A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  “Didn't think I'd need one, conversation being what's on my mind.”

  “Conversation about Yasmin's car?”

  “Missus Edwards' car. Ah. Right. Where is it?” Nkata tried not to look smug. The German woman flushed anyway, perhaps realising that her own dislike and distrust of Nkata had caused her to trip.

  “What's this about, man?” Yasmin snapped, but her voice was higher now and anxiety was tightening her hold on Katja's knee. “You're wanting a warrant if you mean to go through my car, hear me?”

  Nkata said, “I don't need to go through it, do I, Missus Edwards. But I'll have a look at it all the same.”

  The women exchanged a glance, after which Katja rose and went into the kitchen. There, cupboards opened and closed, a kettle clanged onto the cooker, and a burner hissed. For her part, Yasmin waited for a moment as if for a sign from the kitchen of something other than tea being made. When she didn't receive one, she got to her feet and snatched a key from a hook to the right of the flat's front door. She said, “Come on, then,” to Nkata and, coatless despite the weather, she led him outside. Katja Wolff remained behind.

  Yasmin took lengthy strides towards the lift, as if she didn't care one way or another if the detective was following her. When she moved, her plaits—so long that they reached her shoulder blades—made a music that was both hypnotic and soothing, and Nkata realised that he couldn't account for the effect that that music had on him. He felt the reaction in his throat first, then behind his eyes, then in his chest. He shook it away and looked down at the car park, then over at what appeared to be allotments across the street, then in the direction of Manor Place, where he could glimpse the first of a row of derelict buildings that expressed what years of government indifference and urban decay had done to the neighbourhood.

  In the lift, he said, “'D you grow up round here?”

  Yasmin stared him down in silence so he finally moved his gaze to the words eat me till I scream that someone had painted in nail varnish on the lift wall in line with Yasmin's right shoulder. The graffito brought his mother immediately to Nkata's mind: a female vigilante who would no more allow graffiti to foul her landscape than would she permit a profanity uttered within her hearing. Alice Nkata would have been so quickly inside that lift with the varnish remover that the imperative wouldn't have had a chance even to dry before she had obliterated it. Thinking of this and his dignified mother and how she'd managed to maintain her dignity in a society that saw a black woman first and the woman herself only second and if she was lucky that day, Nkata smiled fondly.

  Yasmin said, “Like to have women under your thumb, do you, man? That why you joined the Bill, was it?”

  He wanted to tell her that she shouldn't sneer, not because the expression distorted her face and stretched the scar on her lip so that it seemed to bloom, but because when she sneered, she looked frightened. And fear was a woman's enemy on the streets.

  He said, “Sorry. Thinking of my mum.”

  “Your mum.” She rolled her eyes. “You telling me next I remind you 'f her, yeah?”

  Nkata laughed outright at the thought of the comparison. He said, “Not at all, girl.” And he chuckled more.

  Her eyes narrowed. The lift door creaked open. She stalked outside.

  Across a strip of dying lawn, the car park held a small array of cars that spoke of the general economic status of the people in the Doddington Grove Estate. Yasmin Edwards took Nkata to a Fiesta with a rear bumper that clung to the vehicle like an inebriate to a lamppost. The car had once been red but the colour had long ago oxidized so it was mostly rust. Nkata walked round it carefully. The front right headlamp had a jagged crack in it, but aside from the rear bumper, that was the extent of the damage.

  He squatted at the front of the Fiesta and peered beneath it, using a pocket torch to shed some light on its undercarriage. He did the same thing at the back of the vehicle, taking his time. Yasmin Edwards stood by in silence, her arms wrapped round her against the chill, her summertime top meagre protection against the wind that was blowing and the rain that had begun to fall.

  Nkata straightened, his inspection finished. He said, “When'd that headlamp get smashed?”

  “What headlamp?” She went to the front of the car and examined it herself. “I don't know,” she said, and for the first time since learning who and what Nkata was, she did not sound combative as she ran her fingers across the uneven crack in the glass. “Lights still work proper, so I didn't notice.” She was shivering now, but it seemed more likely with the cold than with concern. Nkata removed his overcoat, saying, “Here,” and handing it over. She took it.

