A Traitor to Memory

“Perhaps he did say that,” Lynley pointed out. “And perhaps she said, ‘I've not got a choice, Richard. It's been years and it's time …’”


“For what?” Havers asked. “A family reunion? An explanation of why she ran off in the first place? An announcement that she was going to hook up with Major Wiley? What?”

“Something,” Lynley said. “Something that we may never find out.”

“Which toasts our muffins good and proper,” Havers noted. “And doesn't go very far towards putting Richard Davies in the nick. If he's our man. And we've got sod all for evidence of that. He has an alibi, Inspector. Hasn't he?”

“Asleep. With Jill Foster. Who was, herself, most likely asleep. So he could have gone and returned without her knowledge, Havers, using her car and then bringing it back.”

“We're at the car again.”

“It's the only thing we have.”

“Right. Well. The CPS aren't likely to do backflips over that, Inspector. Access to the car's not exactly hard evidence.”

“Access isn't,” Lynley agreed. “But it's not access alone that I'm depending on.”





GIDEON





20 November





I saw Dad before he looked up and saw me. He was coming along the pavement in Chalcot Square, and I could tell from his posture that he was brooding. I felt some concern but no alarm.

Then something odd happened. Raphael appeared at the far end of the garden in the centre of the square. He must have called out to Dad, because Dad hesitated on the pavement, turned, and then waited for him a few doors away from my own house. As I watched from the music room window, they exchanged a few words, Dad doing the talking. As he spoke, Raphael staggered back two steps, his face crumpling the way a man's face crumples when he's received a punch to the gut. Dad continued to talk. Raphael turned back towards the garden. Dad watched as Raphael walked back through the gates to where two wooden benches face each other. He sat. No, he dropped, all of his weight falling in a mass that was merely bones and flesh, reaction incarnate.

I should have known then. But I did not.

Dad walked on, at which point he looked up and saw me watching from the window. He raised a hand but didn't wait for me to respond. In a moment, he disappeared beneath me and I heard the sound of his key in the lock of my front door. When he came into the music room, he removed his coat and laid it deliberately along the back of a chair.

“What's Raphael doing?” I asked him. “Has something happened?”





He looked at me, and I could see that his face was awash with sorrow. “I've some news,” he told me, “some very bad news.”





“What?” I felt fear lap against my skin.

“There's no easy way to tell you,” he said.

“Then tell me.”





“Your mother's dead, son.”





“But you said she's been phoning you. About what happened at Wigmore Hall. She can't be—”





“She was killed last night, Gideon. She was hit by a car in West Hampstead. The police rang me this morning.” He cleared his throat and squeezed his temples as if to contain an emotion there. “They asked if I would try to identify her body. I looked. I couldn't tell for certain…. It's been years since I saw her….” He made an aimless gesture. “I'm so sorry, son.”





“But she can't be … If you didn't recognise her, perhaps it's not—”





“The woman was carrying your mother's identification. Driving licence, credit cards, chequebook. What are the possibilities that someone else would have had all of Eugenie's identification?”





“So you said it was her? You said it was my mother?”





“I said I didn't know, that I couldn't be sure. I gave them the name of her dentist … the man she used to see when we were still together. They'll be able to check that way. And there are fingerprints, I suppose.”





“Did you ring her?” I asked. “Did she know I wanted to … Was she willing …?” But what was the point of asking, the point of knowing? What did it matter if she was dead?

“I left a message for her, son. She hadn't got back to me yet.”





“That's it, then.”





Dad's head had been dropped forward, but he raised it then. “That's what?” he asked.

“There's no one to tell me.”





“I've told you.”





“No.”





“Gideon, for God's sake …”





“You've told me what you think will make me believe that I'm not at fault. But you'd say anything to get me back on the violin.”





“Gideon, please.”