by Nicci French
‘It makes me feel like somebody else’s property,’ said Frieda. ‘Which I don’t like.’
Jack picked up the newspaper and looked at it. ‘“Abrasive brunette,”’ he said. ‘That doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘Which? Abrasive or brunette?’
‘Both. And “dodgy”. That’s completely out of order.’ He put the paper down. ‘What I don’t understand is why you put yourself through this.’
‘Now that’s a good question,’ said Frieda. ‘And if you were my therapist, we would spend a lot of time discussing it.’
‘Can’t we spend time discussing it even if I’m not your therapist?’
Frieda rummaged in her bag until she found her phone.
‘Do you ever switch it on?’ he said.
‘I’m switching it on now,’ she said. ‘I switch it on when I need to use it and then I switch it off again.’
‘I’m not sure that’s really the point.’
Frieda dialled Karlsson’s number.
He picked up after a single ring. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you,’ he said.
‘How did they find Janet Ferris?’
‘You mean the journalist?’
‘That’s right.’
There was silence on the line.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Frieda.
‘Look,’ said Karlsson, ‘everybody knows that the press have contacts on the force.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Frieda. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s a bloody disgrace,’ said Karlsson. ‘But regrettably there are officers who leak material. For a fee.’
‘It didn’t take long to become public.’
‘It’s not exactly a state secret. We’re funded from people’s taxes. But I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that we didn’t seem to be putting up much of a defence on your behalf.’
‘If Yvette Long objects to me being on the case, I’d rather she expressed it to me or to you than to a journalist.’ There was another silence on the line. ‘I suppose she already has expressed it to you. That’s OK.’
‘It’s not like that, Frieda.’
She glanced at Jack, who was staring rather guiltily at the Daily Sketch. He looked up and Frieda made a gesture at him, trying to convey that she would only be a minute. ‘What is it like?’
‘That article was bollocks. Bollocks about you and bollocks about the case going nowhere.’
‘It makes you and your team look ridiculous. Whatever the phrase was …’
‘“Dodgy Doc”.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Frieda was about to ring off when she remembered something. ‘I feel bad about Janet Ferris. I’d like to go and see her.’
‘She was talking rubbish to that journalist. Don’t let it get to you.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Frieda. ‘I think she needs someone to talk to.’
‘She’s a lonely woman,’ said Karlsson. ‘I think she had a bit of a crush on Poole. But it’s not our job to hold her hand. We just need to find who killed him.’
‘I’ll see her in my own time,’ said Frieda. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t charge you.’ She switched the phone off and put it back into her bag.
‘It was good to see you, Jack,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve got to go and pay someone a call.’
‘You’re not going to hunt that journalist down and kill her, are you?’ said Jack. ‘Don’t bother. She’s not worth it.’
Frieda smiled. ‘She was interesting,’ she said. ‘First she was like someone who wanted to be my friend. Then she wanted to tell my side of the story. Then she threatened me. As you can see, I’ve already forgotten about it. But she’d better not find herself drowning in a lake with me as the only person looking on.’
‘You’d dive in and save her anyway,’ said Jack. ‘I know you would.’
‘Only to make her feel guilty,’ said Frieda.
‘She wouldn’t. And then she’d write another piece about you, misrepresenting you.’
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I’d let her drown then.’
Thirty-five
They walked out together and Frieda hailed a taxi. She sat back and gazed out at the unfamiliar south London streets. They drove past parks, schools, a cemetery, and it might have been in another part of England, another part of the world. She thought of Janet Ferris and the reporter, Liz Barron. Frieda had just slammed the door on her but Janet Ferris hadn’t. She would have invited her in, made tea for her, talked to her, grateful to find someone who wanted to listen. Janet Ferris was a woman who had been ignored, who was somehow at the edge. And then, suddenly, she had found herself involved in a big story, the murder of someone she knew and cared for, and even then she had been ignored. Nobody had wanted to hear her story. At least Liz Barron had sat in her flat and let her talk.
