A Traitor to Memory (66 page)

Lynley was beginning to get the picture. He said, “It's a risky sort of business, playing the market, isn't it, Mr. Staines? A great deal of money can be made. Or lost.”

“There is no risk, with faith, right action, and belief. Right thought produces the result that's intended by God, Who is Himself goodness and Who wants goodness for His children. If we are one with Him and part of Him, we are part of the good. We must tap into it.” As he spoke, he stared intently at the screen. It was divided in such a way that the continually altering prices on a stock exchange somewhere flickered in a band along the bottom. Staines looked mesmerised by this band, as if its moving figures were coded directions to find the Holy Grail.

“But isn't the good open to interpretation?” Lynley asked. “And isn't it the case that man's time line and God's time line to reaching the good may be running on different calendars?”

“It's
abundance
,” Staines said, and he spoke through his teeth. “We define it and it
comes
.”

“And if it doesn't, we're in debt,” Lynley said.

Abruptly, Staines reached forward and pressed a button on the monitor. The screen faded. He directed his words to it, and his tone underscored a rage that he held at bay. “I hadn't seen her for years. I hadn't bothered her for years. Last time was at our mother's funeral, and even then I held back because I knew if I talked to her, I'd have to talk to
him
as well, and I hated the bastard. I'd read the obituaries every day from the time I ran off, hoping to see his, waiting to read that the great man of God had finally left the hell he'd made for everyone round him and gone to his own. They stayed, though. Doug and Eugenie stayed. They sat like good little soldiers of Christ and listened to him preach on Sundays and felt the strap on their backs the rest of the week. But I ran off when I was fifteen and I never went back.” He looked at Lynley. “I never
asked
my sister for a God damn thing. All those years with the drugs, the drink, the horses, I never asked. I thought, She was the youngest, she stayed, she took the brunt of the bastard's fury so she's owed the life she made for herself. And it didn't matter to me that I lost it all—everything I ever owned or loved—because she was my sister and we were his victims and my time would come. So I went to Doug and he helped me when he could. But this last time he said, ‘Can't do it, old man. Have a look at the chequebook if you don't believe me.' So what was I supposed to do?”

“You asked your sister for money to pay down your debt. What's it from, Mr. Staines? Selling short? Day trading? Buying futures? What?”

Staines swung away from the monitor, as if the sight of it now offended him. He said, “We've sold what we can. We have only a bed left in our room. We're eating from a card table in the kitchen. The silver's gone. Lydia's lost her jewellery. And all I need is a decent break, which she could have helped me to get, which she
promised
to help me to get. I told her I'd pay her back. I'd pay him back. He's got thousands, millions. He
has
to have.”

“Gideon. Your nephew.”

“I trusted her to speak to him. She changed her mind. Something's come up, she said. She couldn't ask him for money.”

“Did she tell you this the other night when you saw her?”

“That's when she told me.”

“Not earlier?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you what the ‘something’ was?”

“We argued like hell. I begged. Begged my own sister, but … no. She didn't tell me.”

Lynley wondered why the man was admitting so much. Addicts, he knew from personal experience, were themselves virtuosos when it came to playing the music that their intimates danced to. His own brother had played the tune for years. But he was no intimate of Eugenie Davies' brother, not a close relative whose overpowering sense of responsibility for something that was not in fact his responsibility was nevertheless going to compel him to hand over the cash that was needed “just this once.” Yet he knew with the assurance of long experience that Staines was saying nothing without being fully aware of what it was.

“Where did you go when you left your sister, Mr. Staines?”

“Drove round till half past one in the morning, till I knew Lydia would be asleep when I got home.”

“Is there anyone who can confirm that? Did you stop for petrol somewhere?”

“Didn't need to.”

“I'll ask you to take me to the dealership where your car's being serviced, then.”

“I didn't run Eugenie down. I didn't kill her. That would have gained me nothing.”

“It's routine, Mr. Staines.”

“She said she'd talk to him. I just needed a break.”

What he needed, Lynley thought, was a cure for his delusions.

13

L
IBBY NEALE TOOK
the corner into Chalcot Square so sharply that she had to put out a foot to prevent the Suzuki from going into a skid. She'd decided to take a break from her delivery route by scoring an English version of a B
LT
at a
Pret à Manger
on Victoria Street, and while she'd been munching at one of the stand-up counters, she'd spied a tabloid that a previous customer had left lying by an empty Evian bottle. She'd flipped it over to see that it was the
Sun
, the paper she loathed most due to the taunting presence of the Page Three Girl, who served as a daily reminder to Libby Neale of all she was not. She was about to shove it to one side, when the headline grabbed her attention.
Virtuoso's Mother Murdered
took up about four inches of space. Beneath it was a grainy picture that was dated by the hairstyle and the clothing of the woman in it: Gideon's mother.

Libby snatched up the paper and read it as she ate. She made the jump to page four, where the story continued, and what she saw on that page made her mouthful of sandwich begin to taste like wood shavings. The entire spread covered not the death of Gideon's mother—about which only a limited amount of information was currently available—but another death entirely.

