by Nicci French
Today he was thirty-five minutes late. He came staggering blindly over the threshold, like a man who had just escaped from a car crash and was still in shock; his mouth was working but no words came out. Frieda saw that his shoelaces were trailing loose, and that the buttons on his shirt were done up wrongly. She could see his stomach through it, shockingly white. His fingernails were too long and a bit dirty. His thick blond hair needed a wash. He hadn’t shaved recently. Frieda guessed he had been in bed for several days and had only now dragged himself out to get here.
He let himself crumple into the chair facing her, the low table between them. He still hadn’t met her gaze. He stared out of the window at the line of cranes standing suspended in the thickening dusk like ghostly figures, although Frieda wondered if he was actually seeing anything out there. There was a beaten look to him. He was a lovely young man, golden and luminous, but on days like today you couldn’t see that. His face was contorted; the light had gone out of it. He looked bruised and heavy.
Silence filled the room, not anxious but restful, and they sat inside it. This was a place of safety. Joe gave a long sigh and turned his head. His eyes filled with tears.
‘Bad?’ asked Frieda. She pushed the box of tissues towards him.
He nodded.
‘You got here. That’s something.’
He picked a single tissue out of the box and held it softly against his face, dusting it delicately as if it was sore, then dabbed his wet eyes. He screwed up the tissue and put it on the table in a tight wet ball, then took another to repeat the process. He leaned forward and put his face in his hands. He looked up as if to speak, opened his mouth, but no words came, and when Frieda asked if there was something he wanted to say, he shook his head violently, like a beast at bay. At six o’clock, when the time came for him to leave, he hadn’t said a single word.
Frieda stood up and opened the door for him. She watched him blunder down the stairs, his laces flapping, and then she stood at her window and saw him come out on to the street. He walked past a woman who didn’t pay him any special attention. Frieda looked at her watch. She was going out. She needed to get ready. Well, there was no hurry.
Eight hours later Frieda swung her legs out of a bed that wasn’t hers. ‘Is there anything to drink?’ she said.
‘There’s some beer in the fridge,’ said Sandy.
Frieda walked into the kitchen and took a bottle from the fridge door. ‘Is there an opener?’ she called.
‘If we went to your place, you’d know where things were,’ he said. ‘The drawer next to the stove.’
Frieda flipped the top off the beer and walked back into the bedroom of Sandy’s small Barbican flat. She looked out of the window at the lights shimmering in the dark. Her mouth felt dry. She took a sip of the beer and swallowed. ‘If I lived on the fifteenth floor, I’d spend my life looking out of the window. It’s like being on the top of a mountain.’
She walked back to the bed. Sandy was lying wrapped in the tangled sheets. She sat on the edge and gazed down at him. He didn’t look like a Sandy; he had a more Mediterranean appearance, with olive skin and hair that was blue-black like a raven’s wing, except for a few streaks of silver. He held her stare without smiling.
‘Oh, Frieda,’ he said.
Frieda felt that her heart was like some old chest that had been heaved up from the seabed, its barnacled lid prised open after all this time. Who knew what treasures she would find inside? ‘Do you want some beer?’
‘Give me some from your mouth.’
She tipped the bottle and took a swig, then leaned over him, their lips almost touching. She felt the cool liquid trickle into his mouth. He gulped at it, coughed and laughed.
‘It’s probably better from the bottle,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s better from your mouth.’
They smiled at each other, and then the smiles faded. Frieda put her hand on his smooth chest. They started to say something at the same time and both apologized, then tried to speak at the same time again.
‘You first,’ said Frieda.
He touched the side of her face. ‘I wasn’t ready for this,’ he said. ‘It’s happened so quickly.’
‘You make that sound like a bad thing.’
He pulled her down on to the bed beside him and leaned over her, running a hand down her body. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘But I feel I don’t know where I am.’ There was a pause. ‘Say something.’
‘I think I was going to say the same thing. This wasn’t part of the plan.’
Sandy smiled. ‘You have a plan?’
‘Not really. I spend my time helping people sort the story of their lives. Give them a narrative. But I don’t know what mine is. And now I feel I’m being carried away on something. I’m not sure what it is.’
Sandy kissed her on the neck and the cheek, and then deeply, mouth to mouth. ‘Are you going to stay the night?’
‘One day,’ said Frieda. ‘But not now.’
‘And can I come to yours?’
‘One day.’
Chapter Five
Detective Constable Yvette Long looked across at her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson. ‘Are you ready for this?’ she said.
‘Does it matter?’ he said, and they stepped outside.
It was the side door of the court but there was no escaping the reporters and the cameras. He tried not to flinch at the lights. It would make him look shifty and defeated when it was shown on the news. He could make out some of the faces from the press gallery over the previous weeks. He heard a muddle of questions being shouted at him.
‘One at a time,’ he said. ‘Mr Carpenter.’ This was addressed to a bald man clutching a microphone.
‘Is the acquittal a personal humiliation or a failure of the system?’
‘I decided on a prosecution in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service. That’s all I’ve got to say.’
