A Traitor to Memory (88 page)

“You do,” Cresswell-White said. “You can choose not to meet her at the level she operates on. You can choose to believe what I'm telling you because what I'm telling you comes from decades of experience. There is no vengeance for this sort of thing. Even death was no vengeance when death was both legal and possible, Gideon.”

“You don't understand.” Gideon closed his eyes, and for a moment, Libby thought he'd start crying. She wanted to do something to prevent him breaking down and humiliating himself further in the eyes of this man who did not really know him and could not therefore know what he'd been going through for more than three months. But she also wanted to do something to smooth things over, on the off-chance that something bad might accidentally happen to the German chick in the next few days, in which case Gideon would be the first person they'd be talking to after this little conversation in the Temple. Not that she really thought Gideon'd
do
anything to anyone. He was just talking; he was just looking for something to make him feel like his world wasn't falling apart.

Libby said to the lawyer in a low voice, “He's been up all night. And he's been having nightmares on the nights he
can
sleep. He saw her, see, and—”

Cresswell-White sat up and took notice of this, saying, “Katja Wolff? Has she contacted you, Gideon? The terms of her parole prevent her from contacting any member of the family, and if she violates those terms, we can see to it—”

“No, no. His mom,” Libby interrupted. “He saw his mom. But he didn't know who she was because he hadn't seen her since he was a little kid. And that's been eating at him since he heard she was … you know, killed.” She glanced cautiously at Gideon. His eyes were still closed, and his head was shaking as if he wanted to negate everything that had happened to bring him to this position of begging a lawyer he didn't even know to violate whatever it was he would have to violate in order to give out the information that Gideon wanted. That wasn't going to happen, and Libby knew it. Cresswell-White sure as hell wasn't going to hand the German nanny over to Gideon on a platter and risk his own reputation and career for having done so. Which was just as well and damn lucky to boot. All Gideon needed to really mess up his life at this point was access to the woman who'd killed his sister and maybe killed his mom as well.

But Libby knew how he felt, or at least she thought she knew. He felt like he'd blown his chance for some kind of redemption for some kind of sin, the punishment for which was not being able to play his violin. And that's what it all boiled down to after all: that frigging violin.

Cresswell-White said, “Gideon, Katja Wolff's not worth the time it would take to locate her. This is a woman who showed no remorse, who was so certain of her exoneration that she offered no defence of her actions. Her silence said, ‘Let them prove they have a case,’ and only when the facts piled up—those bruises, those fractures left to heal
untreated
on your sister's body—and she heard the verdict and the sentence did she decide a defence might be in order. Imagine that. Imagine what kind of person lies behind that simple refusal to cooperate—to answer the most
basic
of questions—when a child in her care has died. She didn't even weep once she made her initial statement. And she won't weep now. You can't expect that from her. She is not like us. Abusers of children are never like us.”

Libby watched anxiously as Cresswell-White spoke, looking for a sign that what the lawyer was saying was somehow making an impression on Gideon. But she was left with a growing sense of despair when Gideon opened his eyes, got to his feet, and spoke.

He said, as if Cresswell-White's words meant nothing to him, “This is what it is: I didn't understand, but now I do. And I've got to find her.” He walked towards the door of the office, raising his hands to his forehead as if he wanted to do what he'd said earlier: rip the brain from his head.

Cresswell-White said to Libby, “He's not well.”

To which she responded, “Well,
duh
,” as she went after Gideon.

Raphael Robson's home in Gospel Oak was set off one of the busier roads in the district. It turned out to be an enormous ramshackle Edwardian building in need of renovation, the front garden of which was hidden behind a yew hedge and graveled over to make it into a parking space. When Lynley and Nkata arrived, three vehicles were standing in front of the house: a dirty white van, a black Vauxhall, and a silver Renault. Lynley took quick note of the fact that the Vauxhall wasn't old enough to qualify as their hit-and-run vehicle.

A man came round the side of the house as they approached the front steps. He headed towards the Renault without noticing them. When Lynley called out, he stopped in his tracks, car keys extended
to unlock his vehicle. Was he Raphael Robson? Lynley asked him, and produced his identification.

The man was an unappealing sort with a serious comb-over of dun-coloured hair that began just above his left ear and made his skull look as if someone were water-colouring a lattice across it. He was patchy-skinned from far too many holidays in the Mediterranean in August, and his shoulders bore a liberal sprinkling of dandruff. He gave a glance at Lynley's warrant card and said yes, he was Raphael Robson.

Lynley introduced Nkata and asked Robson if there was somewhere they could have a word with him, out of the noise of cars whooshing by just beyond the hedge. Robson said yes, yes, of course. If they'd follow him …?

“The front door's warped,” he said. “We haven't replaced it yet. We'll need to go in through the back.”

Through the back
took them along a brick path that led into a good-sized garden. This was overgrown with weeds and grass, edged by herbaceous borders long gone to ruin and dotted with trees that hadn't been pruned in years. Beneath them, wet fallen leaves were rotting to join their brothers from seasons past in the soil. In the midst of all the chaos and decay, however, a newish building stood. Robson saw both Lynley and Nkata giving this a look-over, and he said, “That was our first project. We do furniture in there.”

“Building it?”

“Restoring it. We mean to do the house as well. Doing up furniture and selling it gives us something of a bank account to work from. Restoring a place like this”—with a nod at the imposing edifice—“takes a fortune. Whenever we get enough saved to do a room, we do it. It's taking forever, but no one's in a hurry. And there's a certain camaraderie that develops when everyone's behind a project, I think.”

