A Traitor to Memory (63 page)

The constable said, “Could I have a word, Missus Edwards?”

“You had a word last night. More 'an one, as I recall. And who are you, anyway?”

“Metropolitan police.”

“I mean your name. I don't know your name.”

He told her. She found that she was irritated by it. A surname that spoke of his roots was fine. But that Christian name—Winston—showed such a
groveling
wish to be English. It was worse than Colin or Nigel or Giles. What were his parents thinking of, naming him Winston like he was going to be a politician or something? Stupid, that was. Stupid, he was.

She said, “I'm working, as I expect you c'n see. I got another appointment coming in in”—she made a pretence of looking at her diary, which was, thankfully, out of his range of vision—“ten minutes. What d'you want, then? Make it quick.”

He was big, she noticed. He'd looked big last night, both in the lift and in the flat. But somehow he looked even bigger today in the shop, perhaps because she was alone with him, with no Daniel there to offer a distraction. He seemed to fill the place, all broad shoulders and long-fingered hands and a face that looked friendly—pretended to be friendly because that's what they all did—even with that scar on his cheek.

“Like I said, a word, Missus Edwards.” His voice was scrupulously polite. He kept his distance, the shop counter between them. But
instead of going on with the word he wanted, he said, “Real nice that a new business opened up on a street like this. Always sad, you ask me, to see shop fronts boarded up. It's good to have a business go in, 'stead of some bloke buying up all the properties, bringing in a demolition crew, and putting up a Tesco's or something like.”

She gave a mild snort. “Rent's cheap when you're willing to set up shop in a rubbish tip,” she said, as if it meant nothing to her that she'd managed to actually achieve something she'd only dreamed of during her years in prison.

Nkata half-smiled. “I 'xpect that's the truth. But the neighbours must feel it a blessing. Gives them hope. What sort of work you do in here, then?”

It was more than obvious what sort of work she did. There were wigs on Styrofoam heads along one wall and a work room in the back where she styled them. He could see both the wigs and the work room from where he stood, so his question was maddening. It was such a blatant attempt to be friendly where friendliness between herself and someone like him was not only impossible but dangerous. Thus, she offered him her scorn, saying, “What you doing a plod?” with a contemptuous glance that took him in from head to toe.

He shrugged. “It's a living.”

“At brothers' expense.”

“Only if that's how it plays out.”

He sounded as if he'd resolved the matter of possibly having to arrest one of his own a long time ago. That angered her so she jerked her head at his face, saying, “Where'd you get that, then?” as if the cicatrix that formed a curve on his cheek was his just reward for abandoning his people.

“Knife fight,” he said. “Met some blokes on the 'llotments in Windmill Gardens when I was fifteen and full of myself. I was lucky.”

“And I s'pose the other bloke wasn't?”

He fingered the scar as if trying to remember. He said, “Depends on how you think luck works.”

She blew derision from her nostrils and went back to her make-up sorting. She arranged her eye shadows by colour, twisted tubes of lipstick open and did the same to them, flipped open the blushers and powders, and checked the levels on the liquid foundations. She made much of taking notes, writing on an order pad and being so extra scrupulous about her spelling that the lives of her customers might have depended upon the accuracy of her order form.

“I was in a gang, see,” Nkata offered. “I got out after that fight.
Mostly 'cause of my mum. She took a look at my face when they took me to Casualty and dropped to the floor like a stone. Gave herself a concussion and ended up in hospital. That was that.”

“So you love your mum.” What rubbish, she thought.

“Know better than not to,” he replied.

She looked up quickly and saw he was smiling, but it seemed directed at himself, not at her. He said, “You got a real nice boy.”

“You stay away from my Daniel!” Her panic surprised her.

“He miss his dad?”

“I said you stay away!”

Nkata came to the counter then. He laid down his hands. He seemed to imply by the action that he was weaponless, but Yasmin knew otherwise. Coppers always had weapons and they knew how to use them. Nkata did so now. He said, “There's a woman died two nights ago, Missus Edwards. Up in Hampstead. She had a boy, too.”

