A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  “Stop harping on that. You and I both know that I'm not responsible for a piece of misinformation passed to you by a client when I'm not present.”

  “Right. But you are present now. And now that it's clear you got no partner, p'rhaps we need to dwell on why I 'as told that you had.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don't you.” Nkata took out his notebook and his pencil, and he tapped the pencil against the notebook's leather cover for emphasis. “Here's what it's looking like to me: You're Katja Wolff's brief, but you're something else 's well, something tastier and something that's lying just the other side of what's on the up and up in your business. Now—”

  “You're incredible.”

  “—word of that gets out, you start looking bad, Miss Lewis. You got some code of ethics or other, and solicitor playing love monkeys with her client isn't part of that code. 'Fact, it starts looking like that's why you take on lags in the first place: Get 'em when they're at their lowest, you do, and it's plain sailing when you want to pop 'em in bed.”

  “That's outrageous.” Harriet Lewis finally came round from behind her desk. She strode across the room, took position behind one of the chairs in the grouping by the coffee table, and gripped onto its back. “Leave this office, Constable.”

  “Let's play at this,” he said reasonably, settling back into his chair. “Let's think out loud.”

  “Your sort's not even capable of doing that silently.”

  Nkata smiled. He gave himself a point. He said, “Stick with me, then, all the same.”

  “I've no intention of speaking with you further. Now leave, or I'll see to it you're brought to the attention of the PCA.”

  “What're you going to complain 'bout? And how's it likely to look when the story gets out that you couldn't cope with one lone copper come to talk to you about a killer? And not jus' any killer, Miss Lewis. A baby killer, twenty years put away.”

  The solicitor made no reply to this.

  Nkata pressed on, nodding in the direction of Harriet Lewis's desk. “So you phone up Police Complaints right now, and you shout harassment and you file whatever you want to file. And when the story finds its way to the papers, you watch and see who gets the smear.”

  “You're blackmailing me.”

  “I'm telling you the facts. You c'n do with them what you want. What I want is the truth about Galveston Road. Give me that and I'm gone.”

  “Go there yourself.”

  “Been there once. Not going again without ammunition.”

  “Galveston Road has nothing to do with—”

  “Miss Lewis? Don't play me like a fool.” Nkata nodded at her telephone. “You making that call to the PCA? You ready to file your complaint 'gainst me?”

  Harriet Lewis appeared to consider her options as she let out a breath. She came round the chair. She sat. She said, “Katja Wolff 's alibi lives in that house, Constable Nkata. She's a woman called Noreen McKay, and she's unwilling to step forward and clear Katja from suspicion. We went there last night to talk to her about it. We weren't successful. And I very much doubt you'll be.”

  “Why's that?” Nkata asked.

  Harriet Lewis smoothed down her skirt. She fingered a minute length of thread that she found at the edge of a button on her jacket. “I suppose you'd call it a code of ethics,” she finally said.

  “She's a solicitor?”

  Harriet Lewis stood. “I'm going to have to phone Katja and request her permission to answer that question,” she said.

  Libby Neale went straight to the refrigerator when she got home from South Kensington. She was having a major white jones, and she considered herself deserving of having the attack taken care of. She kept a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs in the freezer for just such emergencies. She dug this out, ferreted a spoon from the utensil drawer, and prised open the lid. She'd gobbled up approximately one dozen spoonfuls before she was even able to think.

  When she finally did think, what she thought was more white, so she rustled through the trash under the kitchen sink and found part of the bag of cheddar popcorn that she'd thrown away in a moment of disgust on the previous day. She sat on the floor and proceeded to cram into her mouth the two handfuls of popcorn that were left in the bag. From there, she went to a package of flour tortillas, which she'd long kept as a challenge to herself to stay away from anything white. These, she found, weren't exactly white any longer, as spots of mould were growing on them like ink stains on linen. But mould was easy enough to remove, and if she ingested some by mistake, it couldn't hurt, could it? Consider penicillin.

