A Traitor to Memory

Lynley looked up. “What?”


Richard said, “I'm no fool, Inspector. I know how you lot work. The pay's not good so you supplement it by passing along what you can without crossing the line. Fine. I understand. You've got mouths to feed. But the last thing Gideon needs right now is to see his problem displayed in the tabloids.”

“I don't generally work with the newspapers,” Lynley replied. And after a pause during which he made a note in his book, “Unless I'm forced to, of course, Mr. Davies.”

Richard heard the implied threat because he said hotly, “You listen here. I'm cooperating with you and you can damn well—”

“Richard.” Jill couldn't stop herself. There was too much at risk to let him continue when continuing only promised to alienate the detective in ways that were unproductive.

Richard clamped his jaws shut and cast a look at her. With her eyes, she appealed to his better judgement. Tell him what he needs to know and he'll leave us. This time, it seemed, he got the message.

He said, “All right.” And then, “Sorry,” to the detective. “This has put me on edge. First Gideon, then Eugenie. After all these years and when we needed her most … I tend to fly off the handle.”

Lynley said, “Had you arranged a meeting between them?”

“No. I'd phoned and left a message on her machine. She'd not got back to me.”

“When had you phoned?”

“Earlier in the week. I don't remember which day. Tuesday, perhaps.”

“Was it like her not to return your call?”

“I didn't think anything of it. The message I left didn't say I was phoning her because of Gideon. I just asked her to ring me when she had the chance.”

“And she never asked you to arrange a meeting with Gideon for reasons of her own?”

“No. Why would she? She phoned me when Gideon had his … that difficulty he had at the performance. In July. But I believe I told you that yesterday.”

“And when she phoned you, it was only about your son's condition?”

“It isn't a condition,” Richard said. “It's stage fright, Inspector. Nerves. It happens. Like writer's block. Like a sculptor making a mess of a few lumps of clay. Like a painter losing his vision for a week.”

He sounded, Jill thought, very much like a man who was desperately attempting to convince himself, and she knew that the inspector had to hear this as well. She said to Lynley, attempting to sound unlike a woman making excuses for the man she loved, “Richard's given his life to Gideon's music. He's done it the way any parent of a prodigy must do it: with no thought of himself. And when one gives one's life to something, it's painful watching the project fall to pieces.”

“If a person is a project,” DI Lynley said.

She flushed and bit back a need to retort. All right, she thought. Let him have his moment. She wouldn't allow it to vex her.

Lynley said to Richard, “Did your ex-wife ever mention her brother to you in all these phone calls?”

“Who? Doug?”

“The other brother. Ian Staines.”

“Ian?” Richard shook his head. “Never. As far as I know, Eugenie hadn't seen him in years.”

“He tells me she was going to speak to Gideon about borrowing money. He's in a bad way—”

“When the hell is Ian not in a bad way?” Richard interrupted. “He ran off from home when he was a teenager, and spent the next thirty years trying to make Doug feel responsible for it. Obviously, Doug's dried up as a source of funds if Ian turned to Eugenie. But she wouldn't help him in the past—this was when we were married and Doug was short of money—so I've little doubt she would have refused him now.” He knotted his eyebrows as he realised where the detective was heading. He said, “Why're you asking about Ian?”

“He was seen with her the night she was killed.”

“How awful,” Jill murmured.

“He has a temper,” Richard said. “He came by it honestly. Their dad was a rager. No one was safe from his temper. He excused it by saying he never lifted a hand against any of them, but his was a special form of torture. And the bastard was a priest, if you can credit that.”

“That's not how Mr. Staines remembers it,” Lynley said.

“What?”

“He mentioned beatings.”

Richard snorted. “Beatings, is it? Ian probably said he took them personally so that the others wouldn't have to. That would be all the better to position Eugenie and Doug to feel guilty when he came calling on them for money.”

“Perhaps he held something over them,” Lynley said. “His brother and sister. What happened to their father?”

“What're you getting at?”

“Whatever it was that Eugenie wished to confess to Major Wiley.”