A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  “You can't recapture what's never been there. You can create it if you want to. But you can't just go out with a net and bag it.”

  “Why won't you see—”

  “I want to feed the ducks,” she cut in. And with that, she swung past me and headed down to Regent's Park Road.

  I watched her go. I wanted to run after her and argue my point. How easy it was for her to talk about one's simply being oneself when she didn't have a past that was littered with accomplishments, all of which served as guideposts to a future that had long been determined. It was easy for her simply to exist in a given moment of a given day because moments were all she had ever had. But my life had never been like that, and I wanted her to acknowledge that fact.

  She must have read my mind. She turned when she came to the corner and shouted something back at me.

  “What?” I called to her as her words were taken by the wind.

  She cupped her hands round her mouth and tried again. “Good luck with your mother,” she shouted.

  17 November

  I'd been able to put my mother from my mind for years because of my work. Preparing for this concert or that recording session, practising my instrument with Raphael, filming a documentary, rehearsing with this or that orchestra, touring Europe or the US, meeting my agent, negotiating contracts, working with the East London Conservatory … My days and my hours had been filled with music for two decades. There had been no place in them for speculation about the parent who'd deserted me.

  But now there was time, and she dominated my thoughts. And I knew even as I thought about it, even as I wondered, imagined, and pondered, that keeping my mind fixed on my mother was a way to keep it at a distance from Sonia.

  I wasn't altogether successful. For my sister still came to me in unguarded moments.

  “She doesn't look right, Mummy,” I remembered saying, hovering over the bed on which my sister lay, swaddled in blankets, wearing a cap, in possession of a face that didn't look as it should.

  “Don't say that, Gideon,” Mother replied. “Don't ever say that about your sister.”

  “But her eyes are squishy. She's got a funny mouth.”

  “I said don't talk like that about your sister!”

  We began in that way, making the subject of Sonia's disabilities verboten among us. When they began to dominate our lives, we made no mention of them. Sonia was fretful, Sonia cried through the night, Sonia went into hospital for two or three weeks. But still we pretended that life was normal, that this was the way things always happened in families when a baby was born. We went about life in that way till Granddad fractured the glass wall of our denial.

  “What good are either of them?” he raged. “What good is any one of you, Dick?”

  Is that when it began in my head? Is that when I first saw the necessity to prove myself different from my sister? Granddad had lumped me together with Sonia, but I would show him the truth.

  Yet how could I do that when everything revolved round her? Her health, her growth, her disabilities, her development. A cry in the night and the household was rallied to see to her needs. A change in her temperature and life was halted till a doctor could explain what had brought it about. An alteration in the manner of her feeding and specialists were consulted for an explanation. She was the topic of every conversation but at the same time the cause of her ailments could never be directly mentioned.

  And I remembered this, Dr. Rose. I remembered because when I thought of my mother, my sister was clinging to the shirttails of any memory I was able to evoke. She was there in my mind as persistently as she'd been there in my life. And as I waited for the time when I would see my mother, I sought to shake her from me with as much determination as I'd sought to shake her from me when she was alive.

  Yes, I do see what that means. She is in my way now. She was in my way then. Because of her, life had altered. Because of her, it was going to alter still more.

  “You'll be going to school, Gideon.”

  That must be when the seed was planted: the seed of disappointment, anger, and thwarted dreams that grew into a forest of blame. Dad was the one who broke the news to me.

  He comes into my bedroom. I'm sitting at the table by the window, where Sarah-Jane Beckett and I do our lessons. I'm working on school prep. Dad pulls out the chair in which Sarah-Jane generally sits, and he watches me with his arms crossed.

  He says, “We've had a good run of it, Gideon. You've thrived, haven't you, son?”

  I don't know what he's talking about, and what I hear in his words makes me wary immediately. I know now that what I heard must have been resignation, but at the moment I cannot put a name to what he's apparently feeling.

