A Traitor to Memory

“Get out!” she cried. “Get out 'f my shop. If you don't get out right now, I'll …” What? What, she thought raggedly. What in God's name would she do? Knife him like she'd knifed her husband? Assault him? And then what would they do to her? And to Daniel? What would happen to him? If they took her son from her—put him into care for even a day while they sorted things out the way they always did their sorting—she would not be able to bear the burden of responsibility for his pain and confusion.

She lowered her head. She would not give the detective her face. He could see her harsh breathing, he could take note of the beads of sweat that glistened on her neck. But more than that she would not give him. Not for the world, not for her freedom, not for anything else.

Into her line of vision, she suddenly saw his dark hand slide across the counter. She flinched till she realised he didn't mean to touch her. Instead, he passed her a business card, then slid his hand away. He said so quietly that it sounded like a prayer, “You phone me, Missus Edwards. There's my pager number on that card, so you phone me. Day or night. You phone. When you're ready—”

“I got nothing more to say.” But she whispered the words because it hurt her throat too much to do more than that.

“When you're ready,” he repeated. “Missus Edwards.”

She didn't look up but she didn't need to. His heels sounded sharply against the yellow lino on the floor as he left the shop.



After she and Lynley went their separate ways, Barbara Havers visited the Valley of Kings first. It was filled with swarthy middle-eastern waiters. Once they appeared to come to terms with their collective disapproval of a woman wearing mufti instead of a black bed sheet, they studied in turn the snapshot of Eugenie Davies that Barbara and Lynley had managed to unearth from the woman's cottage in Friday Street. She had posed with Ted Wiley on the bridge that served as the gateway to Henley-on-Thames, and the picture had been taken during the Regatta, if the banners, boats, and colourfully dressed crowds in the background were anything to go by. Barbara had carefully folded the photograph to exclude Major Wiley. No need to muddy the waters of the waiters' memories by showing Eugenie Davies with someone whom the employees of the Valley of Kings might never have seen.

But they shook their heads anyway, one by one. The woman in the photo wasn't anyone they remembered.

She would have been with a man, Barbara told them helpfully. They would have come in separately but with the intention of meeting each other there, possibly in the bar. They would have seemed interested in each other, interested in a way that leads to sex.

Two of the waiters looked scandalised at this fascinating twist in the information. Another's expression of disgust said that mutual lust played out in public between a man and a woman was just what he'd come to expect from living in the UK's answer to Gomorrah. But the clarification that Barbara had sought to provide through her revelation gained her nothing. Soon enough she was back on the street, and plodding in the direction of the Comfort Inn.

It wasn't, she found, aptly named, but then, what affordable hotel on a busy street in their nation's capital ever was? She flashed Eugenie Davies' picture there—for the desk clerk, the maids, and everyone else having contact with the hotel's residents—but she received the same result. The night clerk, however, who would have been the person to see the pictured lady most closely had she ever checked into the hotel with a lover after dining at the Valley of Kings, was not yet on duty, Barbara was told by the hotel manager. So if the constable wanted to return …?

She would have to do so, Barbara decided. There was no point to leaving any stone right side up.