Deborah Crombie - Where Memories Lie

"Late night, early start," he went on with a shrug, "and I don't have a thing on the victim. What else can you tell me, Doc?" A fingertip search of the garden started at first light had turned up no trace of a murder weapon or any of the victim's possessions, nor had nearby neighbors admitted to knowing the man or to seeing anything unusual.

Rainey turned up the victim's palms. "No defense wounds, so I'd say he knew his killer, or was approached in some way that enabled the killer to take him completely by surprise." With a gloved finger, he traced the wound on the left side of the chest, just beneath the breast. "I'd say this was the first blow, and the killing blow. It was an upward thrust to the heart, and more than likely made by someone who knew what he was doing. These others"-his finger skimmed four more dark slashes in the white skin-"might have been done to mask the deliberateness of the first blow, or perhaps rage got the better of our killer."

"You said 'someone who knew what he was doing.' You're assuming the killer was male?"

"Merely being grammatical," Rainey answered, shaking his head. "A woman could have wielded that knife, if she had knowledge and upper-body strength. That might account for the element of surprise. Still…" Rainey studied the wounds. "I'd put my money on a man, probably ex-service. That would account for the knowledge, and the knife."

Hoxley waited, eyebrow raised, knowing Rainey liked the drama of his revelations.

"I assume you'll want to know what sort of weapon was used?"

"So tell me about the knife," said Hoxley, giving in.

Rainey smiled, showing even white teeth. "A wide, double-edged blade, with a definitive hilt. If you look carefully, you can see the faint indentation it left on the skin."

Following the pathologist's pointing finger, Hoxley saw nothing, and decided Rainey's eyes must be better than his. He nodded agreement, however, not wanting to stop the flow of information.

"My guess would be a hunting knife, or more likely, considering the location of the crime, a combat knife."

"Ah. Near the Royal Hospital. That's why you think the killer might have been ex-service." Hoxley frowned. "Very neat, but then, I don't trust neat."

"A wager?"

"I'll buy you a pint if you're right," replied Hoxley. "That's about all my salary will cover. Anything else you can tell me from the external exam?" He wouldn't stay for the dissection-Rainey could send him a report on the state of his victim's internal organs.

"The hands are soft, but he has a callus on the side of his right index finger, probably from holding a pen. And his teeth. The dental work's not English. Maybe Eastern European."

"So I have a middle-aged, moderately well-nourished, literate, possibly European, possibly Jewish, white male. Thanks, Doc."

"Do I detect a note of sarcasm, Inspector?" Rainey looked hurt. "What did you expect, the poor man's name tattooed on his privates?"

"More to the point," said Hoxley, "there's no tattoo on his forearm. This man was never in the camps."

The morning dawned clear and fine, but brought Erika no peace. She had slept fitfully-shivering beneath the duvet and an extra woolen blanket, even though the night was mild-and had slipped in and out of vague dreams that left her with only an ache under her breastbone.

She lay in bed, thinking, until the sun coming in the garden window crept across the counterpane, then she rose and forced herself to bathe and dress as if it were any ordinary Sunday. Sweeping up the white hair she still wore long and fastening it with pins, she gazed at her shadowed eyes in the dressing table mirror. Already she regretted speaking to Gemma. The confidence had left her feeling violated, and she had a sudden desire to undo it, to forget the whole matter, push it back into the recesses of her life like a wayward jack-in-the-box.

After a meager breakfast, she made coffee-the real thing, to combat her weariness, doctor's orders be damned-and took it out into the garden. Setting the newspaper carefully on the white iron table, she sat, but when she raised the delicate china cup to her lips, her hand trembled. She set the cup down and pulled her cardigan more closely about her shoulders, but not even the brilliant sun seemed able to warm her.

Closing her eyes, she tried to recapture the anticipation of her morning's idyll, but to one side the neighbor's children were as raucous as jackdaws, drowning out the birdsong with their shrieks, and on the other the middle-aged husband was industriously spreading organic fertilizer and whistling through his teeth.

It was a good thing, she knew, the communal garden healthy and well tended, the children happy and well fed, but she found herself remembering the shabby comradeship of the war years, when she had been a mere tenant in the garden flat and the neighbors had come down in the raids, sharing mattresses spread on the floor and endless cups of weak tea. Back then they had been bonded by more than self-interest and the desire to discuss their property values.

She and David had ended up in Notting Hill by a combination of necessity and happenstance, and assessing the future value of their property had been the farthest thing from their minds. All Jewish refugees had been placed by the Jewish relief organizations-a guarantee to the government by established English Jews that the incomers would not be a burden on the state. David had been found a job as secretary to an organization official, while she had been taken on that first year at Whiteleys in Bayswater, in the millinery department. Lodging had been found for them near David's employer.

Those connections had made their transition easier, although her German accent had caused neighbors and coworkers to regard her with suspicion at first. And even then, she'd had to learn to keep quiet when her English friends gloated over the RAF's retaliation bombings in Germany. She took no pleasure in an eye for an eye, seeing only suffering piled upon suffering, but her efforts to explain that the average German family had no more control over circumstances than the English were met with glassy-eyed hostility.

Later, after the war, when Erika had secured a university teaching position, she bought the garden flat and then the entire house, putting tenants in the upper three floors, never dreaming that she'd end up with a gold mine-a gold mine that meant nothing, as there was no one to benefit when she was gone.

Suddenly the breeze shifted and the earthy farmyard smell of her neighbor's fertilizer hit her in a wave, bringing an unexpected rush of memory that made the bile rise in her throat. Pushing away from the table, she left her coffee untouched and hurried back into the house, swallowing and wiping at her stinging eyes.

When she reached the sitting room she stopped, panting, and clutched a chair back for support. How had her father's brooch got from a German barn to an auction house in South Kensington? And why did it matter so much, after all this time? That had been another life, and she had been a different person, a phantom of a girl held to her now by the most tenuous of threads.

Erika looked round the sitting room, at the beautiful cocoon she had made for herself, and saw it for a hollow shell, a facade created to hold the past at bay.

But yesterday her life had cracked open and there could be no putting it back. She owed the truth to that long-ago girl, and that meant she would have to accept the help she had enlisted, no matter how difficult either of them found it.

"Drink up." Kincaid set a cup of hot tea on the kitchen table. Gemma seemed to hesitate for a moment, then sank into a chair and wrapped her hands round the mug. Bringing his own mug to the table, Kincaid sat down opposite and studied her.