by Nicci French
‘That’s all we need.’
‘She didn’t seem to have any real idea about her husband’s work. Officers are at his house now, going through things.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘We should think about how to deal with the press.’ Crawford groaned but she persevered. ‘They could be useful. I wonder if we should get Frieda Klein to do a few interviews.’
Crawford muttered something.
‘What do you think?’
‘You never quite know what she’ll say.’ He winced and leaned forward. ‘Is she safe?’
‘She’s under twenty-four-hour protection.’
‘I mean, that under-the-floor business, it’s like he’s playing with us. If he were to do something, something else, it wouldn’t look good.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Burge.
‘I’ve given you a high-profile case.’
‘Yes.’
‘A case like this, it can make a career,’ said Crawford. ‘Or, well, you know.’
‘I know.’
Darkness fell and the wind strengthened, bringing more rain. On the road outside Reuben’s house, the group of journalists became a huddle, with light glowing from cigarettes and mobile phones. Frieda made scrambled eggs, Reuben opened a bottle of red wine. PC Kelman, Fran’s replacement, produced a hefty sandwich from his bag and sat in the hall to eat it. He was a solidly built young man, who cracked his knuckles when he talked.
All of a sudden, there was a noise.
‘What was that?’
‘It sounds like shouting,’ said Frieda, laying down her fork.
The sound grew louder.
‘I recognize that voice.’ She stood up.
‘I don’t think you should go out there,’ said the officer, as Frieda swept past him in the hall.
She pulled open the door and saw a throng of figures on the pavement outside Reuben’s gate, and an officer trying to hold them back. Cameras were flashing. Several microphones were held out. In the middle of the crowd stood a young woman in a red duffel coat and stout black boots, her head shaved along one side and her eyes fierce: Frieda’s niece, Chloë.
‘Leave her alone!’ she was yelling. ‘Go away, all of you.’ She turned on the man with the beaky nose, whom Frieda had noticed earlier. ‘Fuck off!’ she yelled, into his surprised face.
Frieda saw now that she was holding a box and the box was moving, lurching dangerously. Chloë clutched it as a shape butted through the lid. Her cat, its fur standing up on the back of its neck and its mouth open in a soundless yowl.
Frieda stepped forward and the group swivelled as if with one mind towards her. She put a hand on the cat’s head and pushed it back into the box.
‘Come on,’ she said to Chloë.
‘Tell us about Dean Reeve!’
‘Is it true he’s alive?’
‘Give us something, Frieda, and then we’ll go.’
‘I have nothing to say. Except that up the road and to the left there’s a warm café, and a few doors further on the Ram’s Head does quite good food. There’s nothing for you here.’
She took her niece’s arm and pulled her away from the group. Kelman ushered them back into the hall. Chloë looked at the officer suspiciously and he looked suspiciously back at Chloë.
‘This is one of the people who’re protecting me,’ said Frieda. ‘Protecting all of us, in fact.’
Chloë gave a grunt.
‘And this is my niece,’ Frieda continued. ‘Who drifts in and out of my life.’
‘What she means,’ said Chloë, ‘is that I get in touch with Frieda when I’m in trouble. And sometimes she gets in touch with me when she’s in trouble. And, as you know, Frieda gets in even worse trouble than I do, which is saying something.’
‘What sort of trouble?’ Kelman asked.
‘We don’t need to talk about that now,’ said Frieda, and she bent and lifted the cat from the box. It stood in the hall, its fur bristling and yellow eyes glowing.
6
The following morning, Frieda and Petra stood in the flat that was to be her temporary home. The red-brick mansion itself felt heavy and grim; the furniture was like something from an old lodging house, a couple of battered armchairs, a dark wooden coffee-table. On the wall was an engraving of old London and a plate with a scene labelled ‘Margate 1922’. The carpets were dark red, like in the corridors of a corporate hotel. But the light coming in through the large windows in the sitting room was so bright that Frieda was dazzled for a moment. She looked out across Parliament Hill Fields, at the lido and the railway and the running track and, to the right, Parliament Hill itself.
