by Nicci French
‘What to do?’ Josef spread his arms wide in a gesture of despair. ‘How he go to school, Frieda? I am not –’ He stopped, his face wrinkling in the effort of finding the word. ‘Official. Everything cash. So Alexei not official.’
‘Have you asked for advice?’
‘As soon as I say we are here, we are a problem.’
‘You can’t go on hiding, especially with Alexei.’
‘Maybe.’ Josef was dubious. ‘I think on it.’ His face brightened. ‘Gardening is good.’
The little strip of lawn had to be dug up, the rubbly earth turned and re-turned, the plants that were already there bagged in their own compost, and then the paving stones lifted and used to make a structure of beds that would be filled with soil. It was heavy work but Alexei, who was scrawny but surprisingly strong, did it without any protest, as if he were used to labouring and expected it. It was hot, and he took off his T-shirt and silently, patiently struck the fork into the baked ground. Olivia took tall glasses of elderflower cordial out to him, filled with clinking ice, and he drained them silently before settling back to his toil.
Josef watched him for a while and then, satisfied, decided he could leave them to go to the hardware shop on Camden Road, then to the market to buy food for tonight’s supper. He would make casserole, he said, meaty and full of herbs and spices. It was winter food, really, but it would reward Alexei for their hard work, it would comfort Olivia and strengthen Reuben. It would fill the house with good smells, the smells of home.
29
Dennis Rudkin looked down at his notes, sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘Did I give you the warning?’ he said.
‘You told me that everyone has secrets,’ said Frieda.
‘When a husband contacts me and asks me if his wife is lying I always start by saying I can tell him that for nothing. She’s lying. Everybody lies. Everybody is hiding something from everyone else.’
‘I know that,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
‘And you think your patients tell you the truth?’
Frieda had a sudden uneasy feeling. ‘Have you found out something?’
‘I haven’t got on to them yet,’ he said. ‘I’m picking the low-hanging fruit first. I just wanted to see if you really had an appetite for this.’
‘We’ve already discussed it, haven’t we?’
‘People sometimes feel different once I start finding things out. I haven’t moved out of my office much for this. It’s mostly been done on the computer. A few phone calls.’
‘Is that usual?’
‘Depends.’ He put his glasses back on and glanced at the notes.
‘Your niece Chloë. Works as a carpenter in Walthamstow.’
‘I know.’
Rudkin ignored her and went on reading: ‘Rents a bedroom in a three-bedroom flat nearby. Landlord, name of Gerry Travis William, a well-known shark.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Flatmates all seem OK. Some drug consumption. Do you want to know about that?’
Mutely, Frieda shook her head.
‘Thing is, this means little or nothing – they’re young women and there are lots of people who come to the flat, sometimes stay there for varying lengths of time, and it’s impossible to investigate all of them. You understand what I’m saying?’
‘That this is a waste of time?’
‘Not quite. It’s partial, that’s all.’ He scratched his head. ‘I’ll inevitably turn up lots of things that appear suspicious – but they might not be relevant to what you’re wanting. They might just muddy the picture.’
‘I understand.’
‘OK. At your niece’s work. This may interest you. A new person has joined the team. Know anything about him?’
‘Chloë mentioned him and I told you his name. William McCollough.’
‘That’s the one. So, how much do you want to know?’
‘I’m looking for someone I should be frightened of.’
Rudkin rifled through several pages of the book.
‘It seems like you’ve got a lot,’ said Frieda.
‘Not so much. Also lives in Walthamstow, near his work. Brought up in care in Dundee. And elsewhere. He gave evidence in an inquiry. I mean an inquiry into one of the homes.’
‘Sexual abuse?’
‘No charges were brought. But, yes, that was the remit of the inquiry.’
‘That’s probably not relevant.’
‘But he works with your niece.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was kidnapped.’
‘This McCollough was a victim, wasn’t he? If he was giving evidence to an inquiry.’
‘Perpetrators usually start as victims.’
‘Does he have a criminal record?’
‘A bit of theft, a bit of drugs.’
‘Any violence?’ asked Frieda. ‘Any sexual offences?’
‘No. At least, no convictions.’
‘That’s all I was asking for. Any of them recent?’
‘The last was five years ago. Six, in fact.’ He closed his notebook. ‘So this is just the start.’
‘Thank you, Mr Rudkin.’
‘Dennis, please. If you want to continue, we’re going to spend a lot of time together.’
‘All right, Dennis. I want to continue.’
30
That night, Frieda lay in bed and thought about what she had learned. Rudkin had been right: almost all perpetrators have been victims. But that didn’t mean that all victims became perpetrators. Or anything like it. Nevertheless. Had William McCollough told his employers about his criminal convictions? Was he even obliged to tell them? If there was anything that was important to Frieda, it was that people like McCollough could be saved and given a second chance, a third chance and a fourth chance. But what if anything happened to Chloë? Should she warn her? And if she did, what could Chloë do with that warning, if it wasn’t to get McCollough fired?
