by Nicci French
‘What do you mean?’
‘Reddish hair, Irish name.’
‘I’m from Chelmsford.’
‘But they call you Shane.’
Doherty gave a faint, sarcastic smile. ‘Sometimes they do. You know. Begorrah.’
‘Tell me about Lila Dawes.’
‘What?’
‘You knew a girl called Lila Dawes. Also missing.’ She felt Fearby stiffen beside her, as if a current of electricity had passed through him.
‘Two missing girls,’ he said softly. ‘And you knew them both.’
‘Who says I knew Lila?’
‘Lila. Crack addict. Spent time with you, Shane – Mr Doherty – around the time she went missing. Two years ago.’
‘You say you’re not the police, so I don’t have to say anything to you. Except …’ He put the wire down. Frieda could see the spittle on his mouth and the broken blood vessels on his skin. He clenched and unclenched his fists so that the tattoos on his arm rippled, and his eyes wandered round her, as if he was trying to see something behind her. ‘Except piss off back to where you came from.’
‘Hazel Barton, Roxanne Ingatestone, Daisy Crewe, Philippa Lewis, Maria Horsley, Lila Dawes, Sharon Gibbs.’
It sounded like a chant, an incantation. Frieda felt the breath go out of her body. She stood absolutely still and quiet. For a moment, it was as if she’d entered a dark tunnel that was leading towards a still darker place.
‘What the fuck are you talking about, old man?’
‘Missing girls,’ Fearby said. ‘I’m talking about missing girls.’
‘OK. I knew Lila.’ He gave a smirk of recollection. ‘I don’t know where she went.’
‘I think you do,’ said Frieda. ‘And if you do, you should tell me, because I’m going to find out.’
‘People come and go. She was always more trouble than she was worth.’
‘She was just a teenage girl who had the terrible bad luck of meeting you.’
‘My heart bleeds. And, yeah, I knew Sharon a bit. Not those others.’
‘Was this the first time you’d been in prison?’ Fearby asked.
‘I think I’ve had enough of your questions.’
‘Dates, Mr Doherty.’
Something in his voice made the man’s expression waver for a moment, the sneer replaced by a kind of wariness. ‘Eighteen months ago I was in Maidstone.’
‘What for?’
‘There was a thing with a girl.’
‘A thing.’ Fearby repeated the words as if tasting them. ‘What did you get?’
Doherty just shrugged.
‘How long?’
‘Four months, give or take.’
Frieda could sense Fearby working something out. His face was ravelled with concentration, deep furrows lining his forehead.
‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘We’re done.’
Fearby and Frieda walked back across the field. Two horses followed them; Frieda could hear their hoofs on the dried earth, like a drum.
‘We need to talk,’ Fearby said, as they reached his car. She simply nodded. ‘Is there somewhere we can go? Do you live nearby?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘No. How did you get here?’
‘I got a taxi from the station.’
‘We can find a café.’
Frieda got in beside him; the seatbelt didn’t work; the car smelt of cigarettes. On the back seat there were several folders. Only when they were seated at a table by the window of a small, dingy café on Denham High Street, with mugs of too-milky tea in front of them untouched, did they exchange another word.
‘You begin,’ said Fearby. He put a Dictaphone in front of him, then opened a spiral-bound notebook and took a pen out of his jacket pocket.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making notes. Is that OK?’
‘I don’t think so. And turn that off.’
Fearby looked at her as if he was seeing her properly for the first time. Then a faint smile appeared on his weathered face. He turned off the machine and laid his pen down.
‘Tell me why you’re here.’
So Frieda told her story. At first, she was conscious of its irrationality: just a paranoid instinct in the wake of her own trauma that had led her in a fruitless and inexplicable search for a girl she had never known. She heard herself talking about the tiny vivid anecdote that had sparked off her quest, of the dead-ends, the sad encounters with Lila’s father and with the woman from Josef’s homeland, who had pointed her in the direction of Shane. But bit by bit she realized that Fearby wasn’t responding with incredulity, as if she had gone slightly mad, the way that others had. He nodded in recognition, leaned forward; his eyes seemed to grow brighter and his granite face softer.
‘There,’ she said, when she had finished. ‘What do you think?’
‘It sounds like the same man.’
‘You’re going to have to explain.’
‘Well. I suppose it all began with George Conley.’
‘Why does that name sound familiar?’
‘He was found guilty of murdering a girl called Hazel Barton. You’ll probably have heard of him because he was released a few weeks ago, after spending years in the nick for a crime he never committed. Poor sod, he’d almost have been better off staying inside. But that’s a whole other story. Hazel was the first girl, and the only one whose body was found. I believe Conley interrupted the crime, whereas all the others – but I’m getting ahead of myself. And, in fact, Hazel wasn’t really the first – there were others. Vanessa Dale, for a start, and I just didn’t realize that at the time, because Vanessa was the one who got away. I tracked her down, though. I should have done it sooner, when she had a fresher memory, or any memory, but I didn’t know. I didn’t understand for many years what the story was really about, what a long, dark shadow it cast. Back in the day, I was just a hack, with a wife and kids, covering local news. Anyway –’
‘Stop,’ said Frieda. Fearby looked up at her, blinking. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’
‘I’m trying to explain. Listen. It all links up, but you have to follow the connections.’