  Nkata waited till she had slid her arms into his coat, till she had snugly wrapped it round her, till he saw what she looked like with the collar raised and expressing a curve against her dark skin. Then he said, “You both drive this car, Missus Edwards? Right that, isn't it? You and Katja Wolff?”

  And the coat was off and thrust back at him instantly, almost before he finished the question. If there had been a moment of anything more than hostility between them, he'd just managed to shatter it. Yasmin looked up to the flat where Katja Wolff was making tea. She returned her glance to Nkata and said evenly, arms encircling her body once more, “That all you want with us, man?”

  He said, “No. Where were you last night, Missus Edwards?”

  She said, “Here. Where else would I be? I got a boy needs his mum, I expect you noticed.”

  “Miss Wolff here as well?”

  She said, “Yeah. Tha's right. Katja was here.” But there was an undercurrent in the way she made the statement that suggested the facts might prove otherwise.

  Something always alters in a person when he lies. Nkata had been told that a hundred times. Listen to the timbre of the voice, he'd been lectured. Watch for changes in the pupils of the eyes. Look for the head's movement, the shoulders either relaxing or tensing, the muscles of the throat constricting. Look for something—anything—that wasn't there before, and that something will tell you exactly where the speaker stands in relation to the truth.

  He said, “I'll need another word,” and he nodded upwards.

  “I've given you words.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He headed back to the lift, and they went through the exercise they'd gone through before. But the silence between them felt charged to Nkata, and charged with something more than a man-to-woman charge, more than copper to suspect, more than former lag to potential screw.

  “She was here,” Yasmin Edwards said. “But you don't believe me 'cause you can't believe me. 'Cause if you sussed where Katja was living, then you sussed the rest and you know I did time and lags and liars are one 'n the same when it comes to the filth. I'n't that right, man?”

  He'd reached the door to her flat. She slid in front of it, blocking his way. She said, “You ask her what she did last night. You ask her where she was. She tell you she was here. An' just to make sure I can't mess with your process, I'll keep myself out here while you ask her.”

  Nkata said, “Suit yourself, but put this round you if you mean to stay outside,” and he himself put the coat round her shoulders this time, drawing the collar up to protect her neck from the wind. She flinched. He wanted to say, “How'd you get this way, woman,” but instead, he ducked back inside the flat to have his confrontation with Katja Wolff.

  10

  “THERE WERE LETTERS, Helen.” Lynley was standing at the cheval mirror in their bedroom, gloomily attempting to make a choice among three ties that dangled limply from his fingers. “Barbara found them in a chest of drawers, just like love letters, all of them together with envelopes included. Everything was in place except the traditional blue ribbon tying them up.”

  “Perhaps there's an innocent explanation.”

  “What the hell was the man even thinking?” Lynley went on as if his wife hadn't spoken. “The mother of a murdered child. The victim of a crime. You don't find anyone more vulnerable than that, and when you do, you put dista
nce between yourself and her. You don't seduce her.”

  “If that's what happened in the first place, Tommy.” Lynley's wife watched him from the bed.

  “What else could it have been? ‘Wait for me, Eugenie. I'm coming for you.’ That doesn't sound to me like your average bread-and-butter letter straight out of Mrs. Beeton.”

  “I don't think Mrs. Beeton advised housewives on their letter writing, darling.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Helen rolled onto her side, took his pillow, and cradled it to her stomach. She said, “Lord,” in a hollow tone that he couldn't ignore.

  “Bad this morning?” he asked.

  “Awful. I've never felt like this in my life. When will it progress to the rosy glow of a woman fulfilled? And why are pregnant women in novels always described as glowing when in reality they'd have faces like paste and stomachs at war with the rest of their bodies?”

  “Hmm.” Lynley considered her question. “I don't actually know. Is it a conspiracy to keep the species propagating? I wish I could bear this for you, darling.”

  She laughed weakly. “You've always been such a terrible liar.”

  There was truth to that, and because of it, he held up the three ties for her inspection. “I was thinking about the dark blue with the ducks. What do you say?”