At last, she got out of bed and started to dress. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night. She sat in her kitchen for a while with a large mug of tea, thinking of the two households, Reuben’s where Olivia, Josef and Alexei were living, and then Jack and Chloë in Olivia’s house in Islington. Almost everyone she cared for was in those two houses. Except Sasha. And Karlsson. She pushed away the thought of Karlsson. She thought of Alexei, with his father’s anxious eyes. She thought of Reuben with his naked vulnerable skull and his shrunken body and the cancer inside him. Was he asleep now, or was he lying awake in the dark, waiting to hear footsteps?
She stood up and went to the living room, where she pulled up the photograph of Chloë on the grubby mattress in some bare dank room. She stared at it for a long time, looking for a clue. The broken pane of glass, the cracked plaster on the walls, the wedged shadow that lay across the floor: was that cast by the person taking the photograph or something else? Somewhere abandoned, but near the slide of the widening Thames, where planes flew low overhead. She had the feeling that she was simply waiting for the next thing to happen, reacting to what this person – who wasn’t Dean but was copying Dean, following in Dean’s footsteps – was doing. She had to act. The need of it was like a tight coil inside her, like a band around her forehead.
When it was at last light, the silvery sky of early morning, she went and had a shower, then pulled on clothes, tying her damp hair back tight. She made herself a mug of strong coffee that she drank in four large swallows, and ate half a grapefruit. Then she walked to Holborn.
At the front door, before she even pressed the bell, she saw Walter Levin coming down the street towards her. He was walking briskly, swinging his battered briefcase. There was a jaunty air to him.
She stepped in front of him.
‘What a nice surprise.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s always good to see you. Are you coming in?’
‘I can talk to you here.’
Frieda looked at him, with his thick glasses, his frayed tie and expensive shirt, the dusty
brogues whatever the weather. ‘You’re good at arranging things, aren’t you?’
‘I like helping people, if that’s what you mean.’
‘It’s not what I mean. You used me to get rid of Commissioner Crawford, didn’t you? You knew he didn’t like me, so you used me as a weapon against him.’
Levin smiled faintly. ‘Don’t be modest, Frieda. I think you’re an effective weapon without anybody else’s help. As for Crawford.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘He had enemies and failed in his job. You can do one or the other but not both.’
‘I should have realized.’
Levin looked at her. ‘I’m surprised,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I thought you’d be angrier.’
‘You’ll never know what I am.’
‘No doubt. Well, if there’s nothing I can do for you …’ He let the sentence trail away.
‘There is one thing. It’s why I’m here.’
‘Yes?’
‘I have a friend who wants to become a British citizen. He has a young son, as well. He’s never dared to do anything about it. His name is …’
‘Josef Morozov. From Ukraine.’
‘Yes.’
‘Leave it with me.’
‘That’s not what I was asking.’
‘Yes, you were.’
She didn’t immediately go to her consulting rooms. Her first patient had cancelled because he had flu; the next – Alex Zavou, the one suffering severe post-traumatic stress, whose details she had given to the private investigator – was not until half past ten. She had three hours. She took the photo of Chloë out of her bag and stared at it again, as though, if she concentrated hard enough, it would yield up its secret. Then she walked to the Underground station, took a train, then the Overground to the landscape of scooped and cratered fields of clay, tall cranes and empty warehouses, across whose cracked façades ran faded lettering telling of their past: old mills and paint factories, back in their glory days.
Once again, she got out at Pontoon Dock and walked towards Silvertown. She didn’t know what she was expecting to find. Nothing had changed since she’d come here last. Yet she felt sure that this small area, between the river and the docks, with planes rumbling overhead, was where Chloë had been taken. She stood on the road, the crumbling warehouse behind her, the incongruous row of Victorian semis in front. Where was private, where was accessible, where could someone hide a drugged young woman for a whole weekend and not fear discovery? Whoever had taken her would have to have driven her, surely. Frieda turned to look in all directions: towards the broad flow of the river, where the great cranes stood on the horizon among the gleaming buildings; towards the housing development, not yet finished; the old and crumbling factories; the raw new bungalows waiting for their occupants. She realized that she had seen barely anybody, on foot or in a car: for all the development going on, this was still a deserted landscape.
She squinted up into the bright sky, at the warehouse that stood behind the chain-link fence. It had scaffolding up one side; the lower windows were boarded up against intruders but the upper ones were not and in some the glass was smashed. She tried to imagine all the empty rooms, the scuttling of mice and rats. Perhaps there were people in there, secret inhabitants. Was that where Chloë had been?
Alex Zavou was late for his session and when he did arrive, he almost ran into Frieda’s room, out of breath and slightly frantic. ‘I could hardly bring myself to leave the house,’ he said, before he even sat down.
‘But you did. You’re here and that’s good.’
‘It’s like I’ve got into a habit of panic. As if it’s not about anything any more, it’s just inside me, this panic.’
‘The habit of panic – that’s interesting,’ said Frieda. ‘We’ll come back to that.’
‘I’m just stuck. On a loop.’
‘You’re here to get unstuck,’ said Frieda. And she thought of how she’d asked a private investigator to look into his life. ‘As we talked about at the last session, it’s going to be one step at a time. I’m going to ask you to tell your story to me again, with every detail you can remember. I might stop you with questions.’