‘But you’re not making any connections.’
He sat back, rattled his teaspoon in his cooling tea. ‘I’ve lived with it too long, I guess.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that the girls whose names you gave Doherty are all connected, and that Lila Dawes may be too?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
Fearby stood up abruptly. ‘I can’t tell you. I need to show you.’
‘Show me?’
‘Yes. It’s all written down. I’ve got maps and charts and files. Everything’s there.’
‘Where?’
‘At my house. Will you come and have a look?’
Frieda paused. ‘All right,’ she said at last.
‘Good. Let’s go.’
‘Where do you live? London?’
‘London? No. Birmingham.’
‘Birmingham!’
‘Yes. Is that a problem?’
Frieda thought of her house waiting for her, of her friends who didn’t know where she was, of her cat whose bowl would be empty. She thought of Ted, Judith and Dora – but she couldn’t resist the strangeness of the encounter, the pull of this strange old man. She would call Sasha, and tell her to hold the fort.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a problem.’
FORTY-NINE
In the warmth of the car, Frieda felt herself sliding towards sleep. She had had several nights of insomnia, worse than usual, tormented in between by scraping, violent dreams, and
was ragged and scorched-eyed with tiredness. But she struggled against sleeping in front of Fearby, this shabby bird of prey; she couldn’t let herself be defenceless in front of him. Yet it was no good, she couldn’t stay awake. Even as she let herself go at last, her eyes closing and her body softening, she was thinking how odd it was that she should trust someone she didn’t know at all.
Fearby turned off the M25 and on to the M1. This was a road he knew; it seemed fitting they should be driving it together. He slid some Irish folk music into the CD player, turned the volume down so it was only just audible, and glanced at her. He couldn’t make her out. She must be in her mid- to late-thirties – from a distance, she looked younger, with her slim upright body and her supple movement, but up close her face was gaunt; there were hollows under her eyes and a strained, almost haunted expression on her pale face. He hadn’t asked her what she did. Frieda Klein: it sounded German, Jewish. He looked at her hands, lying half folded in her lap, and saw they were ringless, with unvarnished nails cut short. She wasn’t wearing any jewellery or makeup. Even in sleep, her face was stern and troubled.
Nevertheless – and his heart lifted – he had a companion, a fellow-traveller, at least for a while. He was so used to working alone that it had become hard to tell where the outside world blurred with his private obsessions. She would be able to tell him: she had a good, clear gaze, and whatever motives she had for her own particular quest, he had felt her cool shrewdness. He smiled to himself: she didn’t like being ordered around.
She murmured something and threw up one hand. Her eyes clicked open and, in a moment, she was sitting up straight, pushing her hair off her hot face.
‘I fell asleep.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I never fall asleep.’
‘You must have needed it.’
Then she sat back once more and gazed out of the windscreen at the cars streaming past in the opposite direction.
‘Is this Birmingham?’
‘I don’t actually live in the city. I live in a village, or small town, really, a few miles away.’
‘Why?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Why don’t you live in the city?’
‘It’s where I lived with my wife and kids. When my wife left, I never got around to moving.’
‘Not from choice, then?’
‘Probably not. Don’t you like the countryside?’
‘People should think about where they live, make a deliberate choice.’
‘I see,’ said Fearby. ‘I’m passive. And you’ve made a choice, I take it.’
‘I live in the middle of London.’
‘Because you want to?’
‘It’s somewhere I can be quiet and hidden. Life can carry on outside.’
‘Maybe that’s what I feel about my little house. It’s invisible to me. I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a place to go. I’m an ex-journalist. What do you do?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
Fearby looked bemused. ‘Now that I wouldn’t have guessed.’
He didn’t seem to understand just how wretched he had let his house become. There was a gravelled drive almost entirely grown over with ground elder, dandelions and tufts of grass. The windowsills were rotting and the panes were filthy. He might have cleared away the dirt, but a general air of neglect lay over everything. In the kitchen, piles of yellowing newspapers were stacked on the table, which clearly wasn’t used for eating at. When Fearby opened the fridge door to look for milk that wasn’t there, Frieda saw that, apart from beer cans, it was quite empty. It was a house for a man who lived alone and wasn’t expecting company.
‘No tea, then,’ he said. ‘How about whisky?’
‘I don’t drink in the day.’
‘Today is different.’
He poured them both a couple of fingers into cloudy tumblers and handed one to Frieda.
‘To our missing girls,’ he said, chinking his glass against hers.
Frieda took the smallest stinging sip, to keep him company. ‘You were going to show me what you’ve found.’
‘It’s all in my study.’
When he opened the door, she was speechless for a few seconds, her eyes trying to become accustomed to the combination of frenzy and order. Briefly, she was reminded of Michelle Doyce, the woman to whom Karlsson had introduced her, who had filled her rooms in Deptford with the debris of other people’s lives, carefully categorizing litter.
