A Traitor to Memory

“Beckett gave character evidence. Talked to us and to everyone else about which wires in Wolff 's circuits were fraying. Bit of temper here. Dash of impatience there. Other things to do when the baby wanted a bit of looking after. Not always on her toes the way a properly trained nanny would be. And then getting herself in the club …”

“Yes? So? What about it?” P-Man said. “Sarah-Jane saw more than I saw. She talked about that. Am I supposed to be her conscience or something? Twenty-odd years after the fact?”

Azoff intervened. “We're looking for a point to this confab, DCI Leach. If there isn't one, we'll have that paperwork and be off.” He reached for it.

Leach pressed his fingers along its edge. “The point is Katja Wolff,” he said. “And our boy's ties to her.”

“I have no ties to her,” P-Man protested.

“I'm not sure about that. Someone got her pregnant, and I'm not putting a fiver on the Holy Ghost.”

“Don't put that down to me. We lived in the same house. That's all. We nodded on the staircase. I might have given her the odd lesson with her English and, yes, I might have admired—Look. She was attractive. She was sure of herself, confident, not the way you'd expect a foreigner who didn't even speak the language to feel or act. That's always nice to see in a woman. And for God's sake. I'm not blind.”

“Had a bit of a thing with her, then. Tip-toeing round the house at night. Once or twice behind the garden shed, and oops, look what happened.”

Azoff slapped his hand on the table between them. He said, “Once, twice, eighty-five times. If you're not intending to talk about the case in hand, we're off. You got that?”

“This is the case in hand, Mr. Azoff, especially if our boy spent the last twenty years brooding about a woman he diddled and then didn't do a thing to help once she'd—A—got herself up the spout thanks to him and—B—got herself charged with murder. He might want to make amends for that. And what better way than to give a hand in a spot of revenge. Which she might think she's owed, by the way. Time passes a bit slow inside, you know. And you'd be dead surprised to see the way that slow time makes a killer decide she's the injured party.”

“That's … that is utterly … that's preposterous,” P-Man sputtered.

“Is it?”

“You know it is. What's supposed to have happened?”

“Jay—” Azoff counseled.

“She's supposed to have tracked me down, rung my bell one night, and said, ‘Hello, Jim. Know we haven't seen each other for twenty, but how about helping me rub out a few people? Just for a laugh, this is. Not too busy, are you?’ Is that how you picture it, Inspector?”

“Shut up, Jay,” Azoff said.

“No! I've spent half my life scouring down the walls when I'm not the one who's pissed on them, and I'm tired of it. I'm God damn bloody tired. If it's not the police, then it's the papers. If it's not the papers, it's—” He stopped himself.

“Yes?” Leach leaned forward. “Who is it, then? What's the nasty you've got back there, Mr. P? Something beyond that cot death, I reckon. You're a real man of mystery, you are. And I'll tell you this much: I'm not finished with you.”

P-Man sank back in his chair, his throat working. Azoff said, “Odd. I don't hear a caution, Inspector. Forgive me if I lapsed into momentary unconsciousness sometime during this meeting, but I don't recall having heard a caution yet. And if I won't be hearing one in the next fifteen seconds, it's my suggestion that we make our farewells to each other now, heartrending though those farewells may be.”

Leach shoved the Boxter's paperwork at them. He said, “Don't plan any holidays, Mr. P.” And to Azoff, “Keep that fag unlit till you're on the street or I'll have you in for something.”

“Cor. Blimey. I'm ackshully pissing me pants, guv'nor,” Azoff said.

Leach started to speak, then stopped himself. Then he said, “Get out,” and saw to it that they did just that.



J. W Pitchley, AKA TongueMan, AKA James Pitchford, AKA Jimmy Pytches said his goodbye to Lou Azoff in front of the Hampstead Police Station, and he knew that this was a final one. Azoff was cheesed off about the Jimmy Pytches revelation, more cheesed off than he'd been by the James Pitchford revelation, and despite the fact that he'd been declared blameless of the death of both children first as Pytches and then as Pitchford, that wasn't “the issue,” as Azoff put it. He wasn't about to put himself in the position of getting sucker-punched again by something that his client was withholding from him, Azoff said. How'd he think it felt, sitting in there with a sodding copper who'd probably not even passed his bleeding O levels for Christ's sake, and having the rug pulled out without even knowing there was a rug in the room? This effing situation wasn't on, Jay. Or is it James? Or Jimmy? Or someone else, for that matter?