Sunday Morning Coming Down: A Frieda Klein Novel (7)

by Nicci French

  The driver sniffed. ‘About ten minutes. Depends on the traffic. Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘No hurry.’

  When the taxi left her outside St Jude’s, she looked briefly at the main entrance. It was an established fact that Daniel and Lee Blackstock had arrived there at around ten twenty in the evening. A serious cut in his hand had been stitched up. Would it be useful to talk to the doctor who had treated Blackstock? Was it worth finding out what his behaviour had been like? The condition of the wound? The extent of the bleeding? But it was totally impractical. She looked at her watch. The doctor who had treated Blackstock would almost certainly not be working now. If they happened to be there, they wouldn’t be happy about being questioned by a stranger, even if she was a doctor. Perhaps at some future time, Petra Burge could arrange for them to be questioned, but what was likely to be learned, really?

  She turned away. There was nothing for her there. But it didn’t matter. That wasn’t why she had come. Daniel Blackstock had been here at around ten twenty. Jack had been attacked in Islington shortly after nine thirty. She was going to walk from one to the other. She closed her eyes as she always did at the beginning of a walk like this, going over the different possible routes in her mind. This one had its difficulties. It was obstructed by large roads, by a gas works and a bus depot and a network of warehouses. Beyond that was the River Lea, snaking its way through Canning Town and Bow. She knew the river crossing at Twelvetrees Crescent because she had once worked at St Andrew’s Hospital just beyond it. She heard a sound behind her and looked round. A plane was rising up from City Airport. It was like a reminder.

  She set off on a route that had been designed to frustrate a walker, with rumbling big roads and dead ends and residential streets curling back on themselves. At one point Frieda even had to take her phone out to check her position. Finally she was able to wind her way through the industrial estate and reach the River Lea. On a normal day she would have turned right on to the towpath and made her way up through the Olympic Park towards home. But today was different. He couldn’t have come along the towpath, not late at night and in a hurry. She needed a feel for the route he could have taken.

  She crossed the river and took the underpass beneath the big road. She walked through the streets of Bow and past the west side of Victoria Park towards Haggerston. The city was gradually becoming more familiar and she could walk without checking the route. She could now start to think.

  The alibi. His seriously injured hand was part of that alibi, which meant it hadn’t been an accident. He had done it himself then, though it was hard to deliberately slice through your own hand with a Stanley knife.

  And then the emergency call made from their home, their joint arrival at the hospital, the text sent from Jack’s phone. That was to taunt her but it was also a crucial part of the plan. The time of the emergency call would be no use if Jack had been imprecise about the time of the attack.

  Frieda looked around. She had been walking without thinking and for a moment she wasn’t sure exactly where she was. She was in Hoxton. It felt like another world from Newham, a world of coffee shops and young men with trim beards and bicycles.

  Something else had been nagging at her and she hadn’t quite been able to pin it down. It was to do with the timing. When she had talked to Lee Blackstock, she had concentrated on the length of time it had taken to get to the hospital. It felt too long. As the taxi driver said, it was just a ten-minute drive. And this was a man who had supposedly cut himself so badly that his wife had rung an emergency line. But that wasn’t necessarily impossible or even implausible. People acted strangely in crisis. They could have been trying to bandage the cut themselves and only gone to hospital when they hadn’t been able to staunch the bleeding. Sometimes things go more slowly rather than more quickly during an emergency. It becomes harder to make decisions, harder to do the things you normally do. No, that wouldn’t necessarily have been grounds for suspicion.

  What struck Frieda now was the time of the two calls. The text from Jack’s phone to Frieda was timed at nine thirty-two. The call from Lee Blackstock to the emergency service was timed at nine thirty-eight. If it had been the other way round, Frieda would have found their story much harder to disbelieve. She told herself the narrative of what must have happened. Daniel Blackstock had to attack Jack, then send the text, then phone his wife – presumably on a pay-as-you go phone that wouldn’t reveal his location. Then, at some point, he would have sliced open his hand. They couldn’t just have prearranged a time for Lee to make the phone call. Jack might not have been at home. There might have been someone with him. He would have had to let her know as soon as he had carried out the attack. If the text to her had come after Lee’s phone call, Frieda would have been forced to believe that the attack had been carried out by someone else.

  Now she was standing outside Olivia’s house. She looked at her watch. It had taken her an hour and a half to walk. Blackstock hadn’t walked. How had he got to St Jude’s? There was no station close to the hospital. The journey would involve long walks and changes. No, she thought. Going by train or bus would be hopelessly slow and he would have been seen by multiple people. There was CCTV. Even a bike would take too long. A car, she thought. He went by car. During the day there was the risk of being caught in traffic, but by nine thirty, there would be no problem driving through east London. He wouldn’t have taken a taxi or an Uber. They keep records, they leave traces. He would have used his own car, parked somewhere near Olivia’s, walked the last couple of hundred yards. Then he would have driven back, met Lee somewhere near the hospital. She could have walked there, to a prearranged spot.

