A Traitor to Memory

“To Pitchley-Pitchford-Pytches,” Lynley said. “The end is always the beginning, isn't it?” He found the reference in his notes that supplied a single piece of information that had been there all along, just waiting for the correct interpretation. He said, “Wait. When I brought up the idea of another man, Havers, Davies went straight to him. By name, in fact. Without a doubt in his mind. I've got him naming Pytches right here in my notes.”


“Pytches?” Havers asked. “No. It's not Pytches, Inspector. That can't—”

Lynley's mobile rang. He grabbed it from the table top and held up a finger to stop Havers from continuing. She was itching to do so, however. She'd stubbed out her cigarette impatiently, saying, “What day did you talk to Davies, Inspector?”

Lynley waved her off, clicked on his mobile, said, “Lynley,” and turned away from Havers' smoke.

His caller was DCI Leach. “We've got another victim,” he announced.



Winston Nkata read the sign—HM Prison Holloway—and reflected on the fact that had his life taken a slightly different turn, had his mum not fainted dead away at the sight of her son in a casualty ward with thirty-four stitches closing an ugly slash on his face, he might have ended up in such a place. Not in this place, naturally, which imprisoned only women, but in a place just like it. The Scrubs, perhaps, or Dartmoor or the Ville. Doing time inside because what he'd not been able to manage was doing life outside.

But his mum had fainted. She had murmured, “Oh, Jewel,” and had slid to the floor like her legs'd turned to jelly. And the sight of her there with her turban askew—so that he could see what he'd never noticed before, that her hair was actually going grey—made him finally accept her not as the indomitable force he thought she was but instead as a real woman for once, a woman who loved and relied on him to make her proud that she'd given birth. And that had been that.

But had the moment not occurred, had his dad come to fetch him instead, flinging him into the back seat of the car with a demonstration of the full measure of the disgust he deserved, the outcome might have been quite different. He might have felt the need to prove he didn't care that he'd become the recipient of his father's displeasure, and he might have felt the need to prove it by upping the stakes in the Brixton Warriors' longtime battle with the smaller upstart Longborough Bloods to secure a patch of ground called Windmill Gardens and make it part of their turf. But the moment had happened, and his life course had altered, bringing him to where he was now: staring at the windowless brick bulk of Holloway Prison inside which Katja Wolff had met both Yasmin Edwards and Noreen McKay.

He'd parked across the street from the prison, in front of a pub with boarded-up windows that looked like something straight out of Belfast. He'd eaten an orange, studied the prison entrance, and meditated on what everything meant. Particularly, he meditated on what it meant that the German woman was living with Yasmin Edwards but messing around with someone else, just as he'd suspected when he'd seen those shadows merging on the curtains in the window of Number Fifty-five Galveston Road.

His orange consumed, he ducked across the street when the heavy traffic on Parkhurst Road was halted at the traffic lights. He approached reception and dug out his warrant card, presenting it to the officer behind the desk. She said, “Is Miss McKay expecting you?”

He said, “Official business. She won't be surprised to know I'm here.”

The receptionist said she would phone, if Constable Nkata wanted to have a seat. It was late in the day, and whether Miss McKay would be able to see him …

“Oh, I 'xpect she'll be able to see me,” Nkata said.

He didn't sit but rather walked to the window, where he looked out on more of the vast brick walls. As he watched the traffic passing by on the street, a guard gate raised to accommodate a prison van, no doubt returning an inmate at the end of a day's trial at the Old Bailey. This would have been how Katja Wolff had come and gone during those long-ago days of her own trial. She'd have been accompanied daily by a prison officer, who would remain in court with her, right inside the dock. That officer would have ferried her to and from her cell beneath the courtroom, made her tea, escorted her to lunch, and seen her back to Holloway for the night. An officer and an inmate alone, during the most difficult period of that inmate's life.

“Constable Nkata?”

Nkata swung round to see the receptionist holding a telephone receiver out to him. He took it from her, said his name, and heard a woman say in response, “There's a pub across the street. On the corner of Hillmarton Road. I can't see you in here, but if you wait in the pub, I'll join you in quarter of an hour.”

He said, “Make it five minutes and I'm on my way without hanging about chatting to anyone.”

She exhaled loudly, said, “Five minutes, then,” and slammed down the phone at her end.