by Nicci French
He could sense a release of tension.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Matthew disappeared on Friday, November the thirteenth. I believe Mr Dekker was with you that afternoon?’
Frieda thought for a moment.
‘Yes. He would have left at two fifty.’
‘And his wife says that she met him shortly after that. They went home together. A neighbour came round just after they got back and stayed for a cup of tea. We checked.’
‘So that’s that,’ Frieda said. She bit her lower lip, holding back the next question.
‘They were shocked to be questioned,’ he said.
‘I imagine.’
‘You’re probably wondering what I told them.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I said they were part of a routine inquiry.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s just one of those phrases.’
‘I’ll tell him myself.’
‘I thought you might.’ Karlsson stretched his legs out in front of the fire, which was crackling away now. He half wished Frieda would offer him a cup of tea or a glass of wine so that he could stay in this cocoon of dimly lit warmth, but she didn’t seem about to do that. ‘He’s a curious man, isn’t he? All jangled up. But nice. I liked his wife.’
Frieda shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about him. She had probably done enough damage already. ‘I’m sorry I wasted your time,’ she said neutrally.
‘Don’t be sorry.’ He raised his eyebrows at her: ‘ “Dreams are often most profound when they seem most crazy.” ’
‘You’re quoting Freud at me?’
‘Even coppers read sometimes.’
‘I don’t think dreams are profound. Usually I hate it when patients tell me their dreams as if they’re some magic fable. But in this case -’ She broke off. ‘Well, I was wrong. And I’m glad.’
Karlsson stood up and she did too.
‘I’ll let you get back to your cooking.’
‘Can I ask you one thing?’
‘What?’
‘Is this about Joanna Vine?’
Karlsson looked startled, then wary.
‘Don’t look so surprised. Twenty-two years ago. That was what made you jump. It took me five minutes online and I’m not even very good on a computer.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It seemed… I don’t know, odd.’
‘And that’s the end of it?’
‘Seems like it.’ He hesitated. ‘Can I ask you something now?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘As I’m sure you know, we live in an age where almost everything is contracted out.’
‘I was aware of it.’
‘You know the kind of thing, fewer staff on the books, even if it costs more in the end. Even we have to contract things out.’
‘And what has this got to do with me?’
‘I was wondering if you could give me a second opinion. We’d reimburse you, of course.’
‘A second opinion on what?’
‘Would you consider talking to the sister of Joanna Vine, who was nine when she went missing and who was with her when she vanished?’
Frieda looked speculatively at Karlsson. He seemed slightly embarrassed. ‘Why me? You know nothing about me and you must have people of your own who do this kind of thing.’
‘That’s true, of course. To be honest, it’s just a long shot. A whim.’
‘A whim!’ Frieda laughed. ‘That doesn’t sound very rational.’
‘It’s not rational. And you’re right, I don’t know you, but you made a connection -’
‘A false connection, as it turns out.’
‘Yes, well, that’s as may be.’
‘You must be desperate,’ said Frieda, not unkindly.
‘Most cases are pretty straightforward. You advance by routine investigation and you follow the rulebook. There’s blood, there are fingerprints, there is DNA, there are images caught on CCTV, there are witnesses. It’s all pretty obvious. But every so often you get a case where the rulebook just doesn’t seem to apply. Matthew Faraday’s disappeared into thin air, and there’s nothing to follow. We’re clueless. So now we have to take anything we’re given – any rumour, any idea, any possible connection with another crime, however tenuous.’
‘I still don’t see what I can do that someone else can’t.’
‘Probably nothing at all. As I said, it’s a long shot and I’ll most likely get hauled over the coals for wasting public money on duplicating work unnecessarily. But maybe, just maybe, you have insight that others don’t. And you’re an outsider. Possibly you’ll be able to see things we’ve become blind to because we’ve looked at them so hard and for so long.’
‘This whim of yours…’
‘Yes?’
