The cold air brought her abruptly to her senses six steps from her own front door. She said, “Hang on, Barb,” and scurried back to her bungalow, where she forced herself to sit at the table which she used for dining, ironing, working, and preparing most of what went for her daily dinners. She fired up a fag and told herself that she had to calm down if she was going to be any use to anyone. If Webberly's misfortune and the murder of Eugenie Davies were connected, she wasn't going to be able to assist in the enquiry if she continued to run round like an electrified mouse.
And there was a connection between the two events. She was willing to bet her career on that.
She had achieved very little joy from her second trip to the Valley of Kings and the Comfort Inn on the previous evening, learning only that J. W. Pitchley was a regular at both establishments, but so much a regular that neither the waiters at the restaurant nor the night clerk at the hotel had been able to say with certainty that he'd been there on the night Eugenie Davies had been murdered.
“Oh my yes, this gentleman has a way with the ladies,” the night clerk had commented as he examined Pitchley's photograph over the sound of Major James Bellamy and his wife having something of a class-driven set-to in an ancient episode of Upstairs, Downstairs that was playing nearby on a VCR. The night clerk had paused, had watched the unfolding drama for a moment, had shaken his head and sighed, “It will never last, that marriage,” before turning to Barbara, handing back the picture she'd snagged in West Hampstead, and going on. “He brings them here often, these ladies of his. He always pays cash and the lady waits over there, out of sight in the lounge. This is so I will neither see her nor suspect that they intend to use the room for a few hours only, for sexual congress. He has been here many many times, this man.”
And it was much the same at the Valley of Kings. J. W. Pitchley had eaten his way through the entire menu at the restaurant and the waiters could account for everything he'd ordered in the last five months. But as to his companions …? They were blonde, brunette, red headed, and gray haired. And all of them were English, naturally. What else would one expect of such a decadent culture?
Flashing the picture of Eugenie Davies in the company of the picture of J. W. Pitchley had got Barbara exactly nowhere. Ah yes, she was another Englishwoman, wasn't she? both the waiters and the night clerk had asked. Yes, she might have been with him one night. But she might have not. It was the gentleman, you see, who interested everyone: How did such an ordinary man have such an extraordinary way with ladies?
“Any port in a storm,” Barbara had muttered in reply, “if you know what I mean.”
They hadn't known and she hadn't explained. She'd just gone home, deciding to bide her time till St. Catherine's opened in the morning.
That was what she was supposed to be doing, Barbara realised as she sat at her little dining table, smoked, and hoped that the nicotine would rattle her brain into operation. There was something not right about J. W. Pitchley, and if his address in the possession of the dead woman hadn't told her that much, then the thugs leaping out of his kitchen window and the cheque he'd been writing—to one of them, surely—did.
She could do nothing to improve the condition of Superintendent Webberly. But she could pursue her intended course, looking for whatever it was that J. W. Pitchley, AKA James Pitchford, was trying to hide. What that was might well be what tied him to murder and tied him to the attack on Webberly. And if that was the case, she wanted to be the person who brought the bugger down. She owed that much to the superintendent because she owed Malcolm Webberly more than she could ever repay.
With more calm this time, she rustled her pea jacket from the wardrobe, along with a tartan scarf that she wound round her neck. More appropriately garbed for the November chill, she set out again into the cold, damp morning.
She had a wait before St. Catherine's opened, and she used the time to tuck into a hot bacon and mushroom sandwich in the sort of fine, fried-bread-serving old caff that was fast disappearing from the metropolis. After that, she phoned Charing Cross Hospital, where she got word that Webberly's condition remained unchanged. She phoned Inspector Lynley next, getting him on his mobile on his way to the Yard. He'd been at the hospital till six, he told her, at which time it had become clear that hanging round in the intensive care waiting room was only going to rub his nerves raw while doing nothing to improve the superintendent's condition.
“Hillier's there,” Lynley said abruptly, and those two words served as adequate explanation. AC Hillier wasn't a pleasant man to be around at the best of times. At the worst of times, he'd likely be impossible.
“What about the rest of the family?” Barbara asked.
“Miranda's come from Cambridge.”
“And Frances?”
“Laura Hillier's with her. At home.”
“At home?” Barbara frowned, going on to say, “That's a bit odd, isn't it, sir?” to which Lynley said, “Helen's taken some clothes over to the hospital. Some food as well. Randie came tearing up in such a hurry that she wasn't even wearing shoes, so Helen's taken her a pair of trainers and a track suit should she want to change her clothes. She'll phone me if there's any sudden change. Helen will, that is.”
“Sir …” Barbara wondered at his reticence. There was ground to till here, and she meant to grab the hoe. She was a cop to her core, so—her suspicions about J. W. Pitchley aside for a moment—she couldn't help wondering whether Frances Webberly's absence from the scene might mean something that went beyond shock. Indeed, she couldn't help wondering if it meant something that indicated Frances's knowledge of her husband's past infidelity. She said, “Sir, as to Frances herself, have you thought—”
“What are you onto this morning, Havers?”