Frieda rang Janet Ferris’s bell but there was no answer. She silently cursed herself for arriving without phoning ahead. She looked at the bells. Flat one was Janet Ferris. Flat two was Poole. She pressed the bell for flat three, then pressed it again. A voice came from a little speaker, so crackly that she couldn’t make out the words. She said who she was and that she wanted to see Janet Ferris, but she didn’t know if she was being heard. She waited and then heard steps. The door was opened by a tall young man with blond hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, wearing a sweater and jeans, and with bare feet.
‘What is it?’ he said. His accent was foreign.
Frieda remembered the file: a German student upstairs. ‘I want to see Janet Ferris,’ she said. ‘But she’s not in. I wondered if you knew where she was.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m upstairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t see her come and go.’
Frieda peered into the hallway for piled-up mail. She couldn’t see any. ‘This is going to sound strange,’ she said. ‘I’m working with the police on the murder. I’m a bit worried about Janet’s state of mind. Do you have a key to her flat?’
‘You have identification?’
‘No. I mean, not as police. I’m a therapist. I work with them.’ The man looked reluctant. ‘I’d only be a minute. Just to check she’s all right. You can come in with me.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said. ‘One minute.’ He bounded lightly up the stairs.
Frieda wondered what she was doing. More of the dodgy doc. He came quickly back down.
‘I am not sure of this.’ But he unlocked the door anyway and stood back, calling Janet’s name.
Frieda stepped through the doorway and was immediately hit by the smell. Horrible and sweet at the same time: she recognized it as the smell of shit.
‘Stay there,’ she said to the man, and walked through and into the living room with a lurching sense of what she was going to find. She almost bumped into Janet Ferris’s body, the legs. She looked up. An extension cable had been looped round a wooden beam. The other end was tied round Janet Ferris’s neck. Her body hung quite still, heavily and limply, as if it was a bag filled with sand. One leg was streaked with brown that ran down over her shoe and dripped on to the carpet. Frieda heard a sound behind her, a sort of gasp. She looked round at the pale, dismayed face.
‘I said to stay out,’ she said, but not angrily. He backed away. She fumbled for her phone. She felt calm but at first she couldn’t press the buttons. She couldn’t get her fingers to work. They suddenly felt big and swollen and clumsy.
Josef had never seen Frieda like this before: she, who was always so self-possessed, so strong and dependable, now sitting at her kitchen table, hunched over, her face half hidden by her hand. It made him anxious and protective, and it made him want to get her pot after pot of tea. He refilled the kettle as soon as he had poured the boiling water into the teapot. She hadn’t wanted vodka, although he thought it would do her good and put a bit of colour back in her face. He had baked her a honey cake the day before, spiced with cinnamon and ginger, whose rich smell when it was baking had reminded him of his mother, and also of his wife or, at least, the woman who used to be his wife, and had filled
him with emotions both happy and sad. Now he tried to persuade Frieda to eat some, pushing the plate under her nose. She shook her head and pushed it away.
Reuben hadn’t seen Frieda like this before either, although he had been her supervisor and her friend for years, and knew things about her that probably no-one else in the world did. She wasn’t crying – even Reuben had never seen her cry, although once, during a film, she had been suspiciously watery-eyed – but she was visibly distressed.
‘Tell us, Frieda,’ he said. It was early evening, and in an hour or so he was supposed to be going on a date with a woman he had met in the local gym. He couldn’t remember if she was called Marie or Maria, and he was worried that he might not recognize her when she wasn’t dressed in Lycra, with her hair pulled back in a high pony tail, her cheeks flushed with exercise, a V of perspiration on her shapely back.
‘Yes. Tell us start to end,’ Josef said. He poured them all another cup of tea and then himself a shot of vodka to accompany it, from the bottle he’d slipped into his bag when the phone call from Frieda had come. He thought of laying his hand on the top of her bowed head, but changed his mind.
‘I knew she was lonely.’ Frieda’s voice was low; she spoke not to them but to herself. ‘When I read that story …’
‘Dodgy Doc, you mean?’
She looked up with a grimace.
