A Traitor to Memory (83 page)

“'Morning, Daniel,” the copper said to him with a nod and a smile. “Getting ready for school?”

“Never you mind what he's gettin' ready for,” Yasmin snapped before Daniel could answer. And then to her son as she snatched his jumper from one of the hooks next to the door, “Dan, mind you see to that breakfast. Those pancakes're dead trouble to make. See you eat them all.”

“'Lo,” Daniel said shyly to the cop, and he looked so pleased that Yasmin's insides quaked. “You 'membered my name.”

“Did,” Nkata said agreeably. “Mine's Winston, it is. You like school, Daniel?”

“Dan!” Yasmin spoke so sharply that her son started. She tossed him his sweater. “You heard me, right? Get dressed and get yourself into that breakfast.”

Daniel nodded. But he didn't take his eyes from the cop. Instead, he
drank
him in with such unabashed interest and eagerness to know and be known that Yasmin wanted to step between them, to shove her son in one direction and the copper in another. Daniel backed into his bedroom, gaze still on Nkata, saying, “You like pancakes? They're little ones. They're special. I 'xpect we got enough to—”

“Daniel!”

“Right. Sorry, Mum.” And he flashed that smile—thirty-thousand watts, it was—and disappeared into his room.

Yasmin turned to Nkata. She was suddenly aware of how cold the air was coming in the door, how it swept insidiously round her bare legs and bare feet, how it tickled her knees and caressed her thighs, how it hardened her nipples. The very
fact
of their hardness was an irritant to her, making her vulnerable to her own body. She shivered in the chill, undecided about slamming the door upon the detective or allowing him in.

Katja made the decision for her. She said quietly, “Let him in, Yas,” from the kitchen doorway where she stood with the pan of pancakes in her hand.

Yasmin stepped back as the constable gave a nod of thanks to
Katja. She shoved the door shut and reached for her coat, taking it from its hook and cinching it so tightly round her waist that it might have been a corset and she a Victorian lady with an hourglass figure on her mind. For his part, Nkata unbuttoned his own overcoat and loosened his scarf like a guest come to dinner.

“We are having our breakfast,” Katja said to him. “And Daniel must not be late for school.”

“What d'you want, then?” Yasmin demanded of the detective.

“Want to see if you'd like to change anything you told me 'bout the other night.” He spoke to Katja.

“I have no change to make,” Katja said.

“Tha's something you might want to think over,” he told her.

Yasmin flared, her anger and fear triumphing over her better judgement. She cried, “This is harassment, this is. This is
harassment
. This is
bloody
harassment and you
bloody
well know it.”

“Yas,” Katja said. She slid the pancake pan onto the hob just inside the kitchen door. She remained where she was, in its frame, and the light from the kitchen behind her cast her face into shadow, which was where she kept it. “Let him have his say.”

“We heard his say once.”

“I expect there's more, don't you?”

“No.”

“Yas—”

“No! I bloody well don't intend to let some sodding nig-nog with a warrant card—”

“Mummy!”
Daniel had come back into the room, dressed for school now, and on his face such an expression of horror that Yasmin wanted to pull the slur out of the air where it hung among them like a laughing bully, slapping her own face with far more power than it managed to slap the detective's.

She said abruptly, “Eat your breakfast,” to her son. And to the copper, “Have your say and get out.” For an awful moment, Daniel didn't move, as if waiting for direction from the detective, such as the black man's permission to do what his mother had just told him to do. Seeing this, Yasmin wanted to strike someone, but instead she breathed and tried to still her heart's vicious pounding. She said, “Dan,” and her son moved to the kitchen, pushing past Katja, who told him, “There's juice in the fridge, Daniel,” as she stepped to one side.

None of them said anything till muted sounds from the kitchen told them Daniel was at least making an attempt to eat his breakfast despite what was going on. All three of them maintained the positions
they'd taken when the policeman had first come into the flat, forming a triangle described by the front door, the kitchen, and the television set. Yasmin wanted to leave her spot and join her lover, but just when she made her first move to do so, the detective spoke, and his words were what stopped her.

