A Traitor to Memory

He went on to describe for the others the meeting he'd had with the German woman once he'd returned to Yasmin Edwards' flat on the previous evening. Asked for her whereabouts on the night in question, Katja Wolff had claimed to be at home with Yasmin and Daniel. Watching television, she'd said, although she couldn't name the programme, and when put to the rack about this gap in her recollection, she said they'd channel-surfed all evening and she hadn't kept track where they'd touched down. What was the point of having a satellite dish and a remote if you weren't going to use both to entertain yourself?

She'd lit a cigarette as they'd spoken, and from her demeanour it looked as if she hadn't a care in the world. She'd said, “What's this about, Constable?” in apparent innocence. But her glance flicked to the door before she answered the most important questions, and Nkata had known what that glance meant: She was hiding something from him and wondering if Yasmin Edwards had told a story similar to hers.

“What did the Edwards woman claim?” Lynley asked.

“That Wolff was there. Wouldn't say anything else about it, though.”

“Old lags,” Eric Leach pointed out. “They're sure as hell not going to finger each other for anything, not on a first go-round with the local rozzers. You need to go after them again, Constable. What else have you got?”

Nkata told them of the cracked headlamp on Yasmin Edwards' Fiesta. “Claimed she didn't know how it happened or when,” he said. “But Wolff has access. She was driving it yesterday.”

“Colour?” Lynley asked.

“Red gone bad.”

“That's not helpful,” Havers pointed out.

“Any of the neighbours have either one of them leaving the flat the night in question?” Leach asked this as a uniformed female constable came into his office with a sheaf of papers that she handed over. He glanced at them, grunted his thanks, and said, “Where are we with the Audis, then?”

“Still at it,” she said. “Nearly two thousand in Brighton, sir.”

“Who would've thought that?” Leach muttered as the constable left them. “Whatever happened to buy British?” He hung on to the papers but didn't refer to them, going back to his previous topic and saying to Nkata, “The neighbours? What about it?”

“South of the river,” Nkata said with a shrug. “No one willing to talk, even to me. Just one Bible basher who wanted to bang on 'bout women who live together in sin. Said the residents'd tried to get that baby killer—these're her words—off the premises with no luck.”

“We've got some more digging to do out there, then,” Leach noted. “See to it. Edwards might crack if you have a decent go. You said she has a boy, right? Bring him into the picture if you need to. Accessory to murder could get her arse in a sling, so point that out to her. In the meantime”—he rooted through some paperwork on his desk and brought out a photograph—“Holloway couriered this over last night. It needs to get taken round Henley-on-Thames.” He handed it to Lynley, who saw by the line of typing beneath it that it was a photograph of Wolff. The picture wasn't flattering. She was ill-lit, looking haggard and unkempt. Looking, he thought, just like a convicted murderer . “If she did do the job on the Davies woman,” Leach continued, “she would have had to begin by tracking her down to Henley. If she did that, someone was bound to see her. Check it out.”

In the meantime, Leach concluded, they'd got a list of all phone calls made into and out of Eugenie Davies' cottage in the past three months. That list was being compared with the names in the dead woman's address book. The names and numbers in the address book were being matched to the calls on her answer machine. A few more hours and they should have some details as to who was last in contact with her.

“And we've got a name for the Cellnet number,” Leach informed them. “One Ian Staines.”

“That could be her brother,” Lynley said. “Richard Davies mentioned that she had two brothers, one called Ian.”

Leach jotted this down. He said, “D'we know our assignments, then, lads and lasses?” as a sign their meeting was at an end.

Havers and Lynley rose. Nkata disengaged from the wall. Leach stopped them before they left the office. He said, “Speak to Webberly, any of you?”

It was a casual enough question, Lynley thought. But its air of nonchalance didn't feel genuine. “He wasn't in this morning when we left the Yard,” Lynley answered.

“Give him my best when you see him,” Leach said. “Tell him I'll be in touch very soon.”

“We will. When we see him.”

Out on the street and once Nkata had gone on his way, Havers said to Lynley, “In touch about what? That's what I want to know.”

“They're old friends.”

“Hmmph. What've you done with those letters?”

“Nothing, as yet.”

“Are you still planning to …” Havers peered at him. “You are, aren't you? Damn it, Inspector, if you'd listen for a minute—”

“I'm listening, Barbara.”

“Good. Hear this: I know you, and I know how you think. ‘Decent bloke, Webberly. He made a little mistake. But there's no sense letting one little mistake become a catastrophe.’ Except it has done, Inspector. She's dead and those letters just might be why. We've got to face that. We've got to deal with it.”