by Nicci French
‘There are lots of places with no people around here,’ said Frieda. ‘So? Shall we go for a walk?’
‘Which way?’
‘We don’t know where he is and we don’t know where to look, so it doesn’t matter. I thought of going in a spiral outwards from his house.’
‘Spiral?’ said Josef.
Frieda gestured a spiral with her finger. ‘Like water running into a hole,’ she said. She pointed along the street. ‘This way.’ They started to walk along the edge of a housing estate named after John Ruskin. She looked up at the terraces. More than half of the flats had metal grilles across the doors and windows to seal them. Any of those would be a possible hiding place. At the end of the housing estate there was a gasworks, with rusted chains across the front gate. An old sign on the railings announced that the site was patrolled by dogs. It seemed unlikely. They were now heading north, and at the end of the road they turned right and east alongside a lorry depot and then a scrap-metal yard.
‘It’s like Kiev,’ Josef said. ‘Kiev was like this so I come to London.’ He stopped outside yet another row of closed-down shops. The two of them looked up at the old painted signs on the brick façades: Evans & Johnsons Stationers, J. Jones Stores, the Black Bull. ‘Everybody gone,’ he said.
‘A hundred years ago this was a whole city,’ said Frieda. ‘Down there were the biggest docks in the world. Boats were queuing all the way down to the sea to unload. There were tens of thousands of men working there, and their wives and children. In the war it was bombed and burned. Now it’s like Pompeii, except that people are still trying to live here. It would probably have been better if they’d turned it back into fields and forests and marshes.’
A police car drove past and both Frieda and Josef watched it until it turned the corner.
‘They looking too?’ said Josef.
‘I guess so,’ said Frieda. ‘I don’t really know how they do things.’
As they walked on, Frieda glanced at her map to make sure of the way. One of the things she liked about Josef was that he didn’t talk when it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t feel a need to be clever or to pretend to understand things he didn’t. And when he did say something, he really meant it. They were just passing an empty warehouse when Frieda realized that Josef had stopped and she had walked on without noticing. She walked back to him.
‘Have you seen something?’
‘Why are we doing this?’
‘I told you.’
He took the map from her and looked at it. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.
She prodded at the page. He moved his finger on the map, retracing their progress.
‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘We pass empty houses, empty buildings, empty church. We don’t go in. Course we don’t go in. We can’t look in every hole, in every room, on the roof, in the rooms under the houses. We’re not looking. Not looking really. We are walking and you tell me about the bombs in the war. Why are you doing this? To feel better?’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘To feel worse, probably. I just hoped that if we came here, walked around the streets, we would find something.’
‘The police are looking. They can go into houses, ask questions. That is the job for the police. We being here, we are just…’ Josef searched for the word and waved his hands helplessly.
‘Making a gesture,’ said Frieda. ‘Doing something rather than nothing.’
‘A gesture for what?’
‘But we have to do something. We can’t just sit at home.’
‘Something for what?’ said Josef. ‘If the boy Matthew is lying in the street we fall over him maybe. But if he is dead or he’s locked in a room? Nothing.’
‘You were the one who said it to me, you remember?’ said Frieda. ‘I believed in sitting in a room and talking. You said I should go out and fix people’s problems. It didn’t really work out, did it?’
‘I did not…’ He paused, searching for the words once more. ‘Just going out is not fixing the problem. I don’t just stand in a house to fix the house. I build the wall and put in the pipes and the wires. Just walking in the street is not finding the boy.’
‘The police aren’t finding the boy either,’ said Frieda. ‘Or the woman.’
‘If you’re looking for a fish,’ said Josef, ‘you look where the fish are. You don’t just walk in the fields.’
‘Is that some Ukrainian proverb?’
‘No, it is my idea. But you cannot just walk in the streets. Why do you bring me here to do this? We are like a tourist here.’
Frieda squinted down at the map. She closed it. It had already got damp in the bitter sleet and the pages were ruffled. ‘All right,’ she said.
Breath. Heart. Tongue on stone. Little wheezy sound in chest. Lights in his eyes. Head of fireworks, red and blue and orange. Rockets. Sparks. Flames. They had lit the fire at last. So cold and then so hot. Ice to furnace. Must pull his clothes off, must escape this wild heat. Body melting. Nothing would be left. Just ash. Ash and a bit of bone and nobody would know this had once been Matthew with brown eyes and red hair, a teddy with velvet paws.
Chapter Forty-one
On the Underground back, jostled by the evening rush-hour, they didn’t speak at all. As Frieda opened the front door of her house, she heard the phone ringing. She picked it up. It was Karlsson.
‘I don’t have your mobile number,’ he said.
‘I don’t have a mobile,’ Frieda said.
‘I guess you’re not the kind of doctor people need in an emergency.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘That’s what I’m ringing about. I just wanted to let you know that, as of an hour and a half ago, Reeve and partner are back on the street.’
‘You ran out of time?’
‘We could have kept them a bit more, if we really wanted. But isn’t it better if they’re out there? He might make a mistake. He might lead us somewhere.’
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘I wish I believed that,’ she said. ‘It didn’t feel like that when I met him. He seemed like a man who had made up his mind.’
‘If he slips up, we’ll get him.’
‘He’s sure that you’re following him,’ said Frieda. ‘I think he’s probably enjoying it now. We’ve given him power. He knows what we’re going through. I don’t think there’s anything we could do to him, anything we could give him that would be as much fun for him as that.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ said Karlsson. ‘You’ve got your work. You can get on with it.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s fine for me.’
