Tuesday's Gone fk-2

by Nicci French

  In a small road in Poplar that led through boarded-up estates towards the Lea river, a storm drain flooded. At just after three in the morning, the drain cover was dislodged. About ten minutes later, a clump of hair floated to the surface. Beneath it, something glimmered faintly.

  But it wasn’t until eight twenty-five the next morning, when the rain had eased to an icy drizzle, that a teenage boy walking his terrier came across the remains of a body that was unmistakably human. Unmistakably that of a woman.

  Frieda had woken at five. She liked being in her small, orderly house when the weather outside was wild. Everything was battened down against the rain that flew in bullets against her windows; the gusts of wind sounded like a stormy sea, the foamy rush of an incoming tide. She lay for a while, not thinking, simply listening, but gradually thoughts clarified and pushed their way into her consciousness. The thoughts were people and she could see their faces: Sandy, who was far away but whose fingers touched her when she was asleep, whose arms wrapped around her at last; Alan, with his brown spaniel eyes, who had left his wife and disappeared; his identical twin Dean, dead for more than a year but who stalked her dreams again, always with that amiable and nasty smile; Dean’s wife, Terry; Terry’s sad and careful sister Rose. And then there was Michelle Doyce, with her fading face and her strong, blistered hands, who talked to dead men and stuffed dogs as if they could understand everything she said. Frieda turned towards the window, waiting for the first light to appear through the curtains. Words and phrases flickered through her mind, tiny lights in the darkness. She tried to separate her anxieties and give them a proper name.

  Just before six, she got up, pulled on a dressing-gown and went downstairs to light the fire in the living room and make herself a pot of coffee. It was Sunday: she had no patients to see, no conferences to attend, no duties to see to. She had planned to go for a walk through the watery streets, visit the flower market, buy provisions, pop in at her friend’s café, Number 9, for a bowl of porridge or a cinnamon bagel, perhaps spend an hour or so making a drawing in her study, which was like an eyrie at the top of her narrow house. Instead, she sat by the fire, occasionally crouching to blow strength into the flames, drank mug after mug of coffee, and attempted to sort through the events of her week and the murky emotions that had been stirred up by the hearing and by Karlsson’s surprise reappearance in her life.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  Ten

  Karlsson looked strange on Frieda’s doorstep, as if he was in fancy dress. He was wearing black jeans, a sweater and a leather jacket, and was damp from the rain. His hair was wet and clung to his skull, making him look older and thinner.

  ‘You gave me a shock,’ she said. Anxiety curled through her: he was not bringing good news. ‘You’re not wearing a suit.’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ he said.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Another time perhaps.’

  ‘Are you going to come in?’

  ‘Just for a minute.’ He stepped over the threshold. ‘I wanted to tell you that we’re having a meeting about the case tomorrow morning. We’re probably winding it up. I’d like it if you were there. You’ve probably got a patient, though.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Nine thirty.’

  ‘I’ve got a gap. I could come for an hour.’

  ‘Good. Someone you probably know is going to be there. Dr Hal Bradshaw.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He does some profiling for us. He’s pricey but the commissioner’s keen on him.’

  ‘I don’t want to get into a turf war.’

  ‘We’ll be deciding whether to send the case to the CPS. Will you come?’

  ‘All right,’ said Frieda. ‘But you didn’t arrive at my house early on a Sunday morning to tell me about a meeting.’

  ‘No.’

  Now that the moment had come, he felt unwilling to speak the words.

  She looked at him with concern. ‘Come through to the kitchen. I’ll make us that coffee – I’m having some myself anyway and you look like you could do with it.’

  He followed her and she pulled a packet of coffee beans from the fridge. She took a white poppy-seed roll from a bag and put it on a plate for him. He stood by the window and watched her, not speaking. Only when the mug of coffee was in front of him and he had taken off his jacket did she sit down opposite him.

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘With all the rain,’ he said, ‘there’ve been floods.’ He stopped.

