A Traitor to Memory

“Which you yourself did. With Katja. She 'as doing twenty years—”

“She didn't do all her time at Holloway. Virtually no one does. But I've been here for twenty-four years. So I expect your assumption—whatever it is—has a number of holes in it.”

“She was here on remand, she was here for the trial, she did some time here. And when she went off—to Durham, was it?—she'd be able to list her visitors, wouldn't she? And whose name d'you think I'd find in her records as the one to admit—proba'ly the only one to admit aside from her brief—for her visits? And she'd be back in Holloway to do some of her time, I expect. Yeah. I expect that could've been fixed up easy enough from within. What's your job, Miss McKay?”

“Deputy warden,” she said. “I imagine you know that.”

“Deputy warden with a taste for the ladies. You always been bent?”

“That's none of your business.”

Nkata slapped his hand on the table and leaned towards the woman. “It's all my business,” he told her. “Now, you want me to troll through Katja's records, find all the prisons she 'as locked up in, get all the visitors lists she filled out, see your name topping them, and put the thumbscrews to you? I c'n do that, Miss McKay, but I don't like to. It wastes my time.”

She lowered her gaze to her drink, turning the glass slowly on the mat beneath it. The pub door opened, letting in another gust of chill evening air and the smell of exhaust fumes from Parkhurst Road, and two men in the uniform of prison workers walked inside. They fixed on Noreen, then on Nkata, then back to Noreen. One smiled and made a low comment. Noreen looked up and saw them.

She breathed an oath and said, “I've got to get out of here,” beginning to rise.

Nkata closed his hand over her wrist. “Not without giving me something,” he told her. “Else I'm going to have to look through her records, Miss McKay. And 'f your name's there, I 'xpect you'll have some real 'xplaining to do to your guv.”

“Do you threaten people often?”

“Not a threat. Just a simple fact. Now, sit back down and 'tend to your drink.” He nodded towards her colleagues. “I 'xpect I'm doing your reputation some good.”

Her face flared with red. “You completely despicable—”

“Chill,” he said. “Let's talk about Katja. She gave me the go-ahead to talk to you, by the way.”

“I don't believe—”

“Phone her.”

“She—”

“She's a suspect in a hit-and-run murder. And a suspect in a second hit-and-run as well. 'F you can clear her name, you better set to it. She's 'bout two breaths away from getting arrested. And you think we'll be able to keep that from the press? Notorious baby killer ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ again? Not likely, Miss McKay. Her whole life's about to go under the microscope. And I 'xpect you know what that means.”

“I can't clear her name,” Noreen McKay said, her fingers tightening on her gin and tonic. “That's just it, don't you see? I can't clear her name.”





23





“WADDINGTON,” DCI LEACH informed them when Lynley and Havers joined him in the incident room. He was all exultation: his face brighter than it had been in days and his step lighter as he dashed across the room to scrawl Kathleen Waddington at the top of one of the china boards.

“Where was she hit?” Lynley asked.

“Maida Vale. And it's the same m.o. Quiet neighbourhood. Pedestrian alone. Night. Black car. Smash.”

“Last night?” Barbara Havers asked. “But that would mean—”

“No, no. This was ten days ago.”

“Could be a coincidence,” Lynley said.

“Not bloody likely. She's a player from before.” Leach went on to explain precisely who Kathleen Waddington was: a sex therapist who'd left her clinic on the night in question after ten o'clock. She'd been hit on the street and left with a broken hip and a dislocated shoulder. When she was interviewed by the police, she'd said the car that hit her was big, “like a gangster car,” that it moved fast, that it was dark, possibly black. Leach said, “I went through my notes from the other case, the baby drowning. Waddington was the woman who broke Katja Wolff 's story about being out of the bathroom for a minute or less on the night that Sonia Davies drowned. The woman Wolff claimed phoned her. Without Waddington, it still might have gone down to negligence and a few years in prison. With her showing Wolff up to be a liar … It was another nail in the coffin. We need to bring Wolff in. Pass that word to Nkata. Let him have the glory. He's been working her hard.”

“What about the car?” Lynley asked.

“That'll come in due course. You can't tell me she spent two decades inside without having formed more than one association she could depend on when she got out.”