A Traitor to Memory (129 page)

The nurse eyed Barbara doubtfully. Barbara sighed and fished out her warrant card. The nurse squinted at it and said, “Wait here, then,” leaving Barbara waiting to see what would happen next.

Barbara expected AC Hillier to emerge from the ward, but instead it was Webberly's daughter who came to greet her. Miranda looked just about done in, but she smiled and said, “Barbara! Hello! How very good of you to come. You can't still be on duty at this hour.”

Barbara said, “We've made an arrest. Will you tell your dad? I mean, I know he can't hear you or anything … Still, you know …”

“Oh, but he can hear,” Miranda said.

Barbara's hopes rose. “He's come out of it?”

“No. Not that. But the doctors say that people in comas can hear what's being said round them. And he'll certainly want to know that you've caught who hit him, won't he?”

“How is he?” Barbara asked. “I talked to a nurse, but I couldn't get much. Just that there wasn't any change yet.”

Miranda smiled, but it seemed a response that was generated to soothe Barbara's worries more than a reflection of what the girl herself was feeling. “There isn't, really. But he hasn't had another heart attack, which everyone considers a very good sign. So far he's been stable, and we're … well, we're very hopeful. Yes. We're quite hopeful.”

Her eyes were too bright, too frightened. Barbara wanted to tell Miranda that she had no need to play the part for her sake, but she understood that the girl's attempt at optimism was more for herself than anyone else. She said, “Then I'll be hopeful as well. We all will. D'you need anything?”

“Oh gosh, no. At least, I don't think so. I did come from
Cambridge in a terrible rush and I've left a paper behind that I have due for a supervision. But that's not till next week and perhaps by then … Well, perhaps.”

“Yeah. Perhaps.”

Footsteps coming along the corridor diverted their attention. They turned to see AC Hillier and his wife approaching. Between them, they were supporting Frances Webberly.

Miranda cried out, “Mum!”

“Randie,” Frances said. “Randie, darling …”

Miranda said again, “Mum! I'm so glad. Oh,
Mum
.” She went to her and hugged her long and hard. And then, perhaps feeling a weight lifting off her that she should never have had to bear in the first place, she began to cry. She said, “The doctors said if he has another heart attack, he might … He really might—”

“Hush. Yes,” Frances Webberly said, her cheek pressed against her daughter's hair. “Take me in to see Daddy, won't you, dear? We'll sit with him together.”

When Miranda and her mother had gone through the door, AC Hillier said to his wife, “Stay with them, Laura. Please. Make sure …” and nodded meaningfully. Laura Hillier followed them.

The AC eyed Barbara with a degree less than his usual level of disapproval. She became acutely aware of her clothing. She'd been doing her best to stay out of his way for months now, and when she'd known she'd be running into him, she'd always managed to dress with that expectation in mind. But now … She felt her high-top red trainers take on neon proportions, and the green stirrup trousers she'd donned that morning seemed only marginally less inappropriate.

She said, “We've made the arrest, sir. I thought I'd come to tell—”

“Leach phoned me.” Hillier walked to a door across the corridor and inclined his head at it. She was meant to follow. When they were inside what turned out to be a waiting room, he went to a sofa and sank into it. For the first time, Barbara noted how tired he looked, and she realised he'd been on family duty since the middle of the previous night. Her guard slipped a notch at this thought. Hillier had always seemed superhuman.

He said, “Good work, Barbara. Both of you.”

She said cautiously, “Thank you, sir,” and waited for what would happen next.

He said, “Sit.”

She said, “Sir,” and although she'd have preferred to be off on her
way home, she went to a chair of limited comfort and perched on its edge. In a better world, she thought, AC Hillier would at this moment of emotional
in extremis
see the error of his ways. He'd look at her, recognise her finer qualities—one of which was decidedly not her fashion sense—and he'd summarily acknowledge them. He'd elevate her on the spot to her previous professional position and that would be the end of the punishment he'd inflicted upon her at the end of the summer.

But this was not a better world, and AC Hillier did none of that. He merely said, “He might not make it. We're pretending other-wise—especially round Frances, for what little good it's doing—but it's got to be faced.”

Barbara didn't know what to say, so she murmured, “Bloody hell,” because that's what she felt: bloody, bowed, and consigned to helplessness. And sentenced, with the rest of mankind, to interminable waiting.

“I've known him ages,” Hillier said. “There've been times when I haven't much liked him and God knows I've never understood him, but he's been there for years, a presence that I could somehow depend upon, just to … to
be
there. And I find I don't like the thought of his going.”

“Perhaps he won't go,” Barbara said. “Perhaps he'll recover.”

Hillier shot her a look. “You don't recover from something like this. He may live. But recover? No. He'll not be the same. He'll not recover.” He crossed one leg over the other, which was the first time Barbara noticed
his
clothes, which were what he'd thrown on the night before and had never got round to changing during the day. And she saw him for once not as superior but as human being: in hound's-tooth and Tattersall, with a pullover that had a hole in the cuff. He said, “Leach tells me it was all done to divert suspicion.”

“Yes. That's what DI Lynley and I think.”

“What a waste.” And then he peered at her. “There's nothing else?”

“What do you mean?”

“No other reason behind Malcolm's being hit?”

She met his gaze steadily and read the question behind it, the one that asked if what AC Hillier assumed, believed, or wanted to believe about the Webberly marriage and its partners therein was really true. And Barbara didn't intend to give the assistant commissioner any part of that piece of information. She said, “No other reason. Turns out the superintendent was just easy for Davies to track down.”

“That's what you
think
,” Hillier said. “Leach told me Davies himself isn't talking.”

“I expect he'll talk eventually,” Barbara replied. “He knows better than most where keeping mum can get you.”

