by Nicci French
Today eight or nine of them were playing football. Frieda watched them as they tore over the muddy, churned-up ground, yelling to each other to pass. Their school clothes were beginning to look the worse for wear. Perhaps nothing would ever get built here, she thought. Perhaps it would turn back to a kind of natural wilderness in the centre of the urban density where children could play, gangs could fight each other, and homeless people could retreat from shop fronts.
She heard footsteps outside. Putting down her mug, she stood for a while, clearing her thoughts and readying herself, then went towards her door and opened it into the waiting area. Joe Franklin sat on the sofa, his head tipped to one side as if he was listening to some sound only he could hear. Frieda had a chance to examine him before he noticed she was there: she had been seeing Joe for two and a half years now, twice a week if he managed to turn up, which he frequently didn’t. Today he was early, which was a good sign, and she saw that he was properly dressed: his buttons matched up, his shoelaces were tied, his jeans were held up with a belt, not sliding off his wasted frame, his hair was quite clean. She saw that his fingernails weren’t dirty and that he had shaved recently. What was more, as he turned towards her, his eyes were clear and he stood up in one smooth gesture, no longer toppling upwards like an old drunk. There were weeks and months when he could barely make it through the day, when all his efforts were a blind stumble through a slow-motion nightmare, and then there were times like this, when he emerged from the shadows.
‘Joe.’ She smiled at him reassuringly and held the door open. ‘Good to see you. Come in, sit down. Let’s begin.’
At ten to two, Frieda had finished for the day. Four patients, four stories in her head. She sat for a few minutes, making her notes from the final session in her notebook with her old fountain pen that Reuben always mocked her for, calling her old-fashioned. She checked her mobile for messages, reminded herself that she had to call her niece Chloë later on, and washed her mug in the little kitchen off her room. She had eaten nothing that day, but she wasn’t going home just yet. She pulled on her long black coat and wrapped her red scarf twice round her neck, then set off briskly for Warren Street and the Victoria Line.
A little later, walking up Brixton Road, she found Andy’s Pizzas within a few minutes. It was easy. She had the flyer. She looked at the brightly coloured exterior. Andy didn’t just offer pizzas. He offered hamburgers and chips as well. There were livid photographs of them on display. They suddenly made Frieda think of the photographs of the body, and once she had thought of it she couldn’t stop herself. She walked inside. There were a couple of plastic tables at the front by the window. At one, a woman was sitting with a small child and a baby in a buggy. Frieda went up to the counter. A man was taking an order over the phone. He was balding with a black beard and he wore a red polo shirt with ‘Andy’s’ printed over the left breast. He put the phone down and handed the order through a gap in the wall behind him. A hand took it. Frieda could hear frying and clattering pans. The man looked enquiringly at her.
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, looking beyond him at the list of food and prices on the wall. ‘Can I have a green salad? And a bottle of water.’
‘Salad,’ the man shouted. He leaned down and took a plastic bottle from a fridge. He placed it on the counter. ‘Anything else?’
‘That’s fine,’ said Frieda, handing over a five-pound note.
The man slid the change across the counter. ‘The salad’ll be a minute,’ he said.
Frieda took the flyer and put it on the counter. ‘I got your flyer,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’ said the man.
Frieda had worried about this. All it would take was one wrong question, one that made it sound as if she was from the council or the VAT office and they’d clam up and that would be that.
‘I wanted to ask you,’ she said. ‘I was going to get some flyers done myself. I’ve got a little business. I thought I could print some up like you’ve done, get some publicity.’
The phone rang. The man picked it up and took another order.
‘What I was saying,’ Frieda continued, when he was done, ‘was that I was interested in getting flyers like that. I wondered where you got them done.’
‘There’s a printer along the road,’ said the man. ‘They done us a few hundred.’
‘And then what happens? Do they deliver them for you?’
‘They just print them up. My cousin dropped them off.’
‘You mean he pushed them through doors?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do you know where he did it?’ asked Frieda.
The man shrugged. Frieda felt a sense of hopelessness, as if she were trying to grab something and it was slipping through her fingers.
‘I’m just curious,’ she said. She took the A–Z from her bag and fumbled for the right page. ‘You see, I’d probably end up delivering them myself, so I wanted to know how big an area you could cover. Could you just show me on the map where he went? Or did he just wander wherever he wanted?’
She pushed the map across the counter towards him. A sound came from behind him and a polystyrene container appeared in the gap. The man took the salad and gave it to Frieda. There was chopped cabbage and carrot and onion and a slice of tomato, with a swirl of pink liquid across it. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘About this map.’
The man sighed. He leaned down and put his forefinger on the page. ‘I told him to go along Acre Lane and do all the streets along it on that side.’
‘Which streets?’
The man circled his finger around. ‘All those,’ he said. ‘Until he ran out.’
It looked like a lot of streets.
‘And there were three hundred?’
‘Five, I think. We’ve got a pile in the shop.’
‘And this was about a fortnight ago?’
The man looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I wondered how well it worked,’ said Frieda. ‘Whether it made lots of people ring up for pizza.’
