by Nicci French
‘I know,’ said Frieda. ‘I know, Dora.’
‘So why did she –’
‘Listen to me now. People are very complicated. They can be lots of different people at the same time. They can cause pain and yet still be kind, sympathetic, good. Don’t lose your memories of your mother. That’s who she was to you and that’s real. She loved you. She may have been having an affair but that doesn’t alter the way she felt about her children. Don’t let anyone take her away from you.’
‘Aunt Louise says –’
‘Fuck Aunt Louise!’
Ted was standing in the doorway. His hair was greasy and lank and his face looked mushroomy in its unhealthy pallor; there were violet smudges under his eyes and a prickling rash on his neck. Small sprouts of a young man’s beard were beginning to appear on his chin. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Frieda wondered if he’d even been to bed, let alone slept. As he approached, she could smell sweat and tobacco, a yeasty unwashed aroma.
‘What are you doing here? Couldn’t keep away?’
‘Hello, Ted.’
Ted jerked his head at Dora. ‘Louise wants you.’
Dora got to her feet, still holding Frieda’s hand. ‘Will you come and see us?’ she asked urgently.
‘Yes.’
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
The girl left the room and Frieda was left with Ted. She held up his portfolio. ‘I’ve brought you this.’
‘You thought I might be worrying about where it was? I’ve had other things on my mind.’
‘I know. DCI Karlsson told me that your father has confessed to the manslaughter of Zach Greene and he’s under suspicion of murdering your mother.’
His face twisted violently and he turned away from her. His thin, dirty figure reeked of misery and wretchedness.
‘I’ve also been told that Elaine Kerrigan has confessed, though I think she might be trying to protect her sons.’
‘Jesus,’ he muttered.
‘I’d like to say something, but maybe we can get out of here for a bit,’ suggested Frieda.
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘Please.’
They went outside together. Frieda thought she saw a face staring at them out of a high window, but perhaps she was imagining things. She waited until they turned off the road on to a narrower street, which ran along a deserted playground and then beside a small grey church, before speaking.
‘I was looking at your art,’ she said. ‘You’re good.’
‘That’s what my mum used to say. “Ted, you’ve got a gift.” Is that what you’ve come to tell me?’
‘I saw the still-life you did for your mock exam. On the morning your mother died.’
Ted said nothing. They continued walking in silence down the street. It felt like everybody had gone away and only they were left.
‘There was a strange object I didn’t recognize at first,’ said Frieda. Her voice sounded dry and scratchy. She cleared her throat. ‘You’d drawn it from an interesting angle, so it took me some time to see what it was. I went to the evidence room to check.’
Ted had slowed. He dragged his feet as though they were too heavy for him.
‘You can only see the cog as it appears in your drawing if you tip it sideways and back. Then it flattens out, into what looks more like a ruler.’
‘Yes,’ said Ted, in what sounded more like a shudder than a word. ‘We had riddle books like that when I was a boy. I used to love them. I Spy …’
Frieda put her hand on Ted’s shoulder and he looked at her. ‘Your father knew you’d taken the cog to school that morning. When it turned up as the murder weapon, he knew it couldn’t have been there until you brought it back.’
‘He never said.’ Ted spoke in a dull voice. ‘I thought it could be all right, that nobody would ever know.’
‘You discovered about your mother’s affair?’
‘I’d suspected for ages,’ Ted said drearily. ‘I followed her that day, on my bike. I saw her go to the flat and a man open the door. I left her there and I wandered around for ages, in a kind of fog. I couldn’t really think and I felt sick. I thought I would be sick. I went home and I was putting the fucking cog back on the mantelpiece when she came in.’ He put one hand up to his face for a moment, touching his skin. ‘When I was little, I thought she was the best person in the whole wide world. Safe and kind. She’d tuck me into bed every night and she always had the same smell. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I knew she knew that I’d found out. She didn’t say anything at once, and then she gave me this odd little smile. So I swung the thing in my hand and it hit her, smack, on the side of her head. I can still hear the sound it made. Loud and dull. For one moment, it seemed like nothing had happened and she was still looking at me and I was looking at her and there was this funny smile on her face and then – she seemed to explode in front of my eyes. Blood everywhere and she didn’t look like my mother any more. She was lying on the floor and her face was mashed up and I was still holding the cog and it was all …’
‘So you ran away.’
‘I went to the park and I was sick. I was so sick and I’ve felt sick ever since. Every moment. Nothing takes the taste away.’
‘And then Judith gave you an alibi?’
‘I was going to confess. What else could I do? But then the murder weapon had gone and everyone was saying it was a burglary gone wrong and Judith was begging me to say I’d been with her that afternoon. So I went along with it. I didn’t work anything out in advance.’
‘You do understand that your father planned Zach’s murder, don’t you, Ted? It wasn’t manslaughter. It was murder. Once Judith came to him and told him about her affair and that she’d been with Zach on the day your mother died, he knew your alibi would be broken. Zach would say he’d been with Judith that afternoon.’
‘He killed Zach to save me,’ said Ted, in a low voice.
