A Traitor to Memory (49 page)

He said, “No. Where were you last night, Missus Edwards?”

She said, “Here. Where else would I be? I got a boy needs his mum, I expect you noticed.”

“Miss Wolff here as well?”

She said, “Yeah. Tha's right. Katja was here.” But there was an
undercurrent in the way she made the statement that suggested the facts might prove otherwise.

Something always alters in a person when he lies. Nkata had been told that a hundred times. Listen to the timbre of the voice, he'd been lectured. Watch for changes in the pupils of the eyes. Look for the head's movement, the shoulders either relaxing or tensing, the muscles of the throat constricting. Look for something—anything—that wasn't there before, and that something will tell you exactly where the speaker stands in relation to the truth.

He said, “I'll need another word,” and he nodded upwards.

“I've given you words.”

“Yeah. I know.” He headed back to the lift, and they went through the exercise they'd gone through before. But the silence between them felt charged to Nkata, and charged with something more than a man-to-woman charge, more than copper to suspect, more than former lag to potential screw.

“She was here,” Yasmin Edwards said. “But you don't believe me 'cause you can't believe me. 'Cause if you sussed where Katja was living, then you sussed the rest and you know I did time and lags and liars are one 'n the same when it comes to the filth. I'n't that right, man?”

He'd reached the door to her flat. She slid in front of it, blocking his way. She said, “You ask her what she did last night. You ask her where she was. She tell you she was here. An' just to make sure I can't mess with your process, I'll keep myself out here while you ask her.”

Nkata said, “Suit yourself, but put this round you if you mean to stay outside,” and he himself put the coat round her shoulders this time, drawing the collar up to protect her neck from the wind. She flinched. He wanted to say, “How'd you get this way, woman,” but instead, he ducked back inside the flat to have his confrontation with Katja Wolff.

10

“T
HERE WERE LETTERS
, Helen.” Lynley was standing at the cheval mirror in their bedroom, gloomily attempting to make a choice among three ties that dangled limply from his fingers. “Barbara found them in a chest of drawers, just like love letters, all of them together with envelopes included. Everything was in place except the traditional blue ribbon tying them up.”

“Perhaps there's an innocent explanation.”

“What the hell was the man even thinking?” Lynley went on as if his wife hadn't spoken. “The mother of a murdered child. The victim of a crime. You don't find anyone more vulnerable than that, and when you do, you put distance between yourself and her. You don't seduce her.”

“If that's what happened in the first place, Tommy.” Lynley's wife watched him from the bed.

“What else could it have been? ‘Wait for me, Eugenie. I'm coming for you.’ That doesn't sound to me like your average bread-and-butter letter straight out of Mrs. Beeton.”

“I don't think Mrs. Beeton advised housewives on their letter writing, darling.”

“You know what I mean.”

Helen rolled onto her side, took his pillow, and cradled it to her stomach. She said, “Lord,” in a hollow tone that he couldn't ignore.

“Bad this morning?” he asked.

“Awful. I've never felt like this in my life. When will it progress to the rosy glow of a woman fulfilled? And why are pregnant women in novels always described as
glowing
when in reality they'd have faces like paste and stomachs at war with the rest of their bodies?”

“Hmm.” Lynley considered her question. “I don't actually know. Is it a conspiracy to keep the species propagating? I wish I could bear this for you, darling.”

She laughed weakly. “You've always been such a terrible liar.”

There was truth to that, and because of it, he held up the three ties for her inspection. “I was thinking about the dark blue with the ducks. What do you say?”

“Very appropriate for fostering in suspects the false belief that you'll be gentle with them.”

“Just what I thought.” He returned to the mirror, draping the other two ties round one of the bedposts on his way.

She said, “Did you tell DCI Leach about the letters?”

“No.”

“What did you do with them?” Their glances met in the mirror, and she read his reply on his face. “You
took
them? Tommy …”

“I know. But consider the alternative: to hand them over as evidence or to leave them there for someone else who might track down Webberly at the worst possible time and return them. To his home, for instance. With Frances standing there, just waiting for someone to deal her a death blow. Or even to the Yard, where it wouldn't do much for his career to have it made public that he'd involved himself with the victim of a crime. Or how about to a tabloid or two? They've such a profound love for the Met, after all.”

“Is that the only reason you took them? To protect Frances and Malcolm?”

“What other reason is there?”

“Perhaps the crime itself? They could be evidence.”

“You aren't suggesting Webberly was involved in some way, are you? He was in our presence the evening long. As was Frances, who'd have far more reason to want to be rid of Eugenie Davies than would Webberly if it came down to it. Beyond that, the last of the letters was written over a decade ago. Eugenie Davies has been a closed book for Webberly for years. It was mad for him to have involved himself with her in the first place, but at least it ended before lives were shattered.”

