by Nicci French
‘You’re making it sound like he exists.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘You’re missing something so badly that you’re making it come true in your mind.’
Alan rubbed his hands all over his tired face, as though he was washing it thoroughly. ‘I want to tell someone,’ he said. ‘I want to be able to speak it out loud. It’s like when I fell in love with Carrie. I’d had girlfriends before, of course, but nothing that felt like that. I felt freed from myself.’ He looked at Frieda and she stored away the phrase for later. ‘Those first few months, I just wanted to say her name out loud to anyone. I’d find ways of getting her into the conversation. “My girlfriend Carrie,” I’d say. It made it feel real when I said it to someone else. It’s a bit like that now, as if I just have to say it to someone because that eases this pressure inside me a bit. If that makes sense.’
‘It does. But I’m not here to make what isn’t real seem real, Alan,’ said Frieda.
‘You said everyone needs to make a story out of their lives.’
‘So what do you want to do about this story?’
‘Carrie says we can adopt. I don’t want to. I don’t want to fill out forms and have people decide if I’m fit to be a parent. I want my son, not someone else’s. Look.’ Alan took his wallet out of his jacket pocket. ‘I want to show you something.’
He pulled out an old photograph. ‘Here. This is what I imagine my son to look like.’
Frieda took it reluctantly. For a moment, she couldn’t speak.
‘Is this you?’ she asked eventually, staring at the slightly chubby little boy in blue shorts standing by a tree, a football under one arm.
‘Me when I was about five or six.’
‘I see.’
‘What do you see?’
‘You had very red hair.’
‘It started going grey before I was thirty.’
Red hair, glasses, freckles. A shiver of disquiet ran through her and this time she voiced it. ‘You look very like the little boy who’s gone missing.’
‘I know. Of course I know. He’s my dream.’
Alan looked at her and tried to smile. A single tear ran down his face, into his smiling mouth.
He mustn’t eat anything. He knew that. It was all right to drink water, warm stale water from a bottle, but he mustn’t eat. If he ate, he wouldn’t be able to go home ever. He would be stuck here. Hard fingers forced open his mouth. Things were pushed inside him and he spat them out. Once some peas went down and he coughed and choked to make them come back again but he could feel them going down. Did a few peas count? He didn’t know the rules. He had tried to bite the hand and the hand had hit him and he had cried and the hand had hit him again.
He was a dirty boy. His trousers went stiff with his wee and they smelt bad and yesterday night he had done a poo in the corner. He couldn’t help it. His tummy had burned so badly he’d thought he was going to die. He was turning into liquid and fire. Everything was runny inside him. Hot and shivery. Everything hurt and felt wrong. He was clean now, though. Scrubbing brush and scalding water. Pink sore skin. Bristles on his teeth and against his gums. One of his teeth was wobbly. The tooth fairy would come. If he stayed awake, he could see her and tell her to save him. But if he stayed awake, she wouldn’t come. He knew that.
And something nasty on his hair. Black and gluey and with a strong smell, like when you walk past men working on the roads with drills that make a heavy thumping sound that gets inside your head. His hair felt strange now. He was turning into someone else. If there was a mirror, he would see someone else in it. Who would he see? Someone with a glaring, wicked face. Soon it would be too late. He didn’t know the words to say to turn the spell around again.
Bare boards. Nasty cracking green walls. Blind tied down on the window. One bulb hanging from the ceiling with a frayed cord. A white radiator that burned his skin if he touched it and made groaning sounds in the night, like an animal that was dying on the road. A white plastic potty, cracked. It made him feel ashamed to look at it. Mattress on the floor with dark stains on it. One stain was a dragon and one stain was a country but he didn’t know which country. One stain was a face with a beaky nose and he thought it was a witch’s face, and one stain was from him. There was a door but it didn’t open for him. Even if he had hands to use, and even if it opened, Matthew knew he wouldn’t be able to go through it. There were things on the other side that would get him.
Detective Constable Yvette Long looked around the Faradays’ living room. There were toys scattered about: a large red plastic bus and several little cars on the rug, reading books and picture books, a monkey glove puppet. On the coffee-table, there was a large pad of lined paper with Matthew’s attempts at writing – painstaking, lopsided letters in red felt tip, the Bs and Ds reversed. Andrea Faraday sat opposite her. Her long red hair was tangled and greasy and her face puffy from crying. It seemed to Yvette Long that she’d been crying solidly for days.
‘What else can I tell you?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to say. Nothing. I don’t know anything. Do you think I wouldn’t tell you? I go over and over everything.’
‘Can you think of anything that seems suspicious, any strange person hanging around?’
‘No! Nothing. If I hadn’t been late – oh, God, if I hadn’t been late. Please get him back. My little boy. He still wets his bed at night sometimes.’
‘I know how painful this is. We’re doing everything we can. In the meantime…’
‘They won’t know anything about him. He’s allergic to nuts. What if they give him nuts?’
DC Long tried to keep her face calm and put a hand on Andrea’s arm. ‘Try to think of anything that might help.’
