A Traitor to Memory (94 page)

He said, “Well. Right. Mr. Pytches,” quite affably.

To which Azoff said, “Pitchley,” with an irritation that he underscored with a gust of tobacco smoke blown into the air, carrying on it the accompanying olfactory tincture of advanced halitosis.

Leach said, “Ah. Doesn't know it all, then, does he?” to P-Man with a nod at the solicitor. “Got some nooks and crannies in the skeleton cupboard you've not shone a torch into, yes?”

P-Man sank his head into his hands, body language for his sudden realisation that his bollixed-up life had just become a degree more bollixed up. “I've told you everything I can tell you,” he said, sidestepping the Jimmy Pytches issue. “I've not seen that woman—I've not seen
any
of them—since six months after the trial. I moved on. Well, what else could I do? New house, new life—”

“New name,” Leach said. “Just like before. But Mr. Azoff here doesn't seem to know that a bloke like you with a past like yours has a way of getting sucked into events, Mr. Pytches. Even when he thinks he's weighted that past in concrete boots and chucked it into the Thames.”

“What the hell are you on about, Leach?” Azoff said.

“Get rid of that shit burner you've got in your mouth, and I'll do what I can to elucidate,” Leach answered. “This is a non-smoking area, and I presume that reading is one of your talents, Mr. Azoff.”

Azoff took his time about removing the cigarette from his mouth, and he took even more time to dislodge its ash against the sole of his shoe, carefully so as to preserve the remaining tobacco for his later pleasure. During this performance, P-Man, unbidden, unspooled most of his story for the solicitor. At the end of a recitation that was as brief and as positively slanted as possible, P-Man said, “I've not mentioned this cot-death business before because there was no need, Lou. And there's
still
no need. Or at least there wouldn't be if this”—a jerk of his head at Leach indicated that the demonstrative pronoun was as close as P-Man intended to come to dignifying Leach's presence by actually giving him a name—“hadn't made up his mind to something that bears no relationship whatsoever to the truth.”

“Pytches,” Azoff said, and while he sounded thoughtful as he said the name, his narrowing eyes suggested that his thoughts had less to do with absorbing a new piece of information than they had to do with what he planned as a disciplinary measure for a client who continued to withhold facts from him, making him look like a fool each time he was forced to face the police. “You say
another
kid who died, Jay?”

“Two kids and a woman,” Leach reminded him. “And counting, by the way. Another victim got hit last night. Where were you, Pytches?”

“That's not fair!” P-Man cried. “I haven't seen a single one of those people … I haven't talked to … I don't know
why
she had my address with her … And I certainly don't believe—”

“Last night,” Leach repeated.

“Nothing.
Nowhere
. At home. Where the hell else would I be when you've got my car?”

“Picked up by someone, perhaps,” Leach said.

“Who? Someone I supposedly joined for a nice dash round London for a quick hit-and-run?”

“I don't think I mentioned it was hit-and-run.”

“Don't make yourself out to be so bloody clever. You said another victim. You said another hit. You can't expect me to think you meant hitting someone with a cricket bat, can you? Else why would I be here?”

He was getting hot under the collar. Leach liked that. He also
liked the fact that P-Man's brief was just cheesed off enough to let him twist in the wind for a minute or two. That could be distinctly useful.

He said, “Good question, Mr. Pytches.”

“Pitchley,” P-Man said.

“What have you seen of Katja Wolff lately?”

“Kat—” P-Man halted himself. “What about Katja Wolff?” he asked, quietly cautious.

“I had a look through ancient history this morning and I found you never gave evidence at her trial.”

“I wasn't asked to give evidence. I was in the house, but I didn't see anything and there was no reason—”

“But the Beckett woman did. The boy's teacher. Sarah-Jane she was called. My notes—have I mentioned that I keep all my records from investigations?—show that you and she were together when the kid got the chop. You were together, which must mean you both saw everything or nothing at all, but in any event—”

“I didn't see
anything
.”

