A Traitor to Memory (46 page)

Home was in the Doddington Grove Estate, a short distance away. She lived in Arnold House—had lived there for the last five years, since her release from Holloway and from the hoop-jumping she'd had to do in open conditions—and she was lucky to have a flat that overlooked the horticultural centre across the street. It wasn't a park, a common, or a garden square, true. But it was green and it was
a bit of nature and that's what she wanted for Daniel. He was only eleven and he'd spent most of her prison term in care—thanks to her younger brother, who “couldn't cope with a kid, Yas, look, I'm sorry but it's just a fac’, i'n't it?”—and she was determined to make it up to her son in every possible way that she could.

He was waiting for her just outside the lift, across the strip of tarmac that did for the Arnold House car park. But he wasn't alone, and when Yasmin saw who was chatting to her son, she doubled her pace. The neighbourhood wasn't a bad one—could have been a lot worse and wasn't
that
the truth?—but candymen and chicken hawks could turn up anywhere, and if one of them so much as suggested to her son that there was a life to be had outside of school and study, she would kill the flaming bastard.

This bloke looked just like a candyman with his expensive togs and the glitter of a gold watch in the lights from the car park. And he had the patter as well. Because as Yasmin approached, calling, “Dan, what you
do
ing out here this time of day?” she could see that the man had her son in thrall to a conversation Dan was liking too well.

Both of them turned. Daniel called out, “Hi, Mum. Sorry. Forgot my key.” The man said nothing.

Yasmin said, “Why'd you not come by the shop, then, tell me?” with all her suspicions on top alert.

Daniel dropped his head like he always did when he was embarrassed about something. He said, examining his trainer-shod feet—Nikes that had cost her a fortune—“Went over to the Army Centre, Mum. A bloke was inspecting them and they were all lined up outside and they let me watch and after they let me stay for tea.”

Charity, Yasmin thought. Sodding
charity
. “They not think you had a home to go to?” she demanded.

“They know me, Mum. They know you. One said, ‘Isn't your mummy the lady got the beads in her hair? Right pretty, she is.’”

Yasmin harrumphed. She'd been studiously ignoring her son's companion. She handed over two of the carrier bags to her son, said, “Mind how you go with these. You've some washing to do,” and punched in the code to call the lift.

That was when the man spoke, saying in a voice that was south of the river like hers but more deeply influenced by West Indian roots, “Missus Edwards, that right?”

“I already had too much of what you're selling,” she replied, but she spoke to the lift door and not to him. She said, “Daniel?” and he came to stand in front of her to wait for the lift. She put a protective
hand on his shoulder. Daniel peered round at the man. She straightened him back to face the lift.

“Winston Nkata,” the man then said. “New Scotland Yard.”

That got her attention. He extended an identity card which she looked at before she looked at him. A copper, she thought. A brother
and
a copper. There was only one thing worse than a brother who was a raas, and that was a brother who joined the Bill.

She dismissed the identification with a toss of her head, and the beads at the ends of her multitude of plaits offered him the music of her contempt. He was looking at her the way men always looked at her, and she knew what he saw and what he was thinking. What he saw: the body, all six feet of her; the face coloured walnut, a face that could have been like a model's face with a model's bones and a model's skin except that her lip—her upper lip, this was—was split permanently and scarred like an exploding purple rose where that bastard Roger Edwards had broken a vase against it when she wouldn't give him her Sainsbury wages or go on the game to support his habit; the eyes, coloured coffee and angry, angry but wary as well; and if she took her coat off in the cold evening air, he'd see the rest of her but especially the summertime cropped top she wore because her stomach was flat and her skin there was smooth and if she wanted to show off a smooth, tight stomach to the world, then she was going to, no matter the weather. That's what he saw. And what he thought? What they all thought, what they always thought: Wouldn't mind doing her for a lark, long as she wears a bag on her head.

He said, “C'n I have a word, Missus Edwards?” and he sounded the way they always sounded, like they'd lay in front of a bus for their mummies.