After she had put the phone down Frieda sat for a time, staring at nothing. Then she went upstairs and stared out of her bedroom window at the snow-specked roofs. It was a clear cold night. She ran a bath and lay in it for nearly an hour. Then she got dressed and went to her garret study, where she sat at her drawing board. How long had it been since she had sat here like this, with time for herself? She couldn’t remember. She picked up her soft pencil and held it between her thumb and forefinger, but didn’t draw anything. All she could think of was Matthew, out there somewhere in the fierce cold, perhaps alive and terrified, but probably long dead; of Kathy Ripon, who’d knocked at the wrong door; of Dean and Terry walking away from the police station, free.
Finally she put her pencil down on the blank paper and went downstairs. She laid the fire in the living room and put a match to it, waited until flames were licking at the coal. Then she went to the kitchen again. She found a half-full carton of potato salad in the fridge and ate it with a spoon, just standing at the window. Then she took a tumbler from the sink, rinsed it out and poured some whisky into it. She sipped at it very slowly. She wanted time to pass; she wanted this night to be over. The phone rang and she picked it up.
‘You probably didn’t think you were going to hear from me for a bit?’
‘Karlsson?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Well, you’re on the phone. I can’t
see you.’
‘Has Reeve tried to contact you?’ he said.
‘Not since you last rang.’
‘He’s done it before.’
‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve lost them.’
‘Them?’
‘Reeve. And Terry.’
‘I thought you were following them.’
‘I don’t need to justify myself to you.’
‘I don’t care about you justifying yourself. I just wondered how it could happen.’
‘Oh, you know – Underground, crowds and a bit of incompetent fucking police work. Maybe they meant to get away, maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. And I don’t know what they’re going to do.’
Frieda looked at her watch. It was past midnight. ‘They won’t go home. Will they?’
‘They could do. Why not? They’re not charged with anything. And it’s the middle of the night. Where else would they go?’
Frieda forced herself to think. ‘It could be a good thing,’ she said. ‘They might feel free now. That could be good.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Karlsson. ‘I don’t know enough to even guess. I’m not so sure it matters. Where could they have put them? If they’re tied up in a cupboard in an abandoned flat somewhere, how long can they survive without water? If they aren’t already… well, you know. Anyway, he might contact you. Stranger things have happened. Be prepared.’
After she had put the phone down, Frieda poured herself another inch of whisky and tipped it straight down her throat, feeling it sting and startle her. She went into the living room, but the fire had gone out and the room felt chilly and cheerless. She knew she needed to rest, but the thought of lying in her bed, wide-eyed, her brain hissing with images, appalled her. For a while she lay on her sofa with a rug pulled over her, but sleep eluded her and in its place was a dry, frantic wakefulness. At last she rose and went to the kitchen. She stepped outside into her small yard. The cold made her gasp and brought tears to her eyes but she relished it. It woke her up, scoured her of bleary tiredness, cleared her head and sharpened her thoughts. She stood, coatless and without gloves, until her face was stiff and she could bear it no longer, then returned inside.
She walked to the London map by the front door. The light wasn’t good enough to make out all the details, the little street names. She ripped it away from the wall and laid it out on the table in the living room. She switched the ceiling light on. Even that wasn’t quite enough. She fetched the reading light from next to her bed, took it to the living room and placed it on top of the map. She got a pencil and made a cross on the street where Dean Reeve lived. She had a sudden vertiginous sense that she was looking down on London from a plane half a mile high on a perfectly clear day. She could see the big landmarks, the curves of the Thames, the Millennium Dome, City Airport, Victoria Park, the Lea Valley. She looked closer, at the streets she had walked with Josef. She saw the cross-hatched areas representing the housing estates, the factories.
She thought of Alan and how she’d failed with him. She had failed both as a therapist and as an investigator. Alan and Dean had the same brains, thought the same thoughts, dreamed the same dreams, the way that two different birds would build identical nests. But the only way into that was through the unconscious, and when she had last talked to Alan, it had been like asking someone to describe the skill of riding a bicycle. Not only had he been unable to express the skill in words but she had damaged the skill. If you start trying to think about how you ride a bicycle while you’re riding a bicycle, you’re likely to fall off. Alan had found her out and turned on her. Maybe that was a sign of some strength. It could have been a sign that the therapy was working, even that it had run its course, because Frieda felt that the bond between them had been broken and couldn’t be restored. He could never give himself up to her again, the way a patient had to. She remembered that last session. It was ironic that the best bit of the session, the only real intimacy they achieved, was after the session was over, as they were leaving, when he no longer saw her as a therapist. What was it he’d said about feeling safe? She tried to remember his words. About his mother. About his family.
A thought struck her. Was it possible? It was the moment when he had given up trying to think of hiding places. Could he have…’?
Frieda ran her finger in a spiral around and outwards from Dean Reeve’s house and then her finger stopped. She grabbed her coat and scarf and ran from the house, out of the mews and across the square. It was still dark and these smaller streets were deserted; she could hear her own footsteps echoing behind her. It was only when she got to Euston Road, among the traffic of London that never ceases, that she was able to flag down a taxi. As it sped away she went over and over it in her mind. Should she have called the police? What would she have had to say? She thought of Karlsson and his team, knocking on doors, taking statements. Divers had been searching the river. What they wanted was something tangible, a piece of cloth, a mere fibre, a fingