A Traitor to Memory

She sighed and backed off, which was when she heard it: the violin music floating down from above. She thought for a moment, “Omigod! He's cracked it,” and she felt a surge of pleasure at the realisation that Gideon's problems might be over, that his most recent plan for solving his problem had actually done the job.

This was very cool. This would make him happy. And it had to be Gideon who was playing upstairs. It wouldn't, after all, be Rafe Robson, who couldn't possibly be so uncool as to torture Gid by playing the violin in front of him while Gid was having such trouble playing himself.

But just as she was celebrating the fact of Gideon Davies' return to his music, the rest of the orchestra started grinding away. A CD, Libby thought despairingly. It was Rafe's little pep talk for Gideon's ears: See how you once played the music, Gideon? You did it then. You can do it now.

Why, Libby wondered, wouldn't they leave him the hell alone? Did they think he'd start playing if they bugged him enough? Because they sure as hell were beginning to bug her. “He's more than this stupid music,” she snarled at the ceiling above her.

She left the kitchen and marched to her own small CD player. There, she selected a disk that was guaranteed to drive Raphael Robson right up the wall. It was bubble gum squared, and she played it loud. Just for good measure, she opened her windows. Banging on the floor above ensued in short order. She turned the volume up to full blast. Time for a nice long bath, she thought. Bubble-gum music was, like, so perfect for soaking, soaping, and singing along.

Thirty minutes later, bathed and dressed and feeling that she'd made her point, Libby turned off the CD player and listened for any more sounds from above. Silence. She'd made her point.

She left the flat and popped her head above the level of the street to see if Rafe's car was still in the square. The Renault was gone, which meant Gideon might be ready for a visit from someone who cared more about him as a person than as a musician. She trotted up the stairs from her flat to his front door, where she gave a hearty knock.

No answer prompted her to turn back to the square, taking a look for Gideon's Mitsubishi and seeing the GPS five cars along. Libby frowned, gave another knock, and called out, “Gideon? You still in there? It's me.”

This roused him. The dead bolt was released from the other side of the door. The door swung open.

Libby said, “Hey, sorry about the music. I sort of lost control and—” She cut her own words off. He looked like hell. True, he hadn't looked good in weeks, but now he was positively bird-doo on a cracker. Libby's first thought was that Rafe Robson had worked Gideon over by making him listen to his own recordings. Bastard, she thought.

She said, “Where's good ol' Rafe? Gone to make his report to your dad?”

Gideon merely stepped back from the door and let her in. He went up the stairs, and she followed him. His destination was where he'd obviously been when she'd knocked on his door: the bedroom. The imprint of his head on the pillow and his body on the bed looked pretty recent.

A dim light was burning on the bedside table, and the shadows not dispelled by its glow fell on Gideon's face and made him look cadaverous. He'd been surrounded by an aura of anxiety and defeat since the Wigmore debacle, but Libby saw that there was something more edging that aura now, something that looked … what? Excruciating, she realised. So she said, “Gideon, what's wrong?”

He said simply, “My mother's been murdered.”

She blinked. Her jaw dropped. She snapped it closed. “Your mom? Your mother? Oh no. When? How? Holy shit. Sit down.” She urged him over to his bed and he sat, his hands hanging limply between his knees. “What happened?”

Gideon told her what little there was to know. He concluded with, “Dad was asked to identify her body. The police've been to see him since. A detective, Dad said. He rang a while ago.” Gideon clutched his arms around himself, bent forward, and rocked like a child. He said, “That's it, then.”

“What?” Libby asked.

“There's no hope after this.”

“Don't say that, Gideon.”

“I might as well be dead, too.”

“Jeez. Hey. Don't say that.”

“It's the truth.” He shivered as he said this and glanced round the room as if looking for something while he continued to rock.

Libby thought about what it meant that his mother was dead. She said, “Gideon, you're going to get through all this. You're going to get past it,” and she tried to sound like she really meant those words, like whether he played his music or not was as important to her as it was to him.

She noticed that his shivering had turned to trembling. At the foot of his bed was a knitted blanket, and she grabbed this and dropped it around his thin shoulders. “You want to talk about it?” she asked him. “About your mom? About … I don't know … anything?” She sat beside him and put her arm around him. She used her other hand to close the blanket at his throat till he grasped it as well and clutched it.

He said, “She was on her way to see James the Lodger.”