‘I don’t know,’ said the man. ‘A few, maybe.’
‘All right. Thanks for your help.’ She turned to go.
‘Hang on. You forgot your salad.’
‘Yes, right.’
She walked out of the shop and, feeling guilty, waited until she was thirty or forty yards away, well out of sight, before she crammed the salad container into an overflowing bin.
As she sat on the underground train, returning north, she looked at the back of the flyer once more, though she knew the words by heart. It was laid out like a shopping list. String. Straw. Cord. Stone. Why would you buy those? What would you use them for? Why would you need to buy both string and cord? Were they actually different in some technical DIY sense that she didn’t recognize? Was there a job that string couldn’t do for which you needed cord? It sounded like something outdoors, unless this had a medieval theme. Weren’t Elizabethan taverns scattered with straw? Or perhaps it was a drinking straw. Frieda stared at the list until her head hurt. When she came out of Warren Street station she kept going over and over it. Was she missing an obvious connection? She played mental games. You could tie straw with string. Or a cord. What about the stone? She thought of David and Goliath, except that that was a sling and a stone.
What would you do with those four things? Who might know? One name came straight into her mind. She couldn’t meet him but she could phone him; in fact, she should have phoned him long ago, just so that he knew she was thinking of him. As soon as she came into her house, she flicked through the leather-bound notebook she kept by the phone. She found the number and dialled. It rang and rang, and she was preparing to leave a message when there was a click.
‘Frieda,’ said the voice.
‘Yes, Josef. Hello! It’s good to hear your voice after all this time. How are you? Are you doing all right there? We miss you.’
‘How am I?’ he said. ‘That is a big question. I don’t know the answer.’
‘Has something happe
ned, Josef?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Frieda, how are you? How are things with you?’
‘Just the same,’ she said. ‘On the whole. But I want to hear about you. I should have called. I’m sorry I didn’t.’
‘That is OK,’ he said. ‘Life is busy for all. Many things happen, things that do not do well on the phone.’
‘I keep looking at the weather,’ Frieda said. ‘Whenever I get the chance, I check the weather in Kiev. That’s you, isn’t it? The last time I saw, it was minus twenty-nine. I hope you’re wrapping up warm.’
There was a long silence, followed by a strange sort of moan.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Frieda. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Frieda, I am not in Kiev at the moment.’
‘Oh. Where are you?’
He said something she couldn’t make out.
‘Sorry? Is that somewhere in the countryside?’
He said the name again.
‘Can you speak more slowly?’
He said the three syllables one by one.
‘Summertown?’ said Frieda. ‘You mean, like Summertown in London?’
‘Yes,’ said Josef. ‘Not like. The Summertown in London. That one.’
It was several seconds before Frieda could speak coherently. ‘You’re … you’re only about five hundred yards away.’
‘It is possible.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I have been in complications.’
‘I need to see you.’
‘No good.’
‘I’m your friend, remember?’ Frieda said. ‘Come to my house. Right now.’
Fifteen
Frieda hadn’t seen Josef for nearly two months. The last occasion had been shortly before Christmas when, in memory of the previous Christmas they had spent together, he had made some traditional Ukrainian food and carried it to her house, wrapped in white linen and placed inside a ribboned box, as a parting gift: little cakes made of wheat, honey and poppy seeds. She remembered him as he had been then, beaming with pride, expansive with generosity and full of solemn excitement. After many months of absence, he was returning to his country to visit his wife Vera and his two sons. His usually shaggy hair was cut short and he wore a new quilted jacket for the cold Ukrainian winter. He had bought his sons T-shirts saying ‘I love London’, small Union flags and snow domes with miniature London scenes inside.
It was a very different Josef who came to her door now. His hair was long, dirty and full of dust; he had the beginnings of a beard that looked like the unintended result of not bothering to shave. He was wearing an old pair of canvas trousers, held up with a plastic belt, and a thick jersey. Over it was that quilted jacket, but it was torn and filthy. His boots were cracked. His hands were chapped and blistered. There was a fading bruise on his neck and a plaster across his grimy forehead. Above all, his face was slack, his eyes were dull and he wouldn’t meet Frieda’s gaze: he stood in the doorway, twisting his woollen hat between his hands and shifting from foot to foot.
Frieda took his hand and pulled him into the hall, shutting the door behind them. She caught a thick whiff of body odour, tobacco and alcohol. She pulled off his jacket and hung it next to her coat. There were holes in the elbows of his jersey.
‘Do you want to take your shoes off,’ she said. ‘Then we can go through and sit down.’
‘I not stay.’
His English seemed to have deteriorated in the short time that he had been away.
‘I’ll make you tea.’
‘No tea.’
‘How long have you been back, Josef?’
He held up his palms in a familiar gesture. ‘Some weeks.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
Josef’s eyes lifted to her face then dropped again.
‘All your things are at Reuben’s. Your van’s there. Where have you been staying?’
‘Now? On site. In house that must be built. Is cold. But is roof.’
