Inside Taverstock & Percy, Barbara asked to see the estate agent in charge of letting space in St. Lucy’s Church, and she was shown to a young woman called Misty Perrin, who was apparently thrilled by the idea that custom for St. Lucy’s was walking in off the street. She took out an application and fixed it to a clipboard, saying that of course there were certain rules and regulations that had to be met in order for anyone to have space in the former church or its basement.
Right, Barbara thought. That’s what kept away the riffraff.
She took out her identification and introduced herself to Misty. Could she have a word about a group called MABIL.
Misty lowered the clipboard to her desk, but she didn’t look concerned. She said, “Oh, of course. When you asked about St. Lucy’s, I thought…Well, anyway…MABIL. Yes.” She opened a filing drawer in her desk and fingered through its contents. She brought out a slim manila folder and opened it. She read through the material, nodding appreciatively and saying at the conclusion of her inspection, “I wish all tenants were as prompt as they are. Every month, they’re right on time with the rent. No complaints about how they leave the premises at the end of their meetings. No problem in the neighbourhood with illegal parking. Well, of course the clamp takes care of that, doesn’t it? Anyway, what would you like to know?”
“What sort of group is it?”
Misty looked back at her documents. “Support group, it appears. Men going through divorce. I’m not sure why they call it MABIL unless that’s an acronym for…Men Against what?”
“Bloody Inconsiderate Litigation?” Barbara offered. “Whose name’s on the contract?”
Misty read it to her. J. S. Mill. She recited the address as well. She went on to inform Barbara that the only somewhat odd thing about MABIL was that their fee always arrived in cash, brought in person by Mr. Mill on the first of the month. “He said it had to be cash because that’s how they came up with the money, through a collection at their meetings. Well, it’s a bit irregular and all that, but St. Lucy’s said that was fine by them just so long as they got the money. And they’ve got it, every month on the first, for the last five years.”
“Five years?”
“Yes. That’s right. Is there something…?” Misty looked anxious.
Barbara shook her head and waved off the question. What was the point? The girl was as innocent as the children in the Ladybird centre. She didn’t depend on the promise of anything coming from it, but she showed Misty the two e-fits anyway. “J. S. Mill look like either of these blokes?” she asked.
Misty glanced at the sketches but shook her head. He was much older, she said-round seventy?-and he didn’t have a beard or goatee or anything. He did wear an enormous hearing aid, if that was any help.
Barbara shuddered at the information. Someone’s granddad, she thought. She wanted to find and strangle him.
She took the address of J. S. Mill as she left the estate agency. It would be bogus. She had little doubt of that. But she’d hand it over to TO9 nonetheless. Someone somewhere had to kick down the doors of the members of this organisation.
She was heading back in the direction of Cromwell Road when her mobile rang. It was Lynley asking where she was.
She told him, bringing him up to date on what little she’d managed to glean from her efforts with the registration card from the Canterbury Hotel. “What about you?” she asked him.
“St. James thinks our boy may need to buy more ambergris oil,” Lynley told her and informed her of the rest of St. James’s report. “It’s time for you to take another trip up to Wendy’s Cloud, Constable.”
NKATA PARKED some distance along Manor Place. He was still thinking about the dozens of aimlessly sauntering black kids he’d seen in the vicinity of Elephant and Castle. No single place for them to go and very little for them to do. That wasn’t the real truth of the matter-if nothing else, they could be at school-but he knew that was the way they themselves saw their situation, taught to think it by older peers, by disgruntled and disappointed parents, by lack of opportunity and too much temptation. It was easier for them, in the long run, not to care. Nkata had thought of them all the way to Kennington. He allowed them to become his excuse.
Not that he actually needed one. This journey was owed, not to him but by him. The time had definitely come.
He got out of the car and walked the short distance to the wig shop, still a hopeful sign of what was possible among the failed and boarded-up establishments in the neighbourhood. The pubs, naturally, were still doing business. But other than a dismal corner shop with heavy grilles on the windows, Yasmin Edwards’ business was the only place open.
When Nkata entered, he saw that Yasmin was with a client. This was a skeletal black woman with a death’s-head face. She was bald, and she sat slumped in a beauty chair before the long, mirrored wall and the counter at which Yasmin worked. On the counter, a makeup case was open. Three wigs stood near it: one comprising a head full of plaits; one close cropped like Yasmin’s hair; one long and straight, of the sort worn by catwalk models.
Yasmin’s glance went to Nkata and then away, as if she’d been expecting him and was unsurprised by his arrival. He nodded at her, but he knew she didn’t see. She was focussed on her client and the brush on which she was applying blusher from a round tin box.
“I jus’ can’t see it,” her client said. Her voice was as exhausted as her body looked. “Don’t you bother with that, Yas-meen.”
“You wait,” Yasmin told her gently. “Le’ me fix you, luv, and in the meantime, study those wigs for the one you want.”
“I’n’t going to make a difference, is it,” the woman said. “I don’ know why I even came.”
“’Cause you’re pretty, Ruby, an’ the world deserves to see that.”
Ruby pooh-poohed her. “No more I’m pretty now,” she said.
Yasmin didn’t answer this remark, positioning herself instead in front of the woman in order to study her face. Yasmin’s own was professional, devoid of the pity that the other woman would doubtless have been able to sense in an instant. Yasmin bent towards her and applied the brush along the ridge of her cheekbones. She followed this with a similar movement along her jaw.
Nkata waited patiently. He watched Yasmin work: the flick of a brush, a heightening of shading round the eyes. She finished her client off with lipstick, which she applied with a delicate paintbrush. She wore no kind of lipstick herself. The rose-bloom scar on her upper lip-long-ago gift of her husband-made this impossible.
She stood back and surveyed her work. She said, “Now you’re something, Ruby. Which wig’s goin’ to finish off the picture?”
“Oh, Yas-meen, I dunno.”
“Now come on. Your husband i’n’t waiting out there for some bald-headed lady with a pretty new face. You want to try them again?”
“The short one, I guess.”
“You sure? The long one made you look like what-sername the model.”
Ruby chuckled. “Oh yeah, ’m ready for Fashion Week, Yas-meen. Maybe they’ll put me in a bikini. I finally got the figger for it. Le’ me do the short one. I like it good enough.”
Yasmin removed the short wig from the stand. She lowered it gently onto Ruby’s head. She stood back, then made an adjustment, then stood back again. “You’re ready for a big night out,” she said. “Make sure your man sees you get it.” She helped Ruby out of the beauty chair and took the voucher that the woman held out to her. She gently pushed away an additional ten-pound note that Ruby tried to press upon her. “None ’f that,” she said. “Buy some flowers for your flat.”