  “Very appropriate for fostering in suspects the false belief that you'll be gentle with them.”

  “Just what I thought.” He returned to the mirror, draping the other two ties round one of the bedposts on his way.

  She said, “Did you tell DCI Leach about the letters?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do with them?” Their glances met in the mirror, and she read his reply on his face. “You took them? Tommy …”

  “I know. But consider the alternative: to hand them over as evidence or to leave them there for someone else who might track down Webberly at the worst possible time and return them. To his home, for instance. With Frances standing there, just waiting for someone to deal her a death blow. Or even to the Yard, where it wouldn't do much for his career to have it made public that he'd involved himself with the victim of a crime. Or how about to a tabloid or two? They've such a profound love for the Met, after all.”

  “Is that the only reason you took them? To protect Frances and Malcolm?”

  “What other reason is there?”

  “Perhaps the crime itself? They could be evidence.”

  “You aren't suggesting Webberly was involved in some way, are you? He was in our presence the evening long. As was Frances, who'd have far more reason to want to be rid of Eugenie Davies than would Webberly if it came down to it. Beyond that, the last of the letters was written over a decade ago. Eugenie Davies has been a closed book for Webberly for years. It was mad for him to have involved himself with her in the first place, but at least it ended before lives were shattered.”

  Helen read him, as usual. “But you're not sure of that, are you, Tommy?”

  “I'm sure enough. So I don't see the letters' relevance to the present, to today.”

  “Unless there's been recent contact between them.”

  Which was, in part, why he'd taken Eugenie Davies' computer. Lynley was relying on gut instinct with regard to that, instinct which told him that his superior officer was a decent man who had a difficult life, a man who never sought to harm another human being but who had submitted to temptation in a moment of weakness that he no doubt regretted to this day.

  “He's a good man,” Lynley said into the mirror, more to himself than to his wife.

  She responded all the same. “As are you. And that might explain why he asked DCI Leach to allow you in on the case. You believe in his decency, so you'll protect him, without his having to ask you to do so.”

  And that's the way it was playing out, Lynley thought morosely. Perhaps Barbara had been right. Hand the letters over as potential evidence; leave Malcolm Webberly to his fate.

  Across the room, Helen suddenly threw back the covers and dashed to the bathroom. The retching began, just beyond the open door. Lynley looked at himself in the mirror and tried to close his ears to the sound.

  Funny, how one could talk oneself into believing just about anything if one was desperate enough. In a twist of thinking, Helen's morning sickness could become the result of a bad bit of chicken eaten yesterday on a lunchtime salad. Another twist, and she had flu, which was going round now anyway. Or perhaps it was a case of nerves. She was facing a challenge later in the day, and this was the way her body reacted to anxiety. Or pushed to an extreme of rationalisation, he could say that she was simply afraid. They hadn't been together long, had they, and she wasn't as easy being with him as he was being with her. There were, after all, differences between them: of experience, of education, and of age. And all that counted for something, didn't it, no matter how they tried to talk themselves into believing otherwise?

  The retching continued. He forced himself to deal with it in some reasonable way. He turned from the mirror and strode across to the bathroom. He flipped on the light, which in her haste Helen had not switched on. He found her draped round the toilet, her back heaving mightily as she gulped in air.

  He said, “Helen?” But he found he could not move from the doorway.

  Selfish bastard, he told himself as a prod to action. This is the woman you love. Go to her. Touch her hair. Wipe her face with a cool damp flannel. Do something.

  But he couldn't. He was frozen to one spot as if he'd inadvertently looked upon Medusa, fixed on the sight of his beautiful wife reduced to vomiting into the toilet bowl, her now daily ritual that celebrated the fact of their union.

  He said, “Helen?” and he waited for her to tell him that she was all right, that she needed nothing. He waited hopefully for her to send him on his way.

  She turned her face to him. He could see its damp sheen. And he knew that she was waiting for him to make some move in her direction that would underscore the love and concern that he felt for her.

  He made do with a question. “Can I get you something, Helen?”

