by Nicci French
‘What’s that?’
‘You wouldn’t understand. You’d think I’d gone mad. Sometimes I think I’ve gone mad myself.’
There was nothing to do but wait. Fearby said he had people he needed to see while he was in London and drove off once more, leaving Frieda unsure of what to do with herself. In the end she did what she always did at times of uncertainty or distress, when dark thoughts filled her: she walked. She found herself going towards King’s Cross, weaving along minor streets to avoid the roar of traffic, then took the road that led to Camden Town, which made her think again of the house where the Lennox family used to live, in clutter and a sort of happiness, but which now stood empty. Russell was in prison; Ted, Judith and Dora were at their aunt’s house, many miles away. At least it was neat.
She turned on to the canal. The houseboats moored by the path had pot plants and herbs on their decks. On a couple of them dogs lay in the sunshine; on one, Frieda saw a parrot in a large cage, eyeing her. Some were open to the public, selling banana bread and tie-dye scarves, herbal tea and recycled jewellery. People passed her on bikes; runners pounded by. Summer was coming. She could feel it in the warm air, see it in the thin brightness of the light and the sappy greenness of unfolding leaves on the trees. Soon Sandy would be back and they would have weeks together, not days.
She thought these things but couldn’t feel them. Indeed, the clear light and the happy people seemed unreal, far off, and she belonged to a different world – one in which young women had been dragged out of their lives by a man who had a smiling, sympathetic face. He had killed his daughter, Lila, Frieda was sure of it now – and yet he had seemed genuinely grief-struck by her absence. A piece of chalked graffiti on the wall showed a huge mouth full of sharp teeth, and she shuddered, suddenly cold in spite of the warmth of the afternoon.
She walked along the canal as far as Regent’s Park. The houses on the other side were grand here, like small castles or mock châteaux. Who would live in such places? She walked through the park swiftly, scarcely noticing the gaggles of children, the courting couples, the young man with closed eyes doing some strange slow exercises on a roll-out mattress by the ornamental gardens.
At last, making her way through side-streets, she was at home. The phone was ringing as she opened the door and she half ran to get it, in case it was Karlsson.
‘Frieda? Thank God. Where the fuck –’
‘Reuben, I can’t talk now. I’m waiting for a call. I promise I’ll phone you as soon as I can, all right?’
‘Wait, did you hear about Bradshaw?’
‘Sorry.’
She slammed the phone down. How long would it take for Karlsson to go to Lawrence Dawes’s house? When would he call? Now? This evening? Tomorrow?
She made herself some toast and marmalade and ate it in the living room, listening to the phone ringing over and over and the answering machine playing messages: Chloë, plaintive; Sasha, anxious; Reuben, furious; Sandy – oh, God, Sandy. She hadn’t even told him what she was up to. She’d gone into a different world, of terror and darkness, and hadn’t even thought to confide in him. She didn’t pick up, but let him leave his message asking her, yet again, to contact him, please. Josef, drunk; Olivia, drunker.
The day darkened and still Karlsson hadn’t called. Frieda went upstairs to her study and sat at the desk that looked out over the great sprawl of the city, now lit up and glittering under the clear sky. In the countryside, the sky tonight would be thick with stars. She picked up her pencil and opened her sketch pad, made a few indeterminate lines, like ripples. She thought of the stream at the bottom of Lawrence Dawes’s garden.
Perhaps she should have that long-delayed bath now. She was as tired as she had ever been, but far from sleep. Indeed, it felt as though sleep would never come again and she was trapped for ever in this dry, hissing wakefulness where thoughts were knives.
And then the phone rang again.
‘Yes?’
‘Frieda.’
‘Karlsson? What did you find?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘One very bewildered and distressed father, and a house in which there is no evidence of any kind whatsoever that he has ever done anything wrong.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you? I felt very sorry for him.’
‘Something’s not right.’
‘Frieda, I think you need help.’
‘Are you sure there was nothing at all?’
