A Traitor to Memory

“Having reported to one parent, I didn't think it would be necessary to report it to the other. And your mother was more often in the house, Gideon. Your father was rarely about, as he had more than one job, as you may recall. Have a biscuit. Do you still have a fondness for sweets? How funny. I've just recalled that Katja had a real passion for them. For chocolates, especially. Well, I suppose that comes of growing up in an eastern bloc country as well. Deprivation.”





“Had she any other passions?”





“Any other …?” Sarah-Jane looked perplexed.

“I know she was pregnant, and I've remembered seeing her in the garden with a man. I couldn't see him clearly, but I could tell what they were doing. Raphael says it was James Pitchford, the lodger.”





“I hardly think that!” Sarah-Jane protested. “James and Katja? Heavens!” Then she laughed. “James Pitchford wasn't involved with Katja. What would make you think that? He helped her with her English, it's true, but apart from that … Well, James always had something of an air of indifference towards women, Gideon. One was forced to wonder about his … if I might say it … his sexual orientation at the end of the day. No, no. Katja wouldn't have been involved with James Pitchford.” She took up another ginger biscuit. She said, “One naturally tends to think that when a group of adults live under one roof and when one of the female adults becomes pregnant, another of the co-inhabitants must be the father. I suppose it's logical, but in this case …? It wasn't James. It couldn't have been your grandfather. And who else is there? Well, Raphael, of course. He could have been the pot calling the kettle when he named James Pitchford.”





“What about my father?”





She looked disconcerted. “You can't possibly think your father and Katja—certainly you would have recognised your own father had he been the man you saw with her, Gideon. And even if you hadn't recognised him for some reason, he was utterly devoted to your mother.”





“But the fact that they separated within two years after Sonia died …”





“That had to do with the death itself, with your mother's inability to cope afterwards. She went into a very black period after your sister was murdered—well, what mother wouldn't?—and she never pulled herself out of it. No. You mustn't think ill of your father on any account. I won't hear of that.”





“But when she wouldn't name the father of her child … when she wouldn't talk at all about anything to do with my sister—”





“Gideon, listen to me.” Sarah-Jane set down her coffee, placing the remainder of her biscuit on the saucer's edge. “Your father might have admired Katja Wolff's physical beauty, as all men did. He might have spent the odd hour now and again alone with her. He might have chuckled fondly at her mistakes in English, and he might have bought her a gift at Christmas and two on her birthday … But none of that means he was her lover. You must drive that idea straight from your mind.”





“Yet not to talk to anyone … I know Katja never said a word about anything, and that doesn't make sense.”





“To us, no. It doesn't,” Sarah-Jane agreed. “But you must remember that Katja was headstrong. I've little doubt that she'd got it into her mind that she could say nothing and all would be well. To her way of thinking—and coming from a communist country where criminal science isn't what it is in England, how could she think otherwise?—what evidence had they that couldn't be argued away? She could claim to have been called to the telephone briefly—although why she would claim something that could be so easily disproved is far beyond me—with a tragic accident being the result. How was she to know what else would become public that, taken in conjunction with Sonia's death, would serve to prove her guilt?”





“What else did become public? Beyond the pregnancy and the lie about the phone call and the row she'd had with my parents. What else?”





“Aside from the other, healed injuries to your sister? Well, there was her character, for one thing. Her callous disregard for her own family in East Germany. What happened to them as a result of her escape. Someone did some digging round in Germany after her arrest. It was in the papers. Don't you recall?” She took up her cup again and poured herself more coffee. She didn't notice that I had not yet touched mine. “But no. You wouldn't have done, would you? Every effort was made never to talk about the case in front of you, and I doubt you saw the papers, so how would you remember—or even know in the first place—that her family had been tracked down—God knows how although the East Germans were probably happy to offer the information as a caveat for anyone who might think of escaping …”