Fearby’s study was dimly lit, because the window was half blocked with teetering piles of paper on its sill: newspapers and magazines and printouts. There were piles of papers on the floor as well: it was almost impossible to make a path through them to the long table that acted as his desk, also disappearing under scraps of paper, old notebooks, two computers, a printer, an old-fashioned photocopying machine, a large camera with its lens off, a cordless phone. Also, two chipped saucers overflowing with cigarette stubs, several glasses and empty whisky bottles. On the rim of the table there were dozens of yellow and pink Post-it notes, with numbers or words scribbled on them.
When Fearby turned on the Anglepoise lamp, it illuminated a paper copy of a photograph of a young woman’s smiling face. One chipped tooth. It made Frieda think of Karlsson, who also had a chipped tooth and who was many miles away.
It wasn’t the mess of the room that arrested her, however: it was the contrast of the mess to the meticulous order. On the corkboards, neatly pinned into place, were dozens of young women’s faces. They were obviously separated into two categories. On the left, there were about twenty faces; on the right, six. Between them was a large map of Britain, covered with flags that went in a crooked line from London towards the north-west. On the opposite wall, Frieda saw a huge time line, with dates and names running along it in neat, copperplate writing. Fearby was watching her. He pulled open the drawers of a filing cabinet, and she saw racks of folders inside, marked with names. He started pulling them out, putting them on top of the dangerous heap of things on his table.
Frieda wanted to sit but there was only one swivel chair and that was occupied by several books.
‘Are they the girls?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Hazel Barton.’ He touched her face gently, amost reverently. ‘Roxanne Ingatestone. Daisy Crewe. Philippa Lewis. Maria Horsley. Sharon Gibbs.’
They smiled at Frieda, young faces smooth, eager.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe Lila is too.’
‘It can’t be Doherty.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ He directed her towards his timeline. ‘This is when Daisy went, and Maria – he was in prison.’
‘Why are you so sure it’s the same person?’
Fearby pulled open the first folder. ‘I’m going to show you everything,’ he said. ‘Then you can tell me what you think. It may take some time.’
At seven o’clock, Frieda called Sasha, who agreed to go round to her house and stay there until she returned. She sounded concerned, a note of panic in her voice, but Frieda cut the conversation short. She also called Josef to ask him to feed the cat and perhaps water the plants in her yard.
‘Where are you, Frieda?’
‘Near Birmingham.’
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a place, Josef.’
‘What for?’
‘It would take too long to explain.’
‘You have to come back, Frieda.’
‘Why?’
‘We all worry.’
‘I’m not a child.’
‘We all worry,’ he repeated.
‘Well, don’t.
’
‘You are not well. We all agree. I come to collect you.’
‘No.’
‘I come now.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why can’t?’
‘Because I’m not telling you where I am.’
She ended the call but her mobile rang again almost immediately. Now Reuben was calling; presumably Josef was standing beside him with his tragic eyes. She sighed, turned the phone off and put it into her bag. She’d never wanted to have a mobile in the first place.
‘Sharon Gibbs,’ said Fearby, as if nothing had interrupted them.
At half past ten, they were done. Fearby went outside for a cigarette and Frieda went to look in his cupboards for some food. She wasn’t hungry, but she felt hollow and couldn’t remember when she had last eaten. Not today; not last night.
The cupboards, like the fridge, were almost empty. She found some quick-boil rice and vegetable stock cubes long past their sell-by date: that would have to do. As she was boiling the rice in the stock, Fearby came back in and stood watching her.
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think either we’re two deluded people who happen to have bumped into each other at a donkey sanctuary – or that you’re right.’
He gave a grimace of relief.
‘In which case, it’s not Doherty or Shane or whatever he’s called.’
‘No. But it’s odd, isn’t it, that he knew them both? I don’t like coincidences.’
‘They lived the same kind of lifestyle – two young women who’d fallen off the track.’
‘Perhaps they knew each other?’ Frieda suggested, lifting the rice off the hob, letting the steam rise into her face, which felt grimy with toil and weariness.
‘That’s a thought. Who would know?’
‘I have one idea.’
After they’d eaten the rice – Fearby had eaten most of it, Frieda had just picked at hers – Frieda said she should take the train back. But Fearby said it was too late. After some argument about hotels and trains, Fearby ended by getting an old sleeping bag out of a cupboard and Frieda made a sort of bed for herself on a sofa in the living room. She spent a strange, feverish night in which she didn’t know when she was awake and when she was asleep, when her thoughts were like dreams and her dreams were like thoughts, all of them bad. She felt, or she thought, or she dreamed, that she was on a journey that was also a kind of obstacle race, and only when she had got past the obstacles, solved all the problems, would she finally be allowed to sleep. She thought of the photographs of the girls on Fearby’s wall and their faces became mixed up with the faces of Ted, Judith and Dora Lennox, all staring down at her.