Helen read him, as usual. “But you're not sure of that, are you, Tommy?”

“I'm sure enough. So I don't see the letters' relevance to the present, to today.”

“Unless there's been recent contact between them.”

Which was, in part, why he'd taken Eugenie Davies' computer. Lynley was relying on gut instinct with regard to that, instinct which told him that his superior officer was a decent man who had a difficult life, a man who never sought to harm another human being but who had submitted to temptation in a moment of weakness that he no doubt regretted to this day.

“He's a good man,” Lynley said into the mirror, more to himself than to his wife.

She responded all the same. “As are you. And that might explain why he asked DCI Leach to allow you in on the case. You believe in his decency, so you'll protect him, without his having to ask you to do so.”

And that's the way it was playing out, Lynley thought morosely. Perhaps Barbara had been right. Hand the letters over as potential evidence; leave Malcolm Webberly to his fate.

Across the room, Helen suddenly threw back the covers and dashed to the bathroom. The retching began, just beyond the open door. Lynley looked at himself in the mirror and tried to close his ears to the sound.

Funny, how one could talk oneself into believing just about anything if one was desperate enough. In a twist of thinking, Helen's morning sickness could become the result of a bad bit of chicken eaten yesterday on a lunchtime salad. Another twist, and she had flu, which was going round now anyway. Or perhaps it was a case of nerves. She was facing a challenge later in the day, and this was the way her body reacted to anxiety. Or pushed to an extreme of rationalisation, he could say that she was simply afraid. They hadn't been together long, had they, and she wasn't as easy being with him as he was being with her. There were, after all, differences between them: of experience, of education, and of age. And all that counted for something, didn't it, no matter how they tried to talk themselves into believing otherwise?

The retching continued. He forced himself to deal with it in some reasonable way. He turned from the mirror and strode across to the bathroom. He flipped on the light, which in her haste Helen had not switched on. He found her draped round the toilet, her back heaving mightily as she gulped in air.

He said, “Helen?” But he found he could not move from the doorway.

Selfish
bastard
, he told himself as a prod to action. This is the woman you love. Go to her. Touch her hair. Wipe her face with a cool damp flannel.
Do something.

But he couldn't. He was frozen to one spot as if he'd inadvertently looked upon Medusa, fixed on the sight of his beautiful wife reduced to vomiting into the toilet bowl, her now daily ritual that celebrated the fact of their union.

He said, “Helen?” and he waited for her to tell him that she was all right, that she needed nothing. He waited hopefully for her to send him on his way.

She turned her face to him. He could see its damp sheen. And he knew that she was waiting for him to make some move in her direction that would underscore the love and concern that he felt for her.

He made do with a question. “Can I get you something, Helen?”

Her eyes held his. He saw the subtle change come over her as her dawning realisation that he would not go to her metamorphosed into hurt.

She shook her head and turned away. Her fingers gripped the edges of the toilet. “I'm fine,” she murmured.

He was happy to accept the lie.

In Stamford Brook, the sound of a cup rattling in its saucer awakened Malcolm Webberly He cracked open his eyes to see his wife setting a cup of morning tea on the scarred surface of the bedside table.

The room was claustrophobically hot, the result of a poorly designed central heating system and Frances's refusal to have any windows open at night. She couldn't bear the sensation of night air on her face. She also couldn't sleep for thinking that someone might break into their house should so much as an inch's gap exist between a window and its sill.

Webberly lifted his head from the pillow, then sank back down with a groan. It had been a rough night. He ached in every joint in his body, which was secondary to the ache in his heart.

“I've brought you some nice Earl Grey,” Frances said. “Milk and sugar. It's piping hot.” She went to the window and opened the curtains. The limp light of late autumn filtered into the room. “All grey and nasty today, I'm afraid,” she went on. “It looks like rain. There's to be a wind coming from the west later on. Well, November. What else can one expect?”

Webberly elbowed his way upwards through the covers, becoming
aware of the fact that he'd sweated through another set of pyjamas during the night. He took up the cup and saucer and looked down at the steaming liquid, its colour telling him that Frances hadn't let it steep, that it would taste like milky water. He hadn't been a morning tea drinker for years. Coffee was his beverage of choice. But tea was what Frances herself drank and it was easier to plug in the kettle and pour the boiling water over the tea bags than it was to go through the scooping, measuring, and pouring that resulted in a decent cup of what he preferred.

It's all the same at the end of the day, he told himself. Getting caffeine into the body is the main point, boy. So drink up now and have at the morning.

“I've made out the shopping list,” Frances said. “It's by the door.”

He grunted an acknowledgment.

She seemed to take this sound as a protest, saying anxiously, “Really, there's not much to get. Just the odd thing. Tissues, kitchen rolls, that sort of thing. We've still got all that food from the party. It shouldn't take long.”