  Her eyes held his. He saw the subtle change come over her as her dawning realisation that he would not go to her metamorphosed into hurt.

  She shook her head and turned away. Her fingers gripped the edges of the toilet. “I'm fine,” she murmured.

  He was happy to accept the lie.

  In Stamford Brook, the sound of a cup rattling in its saucer awakened Malcolm Webberly He cracked open his eyes to see his wife setting a cup of morning tea on the scarred surface of the bedside table.

  The room was claustrophobically hot, the result of a poorly designed central heating system and Frances's refusal to have any windows open at night. She couldn't bear the sensation of night air on her face. She also couldn't sleep for thinking that someone might break into their house should so much as an inch's gap exist between a window and its sill.

  Webberly lifted his head from the pillow, then sank back down with a groan. It had been a rough night. He ached in every joint in his body, which was secondary to the ache in his heart.

  “I've brought you some nice Earl Grey,” Frances said. “Milk and sugar. It's piping hot.” She went to the window and opened the curtains. The limp light of late autumn filtered into the room. “All grey and nasty today, I'm afraid,” she went on. “It looks like rain. There's to be a wind coming from the west later on. Well, November. What else can one expect?”

  Webberly elbowed his way upwards through the covers, becoming aware of the fact that he'd sweated through another set of pyjamas during the night. He took up the cup and saucer and looked down at the steaming liquid, its colour telling him that Frances hadn't let it steep, that it would taste like milky water. He hadn't been a morning tea drinker for years. Coffee was his beverage of choice. But tea was what Frances herself drank and it was easier to plug in the kettle and pour the boiling water over the tea bags than it was to go through the scooping, measuring, and pouring that resulted
in a decent cup of what he preferred.

  It's all the same at the end of the day, he told himself. Getting caffeine into the body is the main point, boy. So drink up now and have at the morning.

  “I've made out the shopping list,” Frances said. “It's by the door.”

  He grunted an acknowledgment.

  She seemed to take this sound as a protest, saying anxiously, “Really, there's not much to get. Just the odd thing. Tissues, kitchen rolls, that sort of thing. We've still got all that food from the party. It shouldn't take long.”

  “Fine, Fran,” he said. “No problem. I'll stop on my way home from work.”

  “If something comes up, you needn't—”

  “I'll stop on my way home.”

  “Well, only if it's not too much trouble, dear.”

  Not too much trouble? Webberly thought, and he hated himself for the disloyalty he was showing even as he allowed himself to experience a momentary swelling of resentment towards his wife. Not too much trouble to see to everything and anything that involved an excursion into the world, Fran? Not too much trouble to shop for groceries, to drop by the chemist, to collect the dry cleaning, to have the car serviced, to see to the garden, to walk the dog, to—Webberly forced himself to stop. He reminded himself that his wife wouldn't have chosen this illness, that she wasn't attempting to make his life a misery, that she was doing her best to cope and so was he, and coping with what was dished onto your plate was what life was all about.

  “It's no trouble, Fran,” he told her as he sipped the tasteless drink she'd brought him. “Thanks for the tea.”

  “I hope it's all right. Something special this morning. Something a bit different.”

  “Good of you,” he said.

  He knew why she'd done it. She'd brought him tea for the same reason that she would go downstairs as soon as he was out of bed and begin to cook him a sumptuous breakfast. It was the only way she could apologise to him for not managing to do what she'd claimed she would do a brief twenty-four hours earlier. Her plan to work in the garden had come to nothing. Even protected behind the walls that marked the boundaries of their property, she hadn't felt safe, so she hadn't left the house. Perhaps she had tried: placing one hand on the doorknob—I can manage this—cracking the door open—yes, I can do this as well—feeling the fresh air wash against her cheeks—there's nothing to fear—and even curling the fingers of one hand round the door jamb before panic claimed her. But that's as far as she'd got and he knew it because—God forgive him for his own insanity—he'd inspected her wellingtons, the tines of the rake, the gardening gloves, and even the rubbish bags for evidence that she'd gone outside, done something, picked up a single leaf, made an inroad into her irrational fears.