by Nicci French
‘So,’ said Josef, expectantly.
Frieda thought for a moment. Lawrence and his friend, Gerry. Them. She didn’t know Gerry’s second name and she didn’t know where he lived. But she knew something. Upstream. That was what Lawrence had said. He lived upstream, which meant he was on the same side of the road, and she remembered that when she had stood in the garden with her back to the house, the river flowed from right to left. So Gerry’s house was up to the right. And it probably wasn’t next door. Lawrence would have said ‘my next-door neighbour’. And hadn’t he talked about next door being used for refugees? She got out of the car. She would start with the house next door but one. Josef got out as well.
‘I’m fine,’ said Frieda.
‘I come with you.’
Lawrence Dawes lived at number eight. Frieda and Josef walked up the path of number twelve. Frieda rang the bell. There was no response. She rang again.
‘No people home,’ said Josef.
They walked back on to the pavement and up to the door of number fourteen and rang the bell.
‘This is for what?’ said Josef, puzzled, but before Frieda could answer, the door was opened by a white-haired old woman.
Frieda was momentarily at a loss. She hadn’t thought of what she was going to say. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to drop something off for a friend of a friend. He’s called Gerry. He’s in his sixties. I know he lives in one of these houses but I’m not sure which one.’
‘It might be Gerry Collier,’ said the woman.
‘Early sixties?’ said Frieda. ‘Brown hair going grey?’
‘That sounds like him. He lives along there. Number eighteen.’
‘Thanks so much,’ said Frieda.
The woman closed the door. Frieda and Josef walked back to the van and got inside. Frieda looked at the house. A two-storey, semi-detached house, grey pebbledash exterior, aluminium window frames. Ornate front garden, with a little white brick wall, yellow, blue, red, white flowers spilling over.
‘And now?’ said Josef.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m trying to think what to do. We can –’
‘Stop,’ said Josef, in a hiss. ‘Look.’
The door of number eighteen opened and Gerry Collier stepped out. He was wearing a grey windcheater and carrying a plastic shopping bag. He walked out on to the pavement and set off along the road.
‘I wonder if we should follow him,’ said Frieda.
‘Follow the man?’ said Josef. ‘Is no good.’
‘You’re right. He’s probably going to the shops. We’ve got a few minutes. Josef, can you help me break inside?’
Josef looked bemused and then he grinned. ‘Break into the house? You, Frieda?’
‘Now, this minute.’
‘This not a joke?’
‘It’s really, really not a joke.’
‘OK, Frieda. You ask. Questions later.’ He picked up his work bag, from which he grabbed a heavy wrench and two large screwdrivers. They left the van and walked up to the front door of number eighteen.
‘We need to be quick,’ said Frieda. ‘And quiet. If you possibly can.’
Josef ran his fingers over the lock with a certain delicacy. ‘Which is most important? Quick or quiet?’
‘Quick.’
Josef pushed one screwdriver into the gap between the door and the frame. He flexed it, and the gap widened slightly. Then he pushed the other screwdriver into the gap about a foot further down. He looked at Frieda. ‘All right?’
She nodded. She saw him silently mouth the words, one, two, three, and pull the two screwdrivers sharply towards him, at the same time leaning hard on the door. There was a splintering sound and the door swung inwards.
‘Where now?’ said Josef, in a hoarse whisper.
Frieda had seen Lawrence Dawes’s house. Where was possible? She pointed downwards. Josef put down his bag, and they walked softly along the hallway, by the left side of the staircase, Josef in front. He stopped and nodded to the right. There was a door leading back under the stairs. Frieda nodded and Josef gently opened it. Frieda saw the beginning of stairs leading down into darkness. There was a smell, something slightly sweet that she couldn’t quite identify. Josef fumbled along the wall and switched on a light.
With a start, Frieda saw that a figure was sitting at the bottom of the flight, on the floor, back against the brick wall, half lost in shadow. Whoever it was didn’t look round. Josef hissed at Frieda to stop, but she walked decisively down the steps. She had only taken a few steps before she knew who it was. She recognized the jacket, the white hair, the bent frame. When she reached the cellar floor, Jim Fearby was looking up at her with open, unblinking, unseeing, yellow dead eyes. His mouth gaped open as well, as if in surprise, and there was a large brown stain extending from his scalp down one side of his face. Frieda was going to lean down and check if he was dead but she stopped herself. There was no point. She felt a jolt of nausea that was overtaken by an intense aching sadness as she gazed down at this abandoned, dear man, who had finally been proved right.
Josef was coming down the stairs and Frieda was turning to speak when she heard a sound, like the whimper of an animal, somewhere further in the cellar, where it went under the pavement. She looked and saw a movement. She stepped forward and in the semi-darkness a figure took shape. A person, female, young, propped upright against the wall, arms splayed, legs splayed. Frieda saw matted hair, staring blinking eyes, taped mouth. She stepped forward and saw that the woman was secured by wire around her wrists and ankles, waist and neck. She was whimpering. Frieda put her finger to her lips. She tried to pull at the wire around one wrist but then Josef was beside her. He took something from his jacket pocket. She heard a click of pliers and one hand was free. The other wrist, the neck, the waist and then the woman fell forward. Frieda supported her, fearing she might break her ankles. Josef knelt down and cut her free and the woman fell to her knees.
