by Nicci French
She made herself coffee, a whole pot, and steadily drank her way through it. She felt suddenly as if she were the subject of a psychological experiment designed to demonstrate how lack of control and autonomy resulted in intense, almost paralytic, symptoms of anxiety. It was almost six o’clock, and thoroughly dark, when there was a ring at the door. It was Karlsson.
‘Is it good news?’
Karlsson brushed past her. ‘You mean was he there? No, he wasn’t.’ He picked up Frieda’s half-finished cup of coffee and took a sip. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.
‘I can make you some.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘I should have been there,’ said Frieda.
‘Why?’ asked Karlsson, sarcastically. ‘So you could have looked in a cupboard we missed?’
‘I’d like to have seen Dean Reeve’s demeanour.’
‘His demeanour was confident, if that’s what you mean. The demeanour of someone with nothing to hide.’
‘And I’ve seen the house before. I could see if they’d done anything to it since I was there.’
‘Unfortunately the warrant doesn’t allow us to bring tourists.’
‘Wait,’ said Frieda.
She poured the last from the cafetière into a new mug and heated it in the microwave. She handed it to Karlsson. ‘You want anything with it?’ she said. ‘Or in it?’
He shook his head and took a sip of coffee.
‘So that’s that,’ said Frieda.
‘That photofit you did the other day. That reconstruction of the woman’s face.’
‘What about it?’
‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t just mean, “Have you got it?” I mean, can you get it and show it to me?’
Frieda went out of the room and came back carrying the printout. She smoothed it out on the table. ‘It got a bit scrunched up,’ she said.
Karlsson leaned over and looked at it.
‘While the officers were turning the house upside down and then turning it the right side up again, I wandered into their bedroom. I saw this on the wall.’ From his side pocket he took a small framed photograph. He laid it down on the table next to the printout. ‘Remind you of anything?’
Chapter Thirty-two
‘It’s the same woman,’ said Frieda.
‘Similar.’ Karlsson rubbed his face violently with his fist.
‘It must be.’
‘You think so, do you?’
‘Of course.’
He looked grimly at her.
‘This is the woman Rose remembered,’ Frieda said.
‘Rose didn’t remember. She was led by multiple choice through a succession of images that were narrowed down to this. That is not the same as remembering.’
‘It’s her. Of course it is. Can you think of any other explanation?’
‘It doesn’t need a fucking explanation. Through a series of suggestions, a damaged young woman came up with a face she might have seen twenty-two years ago or she might have imagined or made up, which happens to look a bit like the photograph of a woman in the house of someone who is a sort of half-suspect for a different crime. How do you think that would go down in court?’
Frieda didn’t reply.
‘And in the meantime, there is no sign of Matthew. When I say no sign, I mean nothing. Not a thread or a fibre. And there was one room they had just finished painting. The paint was still wet. If he’d been kept in there, any trace of him would have been covered. You know what I think? I think he died long ago and I’m being led by the nose into a world of shadows and hopes. If it were the kid’s parents, it would be understandable. But you’ve bought into it.’
Frieda stared at the photograph so intently that it almost hurt her head. ‘It’s an old family picture,’ she said.
‘Probably.’
‘Look.’ Frieda put her hand across the picture, covering the hair.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you see the likeness? Dean Reeve. And Alan as well. It must be his mother. Their mother.’ Frieda started murmuring to herself, as a way of thinking.
‘Am I meant to understand what you’re saying?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Remember what I said about a woman? Joanna wouldn’t have walked off with a man like Dean Reeve. But she might have done with her. Don’t you think?’
‘Sorry,’ said Karlsson. ‘My mind was on other things, like conducting an investigation, interviews, evidence, little things. There are rules. They have to find clues, evidence.’
Frieda ignored him. She stared hard at the photograph, as if it could yield up its secrets to her. ‘Is she still alive? She wouldn’t be that old.’
‘We’ll find out,’ he said. ‘It’s something to follow up.’
Frieda suddenly remembered. ‘Are your children OK?’
‘They’re back with their mother, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Were things all right with Josef?’
‘He made them pancakes and drew patterns on their legs with indelible ink.’
‘Good. In the meantime, are you keeping a watch on Dean?’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Karlsson’s tone was grim. ‘Even if you’re right, he knows we’re on to him. So.’
‘You mean he won’t lead you to Matthew because he’ll assume you’re watching him?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But if they’ve stowed Matthew somewhere, they need to feed him, give him water.’
He gave a shrug. His face was sombre. ‘It’s probably not him,’ he said. ‘If it was him, he probably killed him straight away. If he didn’t kill him straight away, he probably killed him after you knocked at the door. And if he didn’t… well, all he has to do is sit and wait.’
Karlsson bent over Rose where she sat, examining the photograph. Her kitchen was small and cold and there was a brown stain on the ceiling. The wall heater was rumbling and a tap was dripping.
‘Well?’ he asked at last.
Rose looked up at him. He was struck by how very pale and delicate her skin was, with small blue veins visible under the surface.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘But you think it may be her?’ He wanted to take her by her thin shoulders and shake her.
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘It rings no bells.’