“Things don't look nice when a story gets changed too far down the line, Miss Wolff. You sure you were watching telly th' other night? That boy goin' t'say the same 'f I ask him?”

“You leave Daniel alone!” Yasmin cried. “You don't talk to my boy!”

“Yas,” Katja said, her voice quiet but insistent. “Have your breakfast, all right? It seems the detective wishes to speak to me.”

“I won't leave you talking to this bloke alone. You
know
what cops do. You know how they are. You can't trust them with anything but—”

“The facts,” Nkata broke into her words. “And you c'n trust us with the facts just fine. So 'bout the other night …?”

“I have nothing to add.”

“Right. Then what about last night, Miss Wolff?”

Yasmin saw Katja's face alter at this question, just round the eyes, which narrowed perceptibly. “What about last night?”

“You watching telly like you did before?”

“Why d'you want to know?” Yasmin asked. “Katja, you don't tell him
anything
till he says why he's asking you. He's not going to trick us. He's going to tell us why he's asking what he's asking or he's going to get his big black bum and his cut-up mug right
out
of my flat. That clear to you, mister?”

“We got us another hit-and-run,” Nkata said to Katja. “You want to tell me where you were last night?”

Bells and alarms went off in Yasmin's head, so she very nearly didn't hear Katja say, “Here.”

“Round half past eleven?”

“Here,” she repeated.

“Got it,” he said, and then he added what Yasmin realised he'd been meaning to say from the moment she opened the door to him, “So you didn't spend the whole night with her, then. You just met her, shagged her, and went on your way. That how it happened?”

There was a horrible silence, broken by nothing but the voice inside Yasmin's head shouting, “No!” She willed her partner to answer in some way, not to use silence and not to walk off.

Katja looked at Yasmin when she said to the copper, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking 'bout a trip 'cross South London by bus last evening after work,” the detective said. “I'm talking 'bout ending up in Putney at Frère Jacques Bar. 'Bout walking down to Wandsworth to Number Fifty-five Galveston Road. I'm talking 'bout what went on inside and who it went on with. This sounding familiar to you? Or were you still watching the telly last night? 'Cause if what I saw's any indication, if the telly was on, you two had your eyes glued elsewhere.”

“You followed me.” Katja said it carefully.

“You and the lady in black. That's right. White lady in black,” he added for good measure, and he cast a quick look at Yasmin as he said it. “Keep the lights off next time you do something interesting in front of the windows, Miss Wolff.”

Yasmin felt wild birds fluttering in front of her face. She wanted to wave her arms to frighten them off, but her arms wouldn't move.
White lady in black
was all she heard.
Keep the lights off next time
.

Katja said, “I see. You've done your work well. You followed me—high marks for that. Then you followed us together—higher marks still. But had you lingered, which you obviously did not, you would have seen us leave within a quarter of an hour. And while this is no doubt the time you yourself would devote to doing something interesting—as you call it, Constable—Yasmin will confirm that I am a woman who takes rather longer when it comes to giving pleasure.”

Nkata looked nonplussed, and Yasmin reveled in that look, as much as she reveled in Katja's seizing upon the advantage that she'd just gained by saying, “Had you done your homework more thoroughly, you would have discovered that the woman I met at Frère Jacques was my solicitor, Constable Nkata. She's called Harriet Lewis, and if you require her phone number to confirm my story, I shall give it to you.”

“And Number Fifty-five Galveston Road?” he said.

“What about it?”

“Who lives there that you and”—his hesitation and the emphasis he placed on the word told them he'd be checking her story—“your
solicitor
went calling on last night, Miss Wolff?”

“Her partner. And if you ask what I was consulting them about, I shall have to tell you it's a privileged matter, which is what Harriet Lewis will tell you herself when you phone her to confirm my story.”
Katja strode across the small sitting room to the sofa, where her shoulder bag lay against a faded tapestry pillow. She switched on a light and dispelled the morning gloom. She took out a packet of fags and lit one as she rooted in her bag for something else. This turned out to be a business card, which she brought over to Nkata and extended to him. She was the personification of calm, drawing in on the fag and sending a plume of smoke towards the ceiling as she said, “Phone her. And if there is nothing else you wish to learn from us this morning, we have our own breakfast to eat.”