The lift arrived and the door slid open slowly, like there was melted cheese on its track. It slid like it was saying if you were so stupid as to get in and ride it to the third floor where you had your flat, you might not get out because the door might decide not to open again.

She tapped Daniel's shoulder to move him inside. The cop said, “Missus Edwards? C'n I have a word with you?”

She said, “Like I've a choice?” and punched the button marked three.

The cop said, “Cheers,” and got inside.

He was big. That was what she noticed first in the harsh overhead light inside the lift. He was taller than she was by a good four inches. And he had a scar on his face as well. It ran like a chalk mark from the
corner of his eye right down his cheek and she knew what it was—a razor slash—but not how he'd got it. So she said, “What's that, then?” with a nod at his face.

He glanced at Daniel, who was looking up at him the way he always looked at black men: with that face so shiny so open so wanting, that face that revealed what'd gone missing in his life since the night his mum had taken on Roger Edwards one last time. The cop said, “A r'minder, this is.”

“Of what?”

“How stupid one bloke can be when he thinks he's cool.”

The lift jerked to a stop. She made no comment. The cop was closest to the door, so he got out first when it groaned open. But he made a point to hold the door back—like it was going to slide shut and smack either Yasmin or her son … fat lot he knew about the flaming lift. He stepped to one side, and she swept past him, saying, “Mind those bags, Dan. Don't drop the wigs. The terrace's dead grotty and you drop 'em, you'll never get the filth out.”

She admitted them into the flat and switched on one of the lamps in what went for the sitting room. She said to her son, “Mind you fill the tub. Be easier with the shampoo this time round.”

“Right, Mum,” Daniel said. He shot a shy look at the cop—a look that so clearly said
This is our gaff, what you think of it, man?
that Yasmin ached for him, physically ached, and that ache made her angry because it told her once again just what she and Daniel had lost.

She said, “Get on with it, then,” to her son and to the cop, “What you want, man? Who'd you say you were?”

Dan said, “Winston Nkata, Mum.”

She said, “Told you what to do, d'n't I, Dan?”

He grinned, with those big white teeth—the teeth already of the man he'd become far sooner than she wanted for him—shining in a face that was lighter than her own, a mixture of the colours of her skin and Roger's. He disappeared into the bathroom, where he turned the bath taps on, setting the water to roaring in a way that announced he was doing his job smartly, just like Mum'd told him to do.

Winston Nkata stayed near to the door, and Yasmin found that this irritated her more than if he'd sauntered through the rooms of the flat—four rooms only so it wouldn't have taken him more than one minute even if he was studying what he saw in every one of those rooms—inspecting every piece of her property. She said, “What's this about, then?”

He said, “Mind 'f I look round?”

“Why? I'm not holding nothing. You got a warrant? And I checked in like I always check in with Sharon Todd last week. If she's told you different—if that bitch's told prison service
anything
different …” Yasmin could feel the scare creeping up her arms as she realised yet again the amount of power her parole officer had over what went for her freedom. She said, “She'd gone to see her GP. Least, that's what I was told, wasn't I? Had some sort of attack in the office, she did, and they told her to have it checked out straightaway. So when I got there …” She drew a breath to slow herself down. And she was angry—
angry
—at the fear that she felt and the fact that this man with his razor-scarred face had brought fear with him into her house. This copper held every card in the deck, and both of them knew it. She said with a shrug, “Look round, then. Whatever you want, you'll not find it here.”

He engaged her eyes for a long clear time, and she refused to look away because to look away would tell him he'd squashed her beneath his thumb like a flea. So she stood where she was by the kitchen door while the water roared in the bathroom and Daniel saw to the wigs that wanted washing.

The cop said, “Cheers,” with a nod that she was meant to believe was shy and polite. He went first to her bedroom and flipped on the light. She could see him move to the paint-chipped clothes cupboard, and he opened it, but he didn't empty the pockets of any of the garments inside, although he fingered several pairs of trousers. He didn't pull out the drawers in the chest, either. But he studied the top of it—particularly one hairbrush and the blond hairs caught up in its bristles, particularly the dish of beads that she used when she wanted a change on the ends of her plaits. He took the most time with the picture of Roger, twin to the picture that she had in the sitting room, triplet to the picture that stood in the other bedroom on the table next to Daniel's small bed, quadruplet to the picture that hung on the kitchen wall above the table. Roger Edwards, aged twenty-seven when the snap had been taken, one month arrived from New South Wales, and two days fresh from Yasmin's bed.