‘If he wasn’t caught, your alibi was safe. If he was, he could say he did it in an argument.’
‘What will happen to him now?’
‘I don’t know, Ted.’
‘Is he going to say he killed Mum as well, to save me?’
‘I think he will if he has to. It’s all a bit of a muddle at the moment, because of Elaine Kerrigan’s intervention.’
‘Will you tell the police?’
‘No,’ said Frieda, thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I will.’
‘Why?’
Frieda stopped and turned to him. She looked at him with her dark eyes. ‘Because you are going to.’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t … I never meant to … I can’t.’
‘What’s it been like?’ said Frieda. ‘These last weeks.’
‘Like being in hell,’ he said, the words barely audible.
‘That’s where you’ll be for ever, unless you speak the truth.’
‘How can I? My mother. I killed my mother.’ He jerked to a pause, and then dragged the words back again. ‘I killed my mother. I can see her face.’ He repeated the words wildly: ‘I can see her face, her smashed-in face. All the time.’
‘This is the only way. It won’t make things better. You will always be the person who killed his mother. You will always carry that with you, until the day you die. But you have to admit what you did.’
‘Will I go to prison?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘I wish I could tell her –’
‘What would you tell her?’
‘That I love her. That I’m sorry.’
‘You can tell her.’
The street had swung round in a crescent and now they were back on the road where Louise Weller lived. Ted stopped and drew a deep, unsteady breath.
‘We don’t need to go back in there,’ said Frieda. ‘We can just go to the station.’
He stared at her, his young face stricken with dread. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I don’t
think I can do it alone.’
Frieda had walked through London many times, but she couldn’t remember a walk so ghostly and so strange. It felt that crowds separated as they passed, and their footsteps rang out in the fugitive grey light. After a while, she put her arm through Ted’s and he drew closer to her, like a child with his mother. She thought of Judith and Dora in that dark, tidy, airless house, their father locked away, their brother too – this young, horror-struck man. Everyone alone in their own terror and grief.
At last they were there. Ted drew apart from her. Beads of sweat had sprung up on his forehead and there was a dazed expression on his face. Frieda put a hand on the small of his back.
‘This is it,’ she said. And they went inside together.
Karlsson had just gone back in to Russell Lennox when Yvette put her head round the door and beckoned him out again.
‘What is it?’
‘I thought you should know at once. Frieda’s here, with the Lennox boy.’
‘With Ted?’
‘Yes. She says that he has something important to say to you.’
‘OK. Tell them I’ll come now.’
‘And Elaine Kerrigan is still insisting she did it.’
Karlsson went back into the room. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ he said to Russell Lennox. ‘But apparently your son’s here to see me.’
‘My son? Ted? No. No, he can’t be. No –’
‘Mr Lennox, what is it?’
‘I did it. I’ll tell you everything. I killed my wife. I killed Ruth. Sit down. Turn on the tape recorder. I want to confess. Don’t go. I did it. No one else. It was me. You have to believe me. I murdered my wife. I swear to God it was me.’
Ted lifted his burning eyes and stared at Karlsson full in the face. For the first time, Karlsson felt a stillness about him, a sense of concentrated purpose. The boy took a breath and then said in a clear and ringing voice: ‘I am here to confess to the murder of my mother. Who I loved very much …’
FIFTY-EIGHT
Josef was sitting in the kitchen with Chloë, playing some card game that involved lots of shouting and slapping of cards one on top of another when Frieda returned. Even as she was considering how to break the news to her niece, she had time to wonder why Chloë was in her house when she should have been at school, and think of how, from being her secure retreat from the world, it had become a casual meeting place for everyone, a place of disorder and grief. Perhaps, she thought, she would replace all the locks when this was over. She looked at Josef. ‘Could Chloë and I have a moment?’ she asked.
Josef seemed puzzled. ‘Moment?’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Could you go out of the room?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Josef. ‘I go to Reuben now anyway. Poker for the guys.’
He picked the cat off his lap and, holding it against his broad chest, backed out.
As Frieda told Chloë, she watched the succession of emotions on the young girl’s pale face: confusion, shock, distress, disbelief, anger. When Frieda had finished, there was a silence. Chloë’s eyes flickered from side to side.
‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’ she said.
‘Where is he?’
‘At the police station.’
‘In a cell?’
‘I don’t know. They were going to take a statement, but they’ll keep him in.’
‘He’s only a child.’
‘He’s eighteen. He’s an adult.’
There was another pause. Frieda saw that Chloë’s eyes were glistening. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘You were supposed to look after him.’
‘I think I was looking after him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He had to own up to what he did.’
‘Even if it meant ruining his life.’
‘It’s his only hope of not ruining his life.’
‘In your opinion,’ said Chloë, bitterly. ‘In your fucking professional opinion. I brought him to you. I brought him to you so that you could help him.’
‘Helping people isn’t simple. It’s –’
‘Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. I don’t want to hear you talk about taking responsibility and fucking autonomy. You’ve betrayed him and you’ve betrayed me. That’s what you’ve done.’
‘He killed his mother.’
