A Traitor to Memory

“We got approval,” Yasmin said. “I'm out five years. 'S no mark against me. We got approval.”


“They got her working at a laundry up Kennington High Street,” Winston Nkata said. “Stopped there first to have a word with her, but she'd not been in all day. Called in ill, they said. Flu. So I came here.”

Alarms rang in Yasmin's head, but she made sure the sound of them didn't play on her face. She said, “So she's gone off to the doctor.”

“All day?”

“NHS,” she replied with a shrug.

He said as politely as he'd so far said everything else to her, “Fourth time she's phoned in like that, they tell me at the laundry, Missus Edwards. Fourth time in twelve weeks. Not happy, that lot in Kennington High Street. They spoke to her parole officer today.”

Alarm bells were changing to full-blown sirens. The frights were charging up Yasmin's spine. But she knew how coppers lied to you when they wanted to rattle you into saying something they could twist like a rag, and harshly she reminded herself of that fact, saying inwardly Bitch, don't you lose it now.

She said, “I don't know nothing about any of that. Katja lives here, right, but she goes her own way. I got 'nough on my mind with Daniel, don't I?”

He looked in the direction of her bedroom, where the full-size bed and the hairbrush on the chest and the clothes in the cupboard told a different story. And she wanted to scream, Yeah! And wha' about it, Charlie? You ever been inside? You ever known for five minutes what's it like to think that f'r a stretch of time that feels like forever you'll have exactly no one in your life? Not a friend, not a mate, not a lover, not a partner? You know what that's like?

But she said nothing. She merely met his eyes with defiance. And for five long seconds that felt like fifty, the only sound in the flat came from the bathroom, where Dan started singing some pop song as he scrubbed the wigs.

Then that sound was interrupted by another. A key scraped into the lock on the door. The door swung open.

And Katja was with them.



Lynley made Chelsea his final stop of the day. After leaving Richard Davies with his card and with instructions to phone should he hear from Katja Wolff or have any further information to impart, he negotiated the congestion round South Kensington station and cruised down Sloane Street, where the streetlamps glowed on an upmarket neighbourhood of restaurants, shops, and houses and the autumn leaves patterned the pavements in bronze. As he drove, he thought about connections and coincidence and whether the presence of the former obviated the possibility of the latter. It seemed very likely. People were often in the wrong place at the wrong time, but rarely were they at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the intention of calling on someone who figured in a violent crime from their past.

He grabbed the first parking space he found in the relative vicinity of the St. James house, a tall umber brick building on the corner of Lordship Place and Cheyne Row. From the Bentley's boot, he took the computer he'd removed from Eugenie Davies' office.

When he rang the bell, he heard a dog's immediate barking. It came from the left—that would be from St. James's study, where Lynley could see through a window that a light was burning—and it approached the door with the enthusiasm of a canine doing the job properly. A woman's voice said, “Good grief, that's enough, Peach,” to the dog who, in best dachshund fashion, completely ignored her. A bolt slid back, the outside light above the door flicked on, and the door itself swung open.

“Tommy! Hullo. What a treat!” It was Deborah St. James who'd answered the bell, and she stood with the long-haired dachshund in her arms, a squirming barking bunch of brandy-coloured fur who wanted nothing better than to sniff Lynley's leg, hands, or face to see if he met with her canine approval. “Peach!” Deborah remonstrated with the dog. “You know very well who this is. Stop it.” She stepped back from the door, saying, “Come in, Tommy. Helen's already gone home, I'm afraid. She was tired, she said. Round four, this was. Simon accused her of keeping late nights to avoid compiling data on whatever it is they're doing—I can never keep it straight—but she swore it was because you'd had her up till dawn listening to all four parts of The Ring. Except I can't remember if there are four parts. Never mind. What have you brought us?”

Once the door was closed behind them, she put the dog on the floor. Peach gained a good whiff of Lynley's trousers, registered his scent, took a step backwards, and wagged her tail in greeting. “Thank you,” he told the dachshund solemnly. She trotted into the study where a gas fire burned and a lamp was lit on St. James's desk. There, a number of printed pages were scattered, some of them bearing black-and-white photographs and some of them bearing only script.