A Traitor to Memory (84 page)

Revenge hadn't been part of the plan for either of them. Indeed, the word
vengeance
hadn't crossed their lips. But now Yasmin wondered what Katja had meant all those years ago when she'd said, “I am owed,” while imprisoned, without ever giving an explanation of what the debt was or who was to pay it.

She couldn't bring herself to ask where her lover had gone last night when she left that house on Galveston Road in the company of her solicitor, Harriet Lewis. The thought of the Katja who had counseled her, who had listened to and loved her throughout her sentence, was what kept Yasmin's every doubt in check.

But still, she couldn't shake off the memory of that moment when Katja had frozen in the act of getting into bed. She couldn't dismiss what that abrupt stillness in her lover meant. So she said, “I di'n't know Harriet Lewis had a partner.”

Katja looked away from her at the window, where the curtains were closed upon the growing daylight. She said, “Funny enough, Yas. Neither did I.”

“Think she'll be able to help you, then? Help with what you're trying to sort out?”

“Yes. Yes, I hope she will help me. That would be good, wouldn't it: to put an end to the struggle.”

And then Katja stood there, waiting for more, waiting to hear the scores of questions that Yasmin Edwards could not bear to ask her.

When Yasmin said nothing, Katja finally nodded as if she herself had asked something and received a reply. “Things are being taken care of,” she said. “I'll be home straight after work tonight.”

16

B
ARBARA
H
AVERS GOT
word of Webberly's condition at seven forty-five that morning when the superintendent's secretary phoned her as she was toweling herself dry from her wake-up shower. Upon instruction from D
I
Lynley, who'd been given the rank of acting superintendent, Barbara was told, Dorothea Harriman was ringing every detective under Webberly's command. She had little time to chat, so she was sparing with the details: Webberly was in Charing Cross Hospital, his condition was critical, he was in a coma, he'd been hit by a car late last night while walking his dog.

“Bloody hell, Dee,” Barbara cried. “Hit by a
car
? How? Where? Will he …? Is he going to …?”

Harriman's voice grew tight, which told Barbara all she needed to know about the effort that Webberly's secretary was making to sound professional in the midst of her own concern for the man she'd worked for for nearly a decade. “That's all I know, Detective Constable. The Hammersmith police are investigating.”

Barbara said, “Dee, what the hell happened?”

“A hit-and-run.”

Barbara grew dizzy. At the same time, she felt the hand that held the telephone receiver turn numb, as if it were no longer part of her body. She rang off in a deadened state, and she dressed herself with even less regard than she normally gave to her appearance. Indeed, it
wouldn't be until much later in the day that she'd glance in the mirror while making a visit to the ladies' toilet and discover that she'd donned pink socks, green stirrup trousers with sagging knees, and a faded purple T-shirt on which were printed the words “The truth ISN'T out there, it's under here” rendered in ornate Gothic script. She crammed a Pop-Tart into the toaster, and while it was heating, she dried her hair and smeared two blobs of fuchsia-tinted lipstick on her cheeks to give some colour to her face. Pop-Tart in hand, she gathered her belongings, grabbed her car keys, and dashed outside to set off into the morning … without coat, scarf, or the least idea of where she was supposed to be going.

The cold air brought her abruptly to her senses six steps from her own front door. She said, “Hang on, Barb,” and scurried back to her bungalow, where she forced herself to sit at the table which she used for dining, ironing, working, and preparing most of what went for her daily dinners. She fired up a fag and told herself that she had to calm down if she was going to be any use to anyone. If Webberly's misfortune and the murder of Eugenie Davies were connected, she wasn't going to be able to assist in the enquiry if she continued to run round like an electrified mouse.

And there
was
a connection between the two events. She was willing to bet her career on that.

She had achieved very little joy from her second trip to the Valley of Kings and the Comfort Inn on the previous evening, learning only that J. W. Pitchley was a regular at both establishments, but so much a regular that neither the waiters at the restaurant nor the night clerk at the hotel had been able to say with certainty that he'd been there on the night Eugenie Davies had been murdered.

“Oh my yes, this gentleman has a way with the ladies,” the night clerk had commented as he examined Pitchley's photograph over the sound of Major James Bellamy and his wife having something of a class-driven set-to in an ancient episode of
Upstairs, Downstairs
that was playing nearby on a VCR. The night clerk had paused, had watched the unfolding drama for a moment, had shaken his head and sighed, “It will never last, that marriage,” before turning to Barbara, handing back the picture she'd snagged in West Hampstead, and going on. “He brings them here often, these ladies of his. He always pays cash and the lady waits over there, out of sight in the lounge. This is so I will neither see her nor suspect that they intend to use the room for a few hours only, for sexual congress. He has been here many many times, this man.”

And it was much the same at the Valley of Kings. J. W. Pitchley had eaten his way through the entire menu at the restaurant and the waiters could account for everything he'd ordered in the last five months. But as to his companions …? They were blonde, brunette, red headed, and gray haired. And all of them were English, naturally. What else would one expect of such a decadent culture?

Flashing the picture of Eugenie Davies in the company of the picture of J. W. Pitchley had got Barbara exactly nowhere. Ah yes, she was another Englishwoman, wasn't she? both the waiters and the night clerk had asked. Yes, she might have been with him one night. But she might have not. It was the gentleman, you see, who interested everyone: How did such an ordinary man have such an extraordinary way with ladies?