‘Right.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Off I go.’
People are stupid. They’re like sheep, following each other, bleating. They don’t know what to think until they’re told. They think they’re being good when they’re only being obedient. In love when it’s just the blind cravings of their bodies. They think they’re free, but they’re just part of a system. Ants in an anthill.
But Dean Reeve isn’t stupid. Frieda Klein isn’t stupid. He isn’t stupid. They belong to a different tribe.
Crazy times when the world comes right like this. Crazy good times. His times. He pushes his hands into his pockets and squeezes them into fists; he squeezes his eyes into slits, then opens them again. His throat is thick with excitement.
31
‘You’re a fast worker,’ said Frieda.
She was in Rudkin’s office once more. The only thing that was different from the last two times was that his dog was awake and was nosing its way round the room, snuffling into corners.
‘You asked for preliminary reports and these are preliminary reports,’ said Dennis Rudkin. ‘Not to demystify my job, but most of this was just me sitting at my screen. Obvious stuff.’
‘What did you find?’
‘OK. Your sister-in-law and her new friends.’
Frieda shifted uneasily in her chair; the dog came over and pushed against her leg.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a bit of a tangle,’ said Rudkin. ‘But you probably knew that.’
‘In what way?’
‘They’re all married, for a start.’
‘All of them?’
‘First off, Robert Astley.’
‘The tax inspector?’
‘Married for a second time. Three girls, aged eleven to seventeen. And he’s not strictly a tax inspector.’
‘What is he, then?’
‘An ex-tax inspector. Unemployed now. Had a gambling problem, I gather. Not good for a tax inspector.’
‘Oh.’
‘And Oliver Volkov isn’t an estate agent either.’
‘I half expected that. He was going door to door. That was how he and Olivia met. What is he?’
‘Difficult to say. This and that. Does some painting and decorating, some gardening. He was in prison for nine months.’
‘What for?’
‘Aggravated assault.’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ said Frieda.
‘The other two look pretty straightforward. Speeding fines, parking tickets, that kind of thing. Nothing else that leaps out.’
‘Do any of them live near City Airport?’
Rudkin leafed through the pages he was holding.
‘Not that I can see,’ he said. ‘Dominic Gordon lives in Beckton, that’s pretty close.’
‘Yes.’
‘But a friend of Jack Dargan does.’
‘Who?’
‘Does the name Tom Sylvester ring any bells?’
‘No.’
‘He and Jack have communicated a lot on Facebook in the last few weeks. I gather they were at school together, lost touch, and then Mr Sylvester reconnected with him. Very eager to meet up. Which they duly did. Reading between the lines, I think your friend was bullied by him at school and Sylvester wanted to apologize, make amends, you know the kind of thing.’
‘I do.’ Frieda thought of Jack with his self-consciousness, his awkwardness, his bouts of excruciating self-doubt.
‘Tom Sylvester is only twenty-seven, but he works in the City and has obviously made enough money to buy himself a three-bedroom house near East India Docks.’
‘Anything else about him?’
‘Not really.’
‘What does that mean? Just tell me what you know.’
‘Both his parents and his younger sister died in a road accident five years ago. Hit by a coach
. He was in the car and escaped with minor injuries.’
‘How awful.’ She paused, tentatively patted the dog’s head. ‘But not suspicious.’
‘When you do my job,’ said Rudkin, ‘everything’s suspicious.’
‘And Reuben.’
‘You’ll be relieved to hear I’ve found nothing to concern you there. Though of course that might be because he’s gravely ill and has been largely housebound.’
Frieda nodded. But that hadn’t stopped him being savagely beaten up. She waited a few seconds, then asked, ‘And my clients?’
‘You’ll have to wait for the next instalment.’
‘I’ve been reading about therapy,’ said Morgan Rossiter.
‘Why?’ said Frieda.
‘I thought you’d be pleased. It’s like doing my homework. Being a keen student.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s a distraction. You ought to be thinking about what’s important to you.’
‘Don’t you want to hear what I was reading about?’
‘You can talk about anything you want to talk about.’
‘I was reading about this thing called “transference”.’
Frieda’s heart sank. She knew what was coming, but she didn’t speak.
‘It’s about how patients have this habit of falling in love with their analyst. Does that really happen?’
Rossiter was looking at her with an amused, challenging expression.
‘I think it’s true of all authority figures,’ said Frieda. ‘Teachers, doctors, bosses. People can become fascinated by them or interested or even obsessed. The point is to talk about it.’
Rossiter continued to smile. ‘Do you ever find it a problem?’
Frieda looked at Rossiter. She was expecting him to mention counter-transference: where the therapist has strong feelings for the patient. Just now, Frieda was thinking about a different kind of problem in the relationship: when the therapist starts to feel a strong dislike of the patient. One of the difficult lessons to remember was that even this was a kind of evidence, something to be used. ‘When Dr Singh referred you to me, he said that, even before you asked for me personally, you had insisted on being analysed by a woman.’
