A Traitor to Memory (21 page)

“Nature of what few tyre marks we've got,” Leach informed him, reaching for his coffee, which he'd left on a nearby desk heaped with files and computer printouts. He was more loosely strung than Lynley had expected upon their first introduction not forty minutes earlier in his office. Lynley took this as a good sign of what it was going to be like working with the DCI.

“But why not three cars, sir?” one of the other DCs asked. “The first knocks her down, drives off in a panic. She's wearing black so the next two don't even see her lying in the road and run over her before they know what's happened.”

Leach took a gulp of coffee and shook his head. “You won't find anyone giving you good odds on our having three conscienceless citizens all in the same neighbourhood on the same night running over
the same body and not one of them reporting it. And nothing in your scenario explains how the hell she ended up partway under that Vauxhall. Only one explanation does that, Potashnik, and it's why we're the ones looking at the situation.”

There was a murmur of agreement at this.

“I'd put good money on the bloke who reported it being the driver we're looking for,” someone from the back of the room called out.

“Pitchley pulled in a brief and put in the plug straightaway,” Leach acknowledged, “and that bears the stench of manure, you're right. But I don't think we've heard the last from him, and that car of his is going to be what unseals his lips, make no mistake.”

“Pinch a bloke's Boxter and he'll sing ‘God Save the Queen’ on demand,” a DC at the front pointed out.

“That's what I'm relying on,” Leach agreed. “I'm not saying he's the driver who did her in in the first place, and I'm not saying he's not. But no matter which way the wind's blowing, he won't be getting that Porsche off us till we know why the dead woman was carrying his address. If it takes holding the Porsche to shake the information from him, then holding the Porsche and going over it six times with granny's hoover is exactly what's going to happen. Now …”

Leach went on to make the action assignments, most of which put his team into the street where the hit-and-run had occurred. It was lined with houses—some conversions and some individual homes—and the DCs were to get a statement from everyone in the area about what had been seen, heard, smelled, or dreamed about on the previous night. His directions allocated other DCs to dog the forensic lab: some of them monitoring the progress made on the examination of Eugenie Davies' car, others given the responsibility for pulling together all the information regarding trace evidence on the woman's body, still others matching the trace evidence from the body to the Boxter that the police had impounded. This same group would be evaluating any and all tyre prints left in the West Hampstead street and on Eugenie Davies' body and her clothes. A final group of constables—the largest—were assigned to search for a car with damage to its front end. “Body shops, car parks, car hire firms, streets, mews, and lay-bys on the motorway,” Leach informed them. “You don't run down a woman in the street and drive away with no damage.”

“That does put the Boxter out of the running,” a female DC noted.

“Possession of the Boxter's how we prise information from our
man,” Leach replied. “But there's no telling if—and where—this bloke Pitchley might have himself another car stowed away. And we'd be wise not to forget that.”

The meeting concluded, Leach met with Lynley and Havers privately in his office. As their superior officer of record, he gave Lynley and Havers instructions in a manner that suggested more than mere homicide—if that were not already enough—was involved in the case. But what that more was, he didn't mention. He merely handed over Eugenie Davies' address in Henley-on-Thames, telling them that the house was their starting point. He assumed, he told them pointedly, that they had enough experience between them to know what to do with what they found there.

“What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Barbara asked now as they swung into Bell Street in Henley-on-Thames, where children were taking their morning exercise in a school yard. “And why've we been given the house while the rest of that lot are beating the pavement from West Hampstead to the river? I don't get it.”

“Webberly wants us involved. Hillier's given his blessing.”

“And
that's
reason enough to do some serious tip-toeing, 'f you ask me.”

Lynley didn't disagree. Hillier had no love for either one of them. And Webberly's state of mind in his study on the previous evening had suggested a few things but declared nothing. He said, “I expect we'll sort things out soon enough, Havers. What's the address again?”

“Sixty-five Friday Street,” she said, and with a glance at their street map, “Take a left here, sir.”