She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I was just a little girl,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone.’
Karlsson straightened up. His back was aching and his neck felt stiff and sore. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What was I expecting anyway?’
‘I’m sorry. But you don’t want me to say something that misleads you, do you?’
‘Why not?’ They were both startled by his sudden harsh laugh. ‘Everybody else is.’
Frieda sat at her chess table and played through one of the games from her book of classic matches, Beliavsky versus Nunn in 1985. The felted pieces moved up the board. The fire flickered in the grate. The clock ticked away the minutes. The pawns fell and the queens advanced. She thought about Dean and Alan, with their dark brown eyes. She thought about Matthew and held his freckled, merry face in her mind. She thought about Joanna, with her gap-toothed, anxious smile. She tried not to hear their thin high voices screaming out in anguish for their mothers to come and rescue them. Her brain felt as though it was falling between the cracks on the board. Something: there must be something she had missed, some tiny, hidden key that could slide into the unyielding mystery and lever it open. No matter what horrors it revealed, anything would be better than this state of unknowing. She let herself remember how Matthew’s parents had looked at the press conference – their terror-struck faces. What would it be like to be them, lying in bed night after night and imagining their son crying for them? What had it been like for Joanna’s parents, month by month, year by year, never knowing and never having a grave on which they could lay their flowers?
At
midnight, her phone rang.
‘Were you asleep?’ asked Karlsson.
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, lifting a bishop off the board and holding it in a clenched fist, waiting.
‘I’m going to visit Mrs Reeve. She’s in an old people’s home in Beckton. Will you come with me?’
‘She’s alive, then. Yes, of course I’ll come.’
‘Good. I’ll send a car for you first thing tomorrow.’
Once, when she was a student, Frieda had gone to Beckton to see the gasworks that looked like a colossal ruin standing in the desert. She still had the photographs she had taken. All of that was gone now; only a grassed-over slag heap showed where it had once been. Everything old and strange seemed to have been demolished, and in its place were lines of eighties houses, apartment blocks, shopping malls and light industrial units.
River View Nursing Home – its name was misleading – was a large modern building in raw orange brick, all on one floor and built around a courtyard with a small balding lawn in the middle, no trees or shrubs. There were metal grids over metal-framed windows. Frieda thought it looked like an army barracks. There were wheelchairs, zimmer frames, walking-sticks, a big jug of plastic flowers in the overheated entrance hall, and a smell of pine air freshener with something like porridge being cooked. She could hear a radio playing but otherwise it was very quiet. Their footsteps echoed. Perhaps most of the residents were still in bed. In the living room, there were only two people – one, a tiny sliver of a man whose bald head shone and whose round glasses caught the light; the other, a large woman dressed in what looked like a voluminous orange cape, with her neck in a brace and her feet in oversized fluffy slippers. Jigsaws were laid out on tables, waiting.
‘Mrs Reeve’s this way.’ The woman led them down a corridor. She had metal-grey hair, twisted into tight, even curls. Her buttocks rolled as she walked and she had strongly muscled calves and forearms, lips that turned down even when she smiled. Her name was Daisy, but she didn’t look like a Daisy.
‘I warn you,’ she said, before she pushed open the door that had a small spy-hole on the outside, ‘she’s not going to tell you much.’ She gave her turned-down smile.
They stepped into a small square room. The air was muggy and smelt of disinfectant. There were bars over the window. Frieda was struck by the bareness. Was that what a life boiled down to? A narrow bed, a picture of the Bridge of Sighs on the wall, a single bookshelf holding a leather-bound Bible, a china dog, a vase with no flowers in it, and a large silver-framed photograph of the son she had chosen to keep. In an armchair by the wardrobe there was a stocky figure in a flannel dressing-gown and thick brown support tights.
June Reeve was short, her feet barely reaching the floor, and she had the same faded grey hair that Alan and Dean had. When she turned her head towards them, Frieda couldn’t at first see the likeness to her picture. Her face had spread. Its shape seemed to have disappeared and all that was left were features in flesh – a sharp chin, a small dry mouth, brown eyes that were her sons’ eyes but looked cloudy. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Seventy? A hundred? Her hands and her hair seemed young; her aimless gaze and her voice much older.
‘Visitors for you,’ Daisy said loudly.
‘What’s she done to her hands?’ asked Karlsson.
‘She chews at her fingers until they bleed, so we put mitten bandages on her.’
‘Hello, Mrs Reeve,’ said Frieda.
June Reeve didn’t reply, although she gave a curious jerk with her shoulders. They advanced further into the room, which was barely large enough to contain the four of them.
‘I’ll leave you, then,’ said Daisy.
‘Mrs Reeve?’ said Karlsson. He was grimacing and stretching his mouth, as if clear enunciation would carry the sense to her. ‘My name is Malcolm Karlsson. This is Frieda.’
June Reeve’s head swivelled. She fixed her milky gaze on Frieda.
‘You’re Dean’s mother,’ said Frieda, kneeling on the floor beside her. ‘Dean? Do you remember Dean?’
‘Who’s asking?’ Her voice was slurred and hoarse, as if her vocal cords were damaged. ‘I don’t like busybodies.’