‘He’s just a baby, really. He’ll be crying out for me and I can’t come to him. Do you understand what that feels like? I missed the bus and I was late.’
Jack had taken Frieda’s advice. Today he was wearing black trousers, a pale blue shirt, only the top button undone, and a grey woollen jacket whose pockets, Frieda saw, were still sewn up. His shoes were cheap-looking, shiny black brogues; they probably still had the price sticker on the soles. He had even brushed his hair away from his face and shaved, though he’d missed a patch under his jaw. He no longer looked like a dishevelled student but a trainee accountant, or maybe a new recruit to a religious cult. Jack referred to his notebook and talked about his cases. It was a desultory process. Frieda was finding it hard to concentrate. She looked at her watch. They were done. She nodded at Jack, and then she asked: ‘Imagine that a patient confesses to a crime. What do you do?’
Jack sat up a bit straighter. He looked suspicious. Was Frieda trying to catch him out in some way? ‘What sort of crime? Speeding? Shoplifting?’
‘Something really serious. Like murder.’
‘Nothing goes beyond the room,’ Jack said doubtfully. ‘Isn’t that what we promise?’
‘You’re not a priest in a confessional,’ said Frieda, with a laugh. ‘You’re a citizen. If someone confesses to a murder, you call the police.’
Jack’s face turned red. He’d failed the test.
‘But now then: what if you suspect a patient of committing a crime?’
Jack hesitated. He chewed the tip of his thumb.
‘I’m not looking for wrong or right answers.’
‘How do you suspect them?’ he said at last. ‘I mean, do you just have a gut feeling? You can’t just go to the police on a gut feeling, can you? Gut feelings are often completely wrong.’
‘I don’t know.’ Frieda was talking to herself rather than to him. ‘I don’t really know what that means.’
‘The thing is,’ said Jack, ‘if I let myself, I could suspect lots of people of being criminals. I saw a man yesterday who said things that were completely gross. I felt poisoned just listening to him. I kept thinking of what you said to me once about the difference between imagining and doing.’
Frieda nodded at him. ‘That’s right.’
‘And you’re always telling us that our job is not to deal with the mess in the outside world but the mess in the person’s head.’ He paused. ‘This is one of your patients, isn’t it?’
‘Not exactly. Or maybe.’
‘The easiest thing would be just to ask him.’
Frieda looked at him and smiled. ‘Is that what you’d do?’
‘Me? No. I’d come to you and do what you told me.’
Frieda walked to the Barbican after her patient left, so she didn’t get there until half past eight. It was raining, at first just a slight drizzle but by the time she arrived it had turned into a downpour, so that puddles formed on the pavement and cars driving past sent up shining arcs of water from their wheels.
‘Let me get you a towel,’ Sandy said, when he saw her. ‘And one of my shirts.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Why didn’t you take a cab?’
‘I needed to walk.’
He found her a soft white shirt, pulled off her shoes and tights and dried her feet, towelled her hair. She curled up on the sofa and he handed her a glass of wine. Inside the flat it was warm and bright; outside, the night was wild and wet, and the lights of London glimmered and dissolved.
‘This is nice,’ she said. ‘What can I smell?’
‘Garlic prawns with rice and a green salad. Is that all right?’
‘Better than all right. I’m not really a cook myself.’
‘I can live with that.’
‘That’s good to know.’
They ate sitting at the small table. Sandy lit a candle. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and jeans. He looked at her with an intensity that unnerved her. She was used to her students and her patients being curious about her but this was different.
‘Why don’t I know anything about your past?’
‘Is this the serious talk?’
‘Not exactly. But you withhold.’
‘Do I?’
‘I feel you know far more about me than I know about you.’
‘It takes time.’
‘I know it does. And we have time, don’t we?’
She held his gaze. ‘I think so, yes.’
‘This has taken me by surprise,’ he said.
‘That’s the way of love.’ The word slipped out before she could check herself; it must have been the wine.
Sandy put his hand over hers. He looked suddenly serious. ‘There is something I’ve got to say.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you’re married?’
He smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that. I’ve been offered a new job.’
‘Oh.’ Relief flooded though her. ‘I thought you were about to say something terrible. But that’s good, isn’t it? What job?’
‘A full professorship.’
‘Sandy, that’s fantastic.’
‘At Cornell.’
Frieda put her knife and fork neatly together and pushed her plate away from her. She put her elbows on the table. ‘Which is in New York.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandy. ‘That one.’
‘So you’re moving to the States.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Oh.’ She suddenly felt cold, and very sober. ‘When did you say yes?’
‘A few weeks ago.’
‘So you’ve known all along.’
He turned his face away from her. He looked both embarrassed and irritated at being embarrassed. ‘When I got the job, I hadn’t even met you.’
Frieda picked up her glass and took a sip of wine. It tasted sour. It was as if the light had changed and everything looked different.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
‘Like a good woman should.’
‘You’ve got contacts. You can work there just as well as here. We could both begin again, together.’
‘I don’t want to begin again.’
‘I know I should have told you.’
