According to Barbara Havers, she’d had a look at the dead woman’s appointment diary taken from her flat. The word evaluation was written in it on July 24, and that wanted clarification. The fact that the word appeared by itself with only the hour of the day indicating when she was to have or do the evaluation suggested that it was for something in a location with which she was familiar. That, in turn, suggested Empress State Building, especially since her transfer to another job occurred almost immediately afterwards.
Nkata brought up his morning’s encounter with Teo’s sister. Nothing about it seemed right to him. She didn’t sit well, was how he put it. He explained the source of the row between Rosie and Teo: Teo’s infrequent calls upon their father as he was rehabilitating after a stroke. That didn’t quite smell like it should since Teo’s mother had related her daughter’s visit three weeks prior to her death. But it was more than just that, Nkata said. Rosie’s declaration that Teo had “gone African” and thus had rejected her husband because he was white didn’t fit in with what Barb had already said about Ross Carver’s explanation regarding the cause of their separation: that he’d loved his wife “too much.” One of them seemed to be massaging a few details: either Rosie or Ross. Both of them wanted further looking into.
Had he started the CCTV films? Lynley wanted to know. Nkata said that he’d viewed a few hours of film, but it was a gargantuan task. Dozens of people were in and out of Teo’s building all day and into the night. It’d be helpful if he had a narrower window of time as well as some idea of what or who he was looking for.
“Got hours more of recording to look at,” Nkata said, and since he’d not personally put eyes on anyone connected to Teo Bontempi aside from Rosie and the parents, he was working in the dark. He could isolate images of anyone entering or leaving the building alone on the day and the night when Ross Carver had said he’d found his wife, and he could view the CCTV recordings from nearby businesses on Streatham High Road. There was no ANPR camera in the vicinity, so he was in for a monumental slog.
“I could do with some help on this, guv,” he concluded. “There’s got to be a few DCs we can call in to lend a hand, innit.”
Lynley said he would do his best. But, he cautioned them, as the request for help had to go through Hillier, he wasn’t sure that his best would be good enough.
What was agreed upon by all of them at the end of the meeting—during which an appearance by Dorothea Harriman informed Barbara that their first sketching session would be at the weekend, 10:00 a.m. sharp at the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens—was that Barbara would return to Ross Carver for further conversation the following day, Nkata would see to producing isolated images from the night Ross Carver paid his call to Streatham, and Lynley—after an attempt to pull in some additional help—would have another word with DCS Phinney as the last person to have been in Teo Bontempi’s flat before she was hospitalised.
And the phone number that Jade Hopwood had handed over to Lynley? Havers wanted to know. He was expecting a result on that in the morning, he told her.
Now in front of Daidre’s flat, Lynley paused. Daidre had not responded to his message, but he decided not to take that as a sign of anything save how busy she was at London Zoo.
He mounted the steps. He had a key but the way of wisdom suggested he not use it, so he rang the bell. Since the door to her flat was just inside the building’s entry, she generally came personally. But that wasn’t the case tonight. He heard her voice instead, and she sounded completely done in. “Can you bear me?” he said in reply to her who is it. “Or is sleep preferable?”
“Sleep with you is more preferable still,” she replied. “Shall I buzz you in? Do you not have your key?”
“I have it.”
“Ah. You weren’t assuming. I like that. Come in.” She hit the buzzer to allow him to enter the building.
With his key he let himself into the flat, and he found her looking over some paperwork in her kitchen. A bottle of red wine was open.
“It’s very cheap plonk,” she told him. “I don’t recommend it. Your teeth and tonsils will never be the same.”
“Luckily, I’ve no tonsils to speak of,” he said.
“Teeth, then. Really, Tommy, it’s godawful swill. I’ll avoid the Oddbins two-pound special henceforth. There’s white in the fridge. Open that.”
He said, “I wouldn’t think of it,” and poured himself a glass of the swill. He took a mouthful. “Good Lord, Daidre.”