‘The sister.’
‘Her name is Rose Teale. The mother remarried.’
‘Did she see anything?’
‘She says she didn’t. But she just seems paralysed by guilt about it.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda.
‘You mean, you don’t know if it could be helpful?’
‘It depends what you mean by helpful. When I hear that, what I want to do is deal with her guilt, help her move on. Do I think she’s got a memory hidden somewhere that someone could find? I don’t think memory really works as simply as that. Anyway, it’s not my thing.’
‘So what is your thing?’
‘Helping people with the stuff, the fears and desires and jealousies and sorrows, they have inside them.’
‘What about helping to find a lost boy?’
‘What I provide for my patients is a safe place.’
Karlsson looked around him. ‘This is a nice place,’ he said. ‘I can see why you wouldn’t want to step out of it into the mess of the world.’
‘The mess of someone’s mind isn’t so very safe, you know.’
‘Will you think about it?’
‘Certainly. But don’t expect me to call you.’
At the door, he said, ‘Our jobs are very similar.’
‘You think so?’
‘Symptoms, clues, you know.’
‘I don’t think it’s the same at all.’
When he had gone, Frieda returned to the kitchen. She was just painstakingly separating the cauliflower into florets as instructed by Chloë’s recipe when the doorbell rang once more. She paused and listened. It wouldn’t be Karlsson again. And it wouldn’t be Olivia, because Olivia usually hammered on the knocker as well as ringing, or even called through the letterbox, yoo-hooing imperiously. She lifted the pan of onions off the hob, thinking that she wasn’t very hungry anyway; all she wanted was a few crackers with cheese. Or nothing, just a mug of tea and bed. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She opened the door a crack, leaving it on a chain.
‘Who is it?’
‘Is me.’
‘Is who?’
‘Is me, Josef.’
‘Josef?’
‘Is cold.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Very cold.’
Frieda’s first impulse was to tell him to go away, then to slam the door. What was he doing coming around like this? Then she felt something she had felt ever since she was a girl. She imagined someone looking at her, judging her, commenting on her. What would she be saying? ‘Look at that Frieda. She rings him up, asks him a favour and he does it straight away, no questions asked. Then he comes to her, cold, lonely, and she just shuts the door against him.’ Sometimes Frieda wished the imaginary person would just go away.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
Frieda drew the chain off the bolt and opened the door. Biting wind and darkness gusted into her house and Josef fell in with them.
‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked suspiciously, before he lifted his face to her. She drew in her breath sharply. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Josef didn’t answer immediately. He crouche
d down and started trying to untie his laces, which were fused in a complicated sodden knot.
‘Josef?’
‘I mustn’t put dirt in your nice house.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘There.’ He pulled off one thick boot, whose sole was coming loose. His socks were red and patterned with reindeer. Then he started work on the next. Frieda examined his face. The left cheek was puffy and bruised and there was a gash on his forehead. The next boot was off now; he lined it up neatly with its pair and put them against the wall, then straightened.
‘This way,’ said Frieda, and led him into her kitchen. ‘Sit down.’
‘You are cooking?’
‘Not you, too.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I was, kind of.’ She ran cold water over a folded hand towel and gave it to him. ‘Press this against your cheek, and let me look at your head. I’m going to wash it first. It’ll sting.’
As she wiped away the blood, Josef just stared ahead of him. In his eyes she saw something fierce. What was he thinking? He smelt of sweat and whisky but didn’t seem altogether drunk.
‘What happened?’
‘There were some men.’
‘Have you been in a fight?’
‘They shout at me, they push me. I push back.’
‘Push?’ said Frieda. ‘Josef, you can’t do this. One day someone will pull a knife.’
‘They called me a fucking Pole.’
‘It’s not worth it,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s never worth it.’
Josef looked around. ‘London,’ he said. ‘It’s not all like your lovely house. Now, we can drink vodka together.’
‘I don’t have any vodka.’