Sixty-five turned out to be a dwelling seven buildings up from the River Thames on a pleasant street that mixed residences with a veterinarian's surgery, a bookshop, a dental clinic, and the Royal Marine Reserve. It was the smallest house that Lynley had ever seen—bar his own companion constable's tiny dwelling in London that often struck him as fit for Bilbo Baggins and no one else. It was painted pink and it consisted of two floors and a possible attic if the microscopic dormer window on the roof was any indication. Appropriately it bore an enamel plaque which named it Doll Cottage.

Lynley parked a short distance away from it, across the street from the bookshop. He fished the dead woman's set of keys from his pocket while Havers took the opportunity to light up and fortify her bloodstream with nicotine. “When are you going to drop that loathsome habit?” he asked her as he checked the front of the house for an alarm system and put the key in the lock.

Havers inhaled deeply and offered him her most maddening smile of tobacco-induced pleasure. “Listen to him,” she said to the sky. “There may be something more obnoxious than a reformed smoker, but I don't know what it is. Child pornographer come to Jesus on the day of his arrest? Tory with a social conscience perhaps? Hmm. No. They don't quite match up.”

Lynley chuckled. “Put it out in the street, Constable.”

“I wouldn't even dwell on another option.” She flicked the cigarette over her shoulder, after taking another three hits.

Lynley opened the door, which admitted them into a sitting room. This looked about as large as a shopping trolley, and it was furnished with near monastic simplicity and with a taste that veered towards Oxfam rejects.

“And I thought
I 'd
achieved drab-with-a-vengeance,” Havers remarked.

It wasn't an inappropriate description, Lynley thought. The furniture was of post-war vintage, crafted at a period of time when rebuilding a capital devastated by bombing had taken precedence over interior design. A threadbare grey sofa accompanied by a matching armchair of an equally disenchanting hue sat against one wall. They formed a little seating area round a blond-wood coffee table spread with magazines and two similar end tables, both of which someone had attempted to refinish unsuccessfully. Three lamps in the room all sported tasseled shades, two of them askew and the third bearing a large burn that could have been turned to the wall but wasn't. Nothing save a single print above the sofa, featuring an unattractive Victorian-era child with her arms round a rabbit, decorated the walls. On either side of a mouse-hole fireplace, fitted shelves held books, but they were spottily placed here and there, and it seemed as if something had stood among them but had been removed.

“Bloody poverty-stricken,” Havers said in assessment. She was, Lynley saw, fingering through the magazines on the coffee table, her hands—latex gloved—fanning the publications out so even Lynley could see from his place by the bookshelves that they all bore pictorial covers that placed them years out of date.

Havers moved into the kitchen that lay just beyond the sitting room as Lynley turned to look at the bookshelves. She called out, “One mod con in here. She's got an answer machine, Inspector. Light's blinking.”

“Play it,” Lynley said.

The first disembodied voice floated from the kitchen as Lynley
took his reading spectacles from his jacket pocket in order to examine more closely the few volumes on the fitted bookshelves.

A man's deep and sonorous voice said,
“Eugenie. Ian,”
as Lynley picked up a book called
The Little Flower
and opened it to see it was a biography of a Catholic saint called Therese: French, from a family of daughters, a cloistered nun, suffered an early death from whatever one would contract living in a cell with no heating in France in midwinter.
“I'm sorry about the row,”
the voice continued from the kitchen.
“Phone me, will you? Please? I've got the mobile with me,”
and he followed this declaration with a number that began with a recognisable prefix.

“Got it,” Havers called out from the kitchen.

“It's a Cellnet number,” Lynley said, and picked up the next book as the next voice—this one a woman's—left her message, saying,
“Eugenie, it's Lynn. Dearest, thank you so much for the call. I was out for a walk when you rang. It was so very kind of you. I hardly expected … Well. Yes. There it is. I'm just about coping. Thanks for asking. If you ring me back, I'll give you an update. But I expect you know what I'm going through
.”

Lynley saw he was holding another biography, this one of a saint called Clare, an early follower of St. Francis of Assisi: gave away all she owned, founded an order of nuns, lived a life of chastity and died in poverty. He picked up a third book.

