A Traitor to Memory

“I couldn't actually tell. She wasn't … I mean, I could see she was unconscious. She wasn't making a sound. She might have been breathing. But I knew not to touch….” He gulped his coffee. Steam rose from the cup.

“She's a fair enough mess. Our pathologist concluded she's a woman by checking for breasts. What did you do?”

Pitchley looked aghast at the implication. He glanced over his shoulder to the pavement, as if worried that the collection of onlookers standing there could hear his exchange with the detective and would draw erroneous conclusions from it. “Nothing,” he said in an undertone. “My God. I didn't do anything. Obviously, I could see that she was wearing a skirt beneath her coat. And her hair's longer than a man's—”

“Where it's not been ripped from her skull.”

Pitchley grimaced but went on. “So when I saw the skirt, I just assumed. That's it.”

“And that's where she was lying, is it? Right there by the Vauxhall?”

“Yes. Right there. I didn't touch her, didn't move her.”

“See anyone on the street? On the pavement? On a porch? At a window? Anywhere?”

“No. No one. I was just driving along. There was no one anywhere except her, and I wouldn't have noticed her at all except her hand—or her arm or something … white, this was—caught my eye. That's it.”

“Were you alone in your own car?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I was alone. I live alone. Over there. Just up the street.”

Leach wondered at the volunteered information. He said, “Where were you coming from this evening, Mr. Pitchley?”

“South Kensington. I was … I was dining with a friend.”

“The friend's name?”

“I say, am I being accused of something?” Pitchley sounded flustered rather than concerned. “Because if phoning the emergency services when one finds a body is grounds for suspicion, I'd like a solicitor with me when I—Hello, there. Do keep your distance from my car, would you please?” This last was directed towards a swarthy constable who was part of a fingertip search ongoing in the street.

More constables combed the area surrounding Pitchley and Leach, and it was from this group that a female PC presently emerged, a woman's handbag in her latex-gloved grip. She trotted towards Leach, and he donned his own gloves, stepping away from Pitchley with instructions to the man to give his address and phone number to one of the policemen guarding his car. He met the female constable in the middle of the street and took the handbag from her.

“Where was it?”

“Ten yards back. Beneath a Montego. Keys and wallet are in it. There's an ID as well. Driving licence.”

“Is she local?”

“Henley-on-Thames,” the constable replied.

Leach unfastened the handbag's clasp, fished out the keys, and handed them over to the constable. “See if they fit any of the cars in the area,” he told her and as she set off to do so, he took out the wallet and opened it to locate the ID.

He first read the name without making a connection. Later he would wonder how he'd failed to twig her identity instantly. But he was feeling so much like trampled horse turds that it wasn't until he'd read not only her organ donor card but also the name imprinted on her cheques that he realised who the woman actually was.

Then he looked from the handbag he was holding to the crumpled form of its owner lying like so much discarded rubbish in the street. And as his body shuddered, what he said was, “God. Eugenie. Jesus Christ. Eugenie”.



Far across town, Detective Constable Barbara Havers sang along with the rest of the party-goers and wondered how many more choruses of jolly-good-fellowing she was going to have to live through before she could make her escape. It wasn't the hour of the night that bothered her. True, one in the morning meant that she was already cutting critically into her beauty rest, but since even doing a Sleeping-Beauty wouldn't make an inroad into her general appearance, she knew that she could live with the knowledge that if she managed to get four hours' kip at the end of the night, she was going to be one lucky bird. Rather, she was bothered by the reason for the party, exactly why, along with her colleagues from New Scotland Yard, she'd been crammed into an overheated house in Stamford Brook for the last five hours.