‘Call for help,’ said Frieda to Josef.
Josef took out his phone.
‘Upstairs for signal,’ he said.
‘Nine, nine, nine,’ said Frieda.
‘I know it,’ said Josef.
Frieda looked into the woman’s face. ‘Sharon?’ There was another whimper. ‘I’m going to pull the tape off. You’ll be fine but keep quiet. Gerry has gone out but we have to move.’ Another whimper. ‘You’ll be all right. But this will sting.’ Frieda got some purchase on the tape and pulled it off. The skin underneath was pale and raw and smelt of decay. Sharon whimpered like an animal. ‘It’s all right,’ said Frieda, soothingly. ‘I told you. He’s gone.’
‘No,’ said Sharon, shaking her head. ‘Other man.’
‘Fuck!’ Frieda turned round and started to run up the stairs. ‘Josef.’
As she ran she heard a clattering and banging, like furniture falling downstairs, and as she emerged from the cellar door she saw shapes moving and heard shouts. She couldn’t make anything out clearly and her foot slipped. The floor was wet, sticky. Then there was a mess of impressions: the figures moving and flexing, flashes of metal, cries, splashes, bangs, impacts so that the floor shook under her feet. Her focus became narrow, as if she was looking at the world through a long thin tube. Her thoughts became narrow as well. They seemed slow and time seemed slow and she knew that she must not collapse because then it would all have been for nothing. She found something in her hand – she didn’t know what it was or how it got there, but it was heavy and she was hitting with it, as hard as she possibly could, and then the scene became clearer, as if the light had gradually been turned up. Lawrence Dawes was lying face down on the hall floor a
nd a dark red pool was spreading out from him, and Josef was leaning back against the wall, panting and groaning, and Frieda herself was leaning against the wall opposite and she realized that the wet sticky stuff on her hands and clothes was blood.
SIXTY
‘Frieda? Frieda, Frieda.’ Josef seemed to have lost his English; her name was all that he could say, over and over.
Frieda crossed to him. She felt suddenly clear and light and calm, a sense of purpose and energy coursing through her. She saw that he had a violent gash running down his face and neck and one of his arms was hanging in an odd way. His face was horribly pale under the grime.
‘It’s all right, Josef,’ she said. ‘Thank you, my very dear friend.’
Then she stooped down beside Lawrence Dawes. There was a matted red patch on his head where she had hit him but she could see that he was breathing. She looked at the heavy object she was still holding: it was one of Josef’s heavy spanners, which must have tumbled from his bag, and it had red smeared across it.
‘Take this,’ she said to Josef. ‘If he comes round, hit him again. I’ll be back in a minute.’
She ran into the kitchen and started pulling drawers open. Gerry Collier was a very organised man: everything had its proper place. She found a drawer full of string, masking tape, pens, and took out a roll of washing line. That would do. She returned to the two men and, bending down, brought Lawrence Dawes’s hands together and rapidly bound the line round them multiple times, before bringing it down and wrapping it round his ankles as well, until he was trussed.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket with fingers that were not trembling, and dialled the emergency services. She said she needed the police, lots of them, and ambulances and gave the address, repeating it to make sure they had it. She gave her name, and heard it as if it belonged to someone else. She told them they should be quick. Then she put her phone back into her pocket. She could hear Josef’s laboured breathing beside her and, turning, saw the pain on his drawn face. She took the spanner out of his hand and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
‘Wait there for one more minute,’ she said, and kissed him on his clammy forehead.
She ran down the cellar stairs. At the bottom, she stopped briefly to put two thumbs on Fearby’s lids, closing them. She smoothed his hair off his face, then went to where Sharon Gibbs was still on her knees, her head cradled on her arms. She was making guttural little cries, like those of an animal in pain. She was wearing a bra that barely covered her shallow breasts and some filthy drawstring trousers; her feet were bare and torn. Frieda could see in the dim light that she was covered with bruises and what looked like cigarette burns.
She squatted beside her and put a hand under her elbow. ‘Can you get up?’ she asked. ‘Let me help. Here.’ She took off her jacket and wrapped it around the girl’s emaciated frame. Her ribs stood out starkly, and her collarbone. She smelt of rot and decay. ‘Come with me, Sharon,’ Frieda said gently. ‘It’s over, and you’re safe. Come out of here.’
She half led and half carried the girl, past Fearby and up out of the cellar that had been her torture chamber, into the light that was fading now. Sharon gave a little cry of pain at the dazzle and bent over, almost falling, coughing up dribbles of vomit. Frieda got her to the doorway, out of the accursed house and into the clean air, and sat her on the steps.
Josef shambled over. Frieda took off her cotton scarf and wrapped it around his neck, where blood was running thickly. He made to sit on the step, but Sharon shrank from him.
‘It’s OK,’ Frieda said. ‘This man is good. He rescued you, Sharon. We both owe him our life.’
‘I was coming to find Lila,’ Sharon whimpered. ‘I wanted to see Lila.’