‘Listen to me. You have to walk away from all of this. And I need to placate the commissioner, who’s not a happy man, I can tell you. He wants to drag me in front of some official hearing.’
‘I’m sorry about that but –’
‘Draw a line under everything.’ His voice was horribly gentle. ‘No more following your instincts. No more trying to rescue people who don’t want to be rescued. No more teaming up with some mad old hack. Go back to the life we dragged you out of. Try and recover.’
He ended the call and Frieda sat for a long time in her garret room, staring at the kaleidoscope of lights spread out before her.
Dear Sandy, I think I am in trouble, in the world and in my head or my heart –
But she stared at the few words for a long time and then pressed the delete button.
Karlsson and Yvette sat in front of Elaine Kerrigan. Her face was unyielding and she repeated, in a wooden tone: ‘I killed her.’
‘Ruth Lennox?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me how it happened,’ said Karlsson. ‘When did you discover your husband’s affair?’
‘Why does it matter? I killed her.’
‘Did your sons tell you?’
‘Yes.’ She took a sip of water. ‘They told me and I went there and killed her.’
‘With what?’
‘An object,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything except I killed her.’
‘Take us through it,’ said Yvette. ‘We have plenty of time. Start from the beginning.’
‘She’s protecting her sons,’ said Karlsson.
‘So you think one of them did it?’
‘She does, anyway.’
‘And you?’
‘Fuck knows. Maybe everyone joined up together to do it, like in that book.’
‘I thought you believed it was Russell Lennox.’
‘I’m sick of this case. It’s too full of misery. Come on, let’s get a coffee. Then you’re going home. I don’t know when you last had any sleep.’
FIFTY-FIVE
Frieda phoned Fearby and told him what had happened – or hadn’t happened. There was a pause and then he said he was still in London and he was coming right over. Frieda gave him her address, then tried to tell him it wasn’t necessary, that there was nothing more to say, but he had already rung off. In what seemed like a few minutes, there was a knock at the door and Fearby was sitting opposite her with a glass of whisky. He asked her to tell him exactly what Karlsson had said. Frieda reacted impatiently.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘They went to Lawrence Dawes’s house. They turned it upside down. They didn’t find anything suspicious at all.’
‘How did Dawes react?’
‘You know what? I didn’t ask. The police appeared out of the blue and searched his house and all but accused him of killing his daughter. I imagine he was shocked and distressed.’ Frieda felt a tiredness that was actually painful. ‘I can’t believe it. I sat in his garden with him and he talked about what he’d been through and I set the police on him. Karlsson is furious with me as well. And rightly so.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ said Fearby.
‘Where do we go? We go nowhere. I’m sorry, but are you incapable of seeing what’s in front of your nose?’
‘Have you stopped trusting your instincts?’
‘It was my instinct that got us into this.’
‘Not just your instinct,’ said Fearby. ‘I’d been following a trail and we found we were on the same trail. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
Frieda sat back in her chair and sighed.‘Have you ever been out in the countryside and you were walking on a path and then you realized it wasn’t really a path at all, it just looked like one, and you were lost?’
Fearby smiled and shook his head. ‘I never was much for walking.’
‘For all we know, Sharon Gibbs is somewhere reasonably happy, not wanting to be found. But, whatever the truth, I think we’re done.’
Fearby shook his head again, but he didn’t seem dismayed or angry. ‘I’ve been doing this too long to get put off by something like this. I just need to go over my files again, make some more enquiries. I’m not going to give up now, not after all I’ve done.’
Frieda looked at him with a kind of horror. Was he a bit like her? Was this the way she appeared to other people? ‘What would it take for you to give up?’
‘Nothing,’ said Fearby. ‘Not after all this, after what George Conley suffered, after Hazel Barton’s murder.’
‘But what about what you’ve suffered? Your marriage, your career?’
‘If I give up now, that won’t bring my job back. Or my wife.’