Nkata took the card and, his eyes on Katja as if they'd pin her to the spot she stood on, he put it in the breast pocket of his coat, saying, “You best hope she matches you A to Z. 'Cause if she doesn't—”

Yasmin cut in. “That all you want, then? 'Cause if it is, time for you to bunk off.”

Nkata moved his glance to her. “You know where to find me,” he said.

“Like I'd want to?” Yasmin laughed. She jerked the door open and didn't look at him as he left. She slammed the door behind him as Daniel called out, “Mummy?” from the kitchen.

She called back, “Be there in a moment, luv. You keep on with the pancakes.”

“Don't forget that bacon as well,” Katja said.

But as they spoke to Daniel, they looked at each other. They looked long and unwavering as each waited for the other to say what needed to be said.

“You didn't tell me you'd be meeting Harriet Lewis,” Yasmin said.

Katja lifted her cigarette to her mouth and took her time about inhaling. She finally said, “There are matters to be dealt with. There are twenty years of matters to be dealt with. This will take time for us to work through.”

“What d'you mean? What kind of matters? Katja, you in trouble or something?”

“There is trouble, yes. But it is not mine. Just something that needs to be resolved.”

“What? What needs—”

“Yas. It is late.” Katja rose and ground out her cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table. “We must work. I cannot explain everything right now. The situation is far too complex.”

Yasmin wanted to say, “And that's why it took so long to discuss it? Last night, Katja? Because the situation—whatever it is—is too complex?” but she didn't say it. She placed the question in the mental
file that held all the other questions she'd not yet asked. Like the questions about Katja's absences from work, the questions about her absences from home, the questions about where she took the car when she borrowed it and why she needed to borrow it in the first place. If she and Katja were to establish something lasting—a connection to each other outside prison walls that was not defined by the need to maintain a bulwark against loneliness, despair, and depression—then they were going to have to start dispelling doubt. All her questions grew from doubt, and doubt was the virulent disease that could destroy them.

To drive it from her mind, she thought of her first days in Holloway on remand, of the medical unit where she was watched for signs that her despondency would lead to derangement, of the humiliation of the initial strip search—“Let's have a look up the grumble and grunt, Missy”—and of every strip search that followed it, of stuffing envelopes endlessly mindlessly in what went for rehabilitation in prison, of anger so deep and so profound that she thought it might eat its way into her bones. And she thought of Katja as Katja had been in those first few days and all through her trial, watching her from a distance but never speaking till Yasmin demanded what she wanted one day over tea in the dining room where Katja sat alone, as she always sat, a baby killer, the worst sort of monster: one who did not repent.

“Don't mess with Geraldine,” she had been told. “That Kraut bitch's just
waiting
for a good sorting-out.”

But she'd asked anyway. She'd sat at the German's table, slamming down her tea tray and saying, “What you
want
with me, bitch? You been watching me like I'm next week's dinner ever since I walked in here, and I'm dead sick of it. You got that straight?” She'd tried to sound tough. She knew without ever having been told that the key to survival behind walls and locked doors was never to show a sign of weakness.

“There are ways to cope,” Katja had told her in answer. “But you will not manage if you do not submit.”

“Sub
mit
to these fuckers?” Yasmin had shoved her own cup away so hard that tea sloshed out and soaked the paper napkin with milky-brown blood. “I don't
belong
in here. I 'as defending my life.”

“And that is what you do when you submit. You defend your life. Not the life inside here but the life to come.”

“What sort 'f life
that's
going to be? I get out of here, my baby won't know me. You know how that feels?”

And Katja had known, though she never spoke of the child she
herself had given up on the day he was born. The miracle of Katja as Yasmin came to know her was that she knew how
everything
felt: from the loss of freedom to the loss of a child, from being tricked into trusting the wrong people to learning that only the self would stand steadfast. It was on the foundation of Katja's understanding that they'd put the first tentative stones of their association with each other. And during the time they spent together, Katja Wolff—who had been in prison ten years when Yasmin encountered her—and Yasmin developed a plan for their lives when they were finally released.