A Traitor to Memory

He'd not been able to stop himself thinking of his own Miranda when he'd seen the lifeless body of Sonia Davies lying on the postmortem table. And as the first cut into her flesh was made, that telltale Y-incision that could never be disguised as anything other than the brutal but necessary mutilation it was, he'd flinched and held back a cry of protest that such a cruelty had to be practised where such a cruelty had gone before.

There was cruelty not only in the manner of Sonia Davies' death, though. There was cruelty in her life as well, even if it was only a natural cruelty, a minuscule blip on the genetic screen that had resulted in her condition.

He'd seen the doctors' reports. He'd marveled at the succession of operations and illnesses that such a tiny child had managed to endure in her first two years of life. He'd blessed his own luck in having produced with his wife a miracle of health and vitality in his daughter Miranda, and he wondered how individuals actually coped when what they were given demanded of them more than they'd ever thought they'd be asked to produce.

Eric Leach had wondered the same himself, saying, “Okay, I see why they had a nanny. It was too much to handle, with Granddad half a loon and the son another Mozart or whatever he is. But why'd they not get someone qualified to see to her? They needed a nurse, not a refugee.”

“It was a bad decision,” Webberly had agreed. “And they're going to take a beating for it. But no beating they take in court or in the press will match the beating they'll be giving themselves.”

“Unless …” Leach hadn't completed his remark. He'd looked down at his feet and shuffled them, instead.

“Unless what, Sergeant?”

“Unless the choice was deliberate, sir. Unless they didn't really want proper care for the baby. For reasons of their own.”

Webberly had allowed his face to reveal the disgust he felt. “You don't know what you're talking about. Wait till you have a kid and then see how it feels. No. Don't wait. I'll tell you myself. It feels like killing anyone who'd even look at her sideways.”

And as more information came in over the next few weeks, that's how he'd felt—like killing—because he'd not been able to get away from seeing his own Miranda in the death of this child, who was so unlike her. She was toddling round the house at that point, always with her tattered Eeyore clutched under her arm, and he started seeing danger to her everywhere. In every corner there was something that could claim her, ripping out his heart and gnawing at his entrails. So he'd begun to want to avenge the death of Sonia Davies as a way to ensure his own child's safety. If I bring her killer to an unquestioned justice, he told himself, I will buy God's protection for Randie with the studied coin of my righteousness.

Of course, he hadn't known there was a killer at all, at first. Like everyone else, he'd thought a moment of negligence had resulted in a tragedy that would haunt the lives of everyone concerned. But when the postmortem uncovered the old fractures on her skeleton and when a closer examination of the body revealed the contusions along her shoulders and her neck that spoke of her being held down and deliberately drowned, he'd felt the blossoming of vengeance within him. It was vengeance for the death of this child, imperfect though she had been born. But it was also vengeance for the mother who had given birth to her.

There were no eyewitnesses and little enough evidence, which troubled Leach but did not worry Webberly. For the crime scene told a tale of its own, and he knew that he could use that tale to support a theory that was quick in coming. There was the bathtub itself with its tray so placidly undisturbed, disavowing the claim that a terrified nursemaid had come upon her charge slipped under the water and frantically called for help as she pulled her out of the tub and attempted to save her. There were the medicines—a cabinet of them—and afterwards the extensive medical records and the story both told about the burden of caring for a child in Sonia's condition. There were the arguments between the nanny and the parents, sworn to by more than one member of the household. And there were the statements given by the parents, the elder child, the grandparents, the teacher, the friend who was supposed to have phoned the nanny on the night in question, and the lodger, who was the only person who tried to avoid any discussion of the German girl at all. And then there was Katja Wolff herself, her preliminary statement, and after that her unbelievable and enduring silence.