  She rustled a cube of Wensleydale from its wrapper and sliced enough for a quesadilla. She plopped the cheese slices onto the tortilla, topped that with another, and slapped the whole mess into a frying pan. When the Wensleydale was melted and the tortilla was browned, she took the treat from the fire, rolled it into a tube, and settled herself on the kitchen floor. She proceeded to shove the food into her mouth, eating like a victim of famine.

  When she'd polished off the quesadilla, she remained on the floor, her head against one of the cupboard doors. She'd needed that, she told herself. Things were getting too weird, and when things got too weird, you had to keep your blood sugar high. There was no telling when you'd need to take action.

  Gideon hadn't walked her from his father's flat to his car. He'd just shown her to the door and shut it behind her. She'd said, “You going to be okay, Gid?” as they'd made their way from the study. “I mean, this can't be the nicest place for you to wait. Look. Why'n't you come home with me? We can leave a note for your dad, and when he gets back, he can call you and we can drive back over.”

  “I'll wait here,” he'd said. And he'd opened the door and shut it without ever once looking at her.

  What did it mean that he wanted to wait for his dad? she wondered. Was this going to be the Big Showdown between them? She certainly hoped so. The Big Showdown had been a long time coming between Davies father and son.

  She tried to picture it, a confrontation provoked, for some reason, by Gideon's discovery of a second sister he hadn't even known he'd had. He'd take that card written to Richard by Virginia's mother and he'd wave it in front of his father's nose. He'd say, “Tell me about her, you bastard. Tell me why I wasn't allowed to know her either.”

  Because that seemed to be the crux of what had set Gideon off when he'd read the card: His dad had denied him another sibling when Virginia had been there all along.

  And why? Libby thought. Why had Richard made this move to isolate Gid from his surviving sister? It had to be the same reason that Richard did everything else: to keep Gid focused on the violin.

  No, no, no. Can't have friends, Gideon. Can't go to parties. Can't play at sports. Can't go to a real school. Must practise, play, perform, and provide. And you can't do that if you've got any interests away from your instrument. Like a sister, for example.

  God, Libby thought. He was such a shit. He was so totally screwing up Gideon's life.

  What, she wondered, would that life have been like had he not spent it playing his music? He would have gone to school like a regular kid. He would have played sports, like soccer or something. He would have ridden a bike, fallen out of trees, and maybe broken a bone or two. He would have met his buddies for beer in the evening and gone out on dates and screwed around in girls' pants and been normal. He would be so not who he was right now.

  Gideon deserved what other people had and took for granted, Libby told herself. He deserved friends. He deserved love. He deserved a family. He deserved a life. But he wasn't going to get any of that as long as Richard kept him under his thumb and as long as no one was willing to take positive action to alter the relationship Gideon had with his frigging father.

  Libby stirred at that and realised her scalp was tingling. She rolled her head against the cupboard door so that she could look at the kitchen table. She'd left Gideon's car keys there when she'd dashed into the kitchen to admit defeat to her attack of the whites,
and it seemed to her now that her possession of those keys was meant to be, like a sign from God that she'd been sent into Gideon's life to be the one who took a stand.

  Libby got to her feet. She approached the keys in a state of pure resolution. She snatched them up from the table before she could talk herself out of it. She left the flat.

  22

  YASMIN EDWARDS SENT Daniel across the street to the Army Centre, a chocolate cake in his hands. He was surprised, considering how she'd reacted in the past to his lingering round the uniformed men, but he said, “Wicked, Mum!” and grinned at her and was gone in an instant to make what she'd called a thank-you visit to them. “Good of those blokes to offer you tea time to time,” she told her son, and if Daniel recognised the contradiction in this statement from her earlier fury at the idea of someone pitying her son, he didn't mention it.

  Alone, Yasmin sat in front of the television set. She had the lamb stew simmering because—bloody fool that she was—she was still incapable of not doing what she'd said earlier she was going to do. She was also as unable to change her mind or to draw the line as she had been as Roger Edwards' girlfriend, his lover, his wife, and then as an inmate in Holloway Prison.

