“Pytches?” Havers asked. “No. It's not Pytches, Inspector. That can't—”
Lynley's mobile rang. He grabbed it from the table top and held up a finger to stop Havers from continuing. She was itching to do so, however. She'd stubbed out her cigarette impatiently, saying, “What day did you talk to Davies, Inspector?”
Lynley waved her off, clicked on his mobile, said, “Lynley,” and turned away from Havers' smoke.
His caller was DCI Leach. “We've got another victim,” he announced.
Winston Nkata read the sign—HM Prison Holloway—and reflected on the fact that had his life taken a slightly different turn, had his mum not fainted dead away at the sight of her son in a casualty ward with thirty-four stitches closing an ugly slash on his face, he might have ended up in such a place. Not in this place, naturally, which imprisoned only women, but in a place just like it. The Scrubs, perhaps, or Dartmoor or the Ville. Doing time inside because what he'd not been able to manage was doing life outside.
But his mum had fainted. She had murmured, “Oh, Jewel,” and had slid to the floor like her legs'd turned to jelly. And the sight of her there with her turban askew—so that he could see what he'd never noticed before, that her hair was actually going grey—made him finally accept her not as the indomitable force he thought she was but instead as a real woman for once, a woman who loved and relied on him to make her proud that she'd given birth. And that had been that.
But had the moment not occurred, had his dad come to fetch him instead, flinging him into the back seat of the car with a demonstration of the full measure of the disgust he deserved, the outcome might have been quite different. He might have felt the need to prove he didn't care that he'd become the recipient of his father's displeasure, and he might have felt the need to prove it by upping the stakes in the Brixton Warriors' longtime battle with the smaller upstart Longborough Bloods to secure a patch of ground called Windmill Gardens and make it part of their turf. But the moment had happened, and his life course had altered, bringing him to where he was now: staring at the windowless brick bulk of Holloway Prison inside which Katja Wolff had met both Yasmin Edwards and Noreen McKay.
He'd parked across the street from the prison, in front of a pub with boarded-up windows that looked like something straight out of Belfast. He'd eaten an orange, studied the prison entrance, and meditated on what everything meant. Particularly, he meditated on what it meant that the German woman was living with Yasmin Edwards but messing around with someone else, just as he'd suspected when he'd seen those shadows merging on the curtains in the window of Number Fifty-five Galveston Road.
His orange consumed, he ducked across the street when the heavy traffic on Parkhurst Road was halted at the traffic lights. He approached reception and dug out his warrant card, presenting it to the officer behind the desk. She said, “Is Miss McKay expecting you?”
He said, “Official business. She won't be surprised to know I'm here.”
The receptionist said she would phone, if Constable Nkata wanted to have a seat. It was late in the day, and whether Miss McKay would be able to see him …
“Oh, I 'xpect she'll be able to see me,” Nkata said.
He didn't sit but rather walked to the window, where he looked out on more of the vast brick walls. As he watched the traffic passing by on the street, a guard gate raised to accommodate a prison van, no doubt returning an inmate at the end of a day's trial at the Old Bailey. This would have been how Katja Wolff had come and gone during those long-ago days of her own trial. She'd have been accompanied daily by a prison officer, who would remain in court with her, right inside the dock. That officer would have ferried her to and from her cell beneath the courtroom, made her tea, escorted her to lunch, and seen her back to Holloway for the night. An officer and an inmate alone, during the most difficult period of that inmate's life.
“Constable Nkata?”
Nkata swung round to see the receptionist holding a telephone receiver out to him. He took it from her, said his name, and heard a woman say in response, “There's a pub across the street. On the corner of Hillmarton Road. I can't see you in here, but if you wait in the pub, I'll join you in quarter of an hour.”
He said, “Make it five minutes and I'm on my way without hanging about chatting to anyone.”
She exhaled loudly, said, “Five minutes, then,” and slammed down the phone at her end.
Nkata went back to the pub, which turned out to be a nearly empty room as cold as a barn where the air was redolent mostly of dust. He ordered himself a cider, and he took his drink to a table that faced the door.
She didn't make it in five, but she arrived under ten, coming through the door with a gust of wind. She looked round the pub, and when her eyes fell upon Nkata, she nodded once and came over to him, taking the long sure strides of a woman with power and confidence. She was quite tall, not as tall as Yasmin Edwards but taller than Katja Wolff, perhaps five foot ten.
She said, “Constable Nkata?”
He said, “Miss McKay?”
She pulled out a chair, unbuttoned her coat, shrugged out of it, and sat, elbows on the table and hands fingering back her hair. This was blonde and cut short, leaving her ears bare. She wore small pearl studs in their lobes. For a moment, she kept her head bent, but when she drew in a breath and looked up, her blue eyes fixed on Nkata with plain dislike.
“What do you want from me? I don't like interruptions while I'm at work.”
“Could've caught up with you at home,” Nkata said. “But here was closer than Galveston Road from Harriet Lewis's office.”
At the mention of the solicitor, her face became guarded. “You know where I live,” she said cautiously.
“Followed a bird called Katja Wolff there last night. From Kennington to Wandsworth by bus, this was. It was in'ersting to note that she went the whole route and didn't stop once to ask directions. Seems like she knew where she was going good enough.”
