A Traitor to Memory (131 page)

29

W
INSTON
N
KATA CAME
out of the bathroom and found his mother seated beneath a standard lamp whose shade had been removed to give her better light in which to work. What she was working on was her tatting. She'd taken a class in this form of lace-making with a group of ladies from her church, and she was determined to perfect the art. Nkata didn't know why. When he'd asked her the reason she'd begun messing about with cotton reels, shuttles, and knots, she said, “Keeps my hands busy, Jewel. And just 'cause something's not done much any longer doesn't make it worth chucking out.”

Nkata thought it actually had to do with his father. Benjamin Nkata snored so ferociously that it was impossible for anyone to sleep in the same room with him unless they managed to drop off first and lie like the dead once they got there. If Alice Nkata was up past her usual retiring time of ten forty-five, it stood to reason that she was practising her lacework in lieu of suffocating her snorting and bellowing husband in sheer insomniac frustration.

Nkata could tell that was the case this night. The moment he stepped from the bathroom, he was greeted not only with the sight of his mother at her lace but also with the sound of his father at his dreams. It sounded as if bears were being baited inside his parents' bedroom.

Alice Nkata looked up from her work, over the top of her
half-moon glasses. She was wearing her ancient yellow chenille dressing gown, and her son frowned with displeasure when he saw this.

He said, “Where's that one I got you for Mothering Sunday?”

“Where's what one?” his mother asked.

“You know what one. That new dressing gown.”

“Too nice to sit round in, Jewel,” she said. And before he could protest that dressing gowns weren't intended to be saved just in case one was invited to tea with the Queen so why wasn't she
using
the one he'd paid two weeks' wages to buy her at Liberty's, she said, “Where you going this hour?”

“Thought I'd go round to see what's up with the super,” he told her. “Case got resolved—th' inspector nabbed the bloke who made the hits—but the super's still out and …” He shrugged. “I don't know. Seemed like it's the right thing to do.”

“At this hour?” Alice Nkata asked, casting a look at the tiny Wedgwood clock on the table beside her, a gift presented by her son at Christmas. “Don't know of any hospital round here that likes having visitors in the middle of the night.”

“Not the middle of the night, Mum.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Can't sleep anyway. Too wired up. If I c'n give a hand to the family … Like I said, it seems the right thing to do.”

She eyed him. “Dressed nice enough to be going to his wedding,” she noted acerbically.

Or his funeral, for that matter, Nkata thought. But he didn't like even getting
close
to that idea with regard to Webberly, so he made himself think of something else: like the reasons he'd set his sights on Katja Wolff as the killer of Eugenie Davies as well as the driver who'd injured the superintendent so grievously, like what it actually
meant
that Katja Wolff was not guilty of either offence.

He said, “Nice to show respect where respect's due, Mum. You brought up a boy knows what's called for.”

His mother said, “Hmph,” but he could tell she was pleased. She said, “Mind how you go, then. You see any no-hair white boys in army boots hanging 'bout on the corner, you give them a wide berth. You walk th' other way. I mean what I say.”

“Right, Mum.”

“No ‘Right, Mum’ like I don't know what I'm talking about.”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I know that you do.”

He kissed her on the top of the head and left the flat. He felt a twinge of guilt at having fibbed—he hadn't done that since adolescence—but he
told himself it was all in a good cause. It was late; there would have been too much explaining to do; he needed to be on his way.

Outside, the rain was making its usual mess of the estate where the Nkatas lived. Pools of water had collected along the outdoor passages between the flats, deposited on the unprotected uppermost level by the wind and seeping down to the other levels through cracks between the floor of the passages and the building itself that had long existed and not been repaired. The staircase was consequently slick and dangerous, also as usual, because the rubber treads on the individual steps had been worn away—or sometimes had been cut away by kids with too much time on their hands and too little to do to fill it—leaving bare the concrete that comprised them. And down below at what went for the garden, the grass and flower beds of ancient times were now an expanse of mud across which lager cans, take-away food wrappers, disposable nappies, and other assorted human detritus made an eloquent statement about the level of frustration and despair that people sank to when they believed—or their experience taught them—that their options were limited by the colour of their skin.

Nkata had suggested to his parents more than once that they move house, indeed that he would
help
them move house. But they had refused his every offer. If people set about digging up their roots first chance they had, Alice Nkata explained to her son, the whole plant could die. Besides, by staying right where they were and by having one son who'd managed to escape what could indeed have ruined him forever, they were setting an example for everyone else. No need to think their own lives had limits when among them lived someone who showed them that it wasn't so.

“Besides,” Alice Nkata said, “we got Brixton Station close. And Loughborough Junction as well. That suits me fine, Jewel. Suits your dad as well.”

So they stayed, his parents. And he stayed with them. Living on his own was as yet too expensive, and even if it weren't, he wanted to remain in his parents' flat. He afforded them a source of pride that they needed, and he himself needed to give that to them.

His car was gleaming under a streetlamp, washed clean by the rain. He climbed inside and belted himself in.

The drive was a short one. A few twists and turns put him on the Brixton Road, where he headed north, cruising in the direction of Kennington. He parked in front of the agricultural centre, where he sat for a moment, looking across the street through the sheets of rain that the wind was waving between his car and Yasmin Edwards' flat.

He'd been propelled to Kennington in part by the knowledge that he'd done wrong. He'd told himself earlier that he'd done this wrong for all the right reasons, and he believed there was a lot of truth to the assurance. He was fairly certain that Inspector Lynley might have used the same ploys with Yasmin Edwards and her lover, and he was absolutely positive that Barbara Havers would have done the same or more. But of course, they'd have had intentions a good sight nobler than his own had been, and beneath their behaviour would not have run the strong current of an aggression that was inconsistent with their invasion into the women's lives.