  ‘Floods …’ Frieda prompted him.

  ‘Yesterday morning someone’s dog came across some bodily remains floating in a storm drain in Poplar. In the next couple of days, they’re doing the full identity check. Dental records, probably. But I know what they’re going to find.’

  Frieda was quite still. She gazed at him with her dark eyes. He put out a hand and laid it across hers for a second. She didn’t respond, but neither did she pull away.

  ‘Kathy Ripon,’ she said at last.

  Kathy Ripon: the young research student whom Professor Seth Boundy, specialist in identical twins and their genetic implications, had sent to Dean Reeve’s house the December before last, following information that Frieda had given him. Kathy Ripon, who had never been seen since but whose parents still waited for. Kathy Ripon, who lay across Frieda’s conscience like an unyielding boulder, and whose narrow, intelligent face appeared to her in dreams and in waking hours.

  ‘There was a locket,’ said Karlsson, quietly, removing his hand and picking up his mug of coffee.

  Frieda had known that Kathy Ripon was dead. She’d known it a hundred per cent. But, even so, she felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Speaking was a great effort. ‘Do the parents know?’

  ‘They were told yesterday afternoon. I wanted you to know before you saw it in the papers.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frieda.

  ‘It was different from the children,’ said Karlsson. ‘Dean didn’t need her. He didn’t want her. He just had to get her out of the way. She was probably dead by the time we heard she was missing.’

  ‘Probably. Maybe.’ She made a great effort to look at Karlsson. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘What? For being the bringer of bad news?’

  ‘Yes. You didn’t need to.’

  ‘Yes, I did. There are some things –’ He was interrupted by a harsh electronic version of ‘The March of the Toreadors’. He took his phone from his pocket and looked at it.

  She saw his face become grim. ‘Work?’

  ‘Family.’

  ‘You should go.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Frieda.

  After she had let him out, she scarcely moved, just leaned her head against the inside of the door. She tried to stop herself thinking about what it must have been like. That sort of empathy is no good to anybody, she told herself. But still. There had been all the celebrations about the children being found, triumphant press conferences, and all the time Kathy Ripon had been under the ground with nobody coming for her: a clever young woman, hard-working, anxious to please her boss, standing eagerly with her notebook and her researcher’s questions on the rim of the black hole of Dean Reeve’s life – and then being sucked into it.

  Frieda hoped so much that Karlsson was right and that Kathy Ripon had died quickly, had not been toyed with or buried alive. You heard of such things: victims knowing their would-be rescuers were above them, but unable to make them hear. She shuddered. For a moment, her little house – huddled in the mews and surrounded by tall buildings, its rooms dim and painted with rich dark colours – felt like a vault rather than a refuge, and she like an underground creature hiding from the bright world.

  And then, like a body rising to the surface of a murky lake, the thought came to her of Carrie Dekker talking about Alan, her husband, Dean’s identical twin. How he’d disappeared. She pressed her head harder against the door, feeling her
brain working, her thoughts hissing. She couldn’t stop herself: the past was seeping into the present and there were things she needed to know. She wondered why she was doing this. Why was she going back?

  On Monday morning, she had an eight o’clock session with a man – he seemed more like a boy – in his mid-twenties, who sat crouched over in his chair, his bulky body shaken by sobs for the first ten minutes, and then, stumbling from his seat and sinking down beside her, tried to get her to hug and hold him. He so badly wanted reassurance, a mothering presence to tell him that everything would be all right, that she would take the burden of it all for him. He was lonely and loveless and lost, and he wanted someone to care for him. He thought that Frieda could become his mother-figure, his friend, his rescuer. She took him by the chapped hand and led him back to his seat. She handed him a box of tissues and told him to take his time, then waited in her red chair while he wept and mopped his streaming face, all the while sobbing out apologies. She watched him in silence until his weeping subsided when she asked, ‘Why did you keep saying sorry?’

  ‘I don’t know. I felt stupid.’

