Hadiyyah stopped, door knob in hand. “We're going to the pleasure pier,” she coaxed.
“I'll be with you in spirit,” Barbara assured her. And she thought about the resilience of children and she marveled at their capacity for taking what came. Considering what had occurred the last time Hadiyyah had been to the sea, Barbara wondered that she wanted to go again. But children aren't like adults, she thought. What they can't endure, they simply forget.
CHAPTER 21
east we're running round incognito,” was DC Winston Nkatas announcement as they pulled into the Boltons, a small neighbourhood shaped like a rugger ball, sandwiched between the Fulham and Old Brompton roads. It consisted of two curving, leafy streets that formed an oval round the central church of St. Mary the Boltons, and its predominant characteristics were the number of security cameras that were mounted on the exterior walls of the mansions and the ostentatious display of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes-Benz, and Range-Rovers that were tucked behind the iron gates of many of the properties.
When Lynley and Nkata pulled into the Boltons, the streetlamps had not yet switched on and the pavements were largely deserted. The only sign of life came from a cat who slinked along the gutter in pursuit of another slinking feline, and a Filipina—dressed in the anachronistic black-and-white garb of a housemaid—who tucked a handbag under her arm and slid into a Ford Capri across the street from the house that Lynley and Nkata were seeking.
Nkata's remark was in reference to Lynley's Bentley, as perfectly at home in this neighbourhood as it had been in Notting Hill. But other than being in possession of the car, the two detectives couldn't have been more out of place in the area: Lynley for his choice of occupation, so unlikely in a man whose family could trace its roots back to the Conqueror and whose more recent ancestors would have considered the Boltons a step down from their usual haunts, and Nkata for the obvious Caribbean-via-South-Bank-of-the-Thames sound of his voice.
“Don't spect they see much rozzer action here,” Nkata said as he stood surveying the iron railings, the cameras, the alarm boxes, and the intercoms that appeared to be the feature of every dwelling. “But it makes you wonder what the point is—all that money—if you got to wall yourself up to enjoy it.”
“I wouldn't disagree,” Lynley said, and he accepted an Opal Fruit from the detective constable's portable stash, unwrapping it and carefully folding the paper into his pocket so as not to foul the pristine footpath with litter. “Let's see what Sir Adrian Beattie has to say.”
Lynley had recognised the name when Tricia Reeve had spoken it in Notting Hill. Sir Adrian Beattie was the UK's answer to Christiaan Barnard. He'd performed the first heart transplant in England and he'd successfully kept performing them round the world for the last several decades, establishing a record of success that had assured his place in medical history and guaranteed his wealth. This latter was on display in the Boltons: Beattie's home was a fortress of glacially white walls and gridiron windows with a front gate barring entrance to anyone who couldn't provide its inhabitants with an acceptable identity through an intercom from which a disembodied voice demanded, “Yes?” in a tone suggesting that not just any answer would do.
Assuming that New Scotland Yard would have a cachet unavailable to the simple word police, Lynley used their place of employment along with their ranks when he identified himself and Nkata. In reply, the gate clicked ajar. By the time Lynley and Nkata had mounted the six front steps, the door had been opened by a woman wearing an incongruous cone-shaped party hat.
She introduced herself as Margaret Beattie, daughter of Sir Adrian. The family were having a birthday party at the moment, she explained hastily, unhooking the hat's elastic strap from her chin and removing the cone from her head. Her daughter was this very evening celebrating the happy negotiation of five years among her fellow men. Was there something wrong in the neighbourhood? Not a burglary, she hoped. And she glanced past them anxiously, as if breaking and entering in the Boltons were a daily occurrence that she might inadvertently encourage by holding the front door open for longer than necessary.