‘I let my guard down,’ said Frieda. ‘I let you into my house, into my life. I told you things I haven’t told anyone else. You were planning this all the time.’
‘With you.’
‘You can’t make plans for me. You knew something about us that I didn’t know.’
‘I didn’t want to lose you.’
‘When are you going?’
‘New Year. In a few weeks. I’ve sold the flat. I’ve found somewhere in Ithaca.’
‘You have been busy.’ She heard her voice, cool, bitter and controlled. She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of it. Really she was feeling hot and weak with distress.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘Please, my beloved Frieda, come with me. Join me.’
‘You’re asking me to give everything up here and start again in America?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about if I ask you to give up your professorship there and stay with me here?’
He got up and walked to the window, his back to her. He looked out for a few seconds, then turned round. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’
‘So?’ said Frieda.
‘Marry me.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I’m proposing to you, not insulting you.’
‘I should just go.’
‘You haven’t given me an answer.’
‘Are you serious?’ said Frieda. She felt as if the alcohol had hit her hard.
‘Yes.’
‘I have to think about it on my own.’
‘You mean, you might say yes?’
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Chapter Sixteen
When Tanner opened his front door he looked surprised. Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson introduced himself.
‘My assistant talked to you,’ said Karlsson.
Tanner nodded and led him through into a dingy front room. It was cold. Tanner got on his knees and fiddled with an electric bar heater that had been placed in the hearth. As he fussed around making tea and serving it, Karlsson looked around the room and remembered going out with his grandparents when he was a child to see their friends, or vaguely distant relations. Even thirty years later the memory gave off a smell of dullness and duty.
‘I’m doing your old job,’ said Karlsson, thinking as he said it that it seemed like a rebuke. Tanner didn’t look like a detective. He didn’t even look like a retired detective. He was wearing an old cardigan and shiny grey trousers and he had shaved himself clumsily, leaving patches of stubble.
Tanner poured tea into two different-sized mugs and handed the large one across. ‘I never planned to stay in Kensal Rise,’ he said. ‘When I took early retirement, we were going to move to the coast. Somewhere away to the east, like Clacton or Frinton. We started to get brochures. Then my wife got ill. It all became a bit too complicated. She’s upstairs. You’ll probably hear her shout for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Karlsson.
‘It’s meant to be the men who get ill straight after retiring. But I’m fine. Just knackered.’
‘I spent a few days looking after my mum when she had an operation,’ said Karlsson. ‘It was harder than being a copper.’
‘You don’t sound like a copper,’ said Tanner.
‘What do I sound like?’
‘Different. I guess you went to university.’
‘I did, yes. Does that stop me being one of the lads?’
‘Probably. What did you study?’
‘Law.’
‘Well, that’s a bloody waste of time.’
Karlsson took a sip of his tea. He could see little spots of milk floating around on the surface and there was a slight sour taste.
‘I know why you’re here,’ said Tanner.
‘We’re looking for a missing kid. We drew up some parameters. Age of child, time of day, type of location, means, opportunity, and a name popped up on our computer. Just one. Joanna Vine. Or is it Jo?’
‘Joanna.’
‘My one’s called Matthew Faraday. The papers call him Mattie. I suppose it fits better into a headline. Litt
le Mattie. But his name is Matthew.’
‘She disappeared twenty years ago.’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘And Joanna was taken in Camberwell. This little boy was in Hackney, right?’
‘You’ve been following the story.’
‘You can’t avoid it.’
‘True. Go on, then.’
‘Joanna was in summer. This was winter.’
‘So you’re not convinced?’
Tanner thought for a moment before he replied, and he started to look a little more like the senior detective he had been. When he spoke, he counted points off on his fingers. ‘Convinced?’ he said. ‘Girl, boy. North London, south London. Summer, winter. And then there’s a gap of twenty-two years. What’s that all about? He snatches a child, waits half a lifetime, then takes another. But you think they’re connected. Is there some clue you haven’t told the press?’
‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘You’re right. There’s no obvious reason at all. I approached it from the other direction. Thousands of children go missing every year. But once you eliminate the teenage runaways, the ones taken by other family members, the accidents, then already we’re down to a very small number. How many children are killed by a stranger every year? Four or five?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Suddenly these two disappearances look like each other. You know how difficult it is to take a child. You need to get the child without a fuss, avoid being seen and then… what? Dispose of the body so that it’s never found or send them abroad or I don’t know what.’
‘Have the press got on to this theory of yours?’
‘No. And I’m not going to help them.’
‘It’s not a fact,’ said Tanner. ‘You can’t base the whole inquiry on it. That was our problem. We were sure it was the family. Because that’s what the numbers tell you. It’s always the family. If the parents are separated it’s the father, or an uncle. The way I remember it, he didn’t have a proper alibi at first, so we spent too much time on him.’
‘Did he have a proper alibi?’
‘Proper enough,’ he said glumly. ‘We thought it was just a matter of making him crack and hoping he hadn’t killed his daughter already. Because that’s what always happens. Except when it doesn’t. But you don’t need me to tell you all this. You’ve read the file.’
