A Traitor to Memory

They were in an interview room at the police station: J. W. Pitchley, his solicitor—a diminutive man called Jacob Azoff with nostril hairs like feather dusters and a large coffee stain decorating his tie—a police constable called Stanwood, and Leach himself, who was doing the questioning as he tossed back Lemsip like cider and wondered sourly how long it was going to take his immune system to catch up with the single life he was back to leading. One night on a pub crawl and he became a breeding ground for every virus known to man.

Pitchley's solicitor had rung not two hours prior to this meeting. His client wanted to make a statement to the police, Azoff had informed Leach briefly. And he wanted to be assured that this statement would be confidential, just between us boys, treated with kid gloves, and blessed with holy water. In other words, Pitchley didn't want the press to get hold of his name, and if there was a ghost of a chance that the press were going to be given his name … et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yawn.

“He's walked that route before,” Azoff had said in a tone that was portentous. “So if we can reach a preliminary agreement about the confidentiality of this conversation, Detective Chief Inspector Leach, I believe we have on our hands a man who deeply wishes to assist you with your enquiries.”

So Pitchley and his brief had shown up, had been ushered through the back door of the station like covert operatives, had been given the refreshment they requested—fresh orange juice and sparkling mineral water with ice and lime not lemon, thank you—and had ensconced themselves at the interview table where Leach had pressed the tape recorder's play button, reciting the day, the time, and the names of all individuals present.

Pitchley's story had so far not altered from what he had told them on the previous night although he'd become more detailed as to arrangements and places and relatively more specific as to names. Unfortunately, aside from the sobriquets adopted by his partners in amorous encounters at the Comfort Inn, he was unable to come up with the actual name of anyone who could confirm his story.

Thus, Leach asked reasonably, “Mr. Pitchley, how is it that you expect us to track down this woman? If she wasn't willing to give her name to the bloke who was poking her—”

“We don't use that term,” Pitchley said with some offence.

“—then how do you expect her to be forthcoming when the coppers want to track her down? Doesn't the withholding of her name suggest something to you?”

“We always—”

“Doesn't it suggest she might not wish to be tracked down in ways other than through the internet?”

“It's merely part of the game that we—”

“And if she doesn't wish to be tracked down, doesn't that suggest she's got someone hanging round—like a husband—who might not look kindly on a bloke—who's had a naked romp with his wife—showing up on the front steps with flowers and chocolates and the hope that she'll confirm his alibi?”

Pitchley's colour was growing high. But then, so was Leach's level of disbelief. With much hemming and hawing, the man had confessed to being an on-line Casanova who regularly seduced women of advancing years, none of whom gave him their names or ever knew his. Pitchley claimed that he couldn't remember the number of women he'd had assignations with since the birth of e-mail and chat rooms, and he certainly couldn't remember all their cybernames, but he could swear on a stack of eighty-five religious books of DCI Leach's choice that he observed the same procedure with all of them once an agreement to meet had been reached: drinks and dinner in the Valley of Kings in South Kensington followed by several hours of athletically creative sexual intercourse at the Comfort Inn on Cromwell Road.

“So you'll be remembered at either the restaurant or the hotel?” Leach asked the man.

That might be, Pitchley was sad to admit, a bit of a problem. The waiters at the Valley of Kings were foreigners, weren't they? The night receptionist at the Comfort Inn was a foreigner as well. And foreigners often had a spot of difficulty remembering an English face, didn't they? Because foreigners—

“Two-thirds of bloody London are foreigners,” Leach cut in. “If you can't come up with something more solid than what you've come up with so far, Mr. Pitchley, we're wasting our time.”

“Might I remind you, DCI Leach, that Mr. Pitchley's visit to the station is voluntary,” Jake Azoff pointed out at this juncture. His had been the orange juice, and Leach noticed that a particle of pulp clung to his moustache like a punk-dyed bird dropping. “Perhaps a more marked degree of civility would serve to encourage a deeper recollection on his part.”

“I assume that Mr. Pitchley came to the station because he had something more to tell me than he told me last night,” Leach retorted. “So far, we're getting a variation on a theme here, and all it's doing is producing more quicksand in which your boy is already up to his chest.”

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