by Nicci French
Frieda took the smallest stinging sip, to keep him company. ‘You were going to show me what you’ve found.’
‘It’s all in my study.’
When he opened the door, she was speechless for a few seconds, her eyes trying to become accustomed to the combination of frenzy and order. Briefly, she was reminded of Michelle Doyce, the woman to whom Karlsson had introduced her, who had filled her rooms in Deptford with the debris of other people’s lives, carefully categorizing litter.
Fearby’s study was dimly lit, because the window was half blocked with teetering piles of paper on its sill: newspapers and magazines and printouts. There were piles of papers on the floor as well: it was almost impossible to make a path through them to the long table that acted as his desk, also disappearing under scraps of paper, old notebooks, two computers, a printer, an old-fashioned photocopying machine, a large camera with its lens off, a cordless phone. Also, two chipped saucers overflowing with cigarette stubs, several glasses and empty whisky bottles. On the rim of the table there were dozens of yellow and pink Post-it notes, with numbers or words scribbled on them.
When Fearby turned on the Anglepoise lamp, it illuminated a paper copy of a photograph of a young woman’s smiling face. One chipped tooth. It made Frieda think of Karlsson, who also had a chipped tooth and who was many miles away.
It wasn’t the mess of the room that arrested her, however: it was the contrast of the mess to the meticulous order. On the corkboards, neatly pinned into place, were dozens of young women’s faces. They were obviously separated into two categories. On the left, there were about twenty faces; on the right, six. Between them was a large map of Britain, covered with flags that went in a crooked line from London towards the north-west. On the opposite wall, Frieda saw a huge time line, with dates and names running along it in neat, copperplate writing. Fearby was watching her. He pulled open the drawers of a filing cabinet, and she saw racks of folders inside, marked with names. He started pulling them out, putting them on top of the dangerous heap of things on his table.
Frieda wanted to sit but there was only one swivel chair and that was occupied by several books.
‘Are they the girls?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Hazel Barton.’ He touched her face gently, amost reverently. ‘Roxanne Ingatestone. Daisy Crewe. Philippa Lewis. Maria Horsley. Sharon Gibbs.’
They smiled at Frieda, young faces smooth, eager.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe Lila is too.’
‘It can’t be Doherty.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ He directed her towards his timeline. ‘This is when Daisy went, and Maria – he was in prison.’
‘Why are you so sure it’s the same person?’
Fearby pulled open the first folder. ‘I’m going to show you everything,’ he said. ‘Then you can tell me what you think. It may take some time.’
At seven o’clock, Frieda called Sasha, who agreed to go round to her house and stay there until she returned. She sounded concerned, a note of panic in her voice, but Frieda cut the conversation short. She also called Josef to ask him to feed the cat and perhaps water the plants in her yard.
‘Where are you, Frieda?’
‘Near Birmingham.’
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a place, Josef.’
‘What for?’
‘It would take too long to explain.’
‘You have to come back, Frieda.’
‘Why?’
‘We all worry.’
‘I’m not a child.’
‘We all worry,’ he repeated.
‘Well, don’t.’
‘You are not well. We all agree. I come to collect you.’
‘No.’
‘I come now.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why can’t?’
‘Because I’m not telling you where I am.’
She ended the call but her mobile rang again almost immediately. Now Reuben was calling; presumably Josef was standing beside him with his tragic eyes. She sighed, turned the phone off and put it into her bag. She’d never wanted to have a mobile in the first place.
‘Sharon Gibbs,’ said Fearby, as if nothing had interrupted them.
At half past ten, they were done. Fearby went outside for a cigarette and Frieda went to look in his cupboards for some food. She wasn’t hungry, but she felt hollow and couldn’t remember when she had last eaten. Not today; not last night.
The cupboards, like the fridge, were almost empty. She found some quick-boil rice and vegetable stock cubes long past their sell-by date: that would have to do. As she was boiling the rice in the stock, Fearby came back in and stood watching her.
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think either we’re two deluded people who happen to have bumped into each other at a donkey sanctuary – or that you’re right.’
He gave a grimace of relief.
‘In which case, it’s not Doherty or Shane or whatever he’s called.’
‘No. But it’s odd, isn’t it, that he knew them both? I don’t like coincidences.’
‘They lived the same kind of lifestyle – two young women who’d fallen off the track.’
‘Perhaps they knew each other?’ Frieda suggested, lifting the rice off the hob, letting the steam rise into her face, which felt grimy with toil and weariness.
‘That’s a thought. Who would know?’
‘I have one idea.’
After they’d eaten the rice – Fearby had eaten most of it, Frieda had just picked at hers – Frieda said she should take the train back. But Fearby said it was too late. After some argument about hotels and trains, Fearby ended by getting an old sleeping bag out of a cupboard and Frieda made a sort of bed for herself on a sofa in the living room. She spent a strange, feverish night in which she didn’t know when she was awake and when she was asleep, when her thoughts were like dreams and her dreams were like thoughts, all of them bad. She felt, or she thought, or she dreamed, that she was on a journey that was also a kind of obstacle race, and only when she had got past the obstacles, solved all the problems, would she finally be allowed to sleep. She thought of the photographs of the girls on Fearby’s wall and their faces became mixed up with the faces of Ted, Judith and Dora Lennox, all staring down at her.