‘Yes, Reuben, that one. It made me think about Janet Ferris all alone in her room, and how anyone knocking at her door would have felt like a friend. She is – was – a clever, attractive and affectionate woman and yet it seemed that she had somehow missed out on everything she most wanted in life. Robert Poole, coming in with his little gifts, confiding in her, must have meant a great deal to her. When I visited her, I could feel that she was distressed. But I put it out of my mind.’
‘You can’t save everyone.’
‘I went there and I encouraged her to open up to me, say what she was feeling. That’s a risky thing to do if you’re not prepared to deal with the consequences.’
‘You were only kind,’ said Josef, soothingly.
‘Sticking-plaster kind,’ Frieda said, and Josef looked confused. He took a mouthful of vodka, then chased it down with tea. ‘Kind to get her to give me her confidences and expose her feelings. Then I went away and filed my report for Karlsson and forgot about her. I’d ticked her off my to-do list.’
‘Ticked her off?’
‘It means – oh, never mind.’ Reuben took Josef’s vodka and absent-mindedly drank it, then filled the glass again, drank half and handed it to Josef, who emptied it. ‘Are you saying you should have been more aware of her state of mind or that you helped to create it?’
‘I don’t know. Me, the police, that journalist – we all just used her. She was grieving.’
‘He was just her neighbour.’
‘He made her feel hopeful.’
‘There is that.’
‘When I first came on to this case, the police didn’t really care about it. Karlsson was different, but basically they wanted to close the file. They thought the victim would turn out to be some drug-dealer or drop-out, and the murderer was a madwoman who would be locked away in a hospital for the rest of her life. Then when we discovered who Robert Poole was, it still didn’t matter that much because he was some kind of creepy conman. Who really minded that he was dead? Janet minded. And now she’s dead too.’
‘The problem,’ said Reuben, refilling the glass with vodka and taking another gulp, ‘is that you’re losing sight of whether you’re a therapist or a detective.’ He stared into the glass. ‘You don’t know whether to catch people or cure them.’
Frieda took her hand away from her face and sat up straighter. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘The point is that a therapist is what you are when someone comes to see you in a room and takes on the role of the patient. You’re not a therapist to everyone you meet. You can’t be.’
‘No,’ said Frieda, but not with certainty. ‘No, you’re probably right.’
‘This is good for sad days,’ said Josef, filling three shot glasses to the brim. They each took one, raised it to the others, and swallowed it in one go. Even in her wretchedness, Frieda noticed how gradually Reuben was shedding his virtuous abstinence and returning to his old self.
‘You need to sort this out,’ said Reuben. ‘In your own head.’
‘I’ll think about it. I need to get this right. Now, you’ve got to go out soon, right?’
‘Christ, Frieda! You should have been a spy.’
‘You’ve just shaved – there’s still a fleck of foam on your neck, and you never shave in the evenings – and you’ve looked at your watch twice.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Just someone I met. Marie. Or Maria.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I’ll just have to avoid using her name.’
‘I’ll be on my way soon. First, can one of you get me some milk from the fridge?’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please.’
Josef fetched a carton of semi-skimmed milk from the fridge and handed it to her, with a glass, but Frieda took a saucer from the cupboard instead and went out into the hall where she had left a cardboard box by the door. Josef and Reuben followed her curiously. She prised open the box and put her hand inside.
‘Out you come,’ she said, and lifted the cat Robert Poole and Janet Ferris had called Mog or Moggie on to the floor. It stood quite still for a few moments, its back arched and its tail high in the air.
‘Where did you get that? Has it got fleas?’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘Janet Ferris wouldn’t have let it get fleas.’ She poured some milk into the saucer and put it under the cat’s nose. It sniffed at it suspiciously, then lapped at it with a flicking pink tongue. Only when the saucer was empty did it move away and delicately start to wash itself, licking the side of its paw, then swiping it over one ear and down the side of its face.
‘So, would you like a cat, Reuben?’ Frieda asked.
‘Ah, yes!’ Josef squatted on the floor beside her and put out one stubby finger, making strange crooning noises and speaking in a language Frieda didn’t understand. The cat gave a piteous mew.
