A Traitor to Memory

Make you, make you, make you. Too many people had made her already. Yasmin clutched her hands to her head.

“Yasmin, I did three evil things in my life. I made Hannes take me over the wall by threatening to tell the authorities.”

“That's ancient history.”

“It's more than that. Listen. That was my first evil, what I did to Hannes. But I also did not speak up when I once should have spoken. That's the second thing. And then, once—only once, Yas, but once was enough—I listened when I should have covered my ears. And I paid for all of it. Twenty years I paid. Because I was lied to. And now others must pay. That's what I have been setting about.”

“No! I won't hear!” In panic, Yasmin dashed to the bedroom, where she'd packed up Katja's small wardrobe of bright secondhand clothes—all those clothes that defined who Katja was, a woman who would never wear black in a city where black was everywhere—into a duffel bag that she'd bought for that purpose, laying out her own money as a way of paying for every mistake she'd made in trust. She didn't want to hear, but more than that, she knew she couldn't afford to hear. Hearing what Katja had to say put her at risk, put her future with Daniel at risk, and she wouldn't do that.

She grabbed the duffel bag and slung it out into the sitting room. She followed it with the Sainsbury bag of dirty laundry and then the single cardboard box that contained the toiletries and other supplies Katja had brought with her when she'd first moved into the flat. She cried out, “I told him, Katja. He knows. You got that? I told him. I told.”

She said, “Who?”

“You know who. Him.” Yasmin drew her fingers down her cheek to indicate the scar that marked the black detective's face. “You weren't here watching the telly, and he knows.”

“But he is … they are … all of them … Yas, you know they are your enemy. What they did to you when you defended yourself against Roger … What they put you through? How could you trust—”

“That's what you were depending on, wasn't it? Old Yas won't ever trust a copper, no matter what he says, no matter what I do. So I'll just set myself up with good old Yas, and she'll protect me when they come calling. She'll follow my lead, just like she did inside. But that's over, Katja. Whatever it was, and I don't much care. It's over.”

Katja looked down at the bags. She said quietly, “We are so close to ending things after all these—”

Yasmin slammed the bedroom door to cut off her words and to cut herself off from further danger. And then, finally, she began to weep. Over her tears, she could hear the sound of Katja gathering up her belongings. When the flat door opened and closed a moment later, Yasmin Edwards knew her lover was gone.



“So it's not about the kid,” Havers said to Lynley concluding the update of her second visit to the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. “He's called Jeremy Watts, by the way. The nun's always known where he was; Katja Wolff's always known that she's known. She's gone twenty years without asking about him. She's gone twenty years without talking to Sister Cecilia at all. So it's not about the kid.”

“There's something not natural in that,” Lynley said reflectively. “There's plenty not natural in all of her,” Havers replied. “In all of them. I mean, what's going on with Richard Davies, Inspector? Okay, all right. Virginia was retarded. He was cut up about that. Who wouldn't be? But never even to see her again … and to let his dad dictate … And why the hell were he and Lynn living with his dad anyway? Sure, those were impressive digs in Kensington and maybe Richard's a bloke who likes to make an impression. And p'rhaps Mum and Dad might've lost the ancestral pile or something if Richard didn't contribute by living there and paying through the nose or whatever, but still …”

“The relationship between fathers and sons is always complicated,” Lynley said.

“More than mothers and daughters?” “Indeed. Because so much more goes unspoken.” They were in a café on Hampstead High Street, not far from the station on Downshire Hill. They'd rendezvoused there by prior arrangement, Havers phoning Lynley on his mobile as he was setting out from Stamford Brook. He'd told her about Webberly's heart attack, and she'd cursed fervently and asked what she could do. His answer had been what Randie's had been when she'd phoned the house from the hospital to share an update with her mother not long before Lynley left: They could do nothing but pray; the doctors were watching him.

She'd said, “What the hell does ‘watching him’ mean?”