ll she be back?”
Bliss flipped a page of her magazine to a two-page spread with the title “What Were They Thinking?” and a line of female celebrity pictures beneath it, each featuring a different choice of clothing more outrageous than the last. “Don’ know, do I?” Bliss said. “She don’ know either. Least, tha’s what she said.”
“When?”
“This morning, she rang.”
“She rang you?” and when Bliss nodded, “Did she mention my sister? Simisola?”
“Not a whisper.”
“But we had a ’rangement, me and Tiombe. Tiombe was set to look after Simi till my dad and mum come to their senses. They want her to be cut, they do.”
Bliss took this in with little reaction beyond a momentary widening of her eyes. She said, “Cut? Tha’s a nasty business. You certain?” And when he nodded, “You ring the cops?”
“I don’t want to do that. I just want her to be someplace safe while I reason with them.”
There was a cigarette packet on the countertop, and Bliss shook out a fag and lit it. She offered him one. He declined. She took a good long hit. She said, “You think you got tha’ kind of reasoning power in you?”
“Don’t know, do I? But the first step was going to be Tiombe looking after Simi.”
“Then I’m tha’ sorry that she i’n’t here.”
“What about you?” Tani asked without thinking. He could see the question gave Bliss pause. She seemed to consider it before she shook her head. She said, “Not like I don’ think any cutting done to girls is bloody-minded and wrong. I’s double both and it makes me sick. But truth is I got a business to run here and I believe in good relations with everyone in the market, which ’ncludes your daddy. There’s also my clients, see. I can’t have them thinking I’m running some sort ’f underground escape route for girls wanting to get ’way from their parents. I’m tha’ sorry ’bout it. And I do wish Tiombe was here. But she’s not and—”
A woman and girl entered the shop, stopping Bliss from saying more. The girl looked about twelve years old. Bliss smiled at them both and said, “Alice here wearin’ you down, Fola?”
Fola, the adult, said, “As far as cornrows jus’ now. No extensions till she’s fifteen.”
“Tha’s just mean, that is!” Alice protested.
“Yeah? Well, mean is as mean does,” Fola replied. “I c’n show you mean if that’s your decision.”
Sulkily, Alice flounced over to Bliss’s station and flopped herself into the chair there. Apparently she’d realised quick enough that she was caught in a beggars and choosers situation.
“Ta for stopping by, then, Tani,” Bliss said as she crushed out her cigarette. “Got to get to work now but if Tiombe rings, I’ll tell her you were here.”
CHELSEA
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
With Havers finishing up in the flat and awaiting Nkata’s arrival in Streatham, Lynley drove to Chelsea, where parking was always a horrendous prospect once the locals began arriving home from their day’s employment. He finally managed to deposit the Healey Elliott in Paultons Square, and he walked from there to Cheyne Row, removing his jacket en route and slinging it over his shoulder in the steaming early evening.
At the corner of Lordship Place, he mounted the steps of a tall brick building and rang its single bell. Generally this invited the enthusiastic barking of the resident long-haired dachshund, but on this day Peach was apparently elsewhere, and the door was opened after a few moments by Simon St. James. He carried with him what looked like a written report, but, upon Lynley’s questioning, this turned out to be a monograph that he was reading for a fellow scientist prior to its submission to a journal for publication.
“You’re still working, then?” Lynley said. “I won’t stay long.”
“Rubbish. I’m achieving very little. My thoughts have been turning to whiskey for at least thirty minutes. What’s your pleasure?”
“A single malt, as always.”
“Lagavulin or the Macallan?”
“I wouldn’t say no to either, but I’ll have the first.”
“Always a wise choice.” St. James led him into his study, to the left of the entry where, at one time in the home’s Edwardian heyday, a dining room would have been. An open window suggested St. James’s wish of catching a breeze should one develop, but not much joy was coming from this owing to the position of the house and its lack of cross ventilation. It was only slightly less hot in the study than it was outside. Nonetheless, the room was psychically comfortable if not physically so. It possessed a display of Deborah’s black-and-white photographs, along with overfull bookshelves, worn leather furniture, and a completely disordered desk. An Anglepoise lamp shone down on the clutter here, shedding a cone of light on a toppled pile of manila folders along with what looked like several days’ unopened post.