“What's that to me?”

“She was run down. Three times run over by the same car.”

“I don't know no one in Hampstead. I don't go to Hampstead. I never been to Hampstead. I go there, I stick out like a cactus in Siberia.”

“You would, that.”

She looked at him sharply to catch the sarcasm in his face that she couldn't hear in his voice, but all she saw was a gentleness in his eyes, and she knew exactly what that gentleness meant. It was a gentleness manufactured for the moment that said he'd do her right here in the shop if he could talk her into it, he'd do her if he could get away with it, he'd do her even if he had to scare her into doing it with him, because to do it would prove he had the power, because she was simply there, like a particularly challenging but nonetheless potentially gratifying mountain he just had to climb.

She said, “I hear coppers work different to this, I do.”

“What's that?” he asked, managing quite effectively to look perplexed.

“You know what's that. You went to cop school, didn't you? Plods look for lags who're falling back on what they know best. They don't dig in new ground if they don't have to because they know that's a waste of time.”

“I'm not wasting time, far's I see. And I got a feeling you know that, Missus Edwards.”

“I knifed Roger Edwards. I cut him up good. I didn't run him down with a car. Didn't even have a car back then, Roger and me.
Sold it, we did, when the money ran out and his little habit needed an urgent seeing to.”

“I'm real sorry about that,” the constable said. “Must've been a bad time for you.”

“You try five years locked up if you want a bad time.” She turned from him and went on taking her inventory of cosmetics.

He said, “Missus Edwards, you know it's not you I'm here about.”

“I don't know nothing like that, Mr. Constable. But you can leave easy enough, I 'xpect, if it's not me you're wanting to talk to. I'm the only one here and the only one who's going to be here till my next client comes in. 'Course, you might want to have a word with her. She's got cancer in her ovaries but she's a real nice lady, and I expect she'll tell you last time she drove up to Hampstead. That's why you're in this part of town, right? Some black lady was driving in Hampstead and the neighbourhood's all in an uproar about it and you're here trying to suss her out?”

“You know that's not the fact 's well.”

He sounded infinitely patient, and Yasmin wondered how far she could push him before he snapped.

She gave him her back. She had no intention of offering him anything, least of all what he apparently was after.

He said, “What happened to your boy when you were inside, Missus Edwards?”

She swung round so fast that the beads on the ends of her plaits struck her cheeks. “Don't you talk about him! Don't you try rattling me with Daniel. I didn't do nothing to anyone anywhere and you
bloody
well know it.”

“I 'xpect that's the truth. But what's also the truth is that Katja Wolff knew this lady, Missus Edwards. This lady that got mashed over up in Hampstead. This was two nights back, Missus Edwards, and Katja Wolff used to work for her. Twenty years ago. Back in Kensington Square. She was nanny to her baby. You know the lady I'm talking about?”

Yasmin felt the panic like a swarm of bees attacking her face. She cried out, “You saw the car. Last night you saw it. You could tell it wasn't in no accident.”

“What I could tell is it had a front headlamp that was broke, with no one able to say how it happened.”

“Katja didn't run down no one! No one, you hear? You saying that Katja could run down a lady and only have a
headlamp
get broke?”

He didn't reply, merely letting her question and all that her question implied sing in the silence between them. She saw her mistake. He hadn't directly said that Katja was the person he was looking for. It was Yasmin herself who'd led them to that point.

She was furious with herself for letting panic get the better of her. She went back to the make-up she'd been cataloguing, and she began to slam each article back into the large metal case.

Nkata said, “I don't think she was home, Missus Edwards. Not when this lady was run down. Happened sometime between ten and midnight. And I think Katja Wolff was gone from your flat just about that time. Maybe she was out for two hours, maybe three or four. Maybe she was gone for the night. But she wasn't there, was she? And neither was the car.”