‘He didn’t mean to!’
‘And that will be taken into account.’
‘I’m going.’
‘Where?’
‘Back home. Mum might be a head case and the house might be a slum, but at least she doesn’t send my friends to prison.’
‘Chloë –’
‘I’ll never forgive you.’
It was finished, she told herself. She had finished. The feverishness of the last few weeks could abate; the strangeness could fade, like a violent bruise fades until at last it is just a faint ache, invisible to anyone else. The Lennox murder was solved. The Lennox children had gone to their different kinds of prison. Chloë had gone. Frieda had betrayed her friendship with Karlsson. The wild quest for a girl she had never known was over and already it had the quality of a dream. She wondered if she would ever see Fearby again, with his staring eyes and his silver hair.
She started clearing up, putting objects back where they belonged, wiping stains off surfaces, rubbing beeswax polish on to the little chess table by the window. That afternoon she would go and see Thelma Scott and dip the bucket down into the dark well of thoughts, but perhaps later on she could play through an old chess game, let the wooden pieces click their way across the board while silence settled around her again. She would have to call Sandy too. In her tumult, she had let him go. The two days in New York seemed distant, unreal. Now at last she let herself dwell upon the way he’d held her that night and the words he had said. Remember.
Remember. Halfway up the stairs, Frieda stopped dead. Something had come into her mind, setting her heart racing. What was it? Fearby. Something about Fearby, and his last message to her, before he’d disappeared out of her life. Frieda sat down on the step and tried to recall exactly what he’d said in his message. Most of it wasn’t important but he’d obviously had an idea that seemed worth following up. He’d said he’d looked over the files of the girls. She remembered that bit clearly enough. Then he’d said something else. That we’d been thinking about them in the wrong way. Yes, and that he was going out to take another look.
Was there anything else? Yes: they hadn’t heard the engine – what did that mean, for God’s sake? It sounded like a slightly mad metaphor for the way the mind works. Frieda thought so hard that it almost hurt. No, that was all, except that he’d said he’d come round and tell her what he found. So that was all. It didn’t seem much. The files of the girls. We’d been thinking about them in the wrong way. What had he meant by that? How could it be the wrong way? Was there some sort of connection they’d missed? He’d said ‘we’. In what way had Fearby and she been thinking together about the girls? She thought about the rest of the message. He was going to take another look. Another. What did that mean? Was he going to go back to one of the girls’ families? It was possible.
But then Frieda thought: No. There had been three parts to what he’d said. The girls. ‘We’ had thought wrongly about them – and he hadn’t heard the engine. And he was going to take another look. That must mean – mustn’t it? – that he was going to a place the two of them had been together.
Was he going to the horse sanctuary to talk to Doherty? No, that didn’t make sense. Then he would have said he was going to talk to someone. His message was about a place. That must mean he’d been going back to Croydon. To take another look. But what could be the point of that? The police had been to the house. They had searched it. What could there possibly be to take another look at? She thought again about the message, as if it was a machine she was taking apart and laying out on the table. The girls. We had the wrong idea about them. Taking another look. The first bit was clear enough. The girls. The third bi
t seemed obvious. Another look. That must be Croydon. The problem was the second bit, the middle. We had the wrong idea about them. We. That was clear enough: Fearby and Frieda. What did Fearby and Frieda have the wrong idea about? Them. The engine. They hadn’t heard the engine. What bloody engine?
And then, quite suddenly, it was as if Frieda had walked out of a dark tunnel into light so dazzling that she could hardly see.
Them. What if ‘them’ wasn’t the girls? What if the engine wasn’t a metaphor at all – because, after all, Fearby didn’t talk in metaphors. He made lists; he focused on objects, facts, details, dates. The engine was the one that Vanessa Dale had heard, the day she was attacked, just before Hazel Barton had been killed. Vanessa Dale, through her panic, when her attacker’s hands were round her throat, had heard an engine revving.
That meant her attacker hadn’t been acting alone. Someone else had been sitting in the car, revving the engine, waiting to drive them away. Not one person. Two. A pair of killers.
FIFTY-NINE
Everything had a steely clarity now, icy, hard-edged. She found Thelma Scott’s number and dialled it.
‘Dr Scott? This is Frieda Klein. I’ve got to cancel.’
There was a pause.
‘Do you have a moment to talk?’
‘Not really. I’ve got something to do. Something that can’t wait.’
‘Frieda, are you quite well?’
‘Probably not, just at the moment. But there’s something important. It overrides everything.’
‘It’s just that you don’t sound quite well.’
‘I’m so sorry. I’ve got to go.’
Frieda hung up. What did she need? Keys, jacket, her hated phone. That was all. She was just pulling on her jacket when the doorbell rang. It was Josef, dusty from work.
‘I’m on my way out. I’ve got no time. Not even to talk.’
Josef took her by the arm. ‘Frieda, what is happening? Everyone phoning everyone. Where is Frieda? What she doing? You never phoning. Never answering.’
‘I know, I know. I’ll explain. But not now. I’ve got to get to Croydon.’
‘Croydon? The girls?’