  ‘Why stupid? You felt sad.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He stared at her helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know where to begin. Where shall I begin?’

  After he had left and she had written up her notes, Frieda walked to Warren Street station and caught the tube. The train stopped in a tunnel for fifteen minutes. A crackly voice had talked about a ‘body under a train at Earl’s Court’ and there had been a murmur of discontent. ‘It’s not even on the same line,’ a woman next to her had muttered, to nobody in particular. Frieda got out at the next station, looked for a taxi in the cold rain and didn’t find one, then just walked. Even so, she was only a few minutes late for the meeting. There were five people sitting around a table: Karlsson, Commissioner Crawford (whom she had never met but had seen on television the year before, talking about the tremendous police work that had been done to recover Matthew and how he didn’t want to take all the credit), and Yvette Long (who gave her a puzzled look, as if she wondered what she was doing there). There were also two men she didn’t recognize – someone the commissioner introduced as Jacob Newton, who peered at her as if she was some interesting specimen in a museum of curiosities, and Dr Hal Bradshaw. He looked as though he was in his early fifties, his curly dark hair streaked with grey. He was wearing a pin-striped suit, but the stripes were in a shade of green. When Karlsson described Frieda’s part in the Dean Reeve case to him, Bradshaw frowned at her.

  ‘I don’t quite see the need,’ he said to Commissioner Crawford. ‘Just my opinion, of course.’

  ‘I want her here,’ said Karlsson, firmly. He turned to Frieda. ‘Dr Bradshaw was about to give us his assessment of the murder scene and of Michelle Doyce’s state of mind. Dr Bradshaw?’

  Hal Bradshaw coughed. ‘You all probably know my methods,’ he said. ‘It’s my view that murderers are like artists, like storytellers.’ Crawford nodded approvingly and sat back in his chair as if at last he felt on safe ground. ‘The scene of a murder is like the murderer’s work of art.’

  As Bradshaw got into his stride, Frieda leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. It was made of polystyrene tiles with a rough grey pattern, which gave them the appearance of paving stones.

  ‘When I saw the photographs, I felt like I was looking at a chapter from one of my own books. I feel like I’m giving away the punch line at the beginning of the joke, but it was instantly clear to me that Michelle Doyce was a highly organized psychopath. Now, when I use a phrase like that, most of you think of a man cutting up women. But I’m using the term strictly. It was clear to me that she entirely lacked empathy and thus she was able to plan the murder, carry it out, arrange the crime scene, then continue to lead a normal life.’

  ‘Did you decide all this before you talked to her?’ Karlsson asked.

  Bradshaw turned to him with an expression of tolerant amusement. ‘I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years. You get a sixth sense for these things, the way an art expert can instantly spot a fake Vermeer. Of course, I then interviewed Michelle Doyce, to the extent that it’s possible to interview her.’

  Frieda was still staring at the polystyrene tiles. She was trying to establish whether the streaked pattern repeated itself or whether it was truly random.

  ‘Did she confess?’ asked Karlsson.

  Bradshaw snorted. ‘The crime scene was her confession,’ he said, addressing most of his remarks to the commissioner. ‘I’ve looked at her file. She has led a life of utter failure and powerlessness. This crime and this crime scene were her final belated assertion of some kind of control of her life, some assertion of sexual power. “Here is a naked man,” she was saying. “This is what I can do to him.” Men have rejected her all her life. Finally, she decided to fight back.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Commissioner Crawford. ‘You agree, Mal?’

  ‘But did she say anything,’ Karlsson said, ‘when you asked her about the body?’

  ‘She wouldn’t answer directly,’ said Bradshaw. ‘She just babbled about the river and about ships and fleets. But if the story I’m telling is right, which I’m sure it is, then this isn’t just nonsense. This is her way of explaining herself. Obviously she lives near the river. She could almost see it from her house. But the way I read it, the river is the great symbol of the woman. The fluvial woman.’ Frieda looked down from the tiles just in time to see Bradshaw make a flowing gesture with his hands to accompany his words. ‘And the ships and the fleet,’ he continued, ‘are symbols of the man. I think what she is telling us is that the river, with its feminine tides and currents, is sweeping the male boat out to sea. Which is a form of death.’

