A Traitor to Memory

“You saw her with someone?” Lynley asked.

“I didn't need to see her with someone,” Georgia said. “I saw what she did when she was here: the phone calls that she took behind closed doors, the days when she left at half past eleven and never returned. And she drove her car to the club on those days, Inspector, though the rest of the time she walked here from Friday Street. And she wasn't doing her volunteer work at the nursing home on those days she drove, because she volunteered at Quiet Pines on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“And the days she left at half past eleven?”

“Thursday or Friday. Always. Once a month. Sometimes twice. What does that suggest to you, Inspector? It suggests an assignation to me.”

It could well suggest anything, Lynley thought, from a doctor's appointment to a session with the hairdresser. But while what Georgia Ramsbottom was telling them was coloured by her obvious dislike of Eugenie Davies, Lynley could not ignore the fact that her information matched up with what they'd seen in the dead woman's diary.

After thanking her for her cooperation—no matter how much he'd had to wrest it from her—Lynley sent the woman back to her committee and had Havers assist her in organising the rest of the club members present for individual examinations of the photograph of Katja Wolff. He could tell that everyone wanted to be helpful, but no one was able to attest to having ever seen the pictured woman in the environs of the club.

They headed back to Friday Street, where Lynley had left his car in front of Eugenie Davies' tiny house. As they walked, Havers said, “Satisfied, Inspector?”

“About what?”

“The Wolff angle. Are you satisfied now?”

“Not entirely.”

“But you can't still be considering her for the killer. Not after that.” This, with a cock of her thumb back in the direction of the Sixty Plus Club. “If Katja Wolff ran over Eugenie Davies, she would have had to know where she was going that night in the first place, right? Or she would have had to follow her into London from here. Do you agree?”

“That seems obvious.”

“So in either case, she would have had to establish some kind of contact with her once she got out of prison. Now, we may get some joy from those telephone records, and we may find out that Eugenie Davies and Katja Wolff were spending their evenings nattering like schoolgirls on the phone for the last twelve weeks for reasons that're completely obscure. But if we don't get something from those BT records, then what we're left with is someone following her up to town from here. And we both know which someone would have had an easy time of that, don't we?” She indicated the door of the bookshop where the be-right-back sign had been removed.

Lynley said, “Let's see what Major Wiley has to say about things,” and he opened the door.

They found Ted Wiley unpacking a box of new books and arranging them on a table top that bore a hand-lettered sign reading new releases. He wasn't alone in the shop. At the far end a woman in a paisley headscarf sat in a comfortable armchair, happily sipping from a Thermos top with a book open upon her knees.

“Saw your motor when I got back,” Wiley said in reference to the Bentley as he lifted three books from the box. He dusted each with a cloth before setting it on the table. “What've you come up with, then?”

The man appeared to have an interesting capacity to direct and demand, Lynley thought. He seemed to assume that the London detectives had come to Henley-on-Thames with the intention of reporting to him. He said, “It's too early in the investigation to reach a conclusion about anything, Major Wiley.”

“What I know is this,” Wiley said. “The longer things drag on, the less likely it is that you'll catch the bastard. You must have leads. Suspicions. Something.”

Lynley offered the photograph of Katja Wolff. “Have you seen this woman? In the neighbourhood, perhaps. Or somewhere else round town.”

Wiley fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket and brought out a pair of heavy-looking horn-rimmed spectacles, which he flipped open with one hand and fixed on his large and florid nose. He squinted at Katja Wolff 's likeness for a good fifteen seconds before saying, “Who is she?”

“She's called Katja Wolff. She's the woman who drowned Eugenie Davies' daughter. Do you recognise her?”