  This scenario didn’t just depend on Daniel Blackstock. It depended on his wife as well. Frieda went through it over and over again. There was no way around it. She couldn’t have been a simple dupe. He would have to have told Lee some story, perhaps the real story or perhaps a fiction. And whatever the story, he would have to trust her. She would need to make the phone call, meet him. She would have been present when he inflicted the wound on his own hand. Frieda knew what such an injury was like, the sight of the blood, the smell of it. And then she would have had to go with Daniel to the hospital and talk to doctors and nurses. Could the awkward, anxious woman she had just talked to have managed all that? Frieda thought of that bunch of flowers in the kitchen. She thought of the flicker of satisfaction that had crossed Lee Blackstock’s face when she had mentioned them. Who knew what people could do?

  ‘Frieda Klein came to see me,’ said Lee Blackstock, as soon as her husband stepped through the door.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. She came in and we talked. Was that right?’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She wanted to ask about your accident.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Daniel Blackstock stepped closer to her. She could smell his breath and see the prickles of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘I said you’d cut yourself and we’d gone to hospital together.’

  ‘And she believed you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She’s good-looking, isn’t she?’

  With a visible effort, he took his wife’s hand in his uninjured one. ‘You don’t need to worry about other women,’ he said.

  ‘Daniel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just – there’s nothing to worry about, is there?’

  ‘Nothing in the whole world.’

  50

  ‘This feels like a meeting,’ said Reuben.

  Frieda looked around his living room. Josef was beside Olivia on the sofa. Reuben was in his special armchair. Chloë came in with mugs of tea on a tray. She handed them round.

  ‘It is a sort of meeting,’ said Frieda.

  ‘Anyone want biscuits?’ asked Chloë.

  ‘Can I just speak for a moment?’ said Frieda.

  Chloë pul
led a face and sat down.

  And so Frieda described in detail her suspicions about Daniel Blackstock. They listened in utter silence, apart from Olivia who gasped and occasionally made a small moan, and Josef who banged one fist slowly on his knee. When she finished, there was a stunned pause and then a sudden babble of sound and movement. She looked from face to face, waiting.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ said Reuben.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘He interviewed me.’ Chloë’s voice was hard and flat. ‘He pretended to be friendly and sympathetic. He asked me questions about what happened, how I felt.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He showed me that photograph. And you’re saying he was the one who took it, who drugged me and grabbed me and kept me locked up and unconscious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  Josef was standing with his arms folded by the door. His face was dark. Frieda wondered why he wasn’t saying anything.

  ‘He’s playing with us,’ Reuben said to Frieda.

  Olivia bent forward and put her face into her hands, her hair falling forward.

  ‘So?’ said Chloë. ‘Why aren’t you making this speech to the police? Isn’t this the point where they go and arrest him and we can all go home and carry on with our lives?’

  ‘I’ve told them about Daniel Blackstock. I couldn’t do any more.’

  ‘If you believe it, why don’t they?’ asked Chloë.

  ‘It’s not just a matter of believing it. First, they don’t entirely believe it. And second, even if they believed what I believe, that wouldn’t be enough. They need to be able to show that he did it. At the moment, he’s showing them he didn’t. He has an alibi. It’s a fake alibi but it might be enough.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do?’ Chloë continued. ‘Just sit here and wait for him to do something else? I mean, Jack’s unable to attend this meeting because he’s in a fucking hospital bed.’

  Olivia murmured something unintelligible.

  ‘And Reuben has been attacked and one of your patients has been murdered. And someone who worked with me has been hauled in by the police and had his life ruined. And it all began with a body that was actually found under the floor in your own house and you’re saying these other attacks don’t have anything to do with that?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying they don’t have anything to do with it. I’m saying they’re not done by the same person.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’ asked Chloë.

  ‘I think that the murder of Bruce Stringer set him off.’

  ‘Set him off?’ said Olivia.

  ‘Inspired him.’

  ‘So he’s a sort of fan?’ said Chloë.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Of you or of Dean Reeve?’ asked Reuben.

  ‘I think it’s like when someone sees a work of art and wants to copy it.’

  ‘But they’re never quite as good as the original,’ said Reuben.

  Frieda shook her head. ‘Violence is violence. It doesn’t matter why someone is doing it. If you’re the victim, that is.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ said Olivia.

  ‘I know what to do,’ said Josef. It was the first time he had spoken.

  ‘What?’ said Frieda.

  He simply looked back at her without speaking.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I talk to a friend. He talk to a friend. We say nothing more here. Say nothing again.’

  ‘No,’ repeated Frieda.

  ‘I get,’ said Josef. ‘You all know nothing. You can deny.’

  ‘No, really, Josef,’ said Frieda, horror-struck. ‘This is real denial. You do nothing, do you understand?’

  ‘You say you sure,’ said Josef. ‘You say you know what he did. You see what he do to Chloë. Do to Jack. Do to Reuben.’

  ‘Frieda is going to give you a lecture,’ said Reuben. ‘She’s going to say that without law we are nothing. Or what would life be like if we did things like that? Or what if she’s wrong?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

  ‘Then what were you going to say?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her face was set, her eyes dark. ‘Just that we don’t do that. It’s not much of an answer. It’s probably not as good as what you said I was going to say. But it’s all I’ve got. We can’t do that.’ She looked at them in a kind of anguish. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘So what we do?’ said Josef. ‘We just wait for him.’

