A Traitor to Memory (69 page)

Robbie said, “'Course, we di'n't know when we 'as here yesterday. Mind 'f I unload this, Jay?” And he'd shrugged his way out of his heavy waxed jacket and lobbed it onto the back of a chair. He made a circuit of the room and a point of examining everything in it. He said, “Nice gaff, this. You done good for yourself, Jay. I expect you got a big name in the City, least 'mong the people who count. That right, Jay? You massage their money and presto amazo, it makes more money and they trust you to do that, don't they?”

Pitchley said, “Just say what you want. I'm rather pressed for time.”

“Don't see why,” Robbie said. “Shoot. In New York …” He snapped his fingers in the direction of his companion. “Brent. Time in New York?”

Brent looked at his watch obediently. His lips moved as he did the maths. He frowned and employed the fingers of one hand. He finally said, “Early.”

Robbie said, “Right. Early, Jay. Th' market's not closed yet in New York. You got plenty of time to make a few more quid before the day's over. Even with this little confab of ours.”

Pitchley sighed. The only way to get rid of the two men would be to make it look as though he was playing Rob's game. He said, “You're right, of course,” and nothing more. He merely walked to a bureau near the window that overlooked the street, and from inside he brought out his chequebook and a biro that he clicked open officially. He carried the chequebook into the dining room, where he pulled out a chair, sat, and began to write. He started with the amount: three thousand pounds. He couldn't imagine that Rob would ask for less.

Rob strode into the dining room. Brent, as always, followed his brother. Rob said, “That's what you think, is it, Jay? Us two show up and it's all about money?”

“What else?” Pitchley filled in the date and began to write the other man's name.

Robbie's hand smacked down on the dining room table. “Hey! You stop that and look at me.” And for good measure, he knocked the biro from Pitchley's hand. “You think this is about
money
, Jay? Me and Brent trot round—all this way up to Hampstead, mind you—with business waiting to be tended to out there”—this with a jerk of his head back in the direction of the sitting room, by which Pitchley took that he meant the street—“with us losing dosh by the bucketful just to stand here and bunny with you for ten minutes and you think we come about money? Hell, man.” And to the other, “What d'you think of that, Brent?”

Brent joined them at the table,
The Source
still dangling from his fingers. He wouldn't know what to do with the paper till Robbie gave him his next set of instructions. As for now, it gave him something to occupy his hands.

The poor oaf was pathetic, Pitchley thought. It was a wonder he'd ever learned to tie his shoes. He said, “All right. Fine,” and sat back in his chair. “So why don't you tell me why you've come, Rob?”

“Can't just be a friendly visit, that it?”

“That's not exactly our history.”

“Yeah? Well, you
think
about history. 'Cause it's ripe to come back and pay a call on you, Jay.” Robbie flicked his thumb at
The Source
. Cooperatively, Brent held it higher, like a schoolboy displaying his primitive art work. “Slow going on the news front last few days. No Royals misbehaving, no MP getting caught with his dick in a schoolgirl's hole. The papers're going to start digging, Jay. And me and Brent come to see you to lay our plans.”

“Plans.” Pitchley repeated the word with a great deal of care.

“Sure. We took care of things once. We c'n do it again. Situation's bound to heat up fast once the coppers suss out who you really are and when they give the word to the press like they always do—”

“They know,” Pitchley said, in the hope that he could head Robbie off, that he could bluff him with a partial truth that the man might take as a full admission. “I've already told them.”

But Rob wasn't swallowing that tale. He said, “No way, Jay. 'Cause if you did, they'd feed you to the sharks soon 's they need something to make it look like they been working hard. You know that. So I 'xpect you told them something, true. But 'f I know you, you didn't tell them all.” He eyed Pitchley shrewdly and seemed to like what he read on his face. He said, “Right. Good. So me and Brent here figger we got to lay some plans. You'll be wanting protection and we know how to give it.”

And then I'll owe you forever, Pitchley thought. Double what I already owe you because it'll be twice in my life that you've played at keeping the hounds at bay.

“You need us, Jay,” Robbie told him. “And me and Brent? We don't turn our backs when we know we're needed. Some people do, but that's not our way.”

Pitchley could only imagine how it would play out: Robbie and Brent doing battle for him, strong-arming the press in the same ineffectual manner that they'd employed in the past.

He was about to tell them to go home to their wives, to their failing inadequate ill-managed business washing waxing buffing the cars of the rich among whom they would never be able to mix. He was about to tell them to piss off permanently because he was tired of being drained like a bathtub and played like a badly tuned piano. Indeed, he opened his mouth to say all of it, but that was when the doorbell rang, when he walked to the window and saw who it was, when he
said, “Stay here,” to Robbie and Brent and closed the dining room doors upon them.

And now, he thought miserably as he sat at his computer and tried and failed to come up with a way to bend the will of CreamPants to his own, he would owe them more. He would owe them more for Rob's quick thinking, the thinking that got him and Brent out of the house and into the park before the dumpy female detective constable was able to put her mitts on them when they'd hidden in the kitchen. No matter that what they might have told her would have added nothing harmful in his present situation. Robbie and Brent would not see it that way. They would see their actions as protecting him, and they would come calling when they thought it was time for him to pay.

Lynley made the drive to London in fairly good time after paying a visit to the Audi dealership that was working on the car owned by Ian Staines. He'd taken Staines with him as a safeguard against the man making any phone calls in an attempt to direct the course of Lynley's enquiries, and once they'd pulled to a stop in front of the auto showroom, he'd told the man to wait in the Bentley while he went inside for a chat.

