by Nicci French
‘It’s the same. It’s always the same. I speak and you don’t listen.’
‘I do listen. I do listen.’
‘You’re nothing. You do nothing.’
Beth started crying and waving her head from side to side, banging it against the wooden wall above her bunk, anything to shut the voice out. Slowly, as the room grew lighter, the voice faded and left her aching, rubbing her tear-blotched face.
She got up and searched through Edward’s papers until she found the pages she wanted. She wasn’t nothing. She wasn’t useless. She stared at the words and stared at them, committing them to memory, saying them to herself over and over again in a sing-song voice. Then she fumbled through the cutlery drawer until she found what she wanted. The knife and the stone for sharpening it. She remembered, from when she was a child, her father in the kitchen telling her mother, ‘Women don’t understand.’ And then she’d hear the noise, the knife edge scraping against the grey stone with the hint of a spark. ‘This is how you sharpen a knife. This is how you sharpen a knife.’
Frieda took a deep breath before she made the call.
‘Frieda,’ Harry said.
‘You sound cross.’
‘You can tell that from just one word?’
‘But you are.’
‘Why would that be, Frieda?’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Where am I? I’m near Regent’s Park, with a client.’
‘Are you free?’
‘When?’
‘Now. For a quick lunch. I’ve got an hour.’
‘Nice of you to fit me in.’
‘I’d like to see you for lunch, if you have the time.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All right, then. Where?’
‘There’s a little place that’s quite near you – Number 9, Beech Street. Quite near my house. I can be there in ten minutes.’
‘I’ll get a taxi. One thing, though: I don’t really like being made a fool of.’
‘I understand that.’
‘Back to wearing dark clothes, I see.’
Frieda glanced down at what she was wearing, all blacks and sombre blues, and smiled. ‘I guess so.’
‘I liked what you were wearing last night.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You looked beautiful.’
She didn’t reply, but studied the offers chalked up on the board. Marcus came over to take their order. His eyes were bright with curiosity.
‘Goat’s cheese salad, please,’ she said briskly.
‘Same,’ said Harry.
‘And tap water.’
‘Same.’ He put his chin in his hands and studied her, thinking she looked tired. ‘So what happened?’ he asked.
‘You mean last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, Frieda.’
‘I’m not being coy. I want to be honest about it. I didn’t know in advance that I was going to leave like that. I just had to. I can’t really explain.’
‘You could have told me, though. I was waiting for you to come back and feeling idiotically happy. Then bit by bit I realized you’d deserted me and I was this stranger at a party who’d been dumped.’
‘I just couldn’t stay there.’
‘I thought …’ He stopped and gave an awkward smile. ‘I thought you liked me. Were coming to like me, at least.’
‘I do. I’m sorry I left you like that last night. It was wrong of me.’
Their salad arrived. Marcus winked at Frieda, who raised her eyebrows at him sternly.
‘Is it because of all the things that are going on?’ asked Harry, prodding his goat’s cheese with a fork. He didn’t really like salads. Or goat’s cheese. ‘With this investigation and all that you’ve had to go through, I mean. That woman who killed herself, I forget her name, and the newspaper articles and the general ugliness of it all. It must be tough.’
Frieda considered. ‘I sometimes think I made a mistake in getting involved at all,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not entirely sure what my motives were. I’ve always said, always believed, that you can’t solve the mess of the world, only the mess inside your own head. Now I’m interviewing suspects and wandering around crime scenes. Why?’
‘Because you know you’re good at it?’ suggested Harry.
‘I probably shouldn’t be talking about this to you. But I don’t know the rules for a police investigation. I don’t know where the boundaries are.’
‘Can I say something?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re someone that people tell their troubles to. Maybe you find it hard when it’s the other way round. You can say what you like to me. I’m not going to run to the newspapers.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
‘What’s troubling you about this investigation?’
‘The police think they know who it is.’
‘That’s good, no?’
‘They’ve found new evidence.’
‘What was that?’
‘Something in the room where Robert Poole’s body was discovered, something that was in his pocket when the body was found. I think they’re going to charge someone soon.’
‘Who?’ asked Harry. He took a small sip of water.
‘Now that really would be breaking a rule,’ said Frieda.
‘But you’re not happy?’
Frieda looked steadily at him. Her expression of concentration almost scared him.
‘It’s not just the investigation,’ she said. ‘The fact is, I’ve had it with all this. At first I enjoyed being involved in a police investigation. It was like an escape from my real life. But now, when I’ve been attacked by people saying, ‘What the hell is this analyst doing here?’ well, I mainly agree with them. So, I’m going to do this last thing and then I’m out of here.’
Harry smiled at her. ‘What’s this last thing?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to hear all the boring details,’ said Frieda.
‘I do,’ said Harry. ‘I’m interested in what you’re doing, in the things that make your life so complicated.’