Noreen McKay sighed. She was middle-aged—probably near fifty, Nkata thought—but the fact that she wore little make-up served her well. She heightened what she had without looking painted, so her colour seemed authentic. She was neatly dressed in the uniform of the prison. Her white blouse was crisp, the navy epaulets bore their brass ornamentation brightly, and her trousers had creases that would have done a military man proud. She had keys on her belt, a radio as well, and some sort of pouch. She looked impressive.
She said, “I don't know what this is about, but I've nothing to say to you, Constable.”
“Not even 'bout Katja Wolff?” he asked her. “'Bout what she was doing calling on you with her solicitor in tow? They filing a law suit 'gainst you, or something?”
“As I just said, I've nothing to say, and there's no room for compromise in my position. I've a future and two adolescents to consider.”
“Not a husband, though?”
She brushed one hand through her hair again. It seemed to be a characteristic gesture. “I've never been married, Constable. I've had my sister's children since they were four and six years old. Their father didn't want them when Susie died—too busy playing the footloose bachelor—but he's started coming round now he's realising he won't be twenty years old forever. Frankly, I don't want to give him a reason to take them.”
“There's a reason, then? What would that be?”
Noreen McKay shoved away from the table and went to the bar instead of replying. There, she placed an order and waited while her gin was poured over two ice cubes and a bottle of tonic set next to it.
Nkata watched her, trying to fill in the blanks with a simple scrutiny of her person. He wondered which part of prison work had first attracted Noreen McKay: the power it provided over other people, the sense of superiority it offered, or the chance it represented to cast a fishing line in waters where the trout had no psychological protection.
She returned to the table, her drink in hand. She said, “You saw Katja Wolff and her solicitor come to my home. That's the exten
t of what you saw.”
“Saw her let herself in 's well. She didn't knock.”
“Constable, she's a German.”
Nkata cocked his head. “I got no recollection of Germans not knowing they're s'posed to knock on strangers' doors before walking in on them, Miss McKay. Mostly, I think they know the rules. Especially the ones telling them they don't have to knock where they already've got themselves well established.”
Noreen McKay lifted her gin and tonic. She drank but made no reply.
Nkata said, “What I'm wondering 'bout the whole situation is this: Is Katja the first lag you had some rabbit with or was she just one in a line of nellies?”
The woman flushed. “You don't know what you're talking about.”
“What I'm talking about's your position at Holloway and how you might've used and abused it over the years, and what action the guv'nors might think of taking if word got out you've been doing the nasty where you ought to be just locking the doors. You got how many years in the job? You got a pension? In line for promotion to warden? What?”
She smiled without humour, saying, “You know, I wanted to be a policeman, Constable, but I've dyslexia and I couldn't pass the exams. So I turned to prison work because I like the idea of citizens upholding the law, and I believe in punishing those who cross the line.”
“Which you yourself did. With Katja. She 'as doing twenty years—”
“She didn't do all her time at Holloway. Virtually no one does. But I've been here for twenty-four years. So I expect your assumption—whatever it is—has a number of holes in it.”
“She was here on remand, she was here for the trial, she did some time here. And when she went off—to Durham, was it?—she'd be able to list her visitors, wouldn't she? And whose name d'you think I'd find in her records as the one to admit—proba'ly the only one to admit aside from her brief—for her visits? And she'd be back in Holloway to do some of her time, I expect. Yeah. I expect that could've been fixed up easy enough from within. What's your job, Miss McKay?”
“Deputy warden,” she said. “I imagine you know that.”
“Deputy warden with a taste for the ladies. You always been bent?”
“That's none of your business.”
Nkata slapped his hand on the table and leaned towards the woman. “It's all my business,” he told her. “Now, you want me to troll through Katja's records, find all the prisons she 'as locked up in, get all the visitors lists she filled out, see your name topping them, and put the thumbscrews to you? I c'n do that, Miss McKay, but I don't like to. It wastes my time.”
She lowered her gaze to her drink, turning the glass slowly on the mat beneath it. The pub door opened, letting in another gust of chill evening air and the smell of exhaust fumes from Parkhurst Road, and two men in the uniform of prison workers walked inside. They fixed on Noreen, then on Nkata, then back to Noreen. One smiled and made a low comment. Noreen looked up and saw them.
She breathed an oath and said, “I've got to get out of here,” beginning to rise.
Nkata closed his hand over her wrist. “Not without giving me something,” he told her. “Else I'm going to have to look through her records, Miss McKay. And 'f your name's there, I 'xpect you'll have some real 'xplaining to do to your guv.”
“Do you threaten people often?”
“Not a threat. Just a simple fact. Now, sit back down and 'tend to your drink.” He nodded towards her colleagues. “I 'xpect I'm doing your reputation some good.”
Her face flared with red. “You completely despicable—”
“Chill,” he said. “Let's talk about Katja. She gave me the go-ahead to talk to you, by the way.”
“I don't believe—”
“Phone her.”