Suddenly Frieda felt as if she was trapped in a disastrous therapy session where she couldn’t find the right thing to say. Should she try to convince Fearby that everything he had sacrificed his life for had been an illusion? Did she even believe it? ‘You’ve already done so much,’ she said. ‘You got George Conley out of prison. That’s enough.’
Fearby’s expression hardened. ‘I need to know the truth. Nothing else matters.’ He caught Frieda’s eye and gave a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Just think of it as my hobby. It’s what I do instead of having an allotment or playing golf.’
When Fearby got up to go, Frieda felt as if she was someone he had sat next to on a train journey and struck up a conversation with and now they were arriving at the station and would part and never meet again. They shook hands at the door.
‘I’ll let you know how things progress,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t want me to.’
When Fearby was gone, Frieda leaned against her door for a few minutes. She felt as if she needed to catch her breath but couldn’t, as if her lungs wouldn’t work properly. She forced herself to concentrate and take long, slow breaths.
Then, at last, she went up to her bathroom. She’d been waiting for the right time but there was never a right time. There was always something left to do. She thought of Josef, her shambolic and eager friend, all the work he’d put into this for her. It was his act of friendship. She had good friends, but she hadn’t turned to them, not even to Sandy. She could listen but she couldn’t talk; give help but not ask for it. It was strange that in the last days she had felt closer to Fearby, with his neglected home, his huge filing system and his wreck of a life, than she had to anyone else.
The doorbell rang and for a moment she thought she wouldn’t answer. But then, with a sigh, she turned away from the bath, and went to the front door.
‘Delivery for you,’ said the man, half obscured by a tall cardboard box. ‘Frieda Klein?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sign here, please.’
Frieda signed and took the box into the living room, levering open its top. As she did so, she was hit by a smell whose powerful sweetness reminded her of funeral parlours and hotel lobbies. Carefully, she lifted out an enormous bouquet of white lilies, tied at the bottom with purple ribbon. She had always hated lilies: they were too opulent for her and their fragrance seemed to clog her airways. But who had sent them?
There was a miniature envelope with the flowers and she opened it and slid out the card.
We couldn’t let him get away with it.
The world narrowed, the air cooled around her. We couldn’t let him get away with it.
Bile rose in her throat and her forehead was clammy. She put out one hand to steady herself, made herself breathe deeply. She knew who had sent her these flowers. Dean Reeve. He had sent her daffodils before, telling her it wasn’t her time, and now he had sent her these lush, pulpy lilies. He had set fire to Hal Bradshaw’s house. For her. She pressed her hand hard against her furious heart. What could she do? Where could she turn? Who would believe her, and who would be able to help?
She had a sickening sense that she had to do something, or talk to someone. That was what she believed in, wasn’t it? Talking to people. But who? Once it would have been Reuben. But their relationship wasn’t like that any more. She couldn’t talk to Sandy because he was in America and these weren’t things to be put into words on the phone. What about Sasha? Or even Josef? Wasn’t that what friends were for? No. It wouldn’t work. She couldn’t find the proper explanation, but she felt it would be a betrayal of their friendship. She needed someone outside everything.
Then she remembered someone. She went to the bin outside her house and thrust the flowers into it. Back inside, she rummaged through her shoulder bag but it wasn’t there. She went upstairs to her study. She pulled open one of the drawers of her desk. When she cleared out her bag, she either threw things away or kept them here. She went through the old postcards, receipts, letters, photographs, invitations, and found it. A business card. When Frieda had faced a medical disciplinary panel, she had encountered one kindly face. Thelma Scott was a therapist herself and she had immediately seen something in Frieda that Frieda hadn’t wanted to be seen. She had invited Frieda to come and talk to her any time she felt the need and given Frieda her card. Frieda had been sure that she would never take her up on the offer, almost angry at the suggestion, but still she had kept it. She dialled the number, her hands almost trembling.
‘Hello? Yes? I’m sorry to call at this time. You probably won’t remember me. My name is Frieda Klein.’