From about half past three she was starkly, bleakly awake, staring at the ceiling. At half past four, she got up. She went to the bathroom and ran herself a bath. She lay there and watched the edges of the window blind grow light. She dried herself with the towel that looked like the least used and dressed herself in yesterday’s dirty clothes. When she emerged from the bathroom, Fearby was there pouring coffee into two mugs.
‘I can’t offer you much of a breakfast,’ he said. ‘I can go out at seven and get some bread and eggs.’
‘Coffee will be fine,’ said Frieda. ‘And then we should go.’
Fearby put a notebook, a folder, a little digital recorder into a shoulder bag and within half an hour they were back on the motorway, heading south. For a long time, they drove in silence. Frieda looked out of the window, then at Fearby. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘At first, for George Conley.’
‘But you got him out,’ said Frieda. ‘That’s something most journalists wouldn’t achieve in their whole career.’
‘It didn’t feel enough. He only got out on a technicality. When he got out and everyone was cheering and celebrating and the media were there, it felt incomplete. I needed to tell the whole story, to show that Conley was innocent.’
‘Is that what Conley himself wants?’
‘I’ve been to see him. He’s a ruined man. I don’t think he’s capable of putting into words what he wants.’
‘Some people who looked at your house would say that you were a ruined man.’
Frieda thought Fearby might flare up at that or say something defensive but he smiled.
‘Would say? People have said it already. Starting with my wife and colleagues. My ex-colleagues.’
‘Is it worth it?’ said Frieda.
‘I’m not asking for thanks. I just need to know. Don’t you agree? When you saw those photographs of the girls, didn’t you want to know what happened to them?’
‘Did it ever occur to you that there may not be any link between the pictures on your wall, except that they’re just poor, sad girls who went missing?’
Fearby glanced at her. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’
‘I’m not on anybody’s side,’ Frieda said, with a frown, and then she relaxed. ‘Sometimes I think I’m not even on my own side. Our brains are constructed so that we find patterns. That’s why we see animal shapes in clouds. But really they’re just clouds.’
‘Is that why you came all the way up to Birmingham? And why we’re driving all the way back to London?’
‘My job is listening to the patterns people make of their lives. Sometimes they’re damaging patterns, or self-serving, or self-punishing, and sometimes they’re just wrong. Do you ever worry what would happen if you discovered that you were wrong?’
‘Maybe life isn’t that complicated. George Conley was convicted of murdering Hazel Barton. But he didn’t do it. Which means someone else did. So, where in London are we going?’
‘I’ll put the address into your satnav.’
‘You’ll like it,’ said Fearby. ‘It’s got the voice of Marilyn Monroe. Well, someone imitating Marilyn Monroe. Of course, that might not appeal to a woman as much a man. I mean the idea of driving around with Marilyn Monroe. In fact, some women might find it quite annoying.’
Frieda punched in the address, and for the next hour and a half, the car was guided down the M1, round the M25, by a voice that didn’t really sound like Marilyn Monroe’s at all. But he was right about the other bit. She did find it annoying.
Lawrence Dawes was at home. Frieda wondered if he ever wasn’t at home. At first he seemed surprised. ‘I thought you’d given up,’ he said.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ said Frieda. ‘We’ve got news for you.’
Dawes invited the two of them through, and once more Frieda found herself sitting at the table in Dawes’s back garden being served tea.
‘We found Shane,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘He was the man your daughter was associated with.’
‘Associated with? What does that mean?’
‘You knew that your daughter was involved with drugs. He was involved with drugs too. In a more professional way.’ Dawes didn’t react, but didn’t seem like a man expecting good news. ‘Shane was just a nickname. His real name is Mick Doherty.’
‘Mick Doherty. Do you think he’s connected with my daughter’s disappearance?’
‘It’s possible. But I don’t know how. It was when I went to see Doherty, out in Essex, that I met Jim. We were both looking for Doherty, but for different reasons.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was investigating the case of a young woman called Sharon Gibbs,’ Fearby said. ‘She had gone missing and I learned that she had known this man, Doherty. When I met Frieda, I discovered that we both wanted to talk to him about different missing women. It seemed an interesting coincidence.’
Dawes looked thoughtful and pained in a way that Frieda had never seen him before. ‘Yes, yes, I can see that,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘You’d never heard of Shane,’ said Frieda. ‘But now that we know his real name – Mick Doherty – do you recognize it?’
Dawes shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t remember ever hearing that name.’
‘What about Sharon Gibbs?’
‘No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t help you. I wish I could.’ He looked in turn at Frieda and Fearby. ‘I must seem like a bad father to you. You know, I always thought of myself as the sort of man who would move heaven and earth to find his daughter, if anyone had tried to harm her. But it wasn’t like a five-year-old girl going missing. It was more like someone growing up, moving away and wanting to lead their own life. Bit by bit, she disappeared. Some days I think of her all the time and it hurts. It hurts here.’ He pressed his hand to his heart. ‘Others, I just get on with things. Gardening, mending. It stops me thinking, but perhaps I shouldn’t stop thinking because that’s a way of not caring so much.’ He paused. ‘This man, what’s his name?’