‘I’m allergic,’ said Reuben, hastily.
‘Is hungry,’ said Josef.
‘How can you tell? Do you talk in cat language?’
Josef stood up and disappeared into the kitchen, the cat trotting behind him. They heard the fridge door open.
‘That cold chicken is not for cats!’ Frieda shouted after him, then turned to Reuben and asked, ‘Are you really allergic?’
‘I wheeze and come out in hives.’
‘I guess I’ll have to keep him.’
‘I don’t believe it. Frieda Klein with a pet?’
‘It’s not a pet. It’s a punishment,’ she said. ‘And now it’s time for you to go.’
She almost pushed them out, and when the door was closed she leaned back against it, as if to keep it shut. She took a deep breath and then another. Suddenly she heard a sound, something she couldn’t make out. Was it from inside the house or outside? Far away or near? She opened the door and just a few yards away she saw a jumble of bodies – she couldn’t make sense of it. It was a mixture of impressions: shouting, swearing, a fist, the sound of blows. Figures were sprawling on the ground entangled with each other. As she stepped forward she saw Reuben, Josef and someone else she couldn’t make out, gripping and hitting each other, rolling round. She shouted something incoherent at them and tried to grab one – it was Reuben’s moleskin jacket – and an arm struck her and knocked her back. She sat down heavily. But her intervention had broken the spell. The men disentangled themselves, and Josef bent down to her.
‘You hurt?’
Frieda looked beyond him at Reuben. He was panting heavily and there was a glow in his eyes that alarmed her. Another man, young, dark-haired, anoraked, a camera hanging from his neck st
ood up and backed away. He raised his hand and touched his nose. ‘You fuckers,’ he said. ‘I’m fucking calling the police.’
‘Call the fucking police,’ said Reuben, still breathing heavily. ‘You’re a fucking parasite. I’d like to see you in court in front of a fucking jury.’
Frieda pushed herself up. ‘Stop this,’ she said. ‘Stop this all of you.’ She looked at the photographer. ‘Are you all right?’
‘You fuck off, too,’ he said jabbing his finger at her. ‘I’m calling the police right now.’
‘Call the police,’ said Reuben. ‘I want you to. I fucking dare you to.’
The photographer gave a strange, twisted nod and walked away, out of the mews and round the corner. The three of them watched him go. Reuben was touching the knuckles of his right hand, flinching slightly. Josef was shamefaced.
‘Frieda …’ he began.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just stop. Go. Go now.’
‘We’re just looking out for you,’ said Reuben.
She couldn’t bring herself to reply. She turned and left them, kicking the door behind her.
Thirty-six
Frieda woke with the watery light of a late-February morning. The cat was sitting on the end of her bed, staring at her with yellow eyes, unblinking. She sat up. The brawl in the street had kept her awake and infected her dreams in which, she knew, Dean Reeve’s face had smiled at her out of shadows and corners. Why had it sickened her? Weren’t they just protecting her? Didn’t she herself know what it was like to behave impulsively? She forced herself to put it out of her mind.
‘What do you know?’ she asked. ‘What did he tell you and what did you hear?’
Perhaps this cat had seen Robert Poole die, and then poor Janet Ferris string herself up and kick away the chair. Or was that really what had happened? Frieda was uneasy with unformed thoughts and suspicions. She shivered and got out of bed. The sky was a pale streaked blue. Today it was possible to believe that spring might come, after such a long, cold winter. She showered and dressed in jeans, then went downstairs, the cat threading through her legs and miaowing. She’d bought some cat food from the late-night shop down the road when she’d come home, and now she shook some dried pellets into a plastic bowl and watched while it ate. Now what should she do? Let it out? But then it might run away, heading for its old home, and get crushed by a car. Or leave it inside to pee all over her floor? She’d have to get a cat flap. Sighing, she laid down several layers of newspaper on the kitchen floor and shut the cat in there. She pulled on a thick jacket, picked up her manila folder and notebook, then left the house.