Nkata wasn't sure where the aggression came from or what it indicated about him as an officer of the police. He only knew that he felt it and that he needed to lose it before he could move with absolute comfort again.

He shoved open the car door, carefully locked it behind him, and dashed across the street to the block of flats. The lift door was closed. He began to ring the buzzer for Yasmin Edwards' flat, but he stopped with his finger suspended above the appropriate button. Instead, he rang the flat beneath it and when a man's voice asked who it was, he gave his name, said he'd been phoned about some vandalism in the car park, and would Mr.—he looked at the list of names quickly—Mr. Houghton be willing to look at some pictures to see if he recognised any faces among a group of youths arrested in the vicinity? Mr. Houghton agreed to do so and buzzed the lift open. Nkata rode to Yasmin Edwards' floor with a pang of guilt for the manner in which he'd gained access, but he told himself he'd stop below afterwards and apologise to Mr. Houghton for the ruse.

The curtains were shut upon Yasmin Edwards' windows, but a thread of light licked at the bottom of them and behind the door, the sound of television voices spoke. When he knocked, she wisely asked who it was and when he gave his name, he was forced to wait thirty eternal seconds while she made up her mind whether to admit him.

When she had done, she merely opened the door six inches, enough for him to see her in her leggings and her oversized sweater. Red this was, the colour of poppies. She said nothing. She looked at him squarely, her face without the slightest expression, which reminded him inadvertently again of who she was and what she always would be.

He said, “C'n I come in?”

“Why?”

“Talk.”

“About?”

“Is she here?”

“What d'you think?”

He heard the door open on the floor beneath them, knew it was Mr. Houghton wondering what had happened to the cop who'd come to show him pictures. He said, “Raining. Cold and damp're getting inside. You let me in and I stay a minute. Five at the most. I swear.”

She said, “Dan's asleep. I don't want him waked. He's got school—”

“Yeah. I'll keep my voice low.”

She took another moment to make up her mind, but at last she stepped back. She turned from the door and walked to where she'd been before he'd knocked, leaving him to open the door wider and then to close it quietly behind him.

He saw that she was watching a film. In it, Peter Sellers began to walk across water. It was an illusion, of course, the stuff of make-believe but suggestive of possibility nonetheless.

She took up the remote control but did not turn the television off. She merely muted the sound and continued to watch the picture.

He got the message and did not blame her for it. He would be even less welcome when he'd said what he'd come to say.

“We got the hit-and-run driver,” he told her. “It wasn't … Not Katja Wolff. She had a square alibi, 's things turned out.”

“I know her alibi,” Yasmin said. “Number Fifty-five.”

“Ah.” He looked at the television, then at her. She sat straight-backed. She looked like a model. She had a model's fine body, and she would have been perfect wearing trendy clothes for pictures except for her face, the scar on her mouth that made her look fierce and used and angry. He said, “Following leads 's part of the job, Missus Edwards. She had a connection with who got hit, and I couldn't ignore that.”

“I 'xpect you did what you had to do.”

“You did 's well,” he said to her. “That's what I came to say.”

“Sure I did,” she said. “Grassing's always the thing to do, isn't it?”

“She didn't give you a choice once she lied to me 'bout where she was when that woman was hit. You either went along for the ride and put yourself in danger—’long with your boy—or you told the truth. If she wasn't here, then she was somewhere and f'r all anyone knew about it, that somewhere could've been up in West Hampstead. You couldn't stand by that, keep your mug shut, and take another fall.”

“Yeah. Well, Katja wasn't up in West Hampstead, was she? And now we know where she was and why, we c'n both rest easy. I won't be getting into trouble with the cops, I won't be losing Dan into care, and you won't be tossing round in your bed nights, wond'ring how the hell you're goin' t' stick something onto Katja Wolff when she never thought once of doing it.”

Nkata found it hard to digest that Yasmin would still defend Katja despite Katja's betrayal of her. But he made himself think before he replied, and he saw that there was sense in what the woman was doing. He was still the enemy in Yasmin Edwards' eyes. Not only was he a copper, which would always put them at odds with each other, he was also the person who'd forced her to see that she was living within a charade, one party to a relationship that existed only in lieu of another, one that was of longer standing to Katja, more desired, and just out of reach.

He said, “No. I wouldn't be tossing in bed 'cause of that.”

“Like I say,” was her contemptuous reply.

“What I mean,” he said, “is I'd still be tossing. But not over that.”

“Whatever,” she said. She held the remote at the television again. “That all you come to say? That I did the right thing and be happy, Madam, 'cause you're safe from being called an accessory to something someone never did?”

“No,” he said. “That's not all I come to say.”

“Yeah? Then what else?”

He didn't really know. He wanted to tell her that he'd had to come because his motives in forcing her hand had been mixed from the first. But in saying that, he'd be saying the obvious and telling her what she already knew. And he was more than acutely aware that she'd long ago realised that the motives of every man who looked at her, spoke to her, asked something of her—lithe and warm and decidedly alive—would always be mixed. And he was also more than acutely aware that he didn't want to be counted among those other men.

So he said, “Your boy's on my mind, Missus Edwards.”

“Then take him off of your mind.”

“Can't,” he said, and when she would have made a retort, he went on with, “It's like this. He's got the look of a winner, you know, if he follows a course. But lots out there c'n get in his way.”