“She—”
“She's a suspect in a hit-and-run murder. And a suspect in a second hit-and-run as well. 'F you can clear her name, you better set to it. She's 'bout two breaths away from getting arrested. And you think we'll be able to keep that from the press? Notorious baby killer ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ again? Not likely, Miss McKay. Her whole life's about to go under the microscope. And I 'xpect you know what that means.”
“I can't clear her name,” Noreen McKay said, her fingers tightening on her gin and tonic. “That's just it, don't you see? I can't clear her name.”
23
“WADDINGTON,” DCI LEACH informed them when Lynley and Havers joined him in the incident room. He was all exultation: his face brighter than it had been in days and his step lighter as he dashed across the room to scrawl Kathleen Waddington at the top of one of the china boards.
“Where was she hit?” Lynley asked.
“Maida Vale. And it's the same m.o. Quiet neighbourhood. Pedestrian alone. Night. Black car. Smash.”
“Last night?” Barbara Havers asked. “But that would mean—”
“No, no. This was ten days ago.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Lynley said.
“Not bloody likely. She's a player from before.” Leach went on to explain precisely who Kathleen Waddington was: a sex therapist who'd left her clinic on the night in question after ten o'clock. She'd been hit on the street and left with a broken hip and a dislocated shoulder. When she was interviewed by the police, she'd said the car that hit her was big, “like a gangster car,” that it moved fast, that it was dark, possibly black. Leach said, “I went through my notes from the other case, the baby drowning. Waddington was the woman who broke Katja Wolff 's story about being out of the bathroom for a minute or less on the night that Sonia Davies drowned. The woman Wolff claimed phoned her. Without Waddington, it still might have gone down to negligence and a few years in prison. With her showing Wolff up to be a liar … It was another nail in the coffin. We need to bring Wolff in. Pass that word to Nkata. Let him have the glory. He's been working her hard.”
“What about the car?” Lynley asked.
“That'll come in due course. You can't tell me she spent two decades inside without having formed more than one association she could depend on when she got out.”
“Someone with an old motor?” Barbara Havers asked.
“Bet on it. I've got a PC going through the significant others right now,” with a jerk of his head towards a female constable sitting at one of the terminals in the room. “She's picking up every name mentioned in every action report and running each through the system. We'll get our mitts on the prison records as well and run through everyone Wolff had contact with while she was inside. We can do that while we've got her in for questioning. D'you want to page your man and give him the message? Or shall I?” Leach rubbed his hands together briskly.
The constable at the computer terminal rose from her seat at that moment with a paper in her hand. She said, “I think I've got it, sir,” and Leach bounded to her with a happy, “Brilliant. Good work, Vanessa. What've we got?”
“A Humber,” she said.
The vehicle in question was a post-war saloon manufactured in the days when the relationship between petrol consumed and kilometers covered was not the first thing on a driver's mind. It was smaller than a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, or a Daimler—not to mention less costly—but it was larger than the average car on the street today. And whereas the modern car was manufactured from aluminium and alloy to keep its weight low and its mileage high, the Humber was fashioned from steel and chrome with a front end comprising a toothy sneer of heavy grillwork suitable for scooping from the air everything from winged insects to small birds.
“Excellent,” Leach said.
“Whose is it?” Lynley asked.
“Belongs to a woman,” Vanessa told them. “She's called Jill Foster.”
“Richard Davies' fiancée?” Havers looked at Lynley. Her face broke into a smile. She said, “That's it. That's bloody it, Inspector. When you—”
But Lynley interrupted her. “Jill Foster? I can't see that, Havers. I've met the woman. She's enormously pregnant. She's not capable of this. And even if she were, w
hy would she go after Waddington?”
Havers said, “Sir—”
Leach cut in, “There's got to be another car, then. Another old one.”
“How likely is that?” the PC said doubtfully.
“Page Nkata,” Leach told Lynley. And to Vanessa, “Get Wolff's prison records. We need to go through them. There's got to be a car—”
“Hang on!” Havers said explosively. “There's another way to look at this, you lot. Listen. He said Pytches. Richard Davies said Pytches. Not Pitchley or Pitchford, but Pytches.” She grasped Lynley's arm for emphasis. “You said he said Pytches when we were having coffee. You said you had Pytches in your notes. When you interviewed Richard Davies? Yes?”
Lynley said, “Pytches? What's Jimmy Pytches have to do with this, Havers?”
“It was a slip of the tongue, don't you see?”
“Constable,” Leach said irritably, “what the hell are you on about?”
Havers went on, directing her comments to Lynley. “Richard Davies wouldn't have made that kind of verbal mistake when he'd just been told his former wife was murdered. He couldn't have known J. W. Pitchley was Jimmy Pytches right at that moment. He might have known James Pitchford was Jimmy Pytches, yes, all right, but he didn't think of him as Pytches, he'd never known him as Pytches, so why the hell would he call him that in front of you, since you yourself didn't know who Pytches even was at that point? Why would he ever call him that, in fact? He wouldn't unless it was on his mind because he'd had to go through what I'd gone through: the records in St. Catherine's. And why? In order to locate James Pitchford himself.”
“What is this?” Leach demanded.
Lynley held up a hand, saying, “Hang on a moment, sir. She's got something. Havers, go on.”