“Any port in a storm,” Barbara had muttered in reply, “if you know what I mean.”

They hadn't known and she hadn't explained. She'd just gone home, deciding to bide her time till St. Catherine's opened in the morning.

That
was what she was supposed to be doing, Barbara realised as she sat at her little dining table, smoked, and hoped that the nicotine would rattle her brain into operation. There was something not right about J. W. Pitchley, and if his address in the possession of the dead woman hadn't told her that much, then the thugs leaping out of his kitchen window and the cheque he'd been writing—to one of them, surely—did.

She could do nothing to improve the condition of Superintendent Webberly. But she could pursue her intended course, looking for whatever it was that J. W. Pitchley, AKA James Pitchford, was trying to hide. What that was might well be what tied him to murder and tied him to the attack on Webberly. And if that was the case, she wanted to be the person who brought the bugger down. She owed that much to the superintendent because she owed Malcolm Webberly more than she could ever repay.

With more calm this time, she rustled her pea jacket from the wardrobe, along with a tartan scarf that she wound round her neck. More appropriately garbed for the November chill, she set out again into the cold, damp morning.

She had a wait before St. Catherine's opened, and she used the time to tuck into a hot bacon and mushroom sandwich in the sort of fine, fried-bread-serving old caff that was fast disappearing from the metropolis. After that, she phoned Charing Cross Hospital, where she
got word that Webberly's condition remained unchanged. She phoned Inspector Lynley next, getting him on his mobile on his way to the Yard. He'd been at the hospital till six, he told her, at which time it had become clear that hanging round in the intensive care waiting room was only going to rub his nerves raw while doing nothing to improve the superintendent's condition.

“Hillier's there,” Lynley said abruptly, and those two words served as adequate explanation. AC Hillier wasn't a pleasant man to be around at the best of times. At the worst of times, he'd likely be impossible.

“What about the rest of the family?” Barbara asked.

“Miranda's come from Cambridge.”

“And Frances?”

“Laura Hillier's with her. At home.”

“At home?” Barbara frowned, going on to say, “That's a bit odd, isn't it, sir?” to which Lynley said, “Helen's taken some clothes over to the hospital. Some food as well. Randie came tearing up in such a hurry that she wasn't even wearing shoes, so Helen's taken her a pair of trainers and a track suit should she want to change her clothes. She'll phone me if there's any sudden change. Helen will, that is.”

“Sir …” Barbara wondered at his reticence. There was ground to till here, and she meant to grab the hoe. She was a cop to her core, so—her suspicions about J. W. Pitchley aside for a moment—she couldn't help wondering whether Frances Webberly's absence from the scene might mean something that went beyond shock. Indeed, she couldn't help wondering if it meant something that indicated Frances's knowledge of her husband's past infidelity. She said, “Sir, as to Frances herself, have you thought—”

“What are you onto this morning, Havers?”

“Sir …”

“What did you come up with on Pitchley?”

Lynley was making it more than clear that Frances Webberly was a subject he wasn't about to discuss with her, so Barbara filed her irritation—if only at present—and instead recounted what she'd discovered about Pitchley on the previous day: his suspicious behaviour, the presence in his home of two yobbos who'd climbed out of a window rather than be confronted by her, the cheque he'd been writing, the confirmation of the night clerk and the waiters that Pitchley was indeed an habitué of the Comfort Inn and the Valley of Kings.

“So what I reckon is this: If he changed his name once because of a crime, what's to say he didn't change it before because of another?”

Lynley said that he thought it unlikely, but he gave Barbara the go-ahead. They would meet later at the Yard.

It didn't take too long for Barbara to troll through two decades of legal records in St. Catherine's, since she knew what she was looking for. And what she finally found sent her to New Scotland Yard posthaste, where she got on the blower to the station that served Tower Hamlets and spent an hour tracking down and talking to the only detective who'd spent his entire career there. His memory for detail and his possession of enough notes to write his memoirs several times over provided Barbara with the vein of gold she'd been seeking.

“Oh, right,” he drawled. “That's not a name I'm likely to forget. The whole flaming lot of them've been giving us aggro 's long as they've been walking the earth.”

“But as to the one …” Barbara said.

“I can spin a tale or two about
him.
”

She took notes from the detective's recitation, and when she rang off, she went in search of Lynley.

She found him in his office, standing near the window, looking grave. He'd apparently been home between his early morning visit to the hospital and coming to the Yard, because he looked as he always looked: perfectly groomed, well-shaven, and suitably dressed. The only sign that things were not normal was in his posture. He'd always stood like a man with a fence pole for a spine, but now he seemed slumped, as if carrying sacks of grain on his shoulders.

“The only thing Dee told me was a coma,” Barbara said by way of hello.

Lynley recounted for her the extent of the superintendent's injuries. He concluded with, “The only blessing is that the car didn't actually run over him. The force he was hit with threw him into a pillar box, which was bad enough. But it could have been worse.”

“Were there any witnesses?”

“Just someone who saw a black vehicle tearing down Stamford Brook Road.”

“Like the car that hit Eugenie?”