Frieda looked into her face and tried to read a story from the wrinkles and folds. Had that face been there twenty-two years earlier?
June Reeve rubbed her mittened hands against each other. ‘I like my tea strong, with lots of sugar.’
‘This is hopeless,’ said Karlsson.
Frieda leaned in close to the old woman’s sour smell. ‘Tell me about Joanna,’ said Frieda.
‘Never you mind that.’
‘Joanna. The little child.’
June Reeve didn’t reply.
‘Did you take her?’ Karlsson’s tone was harsh. ‘You and your son. Tell us about it.’
‘That’s not going to help,’ said Frieda. She said gently, ‘It was outside the sweetshop, wasn’t it?’
‘Why am I here?’ asked the old woman. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Did you give her sweets?’
‘Lemon sherbet,’ she said. ‘Jelly babies.’
‘Is that what you gave her?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Then you put her in a car,’ said Frieda. ‘With Dean.’
‘Have you been a naughty girl?’ Something like a lewd grin appeared on her face. ‘Have you? Wetting yourself like that. Biting. Naughty.’
‘Was Joanna naughty?’ asked Frieda. ‘June, tell us about Joanna.’
‘I want my tea.’
‘Did she bite Dean?’ Pause. ‘Did he kill her?’
‘My tea. Three sugars.’ Her face puckered as if she would cry.
‘Where did you take Joanna? Where is she buried?’
‘Why am I here?’
‘Did he kill her at once, or did he hide her somewhere?’
‘I wrapped him in a towel,’ she said belligerently. ‘Somebody would have found him and taken him. Who are you to judge?’
‘She’s talking about Alan,’ Frieda said quietly to Karlsson. ‘He was found bundled up in a little park on a housing estate.’
‘Who are you, anyway? I didn’t ask you in here. People should mind their own business. Butter wouldn’t melt.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘I want my tea, I want my tea.’ She raised her voice until it cracked. ‘Tea!’
‘Your son, Dean.’
‘No.’
‘Dean hid Joanna somewhere.’
‘I’m not telling you anything. He’ll look after me. Muckrakers. Nosy-parkers. Bloody stuck-up ponces.’
‘She’s upset.’ Daisy had appeared in the door. ‘You won’t get any more out of her now.’
‘No.’ Frieda got to her feet. ‘We’ll leave her in peace.’
They left the room and walked back up the corridor.
‘Has she ever said anything about a girl called Joanna?’ Karlsson asked.
‘She keeps herself to herself,’ Daisy said. ‘Spends most of her time in her room. She doesn’t really talk much at all, except to complain.’ She grimaced. ‘She’s pretty good at that.’
‘Have you ever thought she seemed guilty about anything?’
‘Her? She just feels angry. Put-upon.’
‘What about?’
‘You heard a bit of it. People interfering.’
As they made their way out, Karlsson didn’t speak.
‘Well?’ said Frieda.
‘Well what?’ said Karlsson bitterly. ‘I’ve got a woman trying to reconstruct a face after twenty-two years of not remembering it. I’ve got an identical twin with disturbing dreams and fantasies, and now I’ve got a woman with Alzheimer’s talking about lemon sherbet.’
‘There were things in what she said. Fragments.’
Karlsson pushed the front door open with too much force so that it gave a bang.
‘Fragments. Oh, yes. Bits of nonsense, shadows of memories, strange coincidences, odd feelings, half-baked intuitions. That’s what this whole fucking cas
e boils down to. I could ruin my career over this, like Joanna’s detective twenty-two years ago.’
They stepped into the cold and stopped.
‘Morning,’ said Dean Reeve. He was freshly shaved and his hair had been combed away from his face. He was smiling amiably at them. It felt like a challenge.
Frieda couldn’t speak. Karlsson nodded curtly.
‘How’s my ma today?’ He held up a grease-spotted brown-paper bag. ‘I’m bringing her a doughnut. She likes her doughnut on Sunday. Her appetite is the one thing she hasn’t lost.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Karlsson, in a hoarse voice.
‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again,’ said Dean, politely. ‘One way or another.’
And as he passed them, he gave Frieda a wink.
Chapter Thirty-three
Just after ten, Frieda was sitting alone in her consulting room. She looked at her watch. Alan was late. Was that a surprise? After what he had learned about himself and about her own deceptive behaviour, did she really expect him to come back at all? He had been neglected by one therapist and deceived by a second. What would he do now? Perhaps he would just give up on therapy. It would be a logical conclusion. Or he could make a complaint. Again. This time the results might be bad. Frieda thought about this but found it hard to take seriously; that could all unfold later. Meanwhile, she felt she was in the wrong place. She had been awake for what felt like the whole night, hour after hour. Normally, she would have got up and got dressed and left the house and walked through the empty streets, but she just lay there and went over in her mind what Karlsson had said. He was right. She had exposed dreams and fragments of memories, or images that felt like memories, likenesses. Because that was what she did, that was her currency: the things that happened inside people’s heads, the things that made people happy or unhappy or afraid, the connections that they made for themselves between separate events that could lead them through chaos and fear.