A Traitor to Memory (20 page)

“They showed me a Polaroid first, which was good of them. But when I couldn't identify her from that, they showed me her body. They asked if there were distinguishing marks somewhere on her that might identify her. But I couldn't remember.” His voice was dull, like an old copper coin. “All I could tell them was the name of her dentist twenty years ago and think of that, Jill. I could remember the name of her dentist but not if she had a birthmark somewhere that might tell the police that she is—that she was—Eugenie, my wife.”

Former wife, Jill wanted to add. Deserting wife. Wife who selfishly left behind a child whom you raised to adulthood alone.
Alone
, Richard. Let's not forget that.

“But I could remember the name of her bloody dentist,” he was saying. “And only because he's mine as well.”

“What will they do?”

“Use the x-rays to make sure it's Eugenie.”

“What do you think?”

He looked up. He seemed so tired. With an unaccustomed sense of guilt, Jill thought of how little sleep he was managing to get on her sofa and how kind and solicitous it was of him to stay the nights with her now when her time was drawing near. Since Richard had already had two children—although only one of them was actually still alive—Jill hadn't honestly expected him to be as lovingly concerned for her welfare as he'd been during most of the pregnancy. But from the moment her stomach had started to swell and her breasts had begun to grow heavier, he'd treated her with a tenderness she'd found rather poignant. It served to open her heart to him and to bind them more closely together. This unit they were forming was something she warmed to. It was what she'd longed for and dreamed of having and despaired of finding among men her own age.

“What I think,” Richard said in answer to her question, “is that
the likelihood of Eugenie's having had the same dentist since our marriage ended—”

Since she deserted you, Jill corrected him silently.

“—is fairly remote.”

“I still don't understand how they connected you with her. And how they tracked you down.”

Richard stirred on the sofa. In front of him on the large plump ottoman that served as a coffee table, he fingered the latest copy of
Radio Times
. Its cover featured a toothy American actress who'd agreed to simulate what would undoubtedly be a wildly imperfect English accent so she could play the part of Jane Eyre in yet another resurrection of that eponymous and utterly implausible Victorian melodrama. Jane Eyre indeed, Jill thought with a scoff, she who fostered within the soft brains of more than one hundred years of mentally pliable female readers the nonsensical belief that a man with a past as dark as licorice could be elevated by the love of a decent woman. What utter nonsense.

Richard wasn't answering. Jill said, “Richard, I don't understand. How did they connect you with Eugenie? I realise she must have kept your surname, but Davies isn't so uncommon that one would make the leap that you and she had once been married.”

“One of the police on the scene,” Richard said. “He knew who she was. Because of the case …” He aimlessly shifted the copy of
Radio Times
so that the one beneath it was on top. This one pictured Jill herself in modern garb among the costumed cast of her triumphant production of
Desperate Remedies
, filmed within weeks of Jill's final breakup with Jonathon Stewart, whose passionate vows to leave his wife “once our Steph has finished up at Oxford, darling” had proved to be just about as steadfast as his performance in bed had been reliable. Two weeks after “our Steph” had her diploma in her grubby little grasp, Jonathon was making another excuse which involved settling the wretched girl “in her new digs up in Lancaster, darling.” Three days later Jill had pulled the plug on their relationship and buried herself in
Desperate Remedies
, whose title couldn't have been more appropriate to her emotional state at the time.

Jill said, “The case?” and a moment later realised what case he was speaking about.
The
case, of course, the only one that mattered. The case that had broken his heart, destroyed his marriage, and coloured the last two decades of his life. She said, “Yes, I suppose the police might remember.”

“He was involved. One of the detectives. So when he saw her name on her driving licence, he tracked me down.”

“Yes. I see.” She half-rolled into a kneeling position from which she was able to touch his curved shoulder. “Let me make you something. Tea, coffee.”

“I could do with a brandy.”

She lifted an eyebrow, although since he was looking at the magazine cover and not at her, he didn't see the action. She wanted to say, At this hour? Surely not, darling. But she heaved herself to her feet and went to the kitchen, where she took a bottle of Courvoisier from one of the sleek cupboards and poured him an exact two tablespoons, which seemed an adequate amount to restore him.

He joined her in the kitchen and took the glass without comment. He drank a sip and swirled the remaining liquid in the glass. He said, “I can't get the sight of her out of my mind.”

This seemed too much to Jill. All right, the woman was dead. And yes, she'd died in a dreadful way, with much to be pitied. Indeed, it was a grim affair, having to look upon her broken body. But Richard hadn't had a single word from his former wife in nearly two decades, so why would he be so distraught at her death? Unless he was still carrying a torch for her … Unless, perhaps, he'd not been quite truthful about the death of their marriage and what he'd done with the corpse.

Jill said with care and placing a loving hand on his forearm, “I know this must be a terrible time for you. But you've not actually … seen her in all these years, have you?”

A flicker in his eyes. Of their own accord, her fingers tightened. Don't make this into a Jonathon situation, she told him silently. Lie to me now, and I will end this, Richard. I will not live in a fantasy again.

He said, “No, I've not seen her. But I've spoken to her recently. A number of times in the last month or so.” He seemed to feel the shield she put up to protect her heart from damage at this piece of news, because he went on hastily. “She phoned me because of Gideon. She'd read about what happened at Wigmore Hall. When he didn't recover from that … situation … quickly, she phoned to ask me about him. I haven't told you because … I don't actually know
why
I haven't told you. It didn't seem very important at the time. And beyond that, I didn't want anything to upset you in these final weeks … the baby. It hardly seemed fair to you.”

