A Traitor to Memory

It wasn't someone else. He wasn't someone else. And even if Azoff hadn't said, “You'll get my final bill by special courier tomorrow,” he himself would have put the full stop to their legal dealings. No matter that he handled the labyrinth that was Azoff 's tricky financial position. He could find someone else in the City equally talented at moving Azoff 's money round faster than the Inland Revenue could track it.

So he said, “Right, Lou,” and he didn't bother to try to talk the solicitor out of quitting on him. He couldn't blame the poor sod, really. Who could expect someone to want to play defence on a team that wouldn't give directions to the pitch?

He watched Azoff wind his scarf round his neck and fling its end over his shoulder, like the denouement of a play that had already gone on far too long. The solicitor made his exit, and Pitchley sighed. He could have told Azoff that sacking him had not only already crossed his mind but had also planted itself there half way through the interview with DCI Leach, but he decided to let the solicitor have his moment. The drama of quitting on the streets of Hampstead was meagre compensation for having endured the ignominy of ignorance to which Pitchley's omission of certain facts had recently exposed him. But it was all that Pitchley had to offer at the moment, so he offered it and stood, head bowed, while Azoff railed and till Azoff did his bit with the scarf. “I'll get on to a bloke I know who'll see you right with your money,” he told the solicitor.

“You do just that,” Azoff said. He made no similar offer on his part: recommending another solicitor willing to take on a client who asked him to work in the dark. But then, Pitchley didn't expect that of him. Indeed, he'd given up expecting anything.

That hadn't always been the case, although if it couldn't be said that he'd had expectations years ago, it could be said that he'd possessed dreams. She'd told him hers in that breathless, confiding, cheerful whisper, after hours when they had their English lessons and their chats at the top of the house, one ear to the speaker from the baby's room so that if she stirred, if she cried, if she needed her Katja, her Katja would be there, fast as could be. She said, “There are these fashion-for-clothes schools, yes? For design of what to wear. Yes? You see? And you see how I make these fashion drawings, yes? This is where I study when the money is saved. Where I come from, James, clothing … Oh, I cannot say, but your colours, your colours … And see at this scarf I have bought. This is Oxfam, James. Someone gave it away!” And she would bring it out and whirl it like an eastern dancer, a length of worn silk with fringe coming loose but to her a fabric to be turned into a sash, a belt, a drawstring bag, a hat. Two such scarves and she had a blouse. Five and a motley skirt emerged. “This I am meant to do,” she would say, and her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed and the rest of her skin was velvet milk. All London wore black, but never Katja. Katja was a rainbow, a celebration of life.

And because of all that, he had dreams himself. Not plans as she had, not something spoken, but something held on to like a feather that will soil and be useless for flight if grasped too tightly or for too long.

He wouldn't move quickly, he'd told himself. They were both young. She had her schooling ahead of her and he wanted to establish himself in the City before taking on the sort of responsibilities that came with marriage. But when the time was right … Yes, she was the one. So completely different, so completely capable of becoming, so eager to learn, so willing—no, so desperate—to escape who she'd been in order to achieve who she believed she could become. She was, in effect, his female counterpart. She didn't know that yet and she never would if he had his way, but in the unlikely event that she discovered that fact, she was a woman who would understand. We all have our hot air balloons, he would tell her.

Had he loved her? he wondered. Or had he merely seen in her his best chance for a life where her foreign background would cast a useful shadow in which he could hide? He didn't know. He'd never got a chance to find out. And at a distance of two decades, he still didn't know how it might have worked out between the two of them. But what he did know without a single doubt was that at long last he'd had enough.

With the Boxter in his possession, he began the drive that he knew was a journey long in coming. It took him across London, first dropping down out of Hampstead and veering in the direction of Regent's Park, then wending his way eastward, ever eastward, to arrive in that Hades of postal codes: E3, where his nightmares had their roots.