A Traitor to Memory

“Possession of the Boxter's how we prise information from our man,” Leach replied. “But there's no telling if—and where—this bloke Pitchley might have himself another car stowed away. And we'd be wise not to forget that.”


The meeting concluded, Leach met with Lynley and Havers privately in his office. As their superior officer of record, he gave Lynley and Havers instructions in a manner that suggested more than mere homicide—if that were not already enough—was involved in the case. But what that more was, he didn't mention. He merely handed over Eugenie Davies' address in Henley-on-Thames, telling them that the house was their starting point. He assumed, he told them pointedly, that they had enough experience between them to know what to do with what they found there.

“What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Barbara asked now as they swung into Bell Street in Henley-on-Thames, where children were taking their morning exercise in a school yard. “And why've we been given the house while the rest of that lot are beating the pavement from West Hampstead to the river? I don't get it.”

“Webberly wants us involved. Hillier's given his blessing.”

“And that's reason enough to do some serious tip-toeing, 'f you ask me.”

Lynley didn't disagree. Hillier had no love for either one of them. And Webberly's state of mind in his study on the previous evening had suggested a few things but declared nothing. He said, “I expect we'll sort things out soon enough, Havers. What's the address again?”

“Sixty-five Friday Street,” she said, and with a glance at their street map, “Take a left here, sir.”

Sixty-five turned out to be a dwelling seven buildings up from the River Thames on a pleasant street that mixed residences with a veterinarian's surgery, a bookshop, a dental clinic, and the Royal Marine Reserve. It was the smallest house that Lynley had ever seen—bar his own companion constable's tiny dwelling in London that often struck him as fit for Bilbo Baggins and no one else. It was painted pink and it consisted of two floors and a possible attic if the microscopic dormer window on the roof was any indication. Appropriately it bore an enamel plaque which named it Doll Cottage.

Lynley parked a short distance away from it, across the street from the bookshop. He fished the dead woman's set of keys from his pocket while Havers took the opportunity to light up and fortify her bloodstream with nicotine. “When are you going to drop that loathsome habit?” he asked her as he checked the front of the house for an alarm system and put the key in the lock.

Havers inhaled deeply and offered him her most maddening smile of tobacco-induced pleasure. “Listen to him,” she said to the sky. “There may be something more obnoxious than a reformed smoker, but I don't know what it is. Child pornographer come to Jesus on the day of his arrest? Tory with a social conscience perhaps? Hmm. No. They don't quite match up.”

Lynley chuckled. “Put it out in the street, Constable.”

“I wouldn't even dwell on another option.” She flicked the cigarette over her shoulder, after taking another three hits.

Lynley opened the door, which admitted them into a sitting room. This looked about as large as a shopping trolley, and it was furnished with near monastic simplicity and with a taste that veered towards Oxfam rejects.

“And I thought I 'd achieved drab-with-a-vengeance,” Havers remarked.

It wasn't an inappropriate description, Lynley thought. The furniture was of post-war vintage, crafted at a period of time when rebuilding a capital devastated by bombing had taken precedence over interior design. A threadbare grey sofa accompanied by a matching armchair of an equally disenchanting hue sat against one wall. They formed a little seating area round a blond-wood coffee table spread with magazines and two similar end tables, both of which someone had attempted to refinish unsuccessfully. Three lamps in the room all sported tasseled shades, two of them askew and the third bearing a large burn that could have been turned to the wall but wasn't. Nothing save a single print above the sofa, featuring an unattractive Victorian-era child with her arms round a rabbit, decorated the walls. On either side of a mouse-hole fireplace, fitted shelves held books, but they were spottily placed here and there, and it seemed as if something had stood among them but had been removed.

“Bloody poverty-stricken,” Havers said in assessment. She was, Lynley saw, fingering through the magazines on the coffee table, her hands—latex gloved—fanning the publications out so even Lynley could see from his place by the bookshelves that they all bore pictorial covers that placed them years out of date.

Havers moved into the kitchen that lay just beyond the sitting room as Lynley turned to look at the bookshelves. She called out, “One mod con in here. She's got an answer machine, Inspector. Light's blinking.”

“Play it,” Lynley said.