“Can I help you? What d’you want?”
Barbara turned. She found herself facing a tall, heavyset woman wearing a complicated magenta and gold headpiece and a matching gown that flowed and draped over her body. She stood in the unmistakably unwelcoming posture of one hip thrown out and both arms crossed beneath her ample breasts.
“DS Barbara Havers.” Barbara fished enthusiastically in her dilapidated shoulder bag and brought out her warrant card, which she handed over, saying “New Scotland Yard. This is Orchid House, right?”
Barbara could see caution alter the woman’s face. “It is,” she said, handing back the warrant card. “What is it you want?”
“Conversation.” Out came her notebook as well, along with the mechanical pencil she’d nicked from Nkata. “I’m here about one of your volunteers. She’s called Adaku.” Barbara didn’t use the surname. She reckoned women called Adaku weren’t exactly dropping off the trees outside.
“What’s she done?”
“Unfortunately, she’s got herself murdered.”
As the woman echoed her with “Murdered?” Barbara looked round and said, “Would there be a place we could talk? Who are you, by the way?”
“Zawadi. I’m the founder and managing director here. But did Adaku—”
“Could you spell it? Zawadi, not Adaku. I’ve got that one down.”
Zawadi did the honours. She added that she had no surname. She’d dropped it legally years ago, she explained, when she decided she wanted no further communication with her family.
Bit harsh, that, Barbara thought. But on the other hand, there had been a time when she’d felt that way herself. She jotted the name and then repeated her request, as she had no interest in speaking with Zawadi where anyone might be able to overhear them.
Zawadi told Barbara to follow her. She led the way back outside the chapel, where beneath the wide steps that had given Barbara access to the place, a door allowed one to enter the basement. This was subdivided as above.
Zawadi ushered Barbara into a corridor and from there into what seemed to be her office. It was a small room, and it was already overcrowded with three women: mixed race, Indian, and Chinese. Zawadi made short work of the introductions, using her hands to flip casually at each one of them as she said their names. Barbara caught only the first one, Narissa Cameron. She was a filmmaker. The other two were apparently a lighting technician and a sound engineer.
“Adaku is dead,” Zawadi announced baldly. “You’ll have to muddle on without her.”
The other women were rendered momentarily wordless. Then Narissa repeated, “What happened?”
“She was murdered.” Barbara gave the answer. “I’ll be speaking with everyone here who knew her. I’m starting with Zawadi. The rest of you, don’t leave the premises.”
Narissa’s gaze went to Zawadi as if for further information or a recommendation regarding what she should do. Zawadi said, “Carry on. Tell the girls Adaku has been delayed.”
That was certainly one way to put it, Barbara thought.
When the three other women had left both the office and the basement that contained it, Zawadi sat behind her desk and gestured in the direction of the most uncomfortable-looking folding chair that Barbara had ever seen. She carried it from where it was leaning against a wall and opened it at the side of the desk and not in front of it as Zawadi might have wished her to do.
Zawadi said, “Why did they send you?”
Barbara planted herself on the seat of the chair, saying, “We talk to everyone the victim’s been associated with.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean why you and not a Black officer?”
“You’d’ve preferred a Black officer?”
“What do you think? You’ll find I’m not the only one with that preference here.”
“We’ve got one on the team, another DS, but he’s a bloke. My guv reckoned if it came to race or gender, you’d see gender as the better alternative for an interview.”
“Are you telling me you have no Black female detectives in the Metropolitan Police?”
“I’m saying there aren’t any in this investigation. Matter of fact, there aren’t any other women in this investigation. Adaku was a cop, by the way. She’d been working on a team that deals with genital cutting and all the other crap that’s being done to women in the name of God knows what. We’re trying to work out whether she was murdered because she was Adaku or because she was the cop Teo Bontempi.”