A Traitor to Memory

He didn't reply, merely letting her question and all that her question implied sing in the silence between them. She saw her mistake. He hadn't directly said that Katja was the person he was looking for. It was Yasmin herself who'd led them to that point.

She was furious with herself for letting panic get the better of her. She went back to the make-up she'd been cataloguing, and she began to slam each article back into the large metal case.

Nkata said, “I don't think she was home, Missus Edwards. Not when this lady was run down. Happened sometime between ten and midnight. And I think Katja Wolff was gone from your flat just about that time. Maybe she was out for two hours, maybe three or four. Maybe she was gone for the night. But she wasn't there, was she? And neither was the car.”

She wouldn't answer. She wouldn't meet his eyes. She wouldn't acknowledge he was in the shop. Just a counter separated them, so she could almost feel his breath. But she would not allow his presence—or his words—to gain access to her in any way. Still, her heart was slamming against her ribs, and her mind was filled with the image of Katja's face. It was a face that had observed her carefully during suicide watch when she first went inside, a face that studied her through their exercise period and through association later in the day, a face that locked on hers during tea, and ultimately—though she never would have thought it, expected it, or dreamed that she could have wanted it—a face that lingered above hers in the darkness. Tell me your secrets. I'll tell you mine.

She knew what had taken Katja inside. Everyone knew though Katja herself had never spoken of it to Yasmin. Whatever had happened in Kensington was not one of the secrets that Katja Wolff had been willing to reveal, and the single time that Yasmin had asked about the crime for which Katja was so much hated that she'd had to guard herself for years from retribution from the other women, Katja had said, “Do you think I would kill a child, Yasmin? Very well. So be it.” And she had turned from Yasmin and had left her alone.

People didn't understand what it was like to be inside, to face the choice between solitude and companionship, between running the risks that went with solitude and embracing the protection that came with choosing—or allowing oneself to be chosen as—a lover, a partner, and a companion. To be alone was to be imprisoned within the prison, and the desolation that went with that secondary gaol term could break a woman and leave her fit for nothing when she was finally released.

So she'd put aside doubts and embraced the story that Katja's words had implied. Katja Wolff was no killer of babies. Katja Wolff was no killer at all.

“Missus Edwards,” Constable Nkata said in that gentle, trustworthy voice that coppers always used till they saw it wasn't working like they wanted, “I see the situation you're in. You been together with her for a while. You got loyalty to her from when you were locked up, and loyalty's good. But when someone's dead and someone else is lyin’—”

“What do you know 'bout loyalty?” she cried out. “What do you know 'bout anything, man? You stand there like you think you're God 'cause you made a lucky choice that took you a different route to the rest of us. But you don't know nothing 'bout life, do you? 'Cause your choices always keep you safe but they got nothing in them that make you alive.”

He observed her calmly, and it seemed that there was nothing she could do and nothing she could say to shatter that steady tranquility of his. And she hated him for the calm front he presented because she knew without having to be told that his serenity went right to the core of who he was.

“Katja was home,” she snapped. “Just like we said. Now get out of here. I got work to do.”

He said, “Where d'you 'xpect she went those days she phoned in to the laundry ill, Missus Edwards?”

“She didn't phone in to the laundry. She didn't phone in ill or anything else.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn't need to tell me.”

“You best ask her, then. You best watch her eyes when she answers, too. They fix on you, she's probably lying. They don't look at you at all, she's probably lying as well. 'Course, after twenty years inside, she'll be good at lying. So if she carries on with what she's doing when you ask your question, there's a good enough chance that she's lying.”

“I asked you to get out,” Yasmin said. “I don't 'tend to ask again.”

“Missus Edwards, you're at risk in this situation, but you're not th' only one and you got to know that. You got a boy at risk. You got a fine boy. Clever and good. I c'n see he loves you 'bove everything on earth, and if anything takes you 'way from him again—”