Lynley wondered at the word
camaraderie
. He'd been thinking Robson's
us
referred to his wife and family, but developing camaraderie suggested something else. He considered the vehicles he'd seen in front of the building and said, “This is a commune, then?”

Robson unlocked the door and swung it open onto a passageway with a wooden bench running along its wall and adult-sized wellingtons lined up beneath it and hooks holding jackets on the wall above it. He said, “That sounds like something from the summer-of-love era. But yes, I suppose you could call it a commune. Mostly it's a group with shared interests.”

“Which are?”

“Making music and turning this house into something we can all enjoy.”

“Not restoring furniture?” Nkata asked.

“That's merely a means to an end. Musicians don't make enough money to finance a restoration like this one without something else to fall back on.”

He allowed them into the passage before him, shutting the door when they were inside and locking it scrupulously behind them. He said, “This way,” and led them into what might once have been the dining room but now was a musty combination of draughting room, storeroom, and office, with water-stained wallpaper covering the upper half of the walls and battered wainscoting covering the lower half. A computer was part of the office function that the room was serving. From where he stood, Lynley could see the telephone line that was plugged into it.

He said, “We've tracked you through a message you left on the answer machine of a woman called Eugenie Davies, Mr. Robson. This was four days ago. At eight-fifteen in the evening.”

Next to Lynley, Nkata got out his leather notebook and his propelling pencil, twisting it to produce a micro-millimeter of lead. Robson watched him do this, then walked to a worktable on which a set of blueprints were spread. He smoothed his hand over the top one as if to study it, but he answered the question with the single word. “Yes.”

“Do you know Mrs. Davies was murdered three nights ago?”

“Yes. I know.” His voice was low and his hand grasped a blueprint that lay still rolled up. His thumb played along the rubber band that held it formed into a tube. “Richard told me,” he said, lifting his gaze to Lynley. “He'd been to tell Gideon when I arrived for one of our sessions.”

“Sessions?”

“I teach the violin. Gideon's been my pupil since childhood. He isn't any longer, of course; he's no one's pupil. But we play together three hours a day when he's not recording, rehearsing, or touring. You've heard of him, doubtless.”

“I was under the impression he hasn't played in several months.”

Robson's hand had reached out to touch the opened blueprint again, but he hesitated and did nothing more with the gesture. He said on a heavy sigh, “Sit down, Inspector. You as well, Constable,” and he turned back to them. “It's important not only to keep up appearances
in a situation like Gideon's, but it's also important to go on as normally as possible. So I still turn up for our daily three hours together, and we keep hoping that when enough time passes, he'll be able to go back to the music.”

“‘We’?” Nkata raised his head to look for the answer.

“Richard and I. Gideon's father.”

Somewhere in the house, a scherzo began. Dozens of energetic notes ran riot on what sounded like a harpsichord at first but then abruptly changed to an oboe and then just as abruptly altered to a flute. This was accompanied by an increase in volume and the sudden rhythmic pounding of several percussion instruments. Robson went to the door and shut it, saying, “Sorry. Janet's gone a bit mad over the electric keyboard. She's enthralled with anything a computer chip can do.”

“And you?” Lynley asked.

“I haven't the money for a keyboard.”

“I meant computer chips, Mr. Robson. Do you use this computer? I see it has a telephone connection.”

Robson's gaze flicked to it. He crossed the room and sat at a chair that he drew out from the sheet of plywood which served as a desk top. At this, Lynley and Nkata also sat, unfolding two metal chairs and swinging them into position so that, with Robson, they formed a triangle near the computer.

“We all use it,” Robson said.

“For e-mail? Chat rooms? Surfing the net?”

“I mostly use it for e-mail. My sister's in Los Angeles. My brother's in Birmingham. My parents have a house on the Costa del Sol. It's an easy way for us to stay in contact.”

“Your address is …?”

“Why?”

“Curiosity,” Lynley said.

Robson recited it, looking puzzled. Lynley heard what he'd suspected he'd hear when he saw the computer sitting in the room.
Jete
was Robson's on-line name and consequently part of his e-mail address.

“You've been fairly wrung out about Mrs. Davies, it seems,” he said to the violinist. “Your message on her answer machine was agitated, Mr. Robson, and the last e-mail you sent her looked a bit frantic as well. ‘I must see you. I'm begging.’ Had you had some sort of falling-out?”

Robson's seat was a desk chair that swiveled, and he used it to
rotate, to examine the computer's empty staring screen as if he could see his last message to Eugenie Davies there. He said, “You'd be checking everything. Of course. I see that,” as if speaking to himself and not to them. Then he went on in a normal tone with, “We parted quite badly. I said some things that …” He removed a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it to his forehead, where perspiration had begun to bead. “I expected I'd have a chance to apologise. Even as I drove away from the restaurant—and I was in a real fury, I admit it—I didn't drive off thinking, That's it, I'm done with this business forever, she's a blind silly cow and that's the end of it. What I thought was, Oh God, she looks rotten, she's thinner than ever, why can't she see what that
means
, for God's sake.”

“Which was what?” Lynley asked.

“That she'd made a decision in her head, yes, and it probably sounded like a sensible one to her. But her body was rebelling against that decision, which was her … I don't know … I suppose it was her
spirit's
way of trying to tell her to stop, to carry things not one inch farther. And you could
see
the rebellion in her. Believe me, you could actually see it. It wasn't just that she'd let herself go. God knows she'd done that years ago. She'd been quite lovely, but to see her—especially as she was in these last few years—you'd never have realised how men would at one time slow down on the street as they passed her.”

“What decision had she made, Mr. Robson?”