‘Nice view,’ said Petra Burge.
‘Impossible for a cat, though.’
‘Can your friends look after it?’
‘What I really want is to be back in my own house.’
‘When it’s safe. You’re talking to the journalists at ten tomorrow. Meet me at nine thirty. We’ll need to prep you.’
‘Prep me for what?’
‘I’ve read your file. I’ve read the cuttings. I know you hate publicity. I know you’ve been stitched up before. But this is different. We’re initiating this, you and me, and we have to make it work for us.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘They’re going to write something. That’s what they’re here for. If you’re non-responsive or bad-tempered or sarcastic that will become the story. Remember: there is no such thing as a stupid or offensive question. What there is, is an opportunity for you to put your point across.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘Do. You want to create a narrative where you’re the sympathetic one, where readers care about you and people will want to help you and try to remember things they may have seen, people they may suspect.’
There was absolutely nothing funny about any of this, but even so Frieda couldn’t stop herself smiling. ‘You want me to create a narrative?’
‘Yes.’
Frieda shook her head. ‘Sometimes I wish therapy had never been invented.’
Josef came round with a cauldron of butternut squash soup and some honey cakes, enough for a large, hungry family. Frieda looked at his anxious brown eyes and ate a cake to please him, though she wasn’t hungry. He ate several and drank three mugs of tea. He told her that when he was a boy his mother would make honey cakes every Sunday; the smell would fill the house. He pulled out his phone and showed her the latest photographs of his sons. The eldest, Dima, was tall and quite bulky but the youngest, Alexei, was still small and slight, and his soulful gaze was so like his father’s that Frieda gave a laugh of surprise. ‘You must miss them,’ she said.
‘Sometimes it hurts,’ he said. ‘My boys.’
‘It must.’
He laid a broad hand across his chest. ‘But I carry them here.’
DC Yvette Long came round with a bottle of white wine and a look of furious awkwardness on her face.
‘Has something happened?’ Frieda asked.
‘Why does something have to have happened? If it’s a bad time, just say so and I’ll go away. I know that you mainly meet me when I’m trailing after Karlsson. You can take the bottle of wine anyway.’ Her words had come out in a flood.
‘It is a bad time,’ said Frieda, then felt guilty. ‘But I’m glad to see you.’
‘You don’t have to say that. I wasn’t asking for a compliment.’
‘Oh, stop it, or I really will tell you to go away.’ Frieda opened the bottle and poured two glasses.
‘You didn’t have to open it now,’ said Yvette.
‘Too late,’ said Frieda, and handed one of the glasses to her. They clinked. ‘I wish you were on the case,’ said Frieda. ‘You and Karlsson.’
‘There are rules. Emotional involvement and things like that.’
‘Are you emotionally involved?’ asked Frieda, with a smile.
Yvette blushed. Frieda had never met anyone who blushed as often as Yvette.
�
�I just meant that Karlsson is a friend of yours and I work with Karlsson. And he’s on sick leave. And I’m on another case anyway.’
Frieda sipped at her drink. So why was Yvette here?
When Yvette spoke it was almost as if she were responding to Frieda’s silent question. ‘I know you’re going to talk to the press.’ She stopped abruptly.
‘Yes. Petra Burge thought it might be helpful.’
‘I’ve written down a few things.’
‘Oh?’
‘That could be useful. I mean, they might not be. Or you might think they’re obvious. Or stupid. But I wrote them down anyway. In case.’
‘That’s kind.’
Frieda watched as Yvette searched through her bag, rummaging furiously and finding nothing. She patted her pockets and produced a piece of bent card.
‘Here.’
She passed over the card; Frieda unbent it. There was a list, in block capitals and marked with bullet points, of the things that she should and shouldn’t do.
WEAR PLAIN CLOTHES.
TALK SLOWLY AND IN FULL SENTENCES.
ONLY ANSWER THE QUESTIONS YOU ARE ASKED.
DRINK WATER BEFORE YOU ANSWER A QUESTION TO GIVE YOURSELF TIME.