‘All right,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s about Michelle Doyce, the woman who found the body. She’s in a psychiatric hospital down in Lewisham and she’ll probably never leave. The police have hardly bothered with her, she’s so obviously delusional. But I’ve stayed in touch with her. I’ve seen her from time to time, and just recently she’s been getting more lucid. She was terrified by the noises in the ward, all the other people, and it made her worse. But they moved her to a room on her own and she calmed down and she’s starting to talk about things.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Michelle found the body and brought it back to her room. But from what she’s started saying, I think she did more than that. I think she saw who dumped the body.’
There was a pause. With great care Harry took a piece of goat’s cheese, put it on a piece of toast, chewed it and swallowed. ‘What do the police say?’ he asked.
‘They’re not interested,’ said Frieda. ‘They’ve got their own case and they’re happy with it.’
‘So is that it?’
‘No. I’ve got to know a neurologist who’s an expert on these extreme syndromes. I’m going in with him on Monday. He’s going to give her a cocktail of medication and I’m convinced she’ll be able to tell us exactly what she saw. Then I’ll give her statement to the police and they can do the inquiry the way they should have done it in the first place, which is properly. But they’ll have to do it without me. I’m done.’
‘Why do you do this?’ said Harry. ‘You can’t do everybody’s job for them. Aren’t you just tempted to walk away now? To get your life back?’
‘And watch an innocent man go to jail?’ she said. ‘How could I possibly?’
‘The police might just manage to get the right person themselves,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t be called police.’
Frieda shook her head. ‘Without this, t
hey’ll go with the case they’ve got already and move on to something else.’ She looked suspiciously at him. ‘Don’t you like goat’s cheese salad?’
‘Not much.’
‘Why did you order it?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry, anyway. You know I’m mad about you, don’t you?’
‘Harry …’
‘Don’t say anything. Please don’t say anything. You know, anyway. That’s why I’m here ordering goat’s cheese and babbling.’ He put his hand out and touched her face. She sat quite still, her eyes fixed on his. Marcus, washing espresso cups at the counter, watched them.
‘Do I stand a chance?’
‘Not yet,’ said Frieda. She shifted away from him very slightly and he sighed.
‘Why?’
‘Bad timing.’
‘But one day?’
‘I need to go now. I have a patient.’
‘Don’t go yet. Please. What do I need to do?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No. Tell me. Give me an order.’
‘All right.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Leave me alone.’
Frieda finished work just before six. It was twilight and a damp wind was blowing through the streets. She turned up the collar of her coat, pushed her hands deep into the pockets and began to walk towards her house, which felt far off and infinitely desirable. Then someone touched her softly on the shoulder and she turned and saw Harry. ‘Were you waiting for me?’ She sounded angry.
‘I’ve been here for over an hour. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘I’m going home.’
‘Can I come along?’
‘Not this evening.’
‘All right. Can I say something to you?’
‘What is it?’
‘Not just on the street. Here – can we talk in here?’ Harry gestured towards the wasteland that Frieda looked at from her room every day. In the darkness, it seemed larger and wilder than it did when she stared down at it during the day. Weeds had sprung up; kids had made strange structures from the boards and metal sheets that the workmen had left when they’d abandoned the site. The remains of a bonfire lay near the gap in the fence where Harry stood, its embers still giving out a glowing pulse. He held back a loose part of the fence.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Frieda.
‘‘There’s a bench near here,’ said Harry, coaxingly. ‘I saw it when I walked past earlier. Just a minute, Frieda. Hear me out.’
Frieda hesitated, then stepped nimbly through the gap in the fence. Harry followed her and pulled it close.
‘Tell me.’
‘Let’s find this bench of mine.’
‘I don’t need to sit down.’
‘This way.’
They walked further into the enclosed space. There were craters in the earth; a small crane stood motionless in front of them.
‘Frieda,’ said Harry, in a murmur.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you see, my darling …’
He didn’t finish his sentence because a figure suddenly rose from the ground in front of them: an ancient man wrapped in a blanket, with a bottle in his hand and a strange rusty moan coming from his mouth.
‘He was asleep,’ said Frieda. Then, to the man: ‘I’m so sorry to have frightened you.’
He lifted the bottle to his mouth and tipped it so it was nearly vertical, drank.
‘We’re going,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s all right. We’ll leave you in peace.’
‘Lady,’ he said, and followed them as they made their way back to the fence, through the gap.
‘What was it you wanted to say sorry for?’ asked Frieda.
Harry stared at her. It seemed hard for him to speak. He looked around at the people bustling past, on the way from work, heading home or for a drink.
‘I wanted a word in private. I couldn’t come to your place, could I? Just for a moment.’
‘Not now.’
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘It can wait.’
Forty-six
Michelle Doyce liked the hospital food. It was soft and greyish. It didn’t look like anything. There was something that tasted a bit like fish, with a thick grey sauce. But there were no bones, no shape. There was something that tasted a bit like chicken, also with a thick grey sauce, also with no bones and no shape. It never looked like it would move, like it would speak to her. She didn’t like the days. There were too many things all around her that felt like they were trying to batter at her head, colours and sounds and prickings on her skin, intertwining and tangling so that she couldn’t tell what was the colour and what was the sound. It was all just there, like a storm she was wandering around in, lost.