  She wondered why now, but the answer lay before her in the hol-lowness she felt and the budding of a fear that she'd long ago buried. It seemed to her that her entire life had been described and dominated by that fear, a gripping terror of one thing that she'd been entirely unwilling to name, let alone to face. But all the running she'd done from the Bogey Man had only brought her to his embrace yet again.

  She tried not to think. She wanted not to ponder the fact that she'd been reduced once more to discovering that there was no sanctuary no matter how determinedly she believed there would be.

  She hated herself. She hated herself as much as she'd ever hated Roger Edwards and more—far more—than she hated Katja, who'd brought her to this mirror of a moment and asked her to gaze long and gaze hard. It made no difference that every kiss, embrace, act of love, and conversation had been built on a lie she could not have discerned. What mattered was that she, Yasmin Edwards, had even allowed herself to be a party to it. So she was filled with self-loathing. She was consumed by a thousand “I should've known's.”

  When Katja came in, Yasmin glanced at the clock. She was right on time, but she would be, wouldn't she, because the one thing Katja Wolff wasn't blind to was what was going on within others. It was a survival technique she'd learned inside. So she'd have read a whole book from Yasmin's visit to the laundry that morning. Thus, she'd be home on the stroke of dinner time, and she'd be prepared.

  What she'd be prepared for, Katja wouldn't know. That was the only advantage Yasmin had. The rest of the advantages were all her lover's, and the single most important one was exactly like a beacon that had long been shining although Yasmin had always refused to acknowledge it.

  Single-mindedness. That Katja Wolff had always had a goal was what had kept her sane in prison. She was a woman with plans, and she'd always been that. “You must know what you want and who you will become when you are out of here,” she'd told Yasmin time and again. “Do not let what they have done to you become their triumph. That will happen if you fail.” Yasmin had learned to admire Katja Wolff for that stubborn determination to become who she'd always intended to become despite her situation. And then she'd learned to love Katja Wolff for the solid foundation of the future she represented for them both, even while held within prison walls.

  She'd said to her, “You got twenty years in here. You think you're going to step outside and start designing clothes when you're forty-five years old?”

  “I will have a life,” Katja had asserted. “I will prevail, Yas. I will have a life.”

  That life needed to start somewhere once Katja did her time, made her way through open conditions, proved herself there, and was released into society. She needed a place where she would be safe from notice so that she could begin to build her world again. She wouldn't have wanted any spotlight on her. She wouldn't be able to achieve her dream if she failed to fit easily back into the world. Even then it would prove to be tough: establishing herself in the competitive arena of fashion, when all she was, at best, was a notorious graduate of the criminal justice system.

  When she'd first fixed herself up in Kennington with Yasmin, Yasmin had understood that Katja would have to undergo a period of adjustment before she began to fulfil the dreams she'd spoken of. So she'd given her time to reacquaint herself with freedom, and she had not questioned the fact that Katja's talk of goals within prison did not immediately translate to action once she was outside. People were different, she told herself. It meant nothing that she—Yasmin—had begun to work at her new life furiously and single-mindedly the moment she was finally released. She, after all, had a son to provide for and a lover whose arrival she spent years anticipating. She had more incentive to put her world in order so that Daniel first and then Katja afterwards would have the home they both deserved.

  But now she saw that Katja's talk had been that: merely talk. Katja had no inclination to make her way in the world because she did not need to. Her spot in the world had long been reserved.

  Yasmin didn't move from the sofa as Katja shrugged out of her coat, saying, “Mein Gott. I'm exhausted,” and then, seeing her, “What're you doing in the dark there, Yas?” She crossed the room and switched on the table lamp, homing in as she usually did on the cigarettes that Mrs. Crushley wouldn't allow her to smoke anywhere near the laundry. She lit up from a book of matches that she took from her pocket and tossed down on the coffee table next to the packet of Dunhills from which she'd scored the cigarette. Yasmin leaned forward and picked up the matches. Frère Jacques Bar and Brasserie were the words printed on it.