“—in any event,” Leach continued forcefully, “Beckett gave evidence while you stayed mum. Why was that?”

“She was the boy's teacher. Gideon. The brother. She saw more of the family. She saw more of the little girl. She saw what kind of care Katja gave her, so she must have thought she had something to contribute. And listen, I wasn't
asked
to give evidence. I spoke to the police, I gave my statement, I waited for more but I wasn't asked.”

“Convenient, that.”

“Why? Are you trying to suggest—”

“Plug it,” Azoff said finally. And to Leach, “Get to the point or we're off.”

“Not without my motor,” P-Man said.

Leach fished in his jacket pocket and brought out the release form for the Boxter. He laid it on the table between himself and the two other men. He said, “You were the only one from that house who didn't give evidence against her, Mr. Pytches. I'd think she'd've dropped by to say thank you now that she's out of the coop.”

“What're you
on
about?” P-Man cried.

“Beckett gave character evidence. Talked to us and to everyone else about which wires in Wolff 's circuits were fraying. Bit of temper here. Dash of impatience there. Other things to do when the baby wanted a bit of looking after. Not always on her toes the way a properly trained nanny would be. And then getting herself in the club …”

“Yes? So? What about it?” P-Man said. “Sarah-Jane saw more than I saw. She talked about that. Am I supposed to be her conscience or something? Twenty-odd years after the fact?”

Azoff intervened. “We're looking for a point to this confab, DCI Leach. If there isn't one, we'll have that paperwork and be off.” He reached for it.

Leach pressed his fingers along its edge. “The point is Katja Wolff,” he said. “And our boy's ties to her.”

“I have no ties to her,” P-Man protested.

“I'm not sure about that. Someone got her pregnant, and I'm not putting a fiver on the Holy Ghost.”

“Don't put that down to me. We lived in the same house. That's all. We nodded on the staircase. I might have given her the odd lesson with her English and, yes, I might have
admired
—Look. She was attractive. She was sure of herself, confident, not the way you'd expect a foreigner who didn't even speak the language to feel or act. That's always nice to see in a woman. And for God's sake. I'm not blind.”

“Had a bit of a thing with her, then. Tip-toeing round the house at night. Once or twice behind the garden shed, and oops, look what happened.”

Azoff slapped his hand on the table between them. He said, “Once, twice, eighty-five times. If you're not intending to talk about the case in hand, we're off. You got that?”

“This
is
the case in hand, Mr. Azoff, especially if our boy spent the last twenty years brooding about a woman he diddled and then didn't do a thing to help once she'd—A—got herself up the spout thanks to him and—B—got herself charged with murder. He might want to make amends for that. And what better way than to give a hand in a spot of revenge. Which
she
might think she's owed, by the way. Time passes a bit slow inside, you know. And you'd be dead surprised to see the way that slow time makes a killer decide
she's
the injured party.”

“That's … that is
utterly
… that's preposterous,” P-Man sputtered.

“Is it?”

“You know it is. What's supposed to have happened?”

“Jay—” Azoff counseled.

“She's supposed to have tracked me down, rung my bell one night, and said, ‘Hello, Jim. Know we haven't seen each other for twenty, but how about helping me rub out a few people? Just for a
laugh, this is. Not too busy, are you?’ Is that how you picture it, Inspector?”

“Shut up, Jay,” Azoff said.

“No! I've spent half my life scouring down the walls when
I'm
not the one who's pissed on them, and I'm tired of it. I'm God damn bloody tired. If it's not the police, then it's the papers. If it's not the papers, it's—” He stopped himself.

“Yes?” Leach leaned forward. “Who is it, then? What's the nasty you've got back there, Mr. P? Something beyond that cot death, I reckon. You're a real man of mystery, you are. And I'll tell you this much: I'm not finished with you.”

P-Man sank back in his chair, his throat working. Azoff said, “Odd. I don't hear a caution, Inspector. Forgive me if I lapsed into momentary unconsciousness sometime during this meeting, but I don't recall having heard a caution yet. And if I
won't
be hearing one in the next fifteen seconds, it's my suggestion that we make our farewells to each other now, heartrending though those farewells may be.”