  ‘No. You stay together. You watch out for each other. You do not go out alone and you do not leave just one person in the house alone. You do not go anywhere without the police knowing where you’re going – and they will be outside keeping watch day and night. And maybe they’ll find something, some evidence against him.’

  Daniel came to bed late that night. His skin was hot and he was breathing more heavily than usual.

  Lying beside him, Lee went over and over it. In her mind it was like the first time her husband had kissed her. She remembered that first kiss so vividly that she could smell it and taste it. She had waited and waited, and then there was the sudden closeness and his mouth on hers, the warmth of his tongue, his hand on her breast. She had felt a warm spasm through her, so that the pleasure of it was almost like a sickness.

  It had been like that. She was almost out of breath by the time she got to the recreation ground. The walk had taken a bit longer than Daniel had said. She stayed away from the leisure centre. Daniel had said there would be cameras.

  She waited five minutes, ten. Could something have gone wrong? Then the car appeared and turned into the side road where she was waiting. She got in beside him. His eyes were shining with energy and excitement.

  ‘You made the call?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You’ll need to drive,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

  She got out of the car again and moved round to the driver’s side. He spread the bath towel on his lap. This was going to be messy. She opened the glove compartment and took out the Stanley knife. She had scrubbed it and scrubbed it. She looked at it.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ he said. He looked at her. She was still breathing heavily from the quick walking, almost running. ‘Can you do this?’

  His hand rested on the towel. She held the knife tightly and put the blade against the back of his left hand. It had to be his left hand. She pushed and felt the slight give of the flesh. She lifted the knife. Even in the glow of a streetlight, she could see a small dark bubble on the skin. She took the hand and raised it to her mouth and dabbed the dark bubble with her tongue. It tasted of salt and iron.

  ‘That’s not enough,’ said her husband. ‘That’s not nearly enough.’

  She gently moved the hand back down on to the towel. ‘Ready?’ she said.

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  She pushed and pulled and he leaned his head back and she heard a low whimper, a tearing groan.

  That was the sound she heard as she lay in the dark beside him. She could play it to herself in her head, over and over again.

  51

  The phone rang. It was Karlsson.

  ‘Switch the TV on,’ he said. ‘You won’t like it but you’d better do it.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of supper,’ said Frieda.

  ‘Just do it.’

  Frieda looked around the table. ‘Karlsson says I need to see something on the TV. It’s probably about me so you can stay here and carry on with the meal.’

  ‘Miss you on TV?’ said Chloë.

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Frieda.

  ‘Grab your glasses, everyone,’ said Reuben. ‘Josef, get the other red from the shelf.’

  There was a bustle of clinking glasses as Reuben, Josef, Olivia, Chloë and Alexei followed Frieda through to the living room. They squeezed together on the sofa and on the rug as Josef switched on the TV. A man with a suntanned face was holding a green bottle.

  ‘So how m
uch do we think this could fetch at auction?’ he said to the woman next to him.

  ‘I don’t think this is it,’ said Frieda.

  Josef changed the channel. A young woman in a yellow apron was kneading some dough.

  ‘It’s really important,’ she said panting slightly, ‘to have the right starter.’

  ‘That’s absolutely true,’ said Olivia. ‘Do you think your friend Karlsson thinks we should be making our own bread?’

  ‘He’s not going to bloody ring us up to tell us to watch a cookery programme,’ said Chloë.

  Josef changed the channel again.

  ‘This is the one,’ said Frieda, immediately.

  A man was walking along the side of a river. Frieda saw that it was the Thames. When she saw the Thames Barrier behind him, she knew, with a sinking feeling, what was coming. The man was dressed in a blue suit with a burnt-orange shirt and no tie. He wore glasses with dark frames that ran only along the top of the lenses. When Frieda had last met him, he had been clean-shaven, but now he sported a modish beard, neatly trimmed.

  ‘London is a city of ghosts,’ he was saying. ‘Full of secrets.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Hal Bradshaw,’ said Reuben. ‘The TV profiler.’

  ‘He hates Frieda,’ said Chloë.

  ‘That can’t be true,’ said Olivia.

  ‘He think she burn his house down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Frieda. ‘I need to hear this.’

  ‘For me London is like the mind,’ Bradshaw said, ‘full of hidden people, hidden places, hidden rivers.’

  ‘What rubbish,’ Olivia said.

  ‘It’s not exactly rubbish,’ said Frieda.

  ‘Did you really burn his house down?’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Frieda, then hissed at her sister-in-law, ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Some of us,’ said Bradshaw, looking earnestly into the camera, ‘try to use our professional skills to uncover those secrets, to right those wrongs, to track down the guilty, to protect the innocent. But our profession comes with responsibilities. In the wrong hands, it can wreak havoc. It can destroy lives. In this week’s programme I want to tell one man’s story of what happens when the precious tools of the crime profiler fall into the wrong hands.’