DO NOT WEAR LOTS OF MAKE-UP.
DO NOT WEAR LOTS OF JEWELLERY.
DO NOT SMILE A LOT, OR LAUGH BECAUSE YOU ARE NERVOUS.
DO NOT WAVE YOUR HANDS ABOUT.
REMEMBER NOT TO SAY ANYTHING YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO SEE QUOTED.
‘Thank you,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ll try to remember all of that.’
‘And I was wondering how you were,’ Yvette said. ‘After finding that.’
‘Thoughtful.’
‘I dreamed about it,’ said Yvette. ‘I should be used to crime scenes, but that one stuck with me.’
‘What did you dream?’
‘Just being there,’ said Yvette. ‘And seeing that body. Except it was in my own flat instead of yours.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve been asked to sit the exams for promotion.’
‘That’s good,’ said Frieda. ‘You deserve it.’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.’
7
At ten the next morning, Frieda was shown into a room where the journalists were waiting for her, sitting in a row on a long leather sofa. In front of them was a low glass table. On top of it were three cups of coffee and three phones, set to record. When she came in, the press officer in front of her and Petra Burge behind, they all scrambled to their feet and for a brief moment, Frieda recoiled with an instinctive distaste. She saw on all three faces a greedy curiosity. They were looking at her as if she were an object, a specimen. She knew that they were taking in what she was wearing, how she appeared, how she carried herself, her manner, her voice, her expression. They wanted her to display emotion, frailty and damage. She nodded curtly at them all.
‘This is Gary Hillier,’ said the communications officer. ‘From the Chronicle.’
Hillier put out his large hand and she took it. He held hers for longer than was necessary and stared at her. His face was jowly; his goatee and round, wire-rimmed glasses seemed inappropriately small, as did his rosebud mouth. He was wearing a sports jacket, and black trousers that were too tight for him; his stomach bulged over the waistband. Nothing about him seemed to fit quite together. But his small blue eyes were shrewd. He started to say something about trauma and shock.
Frieda removed her hand from his and turned to Liz Barron. ‘We’ve met before,’ Frieda said, as the press officer started to introduce her.
‘Oh, yes, Frieda and I are old friends,’ said Liz Barron, brightly. She too took Frieda’s hand to shake. Her teeth gleamed; her turquoise jacket glowed. She had a sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Frieda remembered crossing the road to avoid her, closing her front door in her face. ‘I’m still on the Daily News. You must be feeling completely dreadful. It’s unreal.’ She shook her head; her glossy hair swung. ‘Just unreal.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Frieda. From the corner of her eye she saw Petra Burge frown at her.
Daniel Blackstock, who covered crime for a news agency representing local papers, seemed to be dressed for a different occasion, almost a different profession. He was wearing a checked blue shirt with a white T-shirt underneath and a rough denim work jacket on top. Frieda recognized him as one of the reporters from outside her house, the beaky-nosed man Chloë had yelled at. He wiped his palm down his trousers before shaking her hand and said he was honoured to be interviewing her. He seemed nervous, perhaps a bit out of his depth.
They all sat down again. Frieda sat opposite them in a springy black office chair. Petra Burge was seated by the wall and beside the woman from the press office, who was holding her own phone to record what was said.
‘Before anything else,’ said Liz Barron, ‘can you tell us in your own words how you felt when you discovered the body?’
‘My feelings were about Bruce Stringer. Later I felt distressed for his family.’
‘But it was in your house!’ said Liz Barron. ‘In your living room! Under the floor!’ With each exclamation she leaned further forward. ‘You must have been in shock. Perhaps you are traumatized. You know, post-traumatic stress disorder. Like soldiers get after battle. It would make sense.’
‘I’m not traumatized,’ said Frieda. ‘Perhaps I was in shock. A man was killed. That is a shocking thing.’
‘If it was me, I’d probably be hysterical. Yet you seem so calm and collected now. Almost detached. Is that what you were like at the time?’
‘I don’t know what I was like at the time.’