  “Where's Daniel?” Katja said, looking round the flat. She stepped into the kitchen and took note of the fact that the table was set only for two, because the next thing she said was, “Has he gone to a mate's for dinner, Yas?”

  “No,” Yasmin said. “He'll be home soon.” She'd set it up that way to make sure she didn't cave in to her cowardice at the final moment.

  “Then why's the table—” Katja stopped. She was a woman who had the discipline not to betray herself, and Yasmin saw her use that discipline now, silencing her own question.

  Yasmin smiled bitterly. Right, she told her lover in silence. Didn't think little Pinky would open her eyes, did you, Kat? And if she opened them or had them opened, didn't expect her to make a move, make the first move, put herself out there alone and afraid, did you, Kat? 'Cause you had five years to suss out how to get inside her skin and make her feel like she had a future with you. 'Cause even then you knew that if anyone ever made this little bitch start seeing possibilities where there wasn't a hope in hell of planting one, she'd give herself over to that worthless cow and do anything it took to make her happy. And that's what you needed, isn't it, Kat? That's what you were counting on.

  She said, “I been to Number Fifty-five.”

  Katja said guardedly, “You've been where?” And those V's were present in her voice again, those once-charming hallmarks of her dissimilarity.

  “Number Fifty-five Galveston Road. Wandsworth. South London,” Yasmin said.

  Katja didn't reply, but Yasmin could see her thinking despite the fact that her face was the perfect blank she'd learned to produce for anyone looking her way in prison. Her expression said, Nothing going on inside here. Her eyes, however, locked too tightly on Yasmin's.

  Yasmin noticed for the first time that Katja was grimy: Her face was oily and her blonde hair clung in spears to her skull. “Didn't go there tonight,” she noted evenly. “Decided to shower at home, I s'pose.”

  Katja came nearer. She drew in deeply on her cigarette, and Yasmin could see that still she was thinking. She was thinking it could all be a trick to force her into admitting something that Yasmin was only guessing at in the first place. She said, “Yas,” and put out her hand and grazed it along the l
ine of plaits that Yasmin had drawn back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck with a scarf. Yasmin jerked away.

  “Didn't need to shower there, I s'pose,” Yasmin said. “No cunt juice on your face tonight. Right?”

  “Yasmin, what are you talking about?”

  “I'm talking about Number Fifty-five, Katja. Galveston Road. I'm talking about what you do when you go there.”

  “I go there to meet my solicitor,” Katja said. “Yas, you heard me tell that detective so this morning. Do you think I'm lying? Why would I lie? If you wish to phone Harriet and ask her if she and I went there together—”

  “I went there,” Yasmin announced flatly. “I went there, Katja. Are you listenin' to me?”

  “And?” Katja asked. Still so calm, Yasmin thought, still so sure of herself or at least still so capable of looking that way. And why? Because she knew that no one was at home during the day. She believed that anyone ringing the bell would have no luck learning who lived within. Or perhaps she was just buying time to think how to explain it all away.

  Yasmin said, “No one was home.”

  “I see.”

  “So I went to a neighbour and asked who lives there.” She felt the betrayal swelling inside her, like a balloon too inflated that climbed to her throat. She forced herself to say, “Noreen McKay,” and she waited to hear her lover's response. What's it going to be? she thought. An excuse? A declaration of misunderstanding? An attempt at a reasonable explanation?

  Katja said, “Yas …” Then she murmured, “Bloody hell,” and the Englishism sounded so strange coming from her that Yasmin felt, if only for an instant, as if she were talking to a different person entirely to the Katja Wolff she'd loved for the last three of her years in prison and all of the five years that had followed them. “I do not know what to say,” she sighed. She came round the coffee table and joined Yasmin on the sofa. Yasmin flinched at her nearness. Katja moved away.