There, he corroborated much of what Eugenie Davies' brother had told him. The car was indeed being serviced; it had been brought in at eight that morning. An appointment for the work had been scheduled on the previous Thursday, and nothing irregular—like a request for body work—had been noted in the computer when the service secretary had taken the call.

When Lynley asked to see the car, that presented no problem either. The service representative walked him out to it, chatting away about the great strides that Audi had made in craftsmanship, manoeuvrability, and design. If he was curious as to why a policeman had come round asking about a particular car, he gave no evidence of this. A potential customer was, after all, a potential customer.

The Audi in question stood in one of the service bays, raised some six feet on a hydraulic lift. Its position gave Lynley the opportunity to examine its undercarriage as well as the chance to scrutinise its front end and both of its wings for damage. The front end was fine, but there were scratches and a dent on the car's left wing that looked intriguing. They looked fresh as well.

“Any chance a smashed bumper was replaced before you got the car?” Lynley asked the mechanic who was working on it.

“Always a chance of that, mate,” the man replied. “Bloke don't need to drop money at the dealership if he knows how to shop.”

So despite the verification provided by the Audi's general condition and its presence just where Staines said it would be, there was still the chance that those scratches and that small dent meant something more than poor driving skills. Staines couldn't be crossed off the list despite his claim that the scratches and dent were a mystery to him, that “bloody Lydia uses the car as well, Inspector.”

Lynley dropped the man at a bus stop and told him not to disappear from Brighton. “If you move house, phone me,” he said to Staines, handing over his card. “I'll want to know.”

Then he headed for London. Northeast of Regent's Park, Chalcot Square was yet another area of town that was undergoing gentrification. If the scaffolding on the front of several of the buildings hadn't told Lynley this much when he pulled into the square, the freshly painted façades of the rest of the residences would have filled him in on the information. The neighbourhood reminded him of Notting Hill. Here was the same bright paint in a variety of cheerful colours fronting the buildings along the streets.

Gideon Davies' house stood tucked into a corner of the square. It was bright blue in colour with a white front door. It possessed a narrow first-floor balcony along which ran a low white balustrade, and the french windows beyond that balcony were brightly lit.

His knock on the door was answered quickly, as if the house's owner had been waiting on the bottom step just beyond the entrance. Gideon Davies said quietly, “DI Lynley?” and when Lynley nodded, he added “Come upstairs,” and led the way. He took him to the first floor, up a staircase whose walls displayed the framed hallmarks of his career, and he led him into the room that Lynley had seen from the street, where a CD system occupied one wall and comfortable furniture scattered across the floor was punctuated by tables and music stands. Sheet music stood on these stands and lay on the table tops, but none of it was open.

Davies said, “I've never met my uncle, Inspector Lynley. I don't know how much help I'll be to you.”

Lynley had read the stories in the newspaper after the violinist had walked out on his concert at Wigmore Hall. He'd thought—probably like most of the public interested in the tale—that it was another instance of someone who had been feather-bedded for too many years getting his knickers in a twist about something. He'd seen the subsequent explanations put forth by the young man's publicity machine:
exhaustion after a killing schedule of concerts in the spring. And he'd dismissed the entire subject as a three-day wonder that the papers needed to fill column space at a slow time of year.

But now he saw that the virtuoso looked ill. Lynley thought immediately of Parkinson's—Davies' walk was unsteady and his hands trembled—and of what that disease could do to finish his career. That would be something that the young man's publicity machine would indeed want to keep from the public for as long as possible, calling it everything from exhaustion to nerves until it was impossible for them to call it anything else.

Davies gestured to three overstuffed armchairs that formed a group near the fireplace. He himself sat nearest the fire itself: artificial coals between which blue and orange flames rhythmically lapped like a visual soporific. Despite his sickly appearance, Lynley could see the strong resemblance between the violinist and Richard Davies. They shared much the same body type, with an emphasis on bones and stringy muscles. The younger Davies had no spinal curvature, however, although the manner in which he kept his legs locked together and his clenched fists pressed into his stomach suggested that he had other physical problems.

Lynley said, “How old were you when your parents divorced, Mr. Davies?”

“When they divorced?” The violinist had to think about the question before he answered it. “I was about nine when my mother left, but they didn't divorce immediately. Well, they couldn't have done, not with the law being what it is. So it must have taken them what … four years? I don't actually know, now I think of it, Inspector. The subject never came up.”

“The subject of their divorce or the subject of her leaving?”

“Either. She was just gone one day.”

“You never asked why?”

“We never talked much about personal things in my family. There was a lot of … I suppose you could call it reticence amongst us. It wasn't just the three of us in the house, you see. There were my grandparents, my teacher, and a lodger as well. Something of a crowd. I suppose it was a way to have privacy: by letting everyone have a personal life that no one else ever mentioned. Everyone held their thinking and their feelings fairly close in. Well, that was the fashion anyway, wasn't it.”

“And during the time of your sister's death?”

At that, Davies moved his gaze off Lynley and fixed it on the fire,
but the rest of his body remained motionless. “What about my sister's death?”

“Did everyone hold their thinking and feelings close in when she was murdered? And during the trial that followed?”

Davies' legs tightened against each other as if they would defend him from the questions. “No one ever talked about it. ‘Best to forget’ was like a family motto, Inspector, and we lived by it.” He raised his face towards the ceiling. He swallowed and said, “God. I expect that's why my mother finally left us. No one would ever talk about what desperately
needed
talking about in that house, and she just couldn't cope with it any longer.”