Shit, Libby thought. The Fleet Street dickheads were digging
everything
up all over again. And tabloids being what they were, it was only a matter of time before they started hounding Gideon himself. In
fact, they probably were
already
hounding him. A sidebar about Gideon blowing his concert at Wigmore Hall was a feature just begging for further exploration. And as if the poor dude didn't have enough messing up his mind, the paper looked like it was trying to make some sort of connection between Gideon's tough time at that concert and the hit-and-run in West Hampstead!

As
if
, Libby thought contemptuously. Like Gideon would even
recognise
his mother if he'd seen her on the street or something!

Uncharacteristically, she'd thrown half her sandwich away and stuffed the tabloid down the front of her leathers. She had another two deliveries to make, but to hell with that noise. She needed to see Gideon.

In Chalcot Square, she roared counterclockwise around the street and skidded to a stop right in front of the house. She pulled the motorcycle onto the sidewalk without bothering to chain it to the railing. Up the front steps in three strides, she banged on the door, then followed that with a long ring on the bell. He didn't answer, so she looked around the square to see if she could spy his Mitsubishi. She picked it out in front of a yellow house a few doors down on the right. He was at home. So come on, she thought, answer the door.

Within the house, she heard his telephone begin ringing. Four rings and it was abruptly cut off, which made her think he was at home and just not answering the door, but then a distant disembodied voice that she couldn't recognise told her that Gideon's answer machine was taking a message.

“Damn,” she muttered. He must have gone off somewhere. He must have learned that the papers were digging up everything about his sister's death and decided to split for a while. She couldn't blame him. Most people had to live through shit only once. But it looked like he was going to have to live through everything connected with her murder a second time.

She went down to her flat. The day's mail lay on the mat, and she picked this up, unlocked her door, and looked through the letters as she stepped inside. Among the BT bill, a bank statement showing that her account was in dire need of an emergency transfusion, and a circular for a home alarm system, there was also a legal-sized envelope from her mother, which Libby dreaded opening because of the possibility of being confronted with yet another of her sister's success stories. But she tore the end off it anyway, and as she removed her helmet with one hand, with the other she shook out the single sheet of purple paper that her mother had sent.

Have What You Want … Be Everything You Dream
ran in heavy black script across the page. It seemed that Equality Neale—CEO of Neale Publicity and recently a
Money
magazine cover girl—was giving a seminar in Boston on the topic of Self-Assertion and Achievement in Business, which she would follow with another appearance in Amsterdam. Mrs. Neale had written in the precise hand that would have done proud the nuns who'd taught her,
Wouldn't it be nice if the two of you could get together? Ali could arrange for a stopover on her way back. How far is Amsterdam from London?

Not far enough, Libby thought, and balled up the announcement. Still, the very idea of Ali and everything so righteously irritating about her that
made
her Ali caused Libby to bypass the refrigerator, where she'd normally have headed after being thwarted in her intentions to see Gideon. Instead, she poured herself a virtuous glass of Highland water in lieu of the six cheddar quesadillas she was feeling like scarfing down. As she drank it, she looked out the window. Against the wall that marked the side boundary of Gideon's backyard stood his kite-making shed, and its door was ajar, a light within throwing a wedge of illumination onto the ground in front of it.

She set her water glass on the counter and ducked outside, bounding up steps that were grey-green with lichen. She called out, “Hey, Gideon!” as she strode down the path in his direction. “You in there?”

There was no response, which gave Libby a qualm and slowed her steps for a moment. She hadn't seen Richard Davies' Granada out in the square, but she hadn't been looking for it. He might've come calling for another one of those pain-in-the-butt father/son talks of his that he appeared to be addicted to. And if he'd managed to piss off Gideon just enough, Gideon might've left on foot and Richard might even now be getting some vengeance on that leaving by wrecking Gideon's kites. That would be just like him, Libby thought. The one thing Gid did that wasn't connected to that stupid violin—besides gliding, which Richard
also
despised—and his father wouldn't hesitate a second to smash them to smithereens. He'd even come up with a good excuse afterwards. “It was taking you away from your music, son.”

As
if
, Libby thought scornfully.

Richard continued, if only in her head, “I accepted it as a hobby before, Gideon, but I can't accept it now. We've got to get you well. We've got to get you playing. You've concerts scheduled, recordings to make, and a public waiting.”

Fuck
off
, Libby told Richard Davies. He's got a life. He's got a good life. Why don't you think about getting one, too?

The thought of actually going
mano a mano
with Richard for once—of actually telling him off without Gideon there to stop her—renewed Libby's energetic surge along the path. She reached the shed and knocked the door the rest of the way open.

Gideon was there, no Richard with him. He was sitting at his makeshift design table. A piece of butcher paper was taped on the work surface before him, and he sat staring at it like it had something to say to him if he only listened to it long and hard enough.

Libby said, “Gid? Hi. I saw the light.”

He didn't act like he'd heard her. He kept his gaze on the paper in front of him.

Libby said, “I knocked on the door upstairs. I rang the doorbell, too. I saw your car in the square, so I figured you were home. Then, when I saw the light out here …” She heard her own words die off, like a plant that's wilting without its necessary water.