“Eugenie,”
another man's voice from the kitchen, but this one distraught and obviously familiar to the dead woman, since he spoke without attribution, saying,
“I need to speak with you. I had to ring again. I know you're there, so will you pick up the phone? … Eugenie, pick up the God damn phone
.” A sigh.
“Look. Did you actually expect me to be happy about this turn of events? How could I be? … Pick up the phone, Eugenie
.” A silence was followed by another sigh.
“All right. Fine. If that's how you're going to play it. Flush history down the toilet and get on with things. I'll do the same
.” The phone banged down.

“That sounds like a decent field to plough,” Barbara called.

“Hit one-four-seven-one at the end of the messages and pray for good luck.” The third book, Lynley saw, detailed the life of St. Teresa of Avila, and a quick examination of its jacket was enough to inform him that thematic unity was being achieved on the bookshelves: the convent, poverty, an unpleasant death. Lynley read this and frowned thoughtfully.

Another man's voice, again without attribution, came from the answer machine in the kitchen. He said,
“Hullo, darling. Still asleep or
are you out already? I'm just ringing about tonight. The time? I've a bottle of claret that I'll bring along if that suits. Just let me know. I'm … I'm very keen to see you, Eugenie
.”

“That's it,” Havers said. “Fingers crossed, Inspector?” “Metaphorically,” he replied as in the kitchen Havers punched in 1471 to trace whoever had made the most recent call to Eugenie Davies' home. As she did so, Lynley saw that the rest of the books on the shelves were also biographies of Catholic saints, all of them female. None of them were recently published, most of them were at least thirty years old, and some of them had been printed prior to World War II. Eleven of them had the name
Eugenie Victoria Staines
inscribed on their fly leaves in a youthful hand; four of them were stamped
Convent of the Immaculate Conception
, and five others bore the inscription
To Eugenie, with fondest regards from Cecilia
. Out of one of this last group—the life of someone called Saint Rita—a small envelope fell. It bore no postmark or address, but the single sheet of paper had been dated nineteen years earlier in a beautifully schooled hand that had also written:

Dearest Eugenie
,

You must try not to give in to despair. We can none of us understand God's ways. We can only live through the trials He chooses for us to endure, knowing that there is a purpose behind them which we may not be able to understand at the time. But we will understand eventually, dear friend. You must believe that.

We deeply miss you at morning Mass and all of us hope that you will return to us soon.

With Christ's love and my own, Eugenie
,

Cecilia

Lynley returned the paper to its envelope and snapped the book closed. He called out, “Convent of the Immaculate Conception, Havers.”

“Are you recommending a lifestyle change for me, sir?”

“Only if it suits you. In the meantime, make a note to track down the convent. We want someone called Cecilia if she's still alive, and I've a feeling that's where we might find her.”

“Right.”

Lynley joined her in the kitchen. The simplicity of the sitting room was repeated there. The kitchen hadn't been updated in several generations, from the look of it, and the only appliance that could be
said to be remotely modern was the refrigerator, although even it appeared to be at least fifteen years old.

The answer machine was sitting on a narrow wooden work top. Next to it stood a papiermâché holder containing several envelopes. Lynley picked these up as Havers went over to a small table and two chairs that abutted one of the walls. Lynley glanced over to see that the table was set not for a meal but for an exhibition: Three neat lines of four framed photographs apiece stood upon it as if for inspection. Envelopes in hand, Lynley went to Havers' side as she said, “Her kids, d'you think, Inspector?”

Every photograph indeed depicted the same subjects: two children who advanced in age in each picture. They began with a small boy—perhaps five or six years old—holding an infant who, in later pictures, turned out to be a little girl. From first to last, the boy looked desperately eager to please, wide-eyed and smiling so broadly and anxiously that every tooth in his mouth was on display. The little girl, on the other hand, seemed mostly unaware that a camera was focused on her at all. She looked right, she looked left, she looked up, she looked down. Only once—with her brother's hand on her cheek—had anyone managed to get her to look into the camera.