  That is when he tells me that I will be going out to school, to a C of E school that he's managed to locate, a day school not too far away. I say what first comes to my mind.

  “What about my playing? When will I practise?”

  “We'll have to work that out.”

  “But what will happen to Sarah-Jane? She won't like it if she can't teach me.”

  “She'll have to cope. We're letting her go, son.”

  Letting her go. At first I think he means that Sarah-Jane wants to leave us, that she's made a request and he's acceded to it with as much good grace as he can muster. But when I say, “I shall talk to her, then. I shall stop her from going,” he says, “We can't afford her any longer, Gideon.” He doesn't add the rest, but I do, in my head. We can't afford her because of Sonia. “We have to cut back somewhere,” Dad informs me. “We don't want to let Raphael go, and we can't let Katja go. So it's come down to Sarah-Jane.”

  “But when will I play if I'm at school? They won't let me come to school only when I want to, will they, Dad? And there'll be rules. So how will I have my lessons?”

  “We've spoken to them, Gideon. They're willing to make allowances. They know the situation.”

  “But I don't want to go! I want Sarah-Jane to keep teaching me.”

  “So do I,” Dad said. “So do we all. But it's not possible, Gideon. We haven't the funds.”

  We haven't the funds, the money, the funds. Hasn't this been the leitmotiv for all of our lives? So should I be the least surprised when the Juilliard offer comes and must be rejected? Isn't it logical that I would attach my inability to attend Juilliard to money?

  But I am surprised. I am outraged. I am maddened. And the seed that was planted sends shoots upwards, sends roots downwards, and begins to multiply in the soil.

  I learn to hate. I acquire a need for revenge. A target for my vengeance becomes essential. I hear it at first, in her ceaseless crying and the inhuman demands she places upon everyone. And then I see it, in her, in my sister.

  Thinking of my mother, I dwelled upon these other thoughts as well. In considering them, I had to conclude that even if Dad had not acted to save Sonia as he might have done, what did it matter? I had begun the process of killing her. He had only allowed that process to run its course.

  You say to me: Gideon, you were just a little boy. This was a sibling situation. You weren't the first person who has attempted to harm a younger sibling, and you won't be the last.

  But she died, Dr. Rose.

  Yes. She died. But not at your hands.

  I don't know that for certain.

  You don't know—and can't know—what's true right now. But you will. Soon.

  You're right, Dr. Rose, as you usually are. Mother will tell me what actually happened. If there's salvation for me anywhere in the world, it will come to me from her.

  26

  “HE WOULDN'T EVEN take a wheelchair,” the nurse in charge of Casualty told them. Her name badge said she was Sister Darla Magnana and she was in high dudgeon over the manner in which Richard Davies had departed the hospital. Patients were to leave in wheelchairs, accompanied by an appropriate staff member who would see them to their vehicles. They were not meant to decline this service, and if they did decline it, they were not to be discharged. This gentle
man had actually walked off on his own without being discharged at all. So the hospital could not be held responsible if his injuries intensified or caused him further problems. Sister Darla Magnana hoped that was clear. “When we wish to keep someone overnight for observation, we have a very good reason for doing so,” she declared.

  Lynley asked to speak to the doctor who'd seen Richard Davies, and from that gentleman—a harassed-looking resident physician with several days' growth of whiskers—he and Havers learned the extent of Davies' injuries: a compound fracture of the right ulna, a single break of the right lateral malleolus. “Right arm and right ankle,” the doctor translated for Havers when she said, “Fractures of the whats?” He went on to say, “Cuts and abrasions on the hands. A possible concussion. He needed some stitches on the face. Overall, he was very lucky, however. It could have been fatal.”

  Lynley thought about this as he and Havers left the hospital, having been told that Richard had departed in the company of a heavily pregnant woman. They went to the Bentley, phoned in to Leach, and learned from him that Winston Nkata had given the incident room Noreen McKay's name to be put through the DVLA. Leach had the results: Noreen McKay owned a late-model Toyota RAV4. That was her only vehicle.

