A Traitor to Memory

She blew derision from her nostrils and went back to her make-up sorting. She arranged her eye shadows by colour, twisted tubes of lipstick open and did the same to them, flipped open the blushers and powders, and checked the levels on the liquid foundations. She made much of taking notes, writing on an order pad and being so extra scrupulous about her spelling that the lives of her customers might have depended upon the accuracy of her order form.

“I was in a gang, see,” Nkata offered. “I got out after that fight. Mostly 'cause of my mum. She took a look at my face when they took me to Casualty and dropped to the floor like a stone. Gave herself a concussion and ended up in hospital. That was that.”

“So you love your mum.” What rubbish, she thought.

“Know better than not to,” he replied.

She looked up quickly and saw he was smiling, but it seemed directed at himself, not at her. He said, “You got a real nice boy.”

“You stay away from my Daniel!” Her panic surprised her.

“He miss his dad?”

“I said you stay away!”

Nkata came to the counter then. He laid down his hands. He seemed to imply by the action that he was weaponless, but Yasmin knew otherwise. Coppers always had weapons and they knew how to use them. Nkata did so now. He said, “There's a woman died two nights ago, Missus Edwards. Up in Hampstead. She had a boy, too.”

“What's that to me?”

“She was run down. Three times run over by the same car.”

“I don't know no one in Hampstead. I don't go to Hampstead. I never been to Hampstead. I go there, I stick out like a cactus in Siberia.”

“You would, that.”

She looked at him sharply to catch the sarcasm in his face that she couldn't hear in his voice, but all she saw was a gentleness in his eyes, and she knew exactly what that gentleness meant. It was a gentleness manufactured for the moment that said he'd do her right here in the shop if he could talk her into it, he'd do her if he could get away with it, he'd do her even if he had to scare her into doing it with him, because to do it would prove he had the power, because she was simply there, like a particularly challenging but nonetheless potentially gratifying mountain he just had to climb.

She said, “I hear coppers work different to this, I do.”

“What's that?” he asked, managing quite effectively to look perplexed.

“You know what's that. You went to cop school, didn't you? Plods look for lags who're falling back on what they know best. They don't dig in new ground if they don't have to because they know that's a waste of time.”

“I'm not wasting time, far's I see. And I got a feeling you know that, Missus Edwards.”

“I knifed Roger Edwards. I cut him up good. I didn't run him down with a car. Didn't even have a car back then, Roger and me. Sold it, we did, when the money ran out and his little habit needed an urgent seeing to.”

“I'm real sorry about that,” the constable said. “Must've been a bad time for you.”

“You try five years locked up if you want a bad time.” She turned from him and went on taking her inventory of cosmetics.

He said, “Missus Edwards, you know it's not you I'm here about.”

“I don't know nothing like that, Mr. Constable. But you can leave easy enough, I 'xpect, if it's not me you're wanting to talk to. I'm the only one here and the only one who's going to be here till my next client comes in. 'Course, you might want to have a word with her. She's got cancer in her ovaries but she's a real nice lady, and I expect she'll tell you last time she drove up to Hampstead. That's why you're in this part of town, right? Some black lady was driving in Hampstead and the neighbourhood's all in an uproar about it and you're here trying to suss her out?”

“You know that's not the fact 's well.”

He sounded infinitely patient, and Yasmin wondered how far she could push him before he snapped.

She gave him her back. She had no intention of offering him anything, least of all what he apparently was after.

He said, “What happened to your boy when you were inside, Missus Edwards?”

She swung round so fast that the beads on the ends of her plaits struck her cheeks. “Don't you talk about him! Don't you try rattling me with Daniel. I didn't do nothing to anyone anywhere and you bloody well know it.”

“I 'xpect that's the truth. But what's also the truth is that Katja Wolff knew this lady, Missus Edwards. This lady that got mashed over up in Hampstead. This was two nights back, Missus Edwards, and Katja Wolff used to work for her. Twenty years ago. Back in Kensington Square. She was nanny to her baby. You know the lady I'm talking about?”

Yasmin felt the panic like a swarm of bees attacking her face. She cried out, “You saw the car. Last night you saw it. You could tell it wasn't in no accident.”

“What I could tell is it had a front headlamp that was broke, with no one able to say how it happened.”

“Katja didn't run down no one! No one, you hear? You saying that Katja could run down a lady and only have a headlamp get broke?”