She wouldn't answer. She wouldn't meet his eyes. She wouldn't acknowledge he was in the shop. Just a counter separated them, so she could almost feel his breath. But she would not allow his presence—or his words—to gain access to her in any way. Still, her heart was slamming against her ribs, and her mind was filled with the image of Katja's face. It was a face that had observed her carefully during suicide watch when she first went inside, a face that studied her through their exercise period and through association later in the day, a face that locked on hers during tea, and ultimately—though she never would have thought it, expected it, or dreamed that she could have wanted it—a face that lingered above hers in the darkness.
Tell me your secrets. I'll tell you mine.

She knew what had taken Katja inside. Everyone knew though Katja herself had never spoken of it to Yasmin. Whatever had happened in Kensington was not one of the secrets that Katja Wolff had been willing to reveal, and the single time that Yasmin had asked about the crime for which Katja was so much hated that she'd had to guard herself for years from retribution from the other women, Katja had said, “Do you think I would kill a child, Yasmin? Very well. So be it.” And she had turned from Yasmin and had left her alone.

People didn't understand what it was like to be inside, to face the choice between solitude and companionship, between running the risks that went with solitude and embracing the protection that came with choosing—or allowing oneself to be chosen as—a lover, a partner, and a companion. To be alone was to be imprisoned within the prison, and the desolation that went with that secondary gaol term
could break a woman and leave her fit for nothing when she was finally released.

So she'd put aside doubts and embraced the story that Katja's words had implied. Katja Wolff was no killer of babies. Katja Wolff was no killer at all.

“Missus Edwards,” Constable Nkata said in that gentle, trustworthy voice that coppers always used till they saw it wasn't working like they wanted, “I see the situation you're in. You been together with her for a while. You got loyalty to her from when you were locked up, and loyalty's good. But when someone's dead and someone else is lyin’—”

“What do you know 'bout loyalty?” she cried out. “What do you know 'bout
anything
, man? You stand there like you think you're God 'cause you made a lucky choice that took you a different route to the rest of us. But you don't know nothing 'bout life, do you? 'Cause your choices always keep you safe but they got nothing in them that make you alive.”

He observed her calmly, and it seemed that there was nothing she could do and nothing she could say to shatter that steady tranquility of his. And she hated him for the calm front he presented because she knew without having to be told that his serenity went right to the core of who he was.

“Katja was home,” she snapped. “Just like we said. Now get out of here. I got work to do.”

He said, “Where d'you 'xpect she went those days she phoned in to the laundry ill, Missus Edwards?”

“She didn't phone in to the laundry. She didn't phone in ill or anything else.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn't need to tell me.”

“You best ask her, then. You best watch her eyes when she answers, too. They fix on you, she's probably lying. They don't look at you at all, she's probably lying as well. 'Course, after twenty years inside, she'll be good at lying. So if she carries on with what she's doing when you ask your question, there's a good enough chance that she's lying.”

“I asked you to get out,” Yasmin said. “I don't 'tend to ask again.”

“Missus Edwards, you're at risk in this situation, but you're not th' only one and you got to know that. You got a boy at risk. You got a fine boy. Clever and good. I c'n see he loves you 'bove everything on earth, and if anything takes you 'way from him again—”

“Get out!” she cried. “Get out 'f my shop. If you don't get out
right now, I'll …” What?
What
, she thought raggedly. What in God's name would she do? Knife him like she'd knifed her husband? Assault him? And then what would they do to her? And to Daniel? What would happen to him? If they took her son from her—put him into care for even a day while they sorted things out the way they
always
did their sorting—she would not be able to bear the burden of responsibility for his pain and confusion.

She lowered her head. She would not give the detective her face. He could see her harsh breathing, he could take note of the beads of sweat that glistened on her neck. But more than that she would not give him. Not for the world, not for her freedom, not for anything else.

Into her line of vision, she suddenly saw his dark hand slide across the counter. She flinched till she realised he didn't mean to touch her. Instead, he passed her a business card, then slid his hand away. He said so quietly that it sounded like a prayer, “You phone me, Missus Edwards. There's my pager number on that card, so you phone me. Day or night. You phone. When you're ready—”