  “If we get no joy from those prison records, we're back to the Humber,” Leach said. “Bring that car in for a once-over.”

  Lynley said, “Right. And as to Eugenie Davies' computer, sir?”

  “Deal with that later. After we get our hands on that car. And talk to Foster. I want to know where she was this afternoon.”

  “Surely not pushing her fiancé under a bus,” Lynley said despite his better judgement, which told him not to do or say anything that might remind Leach of Lynley's own transgressions. “In her condition, she'd be rather conspicuous to witnesses.”

  “Just deal with her, Inspector. And get that car.” Leach recited Jill Foster's address. It was a flat in Shepherd's Bush. Directory enquiries gave Lynley a phone number to go along with the address, and within a minute he knew what he'd already assumed when Leach gave him the assignment: Jill wasn't at home. She'd have taken Davies to his own flat in South Kensington.

  As they were spinning down Park Lane in preparation for the last leg of the trip from Gower Street to South Kensington, Havers said, “You know, Inspector, we're down to Gideon or Robson shoving Davies into the street this evening. But if either one of them did the job, the basic question remains, doesn't it? Why?”

  “If's the operative word,” Lynley said.

  She obviously heard his doubts, because she said, “You don't think either of them pushed him, do you?”

  “Killers nearly always choose the same means,” Lynley pointed out.

  “But a bus is a vehicle,” Havers said.

  “But it's not a car and driver. And it's not that car, the Humber. Or any antique car for that matter. Nor was the hit as serious as the others, considering what it could have been.”

  “And no one saw the shove,” Havers said thoughtfully. “At least so far.”

  “I'm betting no one saw it at all, Havers.”

  “Okay. So we're back to Davies again. Davies tracking down Kathleen Waddington before going after Eugenie. Davies setting his sights on Webberly to guide our suspicion onto Katja Wolff when we don't get there fast enough. Davies then throwing himself into the traffic because he's got the sense we're not taking Wolff seriously as a suspect. All right. I see. But why’s the question.”

  “Because of Gideon. It has to be. Because she was threatening Gideon in some way and Davies lives for Gideon. If, as you suggested, Barbara, she actually meant to stop him playing—”

  “I like the idea, but what was it to her? I mean, if anything, it seems that she'd want to keep him playing, not stop him, right? She had a history of his whole career up in her attic. She obviously cared that he played. Why cock it up?”

  “Perhaps cocking it up wasn't her intention,” Lynley said. “But perhaps cocking it up was what would have happened—without her knowing it—if she met Gideon again.”

  “So Davies killed her? Why not just tell her the truth? Why not just say, ‘Hang on, old girl. 'F you see Gideon, he's done for, professionally speaking.’”

  “Perhaps he did say that,” Lynley pointed out. “And perhaps she said, ‘I've not got a choice, Richard. It's been years and it's time …’”

  “For what?” Havers asked. “A family reunion? An explanation of why she ran off in the first place? An announcement that she was going to hook up with Major Wiley? What?”

  “Something,” Lynley said. “Something that we may never find out.”

  “Which toasts our muffins good and proper,” Havers noted. “And doesn't go very far towards putting Richard Davies in the nick. If he's our man. And we've got sod all for evidence of that. He has an alibi, Inspector. Hasn't he?”

  “Asleep. With Jill Foster. Who was, herself, most likely asleep. So he could have gone and returned without her knowledge, Havers, using her car and then bringing it back.”

  “We're at the car again.”

  “It's the only thing we have.”

  “Right. Well. The CPS aren't likely to do backflips over that, Inspector. Access to the car's not exactly hard evidence.”

  “Access isn't,” Lynley agreed. “But it's not access alone that I'm depending on.”

  GIDEON

  20 November

  I saw Dad before he looked up and saw me. He was coming along the pavement in Chalcot Square, and I could tell from his posture that he was brooding. I felt some concern but no alarm.