“That's completely outrageous.” Jill felt a swelling of righteous anger.

Richard said, “I'm sorry. We spoke for only five minutes … ten minutes at the most each time she phoned. I didn't consider—”

“I don't mean that,” Jill interrupted. “I don't mean it's outrageous that you didn't tell me. But that she phoned you at all. That she had the audacity to phone you, Richard. That she could walk out of your life—out of
Gideon's
life, for God's sake—and then phone up when she reads about him because she's curious that he's had a bit of trouble at a performance. My
God
, what cheek.”

Richard said nothing in reply to this. He merely swirled the brandy round in his glass and observed the thin patina it left on the sides. There was something more here, Jill concluded. She said, “Richard? What is it? There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?” And she felt once again a basic shutting down when confronted with the idea that a man with whom she was so intimately involved might not be as forthcoming as she required of him. Odd, she thought, how one humiliating and disastrous relationship had the potential to affect every involvement that followed it. “Richard? Tell me. Is there something more?”

“Gideon,” Richard said. “I didn't tell him that she'd been phoning me about him. I didn't know
what
to tell him, Jill. It's not as if she was asking to see him, because she wasn't asking to see him at all. So what would have been the point, telling him? But now she's dead and he's got to be told about that and I'm terrified that hearing it is going to make him take a turn for the worse.”

“Yes. I can see how it could.”

“‘Is he well?’ she wanted to know, Jill. ‘Why isn't he playing, Richard?’ she asked. ‘How many concert engagements has he actually broken? And why? Why?’”

“What was she after?”

“She must have phoned me a dozen times in the last two weeks alone,” Richard said. “There she was, this voice from the past which I thought I'd
bloody
well recovered from and—” He stopped himself.

Jill felt the chill. It started from her ankles and swept up quickly to close round her heart. She said carefully, “Thought you'd recovered?” and tried to stop herself from thinking what she couldn't bear to think, but the words ricocheted round her head anyway: He still loves her. She walked out on him. She disappeared from his life. But he continued to love her. He climbed into my bed. He joined his body to mine. But all the time he was loving Eugenie.

No wonder he'd never remarried. The only question was: Why was he remarrying now?

The damn man read her mind. Or perhaps her face. Or maybe he felt the chill as well, since he said, “Because it took me that much time to find you, Jill. Because I love you. Because at my age, I never expected to love again. And every morning when I awake, even on that miserable sofa of yours, I thank God for the miracle that you love me. Eugenie is a distant part of my past. Let's not make her part of our future.”

And the truth of it was, as Jill knew well, that they both had pasts. They were not adolescents, so neither of them could expect the other to come into their new life unburdened. The future was what was important, at the end of the day. Their future and the future of the baby. Catherine Ann.

Henley-on-Thames was easily accessible from London, especially when the morning commute along the M40 created tailbacks that extended in the opposite direction only. So DI Thomas Lynley and DC Barbara Havers were rolling south in the direction of Henley from Marlow just under an hour after having left Eric Leach's incident room in Hampstead.

DCI Leach, fighting off either a head cold or flu, had introduced them to a squad of detectives who, while slightly leery of the presence of New Scotland Yard among them, also seemed willing to accept their participation in a work load that currently included a series of rapes on Hampstead Heath and an arson in the Grade II-listed cottage of an ageing actress of both title and considerable reputation.

Leach detailed the preliminary findings from the post-mortem examination first, pending blood, tissue, and organ analysis, and they amounted to a multitude of injuries on a body that had ultimately been identified through dental records as belonging to one Eugenie Davies, aged sixty-two. First came the fractures she had sustained: the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, the left femur, ulna, and radius, the right clavicle, and the fifth and sixth ribs. Then came the internal ruptures: liver, spleen, and kidneys. The cause of death had been determined as massive internal haemorrhaging and shock, and the time had been set between ten o'clock and midnight. An evaluation of trace evidence on the body would be forthcoming.

“She was thrown about fifty feet,” Leach told the detectives assembled in the incident room as they stood among the computers, the china boards, the filing cabinets, the copy machines, and the photographs. “According to forensic she was then driven over at least
twice, possibly three times, as indicated by contusions on the body and markings left on her mac.”

A general murmur greeted this remark. Someone said, “Nice neighbourhood, that” with heavy irony.

Leach corrected the DC's misapprehension. “We're assuming a single car, not three, did the damage, McKnight. We'll hold that position till we hear otherwise from Lambeth. One hit from the vehicle put her flat out on the pavement. Then once over her, once in reverse, and back again.”

Leach indicated several pictures on the china board before he went on. They depicted the street as it had been in the aftermath of the hit-and-run. He gestured to one in particular showing a section of tarmac photographed between two orange traffic cones with a line of cars along the pavement in the background. “The point of impact appeared to be here,” he said. “And the body landed here, square in the centre of the road.” Another set of traffic cones, plus a large rectangle of the street taped off. “The rain took care of some of the blood that would have been where the body landed. But it wasn't raining hard enough to carry away all the blood from the site or the tissue and bone fragments either. However, the body's not where the tissue and bone are. Instead, it's over here next to this Vauxhall at the kerb. And notice how she's tucked a bit under it? We reckon that our driver, having knocked her down and having done his bit of back and forthing over her body, then got out of his car, dragged the woman to one side, and drove off.”

“She couldn't have been dragged beneath a set of wheels? Lorry, perhaps?” The question came from a DC who was noisily eating from a cup of instant noodles. “Why rule that out?”