“They can’t be broadcasting that.”
“Don’t need to, do they. It’s all word of mouth.”
“And the arrests you mentioned? The two women?”
“Looked hopeful at first—seems there was a little girl with one ’f them—but turned out to be sod all in the end. One woman runs a clinic in the community, for women who don’t want to see a male GP for things like antenatal exams, birth control, breast checks, smears, and the like. The other just happened to be there when the cops arrived and carted both of them off. Could be something, could be nothing. Lord only knows.”
“The women’s names?”
“In the report as well.” She handed it over and looked at all the material on her desk. She said, “D’you know how many African immigrants’re in London? Somali and Nigerian, ’specially?”
“I don’t,” he said.
“Neither do I. But that’s where this maiming’s going on. Not everyone does it, ’f course, but I swear to God, I got no idea how we’re going to stop those who do.”
Lynley tapped the edge of the folder on his palm, observing the detective. He heard anger in her voice, but he also saw resignation on her face. He said, “Sergeant Hopwood, did you know that DS Bontempi had herself been cut?”
She looked perplexed only for an instant before she realised what he meant. She said, “Holy God, no. I didn’t know that. But I wouldn’t have done, would I? I mean, we only spoke on the phone and there was no reason for her to tell me.” She shook her head slowly and added, “I’m dead sorry to hear it, but it ’xplains a few things, that does.”
“Does it?”
“Way I heard things, she was one hundred and ten percent committed to this work, like the very idea of it set her on fire. It was personal for her, wasn’t it?”
“Very personal,” he agreed. He gestured with the folder she’d given him, saying, “May I take this?”
“All yours,” she told him. “You ring me if you end up with more questions than answers. I’m happy to do what I can.”
He thanked her and headed to the lifts, where he descended to the ground floor and made a stop at Peeler’s Café. There, a double espresso gave him time to read the report written about the arrests made in north London. There was very little to it, he discovered. A phone call had led the local police to a clinic where two women—one Easter Lange and one Monifa Bankole—were arrested. A child had been with them, as Jade Hopwood had indicated to him, the daughter of Monifa Bankole. It was this child’s presence that had evidently prompted the phone call.
In advance, the local police had been led to believe that this particular clinic was providing something called medicalised FGM. Translated, this meant the practitioner was able to render the “patient” unconscious during the mutilation. But the Stoke Newington police had no proof of this, and they could hardly raid the place on a whim if nothing was in the process of going on. On the morning in question, though, the presence of the child suggested something was about to occur. Hence, the raid.
Ultimately, the report confirmed everything Jade Hopwood had told him, Lynley saw. The place the locals raided was a women’s health centre, and everything therein attested to this: filing cabinets filled with patients’ information and most of it dealing with breast checks, cervical exams, postnatal issues, and on and on. Easter Lange ran Women’s Health of Hackney on her own, and she was certified to do so. She was also a midwife.
For her part, Monifa Bankole had had an appointment to deal with what she referred to as “troubles down there.” The child was with her for the simple reason that her mother had not liked to leave her at home alone. From A to Z, every detail had checked out, and the local police were apparently philosophical about the entire cock-up. They put it down to an informant who was determined to be helpful. Only in this case, she’d been too helpful. She’d jumped the gun and wasted everyone’s time.
That was the limit of what the report contained. When all was said and done, there was nothing the women could be charged with, so off they went once things were sorted. Lynley wondered about it all, however. Who was the confidential informant who’d passed the information along to the local police? More, how had Teo Bontempi come to have possession of the report?
STOKE NEWINGTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Tani rang Sophie the next morning. With Tiombe gone and Bliss unwilling to shelter his sister, Tani saw no other possibility, although he’d spent most of the night trying to come up with something. He couldn’t trust his mother, obviously. There was no deal he could strike with his father. He needed another way to look at the options, and, as far as he was concerned, Sophie was that other way. So he asked could they meet for some talking, but he didn’t tell her the subject of their would-be conversation.