  Then something odd happened. Raphael appeared at the far end of the garden in the centre of the square. He must have called out to Dad, because Dad hesitated on the pavement, turned, and then waited for him a few doors away from my own house. As I watched from the music room window, they exchanged a few words, Dad doing the talking. As he spoke, Raphael staggered back two steps, his face crumpling the way a man's face crumples when he's received a punch to the gut. Dad continued to talk. Raphael turned back towards the garden. Dad watched as Raphael walked back through the gates to where two wooden benches face each other. He sat. No, he dropped, all of his weight falling in a mass that was merely bones and flesh, reaction incarnate.

  I should have known then. But I did not.

  Dad walked on, at which point he looked up and saw me watching from the window. He raised a hand but didn't wait for me to respond. In a moment, he disappeared beneath me and I heard the sound of his key in the lock of my front door. When he came into the music room, he removed his coat and laid it deliberately along the back of a chair.

  “What's Raphael doing?” I asked him. “Has something happened?”

  He looked at me, and I could see that his face was awash with sorrow. “I've some news,” he told me, “some very bad news.”

  “What?” I felt fear lap against my skin.

  “There's no easy way to tell you,” he said.

  “Then tell me.”

  “Your mother's dead, son.”

  “But you said she's been phoning you. About what happened at Wigmore Hall. She can't be—”

  “She was killed last night, Gideon. She was hit by a car in West Hampstead. The police rang me this morning.” He cleared his throat and squeezed his temples as if to contain an emotion there. “They asked if I would try to identify her body. I looked. I couldn't tell for certain…. It's been years since I saw her….” He made an aimless gesture. “I'm so sorry, son.”

  “But she can't be … If you didn't recognise her, perhaps it's not—”

  “The woman was carrying your mother's identification. Driving licence, credit cards, chequebook. What are the possibilities that someone else would have had all of Eugenie's identification?”

  “So you said it was her? You said it was my mother?”

  “I said I didn't know, that I couldn't be sure. I gave them the name of her dentist … the man she used to see when we were still together. They'll be able to check that
way. And there are fingerprints, I suppose.”

  “Did you ring her?” I asked. “Did she know I wanted to … Was she willing …?” But what was the point of asking, the point of knowing? What did it matter if she was dead?

  “I left a message for her, son. She hadn't got back to me yet.”

  “That's it, then.”

  Dad's head had been dropped forward, but he raised it then. “That's what?” he asked.

  “There's no one to tell me.”

  “I've told you.”

  “No.”

  “Gideon, for God's sake …”

  “You've told me what you think will make me believe that I'm not at fault. But you'd say anything to get me back on the violin.”

  “Gideon, please.”

  “No.” Everything was becoming so much clearer. It was as if the shock of learning of her death suddenly blew the fog from my mind. I said, “It doesn't make sense that Katja Wolff would have agreed to your plan. That she would give up so many years of her life … for what, Dad? For me? For you? I wasn't anything to her and neither were you. Isn't that true? You weren't her lover. You weren't the father of her child. Raphael was, wasn't he? So it makes no sense that she agreed. You must have tricked her. You must have … what? Planted evidence? Twisted the facts?”

  “How the hell can you accuse me of that?”

  “Because I see it. Because I understand. Because how would Granddad have reacted, Dad, to the news that his freak of a granddaughter had just been drowned by her freak of a brother? And that's what it must have come down to in the end: Keep the truth from Granddad no matter what.”

  “She was a willing participant because of the money. Twenty thousand pounds for admitting to a negligent act that led to Sonia's death. I explained all that. I told you that we didn't expect the press's reaction to the case or the Crown Prosecutor's passion to put her in prison. We had no idea—”

  “You did it to protect me. And all your talk about leaving Sonia in the bath to die—of holding her down yourself—is just that: talk. It serves the same purpose as letting Katja Wolff take the blame twenty years ago. It keeps me playing the violin. Or at least it's supposed to.”