A Traitor to Memory

“Duty.” Frances began to refold the handkerchief carefully. She said nothing more.

Lynley said, “I think that's part of love, Frances. It's not the easy part. It's not that first rush of excitement: wanting and believing something's been written in the stars and aren't we the lucky ones because we've just looked heavenwards and got the message. It's the part that's the choice to stay the course.”

“I gave him no choice,” Frances said.

“Frances,” Helen murmured, and Lynley could tell from her voice just exactly how much her next words cost her, “believe me when I say that you don't have that power.”

Frances looked at Helen then, but of course could not see beyond the structure that Helen had built to live in the world she'd long ago created for herself: the fashionable haircut, the carefully tended and unblemished skin, the manicured hands, the perfect slim body weekly massaged, in the clothes designed for women who knew what elegance meant and how to use it. But as to seeing Helen herself, as to knowing her as the woman who'd once taken the quickest route out of the life of a man she'd dearly loved because she could not cope with staying a course that had altered too radically for her resources and her liking … Frances Webberly did not know that Helen and thus could not know that no one understood better than Helen that one person's condition—mental, spiritual, psychological, social, emotional, physical, or any combination thereof—could never really control the choices another person made.

Lynley said, “You need to know this, Frances. Malcolm didn't throw himself into traffic. Eric Leach phoned him to tell him about Eugenie Davies, yes, and I expect you read about her death in the paper.”

“He was distraught. I thought he'd forgotten about her and then I knew he hadn't. All these years.”

“Not forgotten her, true,” Lynley said, “but not for the reasons you think. Frances, we don't forget. We can't forget. We don't walk away untouched when we hand our documents to the CPS. It doesn't work that way. But the fact of our remembering is just that: because that's what the mind does. It just remembers. And if we're lucky, the remembering doesn't turn into nightmares. But that's the best we can hope for. That's part of the job.”

Lynley knew he was walking a fine line between truth and falsehood. He knew that whatever Webberly had experienced in his affair with Eugenie Davies and in the years that had followed that affair probably went far beyond mere memory. But that couldn't be allowed to matter at the moment. All that mattered was that the man's wife understand one part of the last forty-eight hours. So he repeated that part for her. “Frances, he didn't throw himself into the traffic. He was hit by a car. He was hit deliberately. Someone tried to kill him. And within the next few hours or days, we're going to know if that someone succeeded, because he may well die. He's had a serious heart attack as well. You've been told that, haven't you?”

A sound escaped her. It was something between the excruciating groan of a woman giving birth and the fearful moan of an abandoned child. “I don't want Malcolm to die,” she said. “I'm so afraid.”

“You're not alone in that,” Lynley replied.



The fact that she had an appointment at a women's shelter was what kept Yasmin Edwards steady between the time she phoned the pager number on Constable Nkata's card and the time she was able to meet him at the shop. He'd said he'd have to drive down from Hampstead to see her, so he couldn't swear what time he'd get there but he would come as soon as possible, madam, and in the meantime if she began to worry that he wasn't coming at all or he'd forgotten or had got waylaid in some way, she could ring his pager again and he'd let her know where he was on the route, if that would suit her. She'd said she could come to him or meet him somewhere. She said, in fact, she'd prefer it that way. He'd said no, it was best that he come to her.

She'd nearly changed her mind then. But she thought about Number Fifty-five, about Katja's mouth closing over hers, about what it meant that Katja could still slide down and down and down to love her. And she said, “Right. I'll be at the shop, then.”

In the meantime, she kept her appointment at the shelter in Camberwell. Three sisters in their thirties, an Asian lady, and an old bag married for forty-six years were the residents. Among them were shared countless bruises along with two black eyes, four split lips, a stitched-up cheek, a broken wrist, one dislocated shoulder, and a pierced eardrum. They were like beaten dogs recently let off the chain: cowering and undecided between flight and attack.