A Traitor to Memory

“Leave us.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the two chairs to indicate the cats, adding, “And take them with you before they get turned into someone's new coat.”


Lydia Staines threw her cigarette still smouldering into the fireplace. She scooped up a cat in each arm and said, “Come along, Caesar,” to the one who remained. She went on with, “I'll leave you to your fun, then,” and accompanied by the animals, she left the room.

Staines watched her go, something in his eyes of an animal's hunger as his glance traveled over her body, something round his mouth of a man's loathing for a woman with too much power over him. When he heard a radio click on somewhere in the back of the house, he gave his attention to Lynley. He said, “I saw Eugenie, yes. Twice. In Henley. We had a row. She'd given me her word, her promise that she'd speak to Gideon—that's her son, but I expect you know that already, don't you?—and I was depending on her to do it. But she said she'd changed her mind, said something had come up that made it impossible for her to ask him … And that was it. I took off out of there in a dead blind rage. But someone saw us, I take it. Saw me. Saw the car.”

“Where is it?” Lynley asked.

“Being serviced.”

“Where?”

“Local dealership. Why?”

“I'll need the address. I'll need to see it, to talk to the people at the dealership as well. They do body work there, I expect.”

Staines' cigarette tip glowed, long and bright, as he took in enough smoke to see him through the moment. He said, “What's your name?”

“DI Lynley. New Scotland Yard.”

“I didn't knock down my sister, DI Lynley. I was angry. I was damn well desperate. But running her over wouldn't take me an inch towards what I need, so I planned to wait a few days—a few weeks if it took that and if I could hold out—and try her again.”

“Try her for what?”

Like his wife, he tossed his cigarette into the fireplace. He said, “Come with me,” and headed out of the sitting room.

Lynley followed him. They went to the first floor of the house, up stairs so well-carpeted that their footfalls were soundless. They walked along a corridor where rectangles of darker paper on the walls indicated paintings or prints had been removed. They entered a darkened room that was set up as an office with a desk holding a computer monitor that glowed with text and numerical information. Lynley examined this and saw that Staines had logged on to the internet, having chosen an on-line stock broker as his reading or research material.

“You play the market,” Lynley said.

“Abundance.”

“What?”

“Abundance. It's all about thinking and living abundance. Thinking and living abundance effects abundance, and that abundance produces more of the same.”

Lynley frowned, trying to piece this together with what he saw on the screen. Staines continued.

“It's all about thinking in the first place. Most people stay stuck in paucity because that's the only thing they know and that's what they've been taught. I was like that myself once. I was damn bloody like that.” He came to join Lynley at the desk and laid his hand on a thick book that was open next to his computer's keyboard. This was heavily highlighted in a variety of colours, as if the reader had studied it for years and had taken something new from each perusal of its words. It looked like a text—Lynley thought vaguely of economics—but Staines' words sounded more like a new age philosophy. The man continued in a low, intense voice.

“We attract to our lives that which closely resembles our thoughts,” he said insistently. “Think beauty, and we're beautiful. Think ugliness, and we're ugly. Think success, and we become successful.”

“Think mastery of the international market, and we have it?” Lynley said.

“Yes. Yes. If you spend your life contemplating your limits, you can expect no freedom from limitation.” Staines' eyes fixed on the glowing monitor. In its light, Lynley saw that his left eye was milky with a cataract, and the skin was puffy beneath it. He went on. “I used to live only within my limits. I was bound by drugs, by drink, by horses, by cards. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. I lost everything that way—my wife, my children, my home—but that'll not happen to me again. I swear it. Abundance will come. I live abundance.”

Lynley was beginning to get the picture. He said, “It's a risky sort of business, playing the market, isn't it, Mr. Staines? A great deal of money can be made. Or lost.”