People came and went. Sometimes they moved so quickly and spoke so quickly that it was all a blur and she couldn’t make them out. It was as if she were standing on a station platform and they were on a train that wasn’t stopping, that was racing past at a hundred miles an hour. Sometimes they would try and say something but she couldn’t catch it. It had been the same with the other patients in the ward. She had seen them and heard them, like in the flashes of a strobe light, and they always seemed to be screaming, shouting in pain or anger or despair, and she felt their pain and anger and despair herself. It was like spending day after day surrounded by road drills and sirens and electric buzzers and flashing lights, with jagged stabbing knives in her eyes and her ears and her mouth. It was like a swarm of insects had got inside her body and were trying to scratch and chew their way out with their sharp jaws and claws. Every day she found things and hid them, then ordered them carefully. There were pieces of leftover soap from the bathroom, a little piece of silver wrapper from a pill container, a piece of sticking plaster, a screw. She arranged them in a pill box that had been left on the shelf by her bed. She would look at them and suddenly realize they were in the wrong order, take them out again and put them in the right order.
Mainly it was bad. She felt she had been put out on a rock in the middle of the sea where she was completely alone, too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet, and she could never sleep because if she slept she would be washed off and battered and swept away and lost.
But it had got better when she was moved into a room of her own, as if she had escaped into a little quiet hole, away from the drills and the flashing lights. There was a TV. She would sit there and at first the speckly light and the jagged sound would be a torment but it was also soothing, like something warm washing over her, and she would watch the moving shapes for hour after hour. There were magazines as well, bright, smiling faces looking at her, asking for her friendship and her approval. She could hear them talking to her and she would smile back and sometimes she would catch them talking about her and she would shut the magazine, trap them, teach them a lesson. And there was the nurse. Sometimes she was white, but with an accent; sometimes she was Asian; sometimes she was African. But she would lead her through a bright corridor, so bright that it dazzled her eyes, and sit her in a chair and lean her back and wash her hair. She could feel the fingers warm on her head. The feeling reminded Michelle Doyce of something long, long ago, deep down, when she was being held and kept safe. Then there were the two animals: the teddy bear and the dog. They sat on her bed; they slept with her. The dog had buttons for eyes. She knew they were only toys. But she had a feeling. She couldn’t stop the feeling. Like a child lying in bed with a heavy sleeping parent beside them. Not moving but warm and alive. They knew things; they were watching. When the noises and the lights got too much, she could look at them, feel them against her.
Best of all were when the lights went away and the noises sank like a storm blowing itself out. There would be a shout and a murmuring and a flickering and the lights would go out. It didn’t get dark straight away. The light stayed in Michelle Doyce’s eyes, like a dull ache, an after-light of sour green turning to dirty yellow, then back to green, gradually fading to brown and t
o black. The darkness felt warm. Now even the lights felt more friendly. They blinked outside, in through the window, from far away in the night. They blinked inside, lights on machines, red and green and yellow. Even the noises were friendly, beeps and meeps. Sometimes, far away outside her room, there were groan and moans and cries that reminded Michelle Doyce of all the pain, but the dark was like a big furry cloth that mopped up the messy noises and squeezed them out somewhere into a river that would carry them away. The day wasn’t for waking and the night for sleeping. It was all a sort of long doze and she wasn’t sure whether the pictures in her head and the voices were on TV or whether they were the people coming and going in the ward or whether they were stories she was telling herself, and what did it matter anyway?
But the nights were good. The lights became soft and the sounds softened, too, and the sharp edges of things became rounded. Michelle Doyce would have been happy for life to be like this always, and to go on for ever and ever, sleeping and waking, warm and safe.
Voices came out of the darkness. They were part of her dream. She had been walking in a street and then she had been back somewhere inside, somewhere that seemed familiar. She was making tea. She filled the kettle and prepared cups and saucers. A bear and a dog with button eyes were sitting at the table.
‘Michelle,’ said the quiet voice in the darkness. ‘Michelle Doyce.’
There were two shapes in the black night. Two dark shapes, dark against the darkness, moving around her bed.
‘Michelle,’ said another voice, right by her ear. A hiss, a whisper, but lighter. That had been a man. This was a woman.
‘Is it her?’
Michelle Doyce didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed but she saw a tiny light, a firefly, floating in the dark, at the foot of the bed. It showed up the ghost of a face, a man’s face. She felt something out there in the darkness, pain or anger or fear.
‘Yes, it is,’ said a voice. The woman’s again.
Michelle Doyce opened her mouth. She wanted to say something but it came out as a groan and then the groan stopped. Something was stopping it. The blackness had become blacker. She wasn’t making a sound. She couldn’t make a sound. There was a weight on her, heavy and black, and she felt she was sinking down under it, down into a dream that was itself becoming dark so that she was sinking out of the dream and fading and sinking.