  ‘I wish she could just tell us,’ said Yvette. ‘It sounds a bit abstract to me.’

  ‘She is telling us,’ said Bradshaw. ‘You just have to listen – with all due respect.’

  Commissioner Crawford nodded. Frieda looked across at the young woman and saw her flush crimson and her fists clench on the table for a moment, before she let them uncurl again.

  ‘Did you see Dr Klein’s notes?’ asked Karlsson.

  Bradshaw gave another snort. ‘Since Dr Klein is present, I’m not sure I should comment,’ he said. ‘But I really don’t think it’s necessary to chase up incredibly rare fantasy psychological syndromes. No offence, but I thought the notes displayed a certain naÏvety.’ He turned to Frieda and smiled at her. ‘I heard from the nursing staff that you bought a teddy bear for Michelle.’

  ‘It was a stuffed dog.’

  ‘Was that part of your examination or part of your treatment?’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘It was something for her to talk to.’

  ‘Well, that’s very touching. But, anyway, to business.’ He tapped a cardboard file that lay on the desk in front of him and directed his remarks once more to the commissioner. ‘It’s all in here. It’s my conclusion that this is a slam dunk. She clearly fits the profile. Obviously she won’t be fit to plead, but you can close your case.’

  ‘What about the missing finger?’ asked Frieda.

  ‘It’s all in here.’ Bradshaw picked up the file. ‘You’re an analyst, aren’t you? It all fits. What do you think cutting off a finger symbolizes?’

  Frieda took a deep breath. ‘Your argument,’ she said, ‘is that Michelle Doyce, having killed this man and stripped him naked, wanted to symbolize cutting off his penis by cutting off his finger. Why didn’t she cut off his penis?’

  Bradshaw smiled again. ‘You need to read my report. She’s a psychopath. She arranges the world in terms of symbols.’

  Karlsson looked at his deputy.

  Yvette shrugged. ‘It just seems too vague to me, too theoretical,’ she said. ‘You don’t convict someone based on symbols.’

  ‘But she’s mad,’ said the commissioner, harshly. ‘It won’t matter anyway,’

  ‘What about you?’ Karlsson turned to Fri
eda as if Crawford hadn’t spoken. Frieda could sense his anger, rather than see it. A vein ticked in his temple.

  ‘I’m not an expert on this,’ she replied. ‘Not like Dr Bradshaw. I don’t know. I mean, I really don’t know.’

  ‘But what do you think?’ said Karlsson.

  Frieda looked back up at the ceiling tiles. Definitely random, she decided.

  ‘I just can’t believe that Michelle Doyce committed that murder. I’ve been trying to construct scenarios in my mind in which she does it and none of them makes sense.’

  ‘I’ve just provided a scenario,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Yes. That’s what I mean.’

  ‘But the body was in her flat,’ said Commissioner Crawford, impatiently. She turned, and he leaned towards her, banging his hand on the table to make his point. She could see spittle at the corners of his mouth. ‘Of course she must have killed him. Did someone else come in and leave it there? If we don’t believe she did it, what the hell do we do?’

  ‘What I wrote in my notes is that we should listen to her.’

  ‘But all she’s doing is rambling about boats.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘I wonder what she means by that.’

  ‘Well.’ Frieda almost thought Karlsson was trying not to smile. ‘There’s Dr Bradshaw’s theory about rivers and women and all that.’

  Frieda thought for a moment. ‘That’s the big thing I have trouble with,’ she said. ‘I mean, I have trouble with all of it, but especially with that. The thing about Michelle is that I don’t think she talks in symbols. I think she lives in a world where everything is real. That’s her curse.’