‘Whisky? Beer?’
‘I can give you some tea before you go.’ She looked at the cut, still oozing blood. ‘I’ll put a plaster on that. I think you’ll get away without having stitches. You might have a small scar.’
‘We give help to each other,’ he said. ‘You are my friend.’
Frieda thought of arguing with that but it felt too complicated.
He knew the cat wasn’t really a cat. It was a witch pretending to be a cat. It was grey, not black like they usually are in books, and it had lumps of fur hanging from it, which normal cats didn’t have. Its eyes were yellow and they stared at him without blinking. It had a rough tongue and claws that pricked him. Sometimes it pretended to be asleep but then one yellow eye would open and it had been watching him all the time. When Matthew was lying on his mattress, it would climb onto his naked back and dig its claws into his skin, and its greasy grey fur would make him itch. It laughed at him.
When the cat was there, Matthew couldn’t look out of the window. It was hard to look out anyway because his legs shook too much and his eyes hurt in the light that came from behind the blind, the light from another world. That was because he was turning into something else. He was turning into Simon. There were red marks on his skin. And spots inside his mouth that stung when he drank water. Half of him was Matthew and the other half was Simon. He had eaten the food that was pushed into his mouth. Cold baked beans and floppy fat chips like worms.
If he pressed his head against the floor just by his mattress, he could hear sounds. Little bangs. Bad voices. Something humming. For a moment it reminded him of before, when he was whole, and his mummy – when she was still his mummy before he let go of her hand – cleaned the house and made things safe for him.
Today, when he looked out of the bottom corner of the window, the world had changed again and it was white and shining and it should have been beautiful but his head hurt too and beauty was only cruel.
Chapter Twenty
The shabby little train was almost empty. It creaked and rattled its way through the hidden parts of London – the backs of terraced houses with their soggy winter gardens, the dark-stained walls of abandoned factories, nettles and rosebay willowherb sprouting from cracks in the brickwork, glimpses of a canal. Frieda saw the hunched figure of a man in a thick coat, holding a fishing rod out over the brown, oily water. Lighted windows flashed past and occasionally Frieda glimpsed a person framed there: a young man watching television, an old woman reading a book. From a bridge, she looked down at a high street, Christmas lights looped round lamp-posts, people moving along the road carrying bags or tugging children, cars spraying water from their wheels. London unwound like a film.
She got out at Leytonstone. It was dusk and everything looked grey and slightly blurred. The orange street-lights shimmered on the wet pavements. Buses swayed past. The road where Alan lived was long and straight, a corridor of late-Victorian terraces lined with stout plane trees that must have been planted at the same time as the houses were built. Alan lived at number 108, at the far end. As she walked, slowing slightly to put off the moment she had to face him, she glanced into the bay windows of other houses, seeing the large downstairs rooms, the views through to the back gardens, lying dormant in winter.
Frieda had steeled herself for this. Even so, there was a tightness in her chest as she pushed open the gate and rang at the dark green door. In the distance, she could hear a jaunty double chime. She was cold and she was tired. She allowed herself to think of her own house, the fire she would light later on, once this was over with. Then she heard footsteps and the door swung open.
‘Yes?’
The woman in front of her was short, stockily built. She stood with her legs slightly apart and her feet planted firmly on the ground, as if she was prepared to do battle. Her hair was brown and cut short. She had large and rather beautiful grey eyes, pale smooth skin with a mole just above her mouth, a firm jaw. She wore jeans, a grey flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and no makeup. She was looking at Frieda through narrowed eyes. The line of her mouth was grim.
‘I’m Frieda. I think Alan’s expecting me.’
‘He is. Come in.’
‘You must be Carrie.’
She stepped into the hall; something pressed against her calf and she looked down. A large cat was winding itself around her leg, a purr rumbling in its throat. She bent down and ran a finger along its thrumming spine.