Leach shoved the Boxter's paperwork at them. He said, “Don't plan any holidays, Mr. P.” And to Azoff, “Keep that fag unlit till you're on the street or I'll have you in for something.”

“Cor. Blimey. I'm ackshully pissing me pants, guv'nor,” Azoff said.

Leach started to speak, then stopped himself. Then he said, “Get out,” and saw to it that they did just that.

J. W Pitchley, AKA TongueMan, AKA James Pitchford, AKA Jimmy Pytches said his goodbye to Lou Azoff in front of the Hampstead Police Station, and he knew that this was a final one. Azoff was cheesed off about the Jimmy Pytches revelation, more cheesed off than he'd been by the James Pitchford revelation, and despite the fact that he'd been declared blameless of the death of both children first as Pytches and then as Pitchford, that wasn't “the issue,” as Azoff put it. He wasn't about to put himself in the position of getting sucker-punched again by something that his client was withholding from him, Azoff said. How'd he think it felt, sitting in there with a sodding copper who'd probably not even passed his bleeding O levels for Christ's sake, and having the rug pulled out without even knowing there was a rug in the room? This effing situation wasn't
on
, Jay. Or is it James? Or Jimmy? Or someone else, for that matter?

It wasn't someone else. He wasn't someone else. And even if Azoff hadn't said, “You'll get my final bill by special courier tomorrow,” he himself would have put the full stop to their legal dealings. No matter that he handled the labyrinth that was Azoff 's tricky financial position. He could find someone else in the City equally talented at moving Azoff 's money round faster than the Inland Revenue could track it.

So he said, “Right, Lou,” and he didn't bother to try to talk the solicitor out of quitting on him. He couldn't blame the poor sod, really. Who could expect someone to want to play defence on a team that wouldn't give directions to the pitch?

He watched Azoff wind his scarf round his neck and fling its end over his shoulder, like the denouement of a play that had already gone on far too long. The solicitor made his exit, and Pitchley sighed. He could have told Azoff that sacking him had not only already crossed his mind but had also planted itself there half way through the interview with DCI Leach, but he decided to let the solicitor have his moment. The drama of quitting on the streets of Hampstead was meagre compensation for having endured the ignominy of ignorance to which Pitchley's omission of certain facts had recently exposed him. But it was all that Pitchley had to offer at the moment, so he offered it and stood, head bowed, while Azoff railed and till Azoff did his bit with the scarf. “I'll get on to a bloke I know who'll see you right with your money,” he told the solicitor.

“You do just that,” Azoff said. He made no similar offer on his part: recommending another solicitor willing to take on a client who asked him to work in the dark. But then, Pitchley didn't expect that of him. Indeed, he'd given up expecting anything.

That hadn't always been the case, although if it couldn't be said that he'd had expectations years ago, it
could
be said that he'd possessed dreams. She'd told him hers in that breathless, confiding, cheerful whisper, after hours when they had their English lessons and their chats at the top of the house, one ear to the speaker from the baby's room so that if she stirred, if she cried, if she needed her Katja, her Katja would be there, fast as could be. She said, “There are these fashion-for-clothes schools, yes? For design of what to wear. Yes? You see? And you see how I make these fashion drawings, yes? This is where I study when the money is saved. Where I come from, James, clothing … Oh, I cannot say, but your colours, your
colours
… And see at this scarf I have bought. This is Oxfam, James. Someone
gave
it away!” And she would bring it out and whirl it like an eastern dancer,
a length of worn silk with fringe coming loose but to her a fabric to be turned into a sash, a belt, a drawstring bag, a hat. Two such scarves and she had a blouse. Five and a motley skirt emerged. “This I am meant to do,” she would say, and her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed and the rest of her skin was velvet milk. All London wore black, but never Katja. Katja was a rainbow, a celebration of life.