A Traitor to Memory

Nkata said nothing. He blocked some of the wind with his back as he positioned himself before the deputy warden.

“So I just watched her. She was in jeopardy, of course, once she was off the medical unit. There's a form of honour among them, and the worst in their eyes is the killer of babies, so she wasn't safe unless she was with other Schedule One offenders. But she didn't care that she wasn't safe, and that fascinated me. I thought at first it was because she saw her life as over, and I wanted to talk to her about that. I called it my duty, and since I was in charge of the Samaritans at that point—”

“Samaritans?” Nkata asked.

“We have a programme of visits for them here at the prison. If a prisoner wishes to participate, she tells the staff member in charge.”

“Katja wanted to participate?”

“No. Never. But I used that as an excuse to talk to her.” She examined Nkata's face and seemed to read something into his expression, because she went on with, “I am good at my job. We've got twelve-step programmes now. We've got an increase in visits. We've got better rehabilitation and easier means for families to see mothers who're doing time. I am good at my job.” She looked away from him, into the street, where the evening traffic was pouring out towards the northern suburbs. She said, “She didn't want any of it, and I couldn't understand why. She'd fought deportation to Germany, and I couldn't understand why. She talked to no one unless spoken to first. But all the time she watched. And so she eventually saw me watching her. When I was assigned to her wing—this is later—we started talking. She went first, which surprised me. She said, ‘Why do you watch me?’ I remember that. And what followed. I remember that also.”

“She's holding all the cards, Miss McKay,” Nkata noted.

“This isn't about blackmail, Constable. Katja could destroy me, but I know she won't.”

“Why?”

“There are things you just know.”

“We're talking 'bout a lag.”

“We're talking about Katja.” The deputy warden pushed away from the streetlamp and approached the traffic lights that would allow her to cross the road and return to the prison. Nkata walked beside her. She said, “I knew what I was from an early age. I expect my parents knew as well when I played dressing up and dressed like a soldier, a pirate, a fireman. But never like a princess or a nurse or a mum. And that's not normal, is it, and when at last you're fifteen, all you want is what's normal. So I tried it: short skirts, high heels, low necklines, the whole bit. I went after men and I shagged every boy I could get my hands on. Then one day in the paper I saw an ad for women looking for women and I phoned a number. For a joke, I told myself. Just for a lark. We met at a health club and had a swim and went out for coffee and then went to her place. She was twenty-four. I was nineteen. We were together five years, till I went into the prison service. And then … I couldn't live that life. It felt like too much of a risk. And then my sister got Hodgkin's and I got her children and for a long time that was enough.”

“Till Katja.”

“I've had scores of bed mates in the form of men, but only two lovers, both of them women. Katja's one of them.”

“For how long?”

“Seventeen years. Off and on.”

“You mean to go at it like this forever?”

“With Yasmin in the middle, d'you mean?” She glanced at Nkata, seeming to try to read an answer in his silence. “If it can be said that we choose where we love, then I chose Katja for two reasons. She never spoke about what put her in prison, so I knew she could hold her tongue about me. And she had an enormous secret she was keeping, which I thought at the time was a lover outside prison. I'll be safe getting involved, I thought. When she leaves, she'll go to her or to him, and I'll have had the chance to get this out of my system so I can live the rest of my life celibate but still knowing I once had something….” The traffic lights on Parkhurst Road changed, and the walking figure altered along with it from red to green. Noreen stepped off the pavement, but looked back over her shoulder as she made a final comment. “It's been seventeen years, Constable. She's the only prisoner I ever touched … that way. She's the only woman I've ever loved … this way.”

“Why?” he asked as she began to cross the street.

“Because she's safe,” Noreen McKay said in parting. “And because she's strong. No one can break Katja Wolff.”



“Bloody hell. This is just brilliant,” Barbara Havers muttered. She was beginning to feel the peril of her own situation: Two months demoted for insubordination and assault on a superior officer, she couldn't afford yet another pot hole on the ill-paved road of her career. “If Leach tells Hillier about that computer, we're done for, Inspector. You know that, don't you?”