A Traitor to Memory

“How can that be?”


“First, because we have no scalp attached to either of them. Second—and here's the trickier part—because there's a vast variation in features even within hairs that come from one individual. So we could take dozens of samples of your victim's hair and still not be able to match them to the two hairs found on her body. And all the time they could still be hers. Because of the possible variations. Do you see what I mean?”

“But what about DNA typing? What's the point of combing for hairs in the first place if we can't use them—”

“It's not that we can't use them,” Dr. Knowles interrupted. “We can and we will. But even then, what we'll learn—and this isn't done overnight, which I'm sure you're already aware of—is whether the hairs did come from your victim. Which will help you, of course. But if the hairs didn't come from her, you'll be helped only as far as knowing that someone was close enough to her body either before or after her death to have left a hair or two on it.”

“What about two people being close enough to her body to leave a hair? Since one hair was grey and one was brown?”

“That could have happened. But even then, you see, we can't discount the possibility that prior to her death she embraced someone who quite innocently left a hair behind in the process. And even if we have the DNA typing in front of us, to prove that she couldn't have embraced anyone who is currently in her life, what do we do with that typing, Inspector, without someone on the other end giving us a sample to match it to?”

God. Yes. That was the problem. That would always be the blasted problem. Lynley thanked Dr. Knowles and rang off, flinging the report to one side. They needed a break.

He read through the notes of his interviews again: what Wiley had said, what Staines had said, what Davies, Robson, and the younger Davies had said. There had to be something he was overlooking. But he couldn't dig it out of what he had written.

All right, he thought. Time to try another tack.

He left the station and made the quick drive to West Hampstead. He found Crediton Hill a short distance from Finchley Road, and he parked at the top end, got out, and began to pace. The street was lined with cars, and it possessed that uninhabited air of a place where all the occupants leave for work each morning, not to return till night.

Chalk marks on the tarmac indicated the spot where Eugenie Davies' body had lain, and Lynley stood upon these and gazed down the street in the direction the deadly vehicle would have come. She'd been hit and then driven over several times, which seemed to indicate that she'd either not been thrown as Webberly had or that she'd been thrown directly in front of the car, making the act of driving back and forth over her an easy piece of business. Then she'd been dragged to one side, her body half shoved beneath a Vauxhall.

But why? Why would her killer risk being seen? Why not just drive off and leave her lying in the middle of the road? Of course, putting her to one side might have served the purpose of keeping her from being noticed at once in the dark and the rain, thereby assuring she'd be dead when someone finally did find her. But it was such a risk to get out of the car at all. Unless the killer had a reason for doing so …

Such as living in the neighbourhood? Yes. It was possible.

But was anything else?

Lynley went onto the pavement, pacing along and thinking about every variation he could come up with on the theme of killer-victim-motive, killer-moving-the-broken-body, and killer-getting-out-of-the-car. All he could come up with was her handbag: something she'd carried inside it, something the killer had wanted, had known she'd have with her, had needed to obtain.

But the bag had been found beneath another car on the street, in a spot where it was unlikely that a killer—working in haste and in the darkness—would have seen it. And its contents were in order as far as anyone could tell. Unless, of course, the killer had removed a single item—like a letter, perhaps?—and then thrown the bag beneath the car, where it ultimately had been found.