A Traitor to Memory

He paused at a coffee machine and plugged in a few coins. A viscous liquid drizzled pathetically into a plastic cup. Leach said, “You?” and held the cup up in offer. Havers accepted, although she looked as if she regretted the decision once she tasted the brew; Lynley chose the course of wisdom and demurred. Leach purchased another cup for himself and took them into his office, where he used his elbow to shoot the door home. His phone was ringing, and he barked “Leach” into it as he set down his coffee and sank into his desk chair, nodding Lynley and Havers to chairs of their own. “Hello, love,” he said to his caller, his face brightening. “Nope … Nope … She's what?” With a glance at the other detectives, “Esmé, I can't actually talk at the moment. But let me say this: No one has said anything at all about getting remarried, okay? … Yes. Right. We'll speak later, love.” He dropped the receiver back into place, saying, “Kids. Divorce. It's a real nightmare.”


Lynley and Havers made noises of sympathy. Leach slurped coffee and dismissed the phone call. He said, “Our bloke Pitchley came by for a little chat this morning, solicitor in tow” and he brought them up to date on what the man from Crediton Hill had revealed: that he not only had recognised the name of the hit-and-run victim, that he not only had once known the hit-and-run victim, but that he'd also lived in the very same house with the hit-and-run victim at the time of the murder of said victim's daughter. “He's changed his name from Pitchford to Pitchley for reasons he's not talking about,” Leach concluded. “I like to think I would have twigged his identity eventually, but it's been twenty years since I last saw the bloke and a hell of a lot of fish have swum under the bridge in the meantime.”

“Not surprising,” Lynley said.

“Now that I know who he is, though, I've got to tell you he smells sweet to me for this business, Boxter or not. He's got something the size of a T-Rex marching through his conscience. I can feel it.”

“Was he a suspect in the child's death?” Lynley asked. Havers, he noted, had flipped over a new page in her notebook and was jotting the information down on a sheet that looked stained with brown sauce.

“No one was a suspect at first. Until all the reports came in, it looked like a case of negligence. You know what I mean: A flaming idiot goes to take a phone call while the toddler's in the bath. The kid tries to reach for a rubber ducky. She slips, knocks herself on the head, and the rest is academic. Unfortunate and tragic, but it happens.” Leach slurped more coffee and picked up a document from his desk, which he used to gesture with. “But when the reports came in on the child's body, there were bruises and fractures no one could explain, so everyone became a suspect. It all came down to the nanny dead quick. And she was a real piece of work, she was. I might've forgotten Pitchford's face, but as to that German cow … There's not a chance in hell I'd ever forget her. Cold as a cod, that woman was. Gave us one interview—one interview, mind you, about a toddler that died in her care—and she never said another word. Not to CID, not to her solicitor, not to her barrister. Not to anyone. Took her right to silence straight to Holloway. Never shed a tear either. But then, what else could you expect from a Kraut? Family were mad to engage her in the first place.”

From the corner of his eye, Lynley saw Havers tap her biro against the paper she was writing on. He glanced her way to see her eyes had narrowed at Leach. She wasn't a woman who put up with bigotry in any of its forms—from xenophobia to misogyny—and he could tell she was about to make a comment that wouldn't endear her to the detective chief inspector. He interceded, saying, “The German girl's origins worked against her, then.”

“Her flaming Kraut personality worked against her.”

“‘We will fight them on the beaches,’” Havers murmured.

Lynley shot her a look. She shot him one back.

Leach either didn't hear or chose to ignore Havers, for which Lynley was grateful. The last thing they needed was a division among them, with lines being drawn on the issue of political correctness.

The DCI leaned back in his chair and said, “The diary and phone messages are all you came up with?”

“So far,” Lynley answered. “There was also a card from a woman called Lynn, but that doesn't appear to be germane at the moment. Her child died and Mrs. Davies went to the funeral, apparently.”

“There was no other correspondence?” Leach asked. “Letters, bills, the like?”

Lynley said, “No. There was no other correspondence,” and he didn't look Havers' way. “She had a sea chest filled with materials relating to her son, though. Newspapers, magazines, concert programmes. Major Wiley said that Gideon and Mrs. Davies were estranged, but from the look of her collection, I'd guess it wasn't Mrs. Davies who wanted the estrangement.”

“The son?” Leach asked.

“Or the father.”

“We're back to the argument in the car park, then.”

“We could be. Yes.”

Leach swallowed the rest of his drink and crushed the plastic cup. He said, “But it's odd, don't you think, to have found so little information about her in the woman's own home?”

“It was a fairly monastic environment, sir.”

Leach studied Lynley. Lynley studied Leach. Barbara Havers scribbled furiously into her notebook. A moment passed during which no one admitted to anything. Lynley waited for the DCI to give him the information he wanted. Leach didn't do it. He merely said, “Have at Davies, then. He shouldn't be tough to track down.”