Frieda considered him. His entire body spoke of misery and defeat. ‘I want you to tell me what happened,’ she said gently. ‘But don’t worry – you don’t have to do it all at once. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here. I’m glad you’re back. So will Reuben be. His house needs you. And I need you.’
‘You only say.’
‘No, it’s true.’
‘I have no uses.’
‘Here’s the plan. I’m going to call Reuben and you’re staying there tonight. He has things wrong in his house. You can mend them. When you feel like it, you can tell me – or him – what’s happened. In the meantime, you’re going to sit in my kitchen, drink tea, and I have a question for you.’
Josef’s brown eyes stared at her for a moment. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why you help me? I am bad man, Frieda. Bad, sad man.’
Frieda put a hand under his elbow and steered him into the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and he lowered his body into it. She boiled the kettle and, while the tea was brewing, toasted two pieces of bread for him, which she spread with butter and honey. ‘There. Get that down you.’
He took a hot gulp of tea and his eyes watered. He picked up a piece of toast and she saw how his hand trembled.
‘Now. I need you to help me.’ She put the flyer in front of him, face down, and pointed to the letters. ‘If you had to guess, what do those letters mean?’
Josef put his toast back on the plate, dragged his sleeve across his mouth, and peered at the words. ‘String, straw, cord, stone.’
‘They’re things you could use in building. But why string and cord together? Karlsson said strawberry planting, but I don’t think so. He wasn’t giving it serious attention.’
‘Is easy.’
‘What?’
‘Is easy,’ repeated Josef. For the first time, his eyes looked brighter.
‘So?’
‘Is paint.’
‘Paint?’
‘Names of paint. Gloom colours – like colours in your working room. Pale, dim colours. String, straw, cord and stone. So.’
‘Oh,’ said Frieda. ‘Josef, you’re brilliant.’
‘I?’
‘What about those letters: C, SB, WL.’
‘Is easy,’ Josef said again. For a brief moment he sounded almost happy. He pointed a finger upwards: ‘C is ceiling.’ His finger moved like the hand on a clock. ‘WL is left wall. And …’ His finger moved down.
‘Skirting board,’ supplied Frieda. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘You are doctor, not builder.’
‘So someone was having their house painted.’ She looked at her watch. It was nearly half past four. ‘If we go now, we might get there before five. Will you come with me on an errand?’ He didn’t reply at once, so she added, ‘I need you to help me, Josef. Like you did before.’
It was beginning to get dark and the rain was turning to hail. Frieda thought that Josef looked like a large, helpless child as he trudged along the streets, his hat pulled low over his head and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his shabby trousers. She had called Reuben and told him that she and Josef would be there in the evening and he should make up the bed and perhaps put some baked potatoes into the oven.
‘Why we look?’ Josef asked now.
‘I’m trying to find someone. It’s a bit of a long story and I’ll tell you later.’
‘So how we look for walls of stone and straw?’
‘We can’t knock at every door of every house. But I thought if we see any external signs of building work we can knock at that door.’
‘So you take this road and I take that.’ Josef held up his phone. ‘I call you, you call me.’
Frieda was glad of these signs of engagement. She nodded, and they set off in different directions, met at the top of the streets without progress, and separated once more down another pair of parallel streets that led off from the high street and that Andy’s Pizzas flyers had apparently been delivered to.
&n
bsp; Frieda was two thirds of the way along Tully Road when her mobile rang. ‘Josef?’
‘“Painting and Decorating, No Job Too Small”. Van here by me now, one tyre looks flat. Outside thirty-three Owens Close.’
‘Don’t move. I’ll be there.’
But there were no lights on in Owens Close and no one answered when Frieda rang the bell. She tried thirty-one, stood back from the door and waited. She heard footsteps and the door opened. A young man with a shaved scalp stuck his head out. She saw he was wearing a suit, and had a phone in his hand. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ she said, conscious of Josef hovering on the street behind her, ‘but I was hoping you could help me. Do you happen to have decorators with you?’
‘Yeah. Hang on, let me just finish this call. Sorry, Cas, I’ll call back, OK? There. Sorry, decorators. Yes. Doing us top to bottom. They’re in the front room at the moment, I think they’re just finishing up for the day. But why do you want to know? Do you live nearby? Want a bit of painting done, maybe, because if so I can’t honestly say I’d recommend –’
‘No. It’s hard to explain. I’m looking for someone and I think you can perhaps help me.’
‘Me? I don’t get it. Do you want to come into the hall? It’s getting a bit chilly out here. And, um, your friend.’
‘It’s OK. I won’t take long.’ Frieda stepped into the hall, which still smelt of fresh paint. She pulled the flyer out of her bag. ‘Do you recognize this?’
‘Well.’ The young man looked at her warily, as if she might turn out to be a nutcase. ‘It’s a flyer. Obviously. Andy’s Pizzas.’
‘Do you get them delivered here? The flyers, I mean, not the pizzas.’
‘Yeah. I think so – all sorts of junk comes through our letterbox.’
Frieda turned the leaflet. ‘And this.’
He squinted, frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s my writing. Or Cas’s. My wife. What is this?’