Liz Barron scribbled something in her notebook. She looked dissatisfied; Frieda could imagine how she was going to describe her.
‘Can I ask,’ said Gary Hillier, ‘about why this has happened?’
She turned to him with relief. ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’
‘There have been rumours.’
‘You probably know what I’m about to say.’ She watched as they leaned forward, waiting. ‘You have all heard of Dean Reeve and I assume that you know about my connection with him.’
They nodded.
‘Dean Reeve was thought to be dead, but for a long time now I have known him to be still alive.’ In as calm a manner as she could manage, she told them everything she knew: how he had murdered his identical twin and thus escaped, how he had reappeared over the years, stalking her, protecting her, avenging her, watching over her. It took her several minutes. She looked at their faces as they listened, avid, perhaps incredulous.
‘So he loves you?’ said Liz Barron when she came to an end. ‘You’re saying Dean Reeve is in love with you?’
‘I’m saying he’s obsessed. I’m the one who uncovered him in the first place. Now he wants to have power over me.’
‘That’s a strange way of showing it,’ said Liz Barron.
‘I think he was sending me a message.’
‘What message?’ asked Daniel Blackstock. It was the first time he had spoken. His expression was slightly dazed. He squinted at her.
‘Bruce Stringer was trying to find Dean Reeve for me.’
‘So everyone thought he was dead,’ said Gary Hillier. ‘Apart from you.’
‘He wanted to disappear,’ she said.
‘But now he’s back,’ said Blackstock.
‘Yes.’
‘There are some very serious questions here about the police,’ said Gary Hillier. He turned to Petra Burge. ‘Can I ask you for your comments on that, please?’
‘You’re here to interview Dr Klein.’
‘All right,’ said Hillier. ‘I’ll ask Dr Klein. Is it true that the police authorities refused to accept that Reeve was still alive?’
‘I am not here to criticize the police,’ said Frieda. ‘I am here to say what I know. Maybe one of your readers knows something or suspects something.’
‘I want to get at the real Fri
eda Klein,’ said Liz Barron.
Very slowly, Frieda reached for a glass of water, took a sip from it and remembered that she was following Yvette’s advice. She needed to stop herself saying something that would be unhelpful.
‘I’ll do my best to answer any question,’ she said finally, in a slightly strangled tone.
‘Your private life and your public life have a way of getting mixed up, don’t they?’
‘I don’t have a public life,’ said Frieda.
‘Your boyfriend was murdered. Tragically murdered. And you were briefly a suspect. You were actually a fugitive.’
‘That had nothing to do with Dean Reeve,’ said Frieda.
‘But my readers will want to know about the darkness and violence at the heart of your life.’
Frieda glanced round at Petra Burge, who gave a little nod, signalling encouragement or warning. ‘That’s a bit dramatic.’
‘You’ve been almost murdered by a schizophrenic, who was then herself murdered, possibly by you.’
‘Not in fact by me.’
‘You’ve been involved in other stabbings and killings.’
‘If you ask a question, then I’ll try to answer it.’
‘Dean Reeve is a man of violence. Would you say?’
‘Yes, I would say that.’
‘Do you think there is something about you, a beautiful woman attracted to darkness and violence’ – at that point Frieda closed her eyes and imagined a newspaper headline – ‘do you think Dean Reeve somehow finds that fascinating or even attractive? After all, you’re a psychiatrist. You’re an expert in people’s dark sides.’
Frieda opened her eyes. ‘There are psychiatrists who are interested in violence and evil but I’m not one of them. I’m a therapist and I deal with ordinary unhappiness. I don’t have any big theory about Dean Reeve. At a certain point in his life, I just got in the way.’
Gary Hillier raised his hand. Frieda nodded at him. ‘What would you say to women about the lessons they should draw from your experiences?’
The interview continued for an hour and Frieda was asked about her childhood, about whether she was single, about whether she wanted children, about her views on depression, about her exercise routine (‘I walk,’ she said). At one point she interrupted a complicated question by Daniel Blackstock to ask if she could say something.