“Sir …”
“What did you come up with on Pitchley?”
Lynley was making it more than clear that Frances Webberly was a subject he wasn't about to discuss with her, so Barbara filed her irritation—if only at present—and instead recounted what she'd discovered about Pitchley on the previous day: his suspicious behaviour, the presence in his home of two yobbos who'd climbed out of a window rather than be confronted by her, the cheque he'd been writing, the confirmation of the night clerk and the waiters that Pitchley was indeed an habitué of the Comfort Inn and the Valley of Kings.
“So what I reckon is this: If he changed his name once because of a crime, what's to say he didn't change it before because of another?”
Lynley said that he thought it unlikely, but he gave Barbara the go-ahead. They would meet later at the Yard.
It didn't take too long for Barbara to troll through two decades of legal records in St. Catherine's, since she knew what she was looking for. And what she finally found sent her to New Scotland Yard posthaste, where she got on the blower to the station that served Tower Hamlets and spent an hour tracking down and talking to the only detective who'd spent his entire career there. His memory for detail and his possession of enough notes to write his memoirs several times over provided Barbara with the vein of gold she'd been seeking.
“Oh, right,” he drawled. “That's not a name I'm likely to forget. The whole flaming lot of them've been giving us aggro 's long as they've been walking the earth.”
“But as to the one …” Barbara said.
“I can spin a tale or two about him.”
She took notes from the detective's recitation, and when she rang off, she went in search of Lynley.
She found him in his office, standing near the window, looking grave. He'd apparently been home between his early morning visit to the hospital and coming to the Yard, because he looked as he always looked: perfectly groomed, well-shaven, and suitably dressed. The only sign that things were not normal was in his posture. He'd always stood like a man with a fence pole for a spine, but now he seemed slumped, as if carrying sacks of grain on his shoulders.
“The only thing Dee told me was a coma,” Barbara said by way of hello.
Lynley recounted
for her the extent of the superintendent's injuries. He concluded with, “The only blessing is that the car didn't actually run over him. The force he was hit with threw him into a pillar box, which was bad enough. But it could have been worse.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“Just someone who saw a black vehicle tearing down Stamford Brook Road.”
“Like the car that hit Eugenie?”
“It was large,” Lynley said. “According to the witness, it could have been a taxi. He thought it was painted in two tones, black with a grey roof. Hillier claims the grey would be the street lights' reflection on black.”
“Bugger Hillier for a lark,” Barbara scoffed. “Taxis are painted all sorts of ways these days. Two tones, three tones, red and yellow, or covered tyres-to-top with advertisements. I say we should listen to what the witness says. And as we're talking about a black car once again, I expect we've got a connection, don't you?”
“With Eugenie Davies?” Lynley didn't wait for a reply. “Yes. I'd say we've got a connection.” He gestured with a notebook he'd taken up from his desk and he put on his spectacles as he walked round to sit, nodding for Barbara to do likewise. “But we've still got virtually nothing to go on, Havers. I've been reading through my notes trying to find something, and I'm not getting far. All I can come up with is a conflict among what Richard Davies, his son, and Ian Staines are saying about Eugenie's seeing Gideon. Staines claims she intended to ask Gideon for money to get him out of debt before he loses his house and everything in it, but he also says that she told him—after having made the promise to see her son—that something had come up and because of it, she wouldn't ask Gideon for the money. In the meantime, Richard Davies claims she hadn't asked to see Gideon at all, but just the opposite. He says he wanted her to try to help Gideon with a problem he's having with stage fright and that's why they were going to meet: at his suggestion. Gideon supports this claim, more or less. He says his mother never asked to see him, at least not that he was told. All he knows is that his father wanted them to meet so she could help him out with his playing.”
“She played the violin?” Barbara said. “There wasn't one at the cottage in Henley.”
“Gideon didn't mean that she was going to tutor him. He said there was actually nothing she could do to help him with his problem other than to ‘agree’ with his father.”
“What's that supposed to mean when it's dancing the polka?”
“I don't know. But I'll tell you this: He doesn't have stage fright. There's something seriously wrong with the man.”
“Like a guilty conscience? Where was he three nights ago?”
“Home. Alone. So he says.” Lynley tossed his notebook on his desk and removed his glasses. “And that doesn't even begin to address Eugenie Davies' e-mail, Barbara.” He brought her into the picture on that front, saying in conclusion, “Jete was the name tagged onto the message. Does that mean anything to you?”
“An acronym?” She considered the possible words that the four letters could begin, with just and eat coming to mind at once. She followed that thought along the family tree to its cousin, saying, “Could be Pitchley branching out from his TongueMan handle?”
“What did you get from St. Catherine's on him?” Lynley asked her.
“Gold,” she replied. “St. Catherine's confirms Pitchley's claim that he was James Pitchford twenty years ago.”
“How is that gold?”
“Because of what follows,” Barbara replied. “Before he was Pitchford, he was someone else: He was Jimmy Pytches, sir, little Jimmy Pytches from Tower Hamlets. He changed his name to Pitchford six years before the murder in Kensington Square.”