‘Hansel,’ said Carrie. ‘Gretel’s around somewhere.’
It was warm and dark inside, and the air smelt pleasantly woody. Frieda felt as though she had entered a different world from the one suggested by its façade. She had expected the house to be like the others she had walked by, with walls knocked down, french windows built, everything a continuous open space. Instead, she was in a warren of passageways, tiny rooms, tall cupboards and wide shelves crammed with objects. Carrie led her past the front room, but Frieda had time to see a snug enclosure with a wood-burner fitted into the wall, and a glass-windowed cabinet full of birds’ eggs, feathers, nests made of moss and twigs and even, standing at one pane of glass, a stuffed kingfisher that looked a bit balding. The room backing on to it – the one that most people would have knocked through – was even smaller, and was dominated by a large desk on which stood several balsawood model planes, the kind Frieda’s own brother used to make when he was young. Just the sight of them brought back the smell of glue and varnish, the feel of small adhesive blisters on the fingertips, the memory of those tiny tubs of grey and black paint.
On the wall outside the kitchen there was a group of family photographs in frames – some of Carrie as a small child, squashed with two sisters on a garden bench, standing posing with her parents; others were of Alan. In one, he stood with his parents, a small, blocky figure between two tall and spindly ones, and she tried to look at it more closely as she passed.
‘Have a seat,’ said Carrie. ‘I’ll call him.’
Frieda took off her coat and sat down at the small table. The catflap in the back door rattled and another cat slid through, this one black and white and orange, like a pleasing jigsaw. She jumped up on Frieda’s lap and settled there, licking one paw delicately.
The kitchen was a room of two halves. To Frieda it felt like a physical demonstratio
n of two different spheres of interest, a precise delineation of Alan’s place in the house and Carrie’s: the woman who cooks and the man who makes and mends. On one side there were all the things you usually find in a kitchen: oven, microwave, kettle, scales, a food processor, a magnetic strip for the sharp knives, a spice rack, a tower of pots and pans, a bowl of green apples, a small shelf for the recipe books, some of which were old and worn while others looked untouched, an apron hanging on a hook. On the other side, the wall was lined with narrow boxed shelves. Each separate compartment was labelled, in large neat capital letters: ‘Nails’, ‘Tacks’, ‘Screws 4.2 × 65mm’, ‘Screws 3.9 × 30mm’, ‘Chisels’, ‘Washers’, ‘Fuses’, ‘Radiator keys’, ‘Methylated spirits’, ‘Sandpaper – rough’, ‘Sandpaper – fine’, ‘Drill bits’, ‘Batteries – AA’. There must have been dozens, hundreds of these compartments; the effect reminded Frieda of a beehive. She imagined all the work that must have gone into it – Alan with his blunt fingers delicately putting these small objects in place, on his round baby-face a look of contentment. The image was so strong that she had to blink it away.
In another situation, she might have said something sardonic, but she was aware of Carrie’s eyes fixed on her, of the peculiar dynamic between them. Carrie spoke for her, drily: ‘He’s building a shed in the garden.’
‘I thought I was organized,’ said Frieda. ‘This is on a different scale.’
‘The gardening things are all in there.’ Carrie nodded towards a narrow door next to the window, presumably meant for a pantry. ‘But he hasn’t done much gardening recently. I’ll look for him. He might be asleep. He’s tired all the time.’ She hesitated, then said abruptly, ‘I don’t want him upset.’
Frieda didn’t answer. There were too many things she could have said, but nothing that would have prevented Carrie from seeing her as a threat.
Frieda listened to Carrie as she went up the stairs. Her voice, curt when she spoke to Frieda, was tender, like a mother’s, when she called her husband. A few moments later, she heard them come down the stairs, Carrie’s footsteps light and firm, Alan’s slower and heavier, as though he was putting his whole sagging weight onto each step. When he came into the room, rubbing his fists into his eyes, she saw how tired and defeated he looked.