‘Of course I remember you.’ Her voice sounded firm, reassuring.
‘This is really stupid, and you’ve probably forgotten this as well, but you once came to see me and you said I could come and talk to you if I needed it. I was just wondering if at some point I could do that. But if that’s not convenient, then it’s completely all right. I can find someone else to talk to.’
‘Can you come tomorrow?’
‘Yes, yes, that would be possible. But there’s no hurry. I don’t want to force myself on you.’
‘What about four o’clock, the day after tomorrow?’
‘Four o’clock. Yes, that would be fine. Good. I’ll see you then.’
Frieda got into bed. She spent most of the night not sleeping, besieged by faces and images, by fears and dark, pounding dread. But she must have slept a bit, because she was woken by a sound that at first she didn’t recognize, then gradually realized was her mobile phone. She fumbled for it and saw the name Jim Fearby on it. She let it ring. She couldn’t bear to talk to him. She lay back in the bed and thought of Fearby and had a sudden vivid, sickening, flashing sense of what it would be like to be mad, really mad, finding your own hidden meanings in a chaotic world. She thought of the troubled, sad people who came to her for help, and then the even more troubled, sadder people who were beyond anything she could do, the people who had voices in their heads telling them about conspiracies, how everything made horrible, terrifying sense.
Frieda looked at her clock. It was a couple of minutes after seven. Fearby must have waited for a permissible time to ring her. She got up and had a cold shower, so cold it made her ache. She pulled on some jeans and a shirt and made herself coffee. She couldn’t face anything else. What if Fearby had left a message? She didn’t even want to hear his voice, but now she’d thought of it, she couldn’t stop herself. She retrieved the phone from upstairs and called her voicemail. He probably wouldn’t have said anything. But he had.
The message began with a nervous cough, like someone starting a speech without knowing quite what to say.
‘Erm. Frieda. It’s me. Jim. Sorry about everythi
ng yesterday. I should have thanked you for all you’ve done. I know I come over as a bit of a nutter. And an obsessive. Anyway, I said I’d keep you in touch. Which is probably not what you want to hear. I’m in London. I’ve been going over things, the files on the girls. I’ve had a thought. We weren’t thinking about them properly. We didn’t hear the engine. I’m going out to have another look. Then I’ll call round to you and fill you in. I’ll be there at two. Let me know if that’s no good. Sorry to go on so long. Cheers.’
Frieda almost wished she hadn’t heard the message. She felt she was being sucked back in. It was clear that Fearby would never let go. Like those people obsessed with the Freemasons or the Kennedy assassination, he would never give up and nothing would change his mind. She was tempted to ring him back and tell him not to come but then she thought: No. He could come one last time and she would hear what he had to say and respond rationally and that would be that.
The day was almost as much of a blur as the night had been. Frieda thought she might read a book but she knew she couldn’t concentrate. Normally at a time like this she would have done a drawing, of something simple, like a glass of water or a candle. She didn’t even want to go out, not in the daytime, with the people and the traffic noise. She decided to clean her house. That would do. Something that required no thought. She filled bucket after bucket with hot water and cleaning fluid and took objects off shelves and wiped them down. She sprayed the windows. She mopped floors. She polished surfaces. The more she cleaned, the more she had a comforting sense that nobody lived in the house or had lived there or had ever been there.
The phone rang periodically, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t know whether it had been a surprisingly long time or a surprisingly short time, but she looked up at the clock and saw it was five to two. She sat in a chair and waited. There was going to be no coffee. Certainly no whisky. He could say what he had to say, she would respond, and he could go. Then it would be over, and she could go to talk to Thelma Scott and start to deal with all of this because it just couldn’t go on.
One minute past two. Nothing. She actually went to the door and opened it and stepped out. As if that would help. She sat back down. Ten past, nothing. Quarter past, nothing. At twenty past, she called Fearby and went straight to his voicemail.