A woman put up her hand. She was from one of the quality papers. He couldn’t remember which.
‘You’ve been accused of bringing the case prematurely. What’s your response?’
‘I was in charge of the inquiry. I take full responsibility.’
‘Are you restarting your inquiry?’
‘Investigating officers will consider any new evidence.’
‘Do you think this operation was a waste of manpower and public money?’
‘I thought we assembled a compelling case,’ said Karlsson, trying to suppress a feeling of nausea. ‘The jury apparently disagreed.’
‘Will you resign?’
‘No.’
Later that day there was, following tradition, a wake at the Duke of Westminster pub. A group of officers formed a noisy huddle in the corner, under a display of nautical knots in a glass case. DC Long sat down next to Karlsson. She was holding two glasses of whisky, then saw that he had barely touched the one he already had.
Karlsson looked across at the other officers. ‘They’re in quite a good mood,’ he said. ‘Considering.’
‘Because you took all the blame,’ she said. ‘Which you shouldn’t have done.’
‘That’s my job,’ he said.
Yvette Long looked around and gave a start. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Crawford’s here. The cunt that dropped you in it. He’s actually here.’
Karlsson smiled. He’d never heard her swear before. She must be really angry. The commissioner hovered at the bar, then came over and sat with them. He didn’t notice DC Long glaring at him. He slid a glass of whisky across to Karlsson. ‘Add that to your collection,’ he said. ‘You deserve it.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Karlsson.
‘You took one for the team today,’ Crawford said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice. I know I pushed you. There were political reasons. We needed to be seen to be doing something.’
Karlsson pushed his glasses together, as if he were considering which one to drink from first. ‘It was my decision,’ he said. ‘I was in
charge.’
‘You’re not talking to the press now, Mal,’ said Crawford. ‘Cheers.’ He drained his glass and stood up. ‘Can’t stop,’ he said. ‘There’s a dinner with the home secretary. You know the sort of thing. I’ll just wander over and commiserate with the lads.’ Then he leaned closer to Karlsson, as if he was confiding something personal. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘You’re due a result. Better luck next time.’
Reuben McGill still smoked like it was the 1980s. Or the 1950s. He took a Gitanes from his packet, lit it and snapped his lighter shut. At first he didn’t speak and Frieda didn’t either. She sat opposite his desk and scrutinized him. In a way he looked better than he had when she had first met him, fifteen years earlier. His full head of hair was now grey, his face was more wrinkled, even jowly, but that just added to his vagrant charm. He still wore jeans and an open-necked shirt. This was a man who was telling you – telling his patients – that he wasn’t part of the system.
‘Good to see you,’ he said.
‘Paz rang me.’
‘Did she now? It’s like being surrounded by spies. Are you a spy as well? So, what do you think? Now that you’ve been summoned.’
‘I’m on the board of the clinic,’ said Frieda. ‘It means that if someone expresses a concern, I need to respond.’
‘So respond,’ said Reuben. ‘What should I do? Tidy my desk?’
The surface of the desk was hidden under piles of books and papers and files and journals. There were pens and mugs and plates.
‘It’s not the mess,’ said Frieda. ‘What I can’t help noticing is that it’s the same mess as when I came in here three weeks ago. I’m not clear why you haven’t introduced new mess. Why it hasn’t changed.’
He laughed. ‘You’re dangerous, Frieda. I should only agree to meet you on neutral territory. As you’ve probably heard, Paz and the rest of them don’t think that I’ve ticked enough boxes, dotted enough is. I’m sorry, I’m too busy caring for people.’
‘Paz is looking out for you,’ said Frieda. ‘So am I. You talk about ticking boxes. Maybe it’s a warning sign. And maybe it’s better to hear from the people who love you before the people who don’t love you start to notice. Allegedly there are such people.’
‘Allegedly,’ said Reuben. ‘You know what you’d do if you really wanted to help me?’
‘What?’
‘You’d come and work here full-time.’
‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea.’
‘Why not? You could still have your own patients. And you could keep an eye on me.’
‘I don’t want to keep an eye on you, Reuben. I’m not responsible for you and you’re not responsible for me. I like to have autonomy.’
‘What did I do wrong?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Almost from the moment you came here as an eager young student, I saw you as the person who’d take this over from me some day. What happened?’
Frieda gave a frown of disbelief. ‘One, you were never going to hand your baby over to anyone. And two, I don’t want to run anything. I don’t want to spend my life checking that the phone bill’s been paid and that the fire doors are kept closed.’ Frieda paused. ‘When I first came here, I knew that it was – just at that moment – the best place in the world for me. It’s hard to keep something like that up. I couldn’t.’
‘You think I haven’t? Is that what you’re saying – that it’s gone downhill?’
‘It’s like a restaurant,’ said Frieda. ‘You cook a great meal one night. But you’ve got to do it the next night and the next. Most people can’t manage that.’
‘I’m not making fucking pizza. I’m helping people cope with their lives. What am I doing wrong? Tell me.’
‘I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong.’