‘Doherty,’ said Fearby.
‘You think he’s connected with Lila’s disappearance?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Fearby, then glanced at Frieda.
‘There’s some kind of link,’ said Frieda. ‘But he can’t be responsible for both. Doherty was in prison when Sharon Gibbs disappeared. I can’t make it out. Jim’s been looking at some girls who’ve gone missing and Sharon Gibbs fits with that pattern. But the case of your daughter seems different. Yet she seems connected to them through Doherty. Somehow he’s the hinge to all of this, but I don’t know why.’
‘Why is she different?’ asked Dawes.
Frieda stood up. ‘I’ll take the tea things in and wash up and Jim can tell you what he’s been up to. Maybe something will ring a bell with you. Otherwise, we’ve got through one brick wall only to run up against another.’
Dawes started to protest but Frieda ignored him. She picked up the patterned plastic tray that he had leaned against the leg of the table and put the mugs, the milk jug and the sugar bowl on to it. Then she walked into the house and turned right into the little kitchen. The window above the sink looked out on to the garden and Frieda watched the two men as she did the washing-up. She could see them talking but couldn’t hear anything that was being said. Dawes was probably the sort of man who was more comfortable saying things to another man. They got up from the table and walked down the garden away from the house. She saw Dawes gesturing towards various plants and at the end of the garden where the little river flowed. The Wandle, shallow and clear, trickling its way towards the Thames.
There were four other mugs in the sink and some dirty plates and glasses on the Formica worktop. Frieda washed those as well, then rinsed and stacked them on the draining-board. She looked around the kitchen, wondering if men reacted to absence differently from women. The contrast with Fearby’s house was sharp. Here, it was tidy, clean and well organized where Fearby’s house was dirty and neglected. But there was something they had in common. Frieda thought that a woman would perhaps have turned the home into some sort of shrine to the missing person but Fearby and Dawes were the opposite. Their very different spaces were both like highly organized ways of keeping all those terrible thoughts and feelings of loss at bay. Fearby had filled his house with other missing faces. And this house? It seemed like a house where a man lived alone and had always lived alone. Even doing the washing-up, she felt like a female intruder.
She wiped her hands on a tea-towel, neatly hanging on its own hook, then stepped outside to join the men. They turned at the same moment and gave a smile of recognition, as though in the few minutes she had been away, they had bonded.
‘We’ve been comparing notes,’ said Fearby.
‘It feels like we’ve been doing the same sort of godforsaken work,’ said Dawes.
‘But you were a salesman, not a journalist,’ said Frieda.
Dawes smiled. ‘Still too much time on the road.’
‘I suppose you got out just in time?’ said Fearby.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do offices have photocopiers any more?’
‘They certainly do,’ said Dawes.
‘I thought they’d gone paperless.’
‘That’s a myth. They use more than ever. No, Copycon are going strong. At least, my pension still arrives every month.’ He smiled but then seemed to correct himself. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Tell me something, do you think my daughter is alive?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Frieda, softly.
‘It’s the not knowing that’s hard,’ said Dawes.
‘I’m sorry. I keep coming around and stirring up old feelings and it’s not as if I’ve got much to report.’
‘No,’ said Dawes. ‘I’m grateful anyone’s trying to do anything for my daughter. You’re welcome here whenever you want to come.’
After a few more exchanges, Frieda and Fearby were back out on the street.
‘Poor man,’ said Frieda.
‘You came back out just in time, though. Dawes was just explaining in unnecessary detail how he and his neighbour were building a new wall.’
Frieda smiled. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said, pointing. And there was Gerry, walking down the road, clasping two enormous bags of compost that almost obscured him. Frieda saw that one bag was leaking, leaving a thick brown trail in his wake.
‘Hello, Gerry.’
He stopped, put the bags down, wiped a grimy hand across his forehead. His moustache was still uneven. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he said. ‘Not to seem unfriendly, but why are you here again?’
‘We came to ask Lawrence a couple of questions.’
‘I hope you had good reason.’
‘I thought so, but –’
‘You mean well, I can see that. But he’s had enough pain. You leave him be now.’ He bent to lift up his bags again and stumbled away, his trail of soil behind him.
‘He’s right,’ said Frieda, soberly.
Fearby unlocked his car. ‘Can I drop you home?’
‘There’s a station round the corner. I can walk and take the train back. It’s easier for both of us.’
‘Tired of me already?’
‘I’m thinking of your trip back. Look, Jim, I’m sorry for dragging you all the way down here. It didn’t amount to much.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve driven across the country for way less than this. And been glad to get it.’ He got into his car. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Aren’t you baffled by the way these girls can just disappear?’
‘Not baffled,’ he said. ‘Tormented.’
He closed the door but opened it again.
‘What?’ asked Frieda.