The cop came out of her bedroom, nodded at her politely, and went into Daniel's, where the music was the same: clothes cupboard, top of the chest, picture of Roger. He went from there to the bathroom, where Daniel started chatting to him straightaway, saying, “This is my reg'lar job, these wigs. Mum pr'vides them for ladies what have cancer, see? When they take their med'cine, their hair falls out mostly. Mum gives them hair. She does their faces as well.”

“Gives them beards, does she?” the cop asked.

Daniel laughed. “Not with hair, man! She does them with make-up. Dead good she is at it, Mum is. I c'n show you a—”

“Dan!” Yasmin barked. “Mind you've a job to do.” She saw her son duck back to the tub.

The cop came out of the bathroom, gave her another nod, and went into the kitchen. There a door led onto a tiny balcony where she dried their clothes, and he opened this door, peered outside, then closed it carefully and ran his hand—large like the rest of him—along the jamb like someone looking for splinters. He opened no cupboards or drawers. He did nothing else, in fact, except stand at the table and look at that same picture that he'd been looking at in every room.

He said, “Who's this bloke, then?”

“Dan's dad. My husband. He's dead.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry,” she said. “I killed him. But I 'spect you know that already. I 'spect that's why you're here, right? Some Aussie with a habit for henry got found dead with a knife in his neck and you lot ran the specifics through your computers and Yasmin Edwards' name popped up like toast.”

“I didn't know that,” Winston Nkata said. “Sorry all the same.”

He sounded … what? She couldn't put a name to it, just as she couldn't put the name she wanted to put to the expression in his eyes. And she felt the bubbling of rage grow in her, which was something that she couldn't think through and she could never explain. It was the rage she'd learned to feel young and always—
always
—at the hands of a man: blokes she met and thought well of for a day or a week or a month till who they were showed through what they pretended to be.

She snapped, “What you want, then? Why're you messing with me? Why're you outside chatting to my son like you were in'erested in something he got to tell you? 'F you think I done something, then you speak proper and you speak now or you get your bum
out
'f here. Hear me? Because if you don't—”

He said, “Katja Wolff,” and that stopped her. What the hell did he want with Katja? He said, “Probation service list this as her address. That right?”

“We got approval,” Yasmin said. “I'm out five years. 'S no mark against me. We got approval.”

“They got her working at a laundry up Kennington High Street,” Winston Nkata said. “Stopped there first to have a word with her, but she'd not been in all day. Called in ill, they said. Flu. So I came here.”

Alarms rang in Yasmin's head, but she made sure the sound of them didn't play on her face. She said, “So she's gone off to the doctor.”

“All day?”

“NHS,” she replied with a shrug.

He said as politely as he'd so far said everything else to her, “Fourth time she's phoned in like that, they tell me at the laundry, Missus Edwards. Fourth time in twelve weeks. Not happy, that lot in Kennington High Street. They spoke to her parole officer today.”

Alarm bells were changing to full-blown sirens. The frights were charging up Yasmin's spine. But she knew how coppers lied to you when they wanted to rattle you into saying something they could twist like a rag, and harshly she reminded herself of that fact, saying inwardly Bitch, don't you lose it now.

She said, “I don't know nothing about any of that. Katja lives here, right, but she goes her own way. I got 'nough on my mind with Daniel, don't I?”

He looked in the direction of her bedroom, where the full-size bed and the hairbrush on the chest and the clothes in the cupboard told a different story. And she wanted to scream, Yeah! And wha'
about
it, Charlie? You ever
been
inside? You ever known for five minutes what's it like to think that f'r a stretch of time that feels like forever you'll have exactly
no one
in your life? Not a friend, not a mate, not a lover, not a partner? You know what that's like?