‘Except you have concerns about me.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Frieda, carefully, ‘you should delegate a bit more.’
‘Is that what people think?’
‘The Warehouse is your creation, Reuben. It’s been an extraordinary achievement. It’s helped people. But you can’t be too possessive of it. If you are, it will collapse as soon as you leave. Surely you don’t want that. It’s not the same place as it was when you started it in your back room.’
‘Of course it’s not.’
‘Have you ever thought that your present lack of grip on things here is a way of letting go, without having to admit that’s what you’re doing?’
‘Lack of grip? Because my desk is in a mess?’
‘And that perhaps it would be better to do it more rationally?’
‘Fuck off. I’m not in the mood for therapy.’
‘I was going anyway.’ Frieda stood up. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’
‘So, am I on some kind of probation?’ said Reuben.
‘What’s the problem with crossing t s? If you don’t cross them, you can’t tell that they’re t s.’
‘Who’s your meeting with? Is it to do with me?’
‘I’m seeing my trainee. It’s our regular session and we won’t be talking about you.’
Reuben stubbed his cigarette out in what was already an overflowing ashtray. ‘You can’t just hide away in your little room talking to people for the rest of your life,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get out in the world and get your hands dirty.’
‘I thought that talking to people in a little room was our job.’
When Frieda came out of Reuben’s office she found Jack Dargan hovering in the corridor. He was a gangly young man – ardent, clever and impatient – and he was on attachment to the clinic, just as Frieda had been when she was his age. He sat in on group-therapy sessions, and he had a patient. Each week Frieda met him to discuss their progress. On the first day they had met, aware that it was a cliché, knowing that she was aware of it and despising himself, Jack had fallen head over heels in love with her.
‘I need to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
They passed a man coming towards them, a lost expression on his round face, his spaniel eyes baffled.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I’m looking for Dr McGill.’
‘In there.’ She nodded towards the closed door.
As she walked out of the clinic, past Paz, who was talking on the phone garrulously and throwing her ringed hands around in extravagant gestures, she felt suddenly like a mother duck with a solitary duckling walking after her. There was a bus coming up the hill as they came out on to the road and she and Jack climbed aboard. He was flustered. He didn’t know whether to sit on the seat beside her or to take the one in front or behind. When he did take the one next to her, he sat on her skirt and leaped up again as if scalded.
‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s a café some people I know run. It’s their new venture and near where I live. It’s open through the day.’
‘Fine,’ said Jack. ‘Great. Yes.’ And ground to a halt.
Frieda stared out of the window, saying nothing, and Jack looked surreptitiously at her. He’d never been quite this close to her. His thigh touched hers and he could smell her perfume. When the bus swung round a corner, his whole body pressed against hers. He knew nothing about her life. She had no ring on her left hand so presumably she wasn’t married. But did she live with someone? Did she have a lover? Maybe she was gay – he couldn’t tell. What did she do when she left the clinic? What did she wear when she wasn’t wearing her mannish suits, her plain skirts? Did she ever let her hair down, dance, drink too much?
When they got off the bus, Jack had to walk swiftly to keep up with Frieda as she led him through a maze of streets, into Beech Street. It was full of one-room restaurants and cluttered cafés, little art galleries, shops selling cheese, ceramic tiles, stationery. There was a one-day dry-cleaner’s, a hardware shop, a twenty-four-hour supermarket with newspapers in Polish and Greek as well as English.
Number 9 was warm inside, and plainly decorated. It smelt of baking bread and
coffee. There were only half a dozen wooden tables, most of them empty, and some stools at the bar.
The woman behind the counter raised her hand in greeting. ‘How are you since this morning?’
‘Good,’ said Frieda. ‘Kerry, this is my colleague, Jack. Jack, this is Kerry Headley.’
Jack, pink with gratification at being called Frieda’s colleague, muttered something.
Kerry beamed at him. ‘What can I get you? There aren’t many cakes left – Marcus is going to make some more soon. He’s collecting Katya from school at the moment. There are a few flapjacks left.’
‘Just coffee,’ said Frieda. ‘From your shiny new machine, thanks. Jack?’
‘Same,’ said Jack, although he was already twitchy with caffeine and nerves.
They sat at a table by the window, facing each other. Jack took off his bulky coat and Frieda saw that he was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a vividly striped open-necked shirt with a lime green T-shirt visible underneath. His trainers were grubby and his tawny hair was wild, as if he’d spent the day pushing his fingers into it in exasperation.
‘Is that what you wear when you see your patient?’ said Frieda.
‘It’s not the exact clothes. This is just what I wear. Is that a problem?’
‘I think you should wear something more neutral.’
‘Like a suit and tie?’
‘No, not like a suit and tie. Something boring, like a plain shirt or a jacket. Something more invisible. You don’t want the patient to get too interested in you.’
‘There’s not much chance of that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This guy I’m meant to be giving therapy to is just completely self-absorbed. That’s what his real problem is. I mean, that’s bad, isn’t it? If I’m starting to find my very first patient a complete pain in the arse.’