“I've made Lynley acting superintendent till this is sorted out,” Hillier said. “You know that, don't you?”

“Dee Harriman passed along the word.” Barbara drew in a breath and held it, hoping, wishing, and dreaming for what did not then come.

Instead, he said, “Winston Nkata does good work, doesn't he, all things considered.”

What things? she wondered. But she said, “Yes, sir. He does good work.”

“He'll be looking at a promotion soon.”

“He'll be glad of that, sir.”

“Yes. I expect he will.” Hillier looked at her long, then he looked away. His eyes closed. His head rested back against the sofa.

Barbara sat there in silence, wondering what she was meant to do. She finally settled on saying, “You ought to go home and get some sleep, sir.”

“I intend to,” Hillier replied. “We all should, Constable Havers.”

It was half past ten when Lynley parked on Lawrence Street and walked back round the corner to the St. James house. He hadn't phoned ahead to let them know he was coming, and on the way down from the Earl's Court Road, he'd determined that if the ground floor lights in the house were off, he wouldn't disturb its occupants. This was, he knew, in large part cowardice. The time was fast approaching when he was going to have to deal with harvesting the crop he'd long-ago sown, and he didn't particularly want to do that. But he'd seen how his past was seeping insidiously into his present, and he knew that he owed the future he wanted an exorcism that could only be managed if he spoke. Still, he would have liked to put it off and as he rounded the corner, he hoped for darkness in the house's windows as a sign that further procrastination was acceptable.

He had no such luck. Not only was the light above the front door blazing, but the windows of St. James's study cast yellow shafts onto the wrought iron fence that edged the property.

He mounted the steps and rang the bell. Inside the house, the dog
barked in response. She was still barking when Deborah St. James opened the door.

She said, “Tommy! Good Lord, you're
soaked
. What a night. Have you forgotten your umbrella? Peach, here. Stop it at once.” She scooped the barking little dachshund from the floor and tucked her under her arm. “Simon's not in,” she confided, “and Dad's watching a documentary about dormice, don't ask me why. So she's taking guard duty more seriously than usual. Peach, none of your growling, now.”

Lynley stepped inside and removed his wet coat. He hung it on the rack to the right of the door. He extended his hand to the dog for purposes of olfactory identification, and Peach ceased both barking and growling and indicated her willingness to accept his obeisance in the form of a few scratches behind her ears.

“She's impossibly spoiled,” Deborah said.

“She's doing her job. You shouldn't just open the door like that at night anyway, Deb. It's not very wise.”

“I always assume that if a burglar's calling, Peach will go for his ankles before he can get into the first room. Not that we have much worth taking, although I wouldn't mind seeing the last of that hideous thing with peacock feathers that sits on the sideboard in the dining room.” She smiled. “How
are
you, Tommy? I'm in here. Working.”

She led him into the study where, he saw, she was in the process of wrapping the pictures she'd selected for her December show. The floor was spread with framed photographs yet to be protected by plastic, along with a bottle of window cleaner that she'd been using to see to the glass that covered them, a roll of kitchen towels, myriad sheets of bubble-wrap, tape, and scissors. She'd lit the gas fire in the room, and Peach repaired to her ramshackle basket that stood before it.

“It's an obstacle course,” Deborah said, “but if you can find your way to the trolley, have some more of Simon's whisky.”

“Where is he?” Lynley asked. He worked his way round her photographs and went to the drinks trolley.

“He went to a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society: somebody's journey somewhere and a book signing to follow. I think there are polar bears involved. In the lecture, that is.”

Lynley smiled. He tossed down a hefty gulp of the whisky. It would do for courage. To give himself time for the spirits to work in his bloodstream, he said, “We've made an arrest in the case I've been working on.”

“It didn't take you long. You know, you're completely suited to
police work, Tommy. Who would ever have thought it, the way you grew up?”

She rarely mentioned his upbringing. A child of privilege born to another child of privilege, he'd long chafed beneath the burdens of blood, family history, and his duties to both. The thought of it now—family, useless titles that were every year rendered more meaningless, velvet capes trimmed in ermine, and more than two hundred and fifty years of lineage always determining what his next move should be—served as a stark reminder of what he had come to tell her and why. Still, he stalled, saying, “Yes. Well. One always has to move quickly in a homicide. If the trail begins to cool, you stand less chance of making an arrest. I've come for that computer, by the way. The one I left with Simon. Is it still up in the lab? May I fetch it, Deb?”

“Of course,” she said, although she gave him a curious glance, either at his choice of subject—considering her husband's line of work, she was more than aware of the need for speed in a murder investigation—or the tone with which he spoke about it, which was too hearty to be at all believable. She said, “Go on up. You don't mind my carrying on down here, do you?”

He said, “Not at all,” and made his escape, taking his time to trudge up the stairs to the top floor of the house. There, he flipped on the lights in the lab and found the computer exactly where St. James had left it. He unplugged it, cradled it in his arms, and went back down the stairs. He placed it by the front door and considered calling out a cheerful goodnight and going on his way. It was late, after all, and the conversation that he needed to have with Deborah St. James could wait.

Just as he was thinking of another postponement, though, Deborah came to the study door and observed him. She said, “All's not right with your world. There's nothing wrong with Helen, is there?”

And Lynley found at last that he couldn't avoid it no matter how much he wanted to. He said, “No. There's nothing wrong with Helen.”

“I'm glad,” she said. “The first months of pregnancy can be awful.”

He opened his mouth to reply but lost the words. Then he found them again. He said, “So you know.”

She smiled. “I couldn't help knowing. After … what is it, now? seven pregnancies? … I've become pretty well-attuned to the signs. I never got far in them—the pregnancies, I mean … well, you know that—but far enough to feel that I'd
never
get over being sick.”