A Traitor to Memory

“Dan!” Yasmin spoke so sharply that her son started. She tossed him his sweater. “You heard me, right? Get dressed and get yourself into that breakfast.”


Daniel nodded. But he didn't take his eyes from the cop. Instead, he drank him in with such unabashed interest and eagerness to know and be known that Yasmin wanted to step between them, to shove her son in one direction and the copper in another. Daniel backed into his bedroom, gaze still on Nkata, saying, “You like pancakes? They're little ones. They're special. I 'xpect we got enough to—”

“Daniel!”

“Right. Sorry, Mum.” And he flashed that smile—thirty-thousand watts, it was—and disappeared into his room.

Yasmin turned to Nkata. She was suddenly aware of how cold the air was coming in the door, how it swept insidiously round her bare legs and bare feet, how it tickled her knees and caressed her thighs, how it hardened her nipples. The very fact of their hardness was an irritant to her, making her vulnerable to her own body. She shivered in the chill, undecided about slamming the door upon the detective or allowing him in.

Katja made the decision for her. She said quietly, “Let him in, Yas,” from the kitchen doorway where she stood with the pan of pancakes in her hand.

Yasmin stepped back as the constable gave a nod of thanks to Katja. She shoved the door shut and reached for her coat, taking it from its hook and cinching it so tightly round her waist that it might have been a corset and she a Victorian lady with an hourglass figure on her mind. For his part, Nkata unbuttoned his own overcoat and loosened his scarf like a guest come to dinner.

“We are having our breakfast,” Katja said to him. “And Daniel must not be late for school.”

“What d'you want, then?” Yasmin demanded of the detective.

“Want to see if you'd like to change anything you told me 'bout the other night.” He spoke to Katja.

“I have no change to make,” Katja said.

“Tha's something you might want to think over,” he told her.

Yasmin flared, her anger and fear triumphing over her better judgement. She cried, “This is harassment, this is. This is harassment. This is bloody harassment and you bloody well know it.”

“Yas,” Katja said. She slid the pancake pan onto the hob just inside the kitchen door. She remained where she was, in its frame, and the light from the kitchen behind her cast her face into shadow, which was where she kept it. “Let him have his say.”

“We heard his say once.”

“I expect there's more, don't you?”

“No.”

“Yas—”

“No! I bloody well don't intend to let some sodding nig-nog with a warrant card—”

“Mummy!” Daniel had come back into the room, dressed for school now, and on his face such an expression of horror that Yasmin wanted to pull the slur out of the air where it hung among them like a laughing bully, slapping her own face with far more power than it managed to slap the detective's.

She said abruptly, “Eat your breakfast,” to her son. And to the copper, “Have your say and get out.” For an awful moment, Daniel didn't move, as if waiting for direction from the detective, such as the black man's permission to do what his mother had just told him to do. Seeing this, Yasmin wanted to strike someone, but instead she breathed and tried to still her heart's vicious pounding. She said, “Dan,” and her son moved to the kitchen, pushing past Katja, who told him, “There's juice in the fridge, Daniel,” as she stepped to one side.

None of them said anything till muted sounds from the kitchen told them Daniel was at least making an attempt to eat his breakfast despite what was going on. All three of them maintained the positions they'd taken when the policeman had first come into the flat, forming a triangle described by the front door, the kitchen, and the television set. Yasmin wanted to leave her spot and join her lover, but just when she made her first move to do so, the detective spoke, and his words were what stopped her.

“Things don't look nice when a story gets changed too far down the line, Miss Wolff. You sure you were watching telly th' other night? That boy goin' t'say the same 'f I ask him?”

“You leave Daniel alone!” Yasmin cried. “You don't talk to my boy!”

“Yas,” Katja said, her voice quiet but insistent. “Have your breakfast, all right? It seems the detective wishes to speak to me.”

“I won't leave you talking to this bloke alone. You know what cops do. You know how they are. You can't trust them with anything but—”

“The facts,” Nkata broke into her words. “And you c'n trust us with the facts just fine. So 'bout the other night …?”

“I have nothing to add.”

“Right. Then what about last night, Miss Wolff?”

Yasmin saw Katja's face alter at this question, just round the eyes, which narrowed perceptibly. “What about last night?”