‘It’s all right now. Don’t talk yet.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘Yes. I’m certain she is. She must have found out about her father so he killed her. But you are alive, Sharon, and you’re safe now.’
She stood beside the two of them. There was the smell of honeysuckle wafting over to them from the neighbouring garden, and three doors down Frieda could see the old woman watering her tiny front garden with a hose. It was a beautiful late-spring evening. She fixed her eyes on the road – looking not just for the flashing blue lights of the police and the ambulances, but also for the figure of Gerry Collier. It was only minutes since she and Josef had watched him leave, but it seemed like hours, days – another world. Behind them, the door was wrenched off its hinges, and in the cellar lay Jim Fearby, his long task over.
At last they came, sirens and lights shattering the soft evening. She heard them before she saw them, blue arcs swinging over the street before the cars and ambulances arrived, a screech of brakes, a sudden rush of men and women, voices speaking urgently, orders and exclamations, people bending towards them, stretchers, oxygen masks. Neighbours gathering on the road, a sudden sense of being at the centre of a world closing in on them.
There was a man standing in front of her, asking her something. She couldn’t make out his questions but she knew what she had to say.
‘My name is Frieda Klein.’ She heard her voice, calm and clear. ‘I made the call. This is Josef, who is hurt. And Sharon Gibbs, who has been missing for weeks. She has been held in the cellar by the man tied up inside, Lawrence Dawes. Be careful with her. You can’t know what she’s been through. A second man is at large, Gerry Collier. You have to find him.’
‘Gerry Collier, you say?’
‘Yes. He owns this place. And a man called Jim Fearby is dead, inside the house. You’re too late for him.’
Faces hovered above her, blurred, anonymous, mouths opening and stretching, eyes large and staring. Someone was saying something, but she pressed on.
‘There will be bodies in the garden.’ She could no longer tell if she was speaking quietly or shouting, as if from a pulpit. ‘Or bodies in the cellar.’
Sharon Gibbs was lifted from her crouched position on the steps to a stretcher. Her huge eyes gazed imploringly at Frieda from her pinched, dirty face. Now Lawrence Dawes was carried from the house, still tangled in the washing line. His eyes were flickering and they opened briefly on Frieda. For a moment they stared at each other, into each other, and then he turned his head away.
‘Please can someone tell Karlsson?’ Frieda continued.
‘Karlsson?’
‘DCI Malcolm Karlsson.’
A woman was wrapping a blanket around Josef’s shoulders, unwrapping Frieda’s bloody scarf from his neck. He stood up, bulky and dazed, staggering slightly. Frieda put her arms round him, careful of his dangling arm, and pressed her head against his chest. She could feel his heart hammering and smell his sweat and his blood. ‘You’ll be fine now,’ she said. ‘You’ve done well, Josef.’
‘I?’
‘Yes. I will write to your sons to tell them. They will be very proud of you.’
‘Proud?’
‘Yes, proud.’
‘But you –’
‘I’ll come and see you very soon.’ She looked at the woman. ‘Where are you taking him?’
‘St George’s.’
Now Josef was gone and Fearby’s body was being carried out of the house. His face was covered, but Frieda could still see his fine white hair. His feet poked out of the blanket the other end; the shoes were old and scuffed and on one the lace was undone.
The ambulances slid away, and suddenly she was alone. There were gathering crowds in the street, and in the house the light was unnaturally bright and full of noises, voices. But here, on this small patch of soil, she was by herself at last. The door gaped behind her, like a foul, hot mouth; she could smell its sickening stench.
‘Frieda Klein?’
A man was in front of her, blocking out the light.
‘Yes.’
‘I need to talk to you urgently. I will be a few more minutes. Would you wait for me here, please?’
He left her again. Her mobile rang. She looked at it – Sandy – but didn’t answer. Then she turned it off.
Without thinking what she was doing, she stood up and went into the house. No one stopped her or even seemed to notice. She stepped out of the back door into the garden. It was the same size and shape as Lawrence Dawes’s garden, and was full of flowers. Bright, sweet, fragrant flowers, peonies and roses and foxgloves and tall lupins; perhaps they were feeding on the bodies, she thought. Perhaps that was why they were so strong and bright and colourful. She walked down the lawn, past a well-tended vegetable plot, until she was standing by the shallow brown River Wandle. She could see the pebbles on its bottom, and a few tiny dark fish. Behind her, there was the roar of the world, but here just the trickle of water; she could hear its faint gurgle. A swallow dipped past her, low and fast, then up into the evening sky.
She knew she had to go home. She thought of something she had read in a book when she was a child. If you’re lost in the jungle, find a stream and follow it downhill and it will reach a larger river or the sea. This little brook would take her home.
She took off her sandals, rolled up her jeans and stepped into the water. It was cool, not cold, and rose to her ankles. She walked delicately along the stony bed until she was standing outside Lawrence Dawes’s garden. They’d drunk tea together there, and he’d shown her this little river. She could hear his voice now, mild and amiable: … we used to make little paper boats and put them on the stream and watch them float away. I used to tell them that in three hours’ time, those boats would reach the Thames and then, if the tide was right, they’d float out to sea.