“Unusual,” Lynley agreed, “but hardly damning.”
“By itself, right. But when you put two name changes in one lifetime into the same basket as having two blokes jumping out of his kitchen window when the rozzers come to call, you've got something that smells like cod in the sun. So I rang the station over there and asked if anyone remembered a Jimmy Pytches.”
“And?” Lynley asked.
“And listen to this. The whole family're in and out of trouble all the time. Were back then. Still are now. And when Pitchley was Jimmy Pytches all those years ago, a baby died while he was minding her. He was a teenager at the time, and the investigation couldn't pin anything on him. The inquest finally called it cot death, but not before our Jimmy spent forty-eight hours being held and questioned as suspect number one. Here. Check my notes if you want to.”
Lynley did so, putting his reading glasses back on.
Barbara said, “A second kid dying while he was in the same house,” as Lynley looked over the information. “Doesn't feel very nice, does it, sir?”
“If he did indeed murder Sonia Davies and if Katja Wolff carried the can for him,” Lynley began, and Barbara interrupted with, “Perhaps this is why she never said a word once she was arrested, sir. Say she and Pitchford had a thing—she was pregnant, right?—and when Sonia was drowned, they both knew that the cops would look hard at Pitchford because of the other death, once they found out who he really was. If they could play it out as an accident, as negligence—”
“Why would he have drowned the Davies girl?”
“Jealousy over what the family had and he hadn't got. Anger over how they were treating his beloved. He wants to rescue her from her situation, or he wants to get back at people he sees as having what he'll never put his mitts on, so he goes after the kid. Katja takes the fall for him, knowing about his past and thinking she'll get a year or two for negligence while he'd probably get life for premeditated murder. And she never once considers how a jury's going to react to her keeping silent about the death of a disabled toddler. And just think of what was probably going through their heads: shades of Mengele and all that, Inspector, and she won't even say what happened. So the judge throws the book at her, she gets twenty years, and Pitchford disappears from her life, leaving her to rot in prison while he becomes Pitchley and makes a killing in the City.”
“And then what?” Lynley said. “She gets out of prison and then what, Havers?”
“She tells Eugenie what really happened, who really did it. Eugenie tracks down Pitchley the way I tracked down Pytches. She goes to confront him, but she never makes it.”
“Because?”
“Because she gets it on the street.”
“I realise that. But from whom, Barbara?”
“I think Leach might be onto it, sir.”
“Pitchley? Why?”
“Katja Wolff wants justice. So does Eugenie. The only way to get it is to put Pitchley away, which I doubt he'd go for.”
Lynley shook his head. “How do you explain Webberly, then?”
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“Those letters?”
“It's time to hand them over. You've got to see they're important, Inspector.”
“Havers, they're more than ten years old. They're not an issue.”
“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” Barbara pulled on her sandy fringe in sheer frustration. “Look. Say Pitchley and Eugenie had something going. Say that's the reason she was in his street the other night. Say he's been to Henley to see her on the sly and during a tryst he's come across those letters. He's gone round the bend with jealousy, so he gives her the chop and then takes down the superintendent.”
Lynley shook his head. “Barbara, you can't have it all ways. You're twisting the facts to fit a conclusion. But they don't fit it, and it doesn't fit the case.”
“Why not?”
“Because it leaves too much unaccounted for.” Lynley ticked off the items. “How could Pitchley have maintained an affair with Eugenie Davies without Ted Wiley's knowledge since Wiley appears to have kept close tabs on the comings and goings at Doll Cottage? What did Eugenie have to confess to Wiley, and why did she die the night before the scheduled confession? Who is Jete? Who was she meeting at those pubs and hotels? And what do we do about the coincidence of K
atja Wolff's release from prison and two hit-and-runs in which the victims are significant people in the case that put her away?”
Barbara sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Okay. Where's Winston? What's he got to say about Katja Wolff?”
Lynley told her about Nkata's report on the German woman's movements from Kennington to Wandsworth on the previous night. He ended with, “He was confident that both Yasmin Edwards and Katja Wolff are hiding something. When he got the word about Webberly he passed the message back that he wanted to have another chat with them.”
“So he thinks there's a connection between the hit-and-runs as well.”
“Right. And I agree. There is a connection, Havers. We just haven't seen it clearly.” Lynley stood, handed Barbara her notes, and began gathering up material from his desk. He said, “Let's get on to Hampstead. Leach's team must have something we can work with by now.”
Winston Nkata sat in front of the Hampstead police station for a good five minutes before he clambered out of his car. Because of a four-car pileup on the huge roundabout just before the crossing to Vauxhall Bridge, it had taken him more than ninety minutes to make the drive from South London. He was glad of that. Sitting in the car while firemen, paramedics, and traffic police sorted out the tangle of metal and injured bodies had given him the time he needed to come to terms with the balls-up he'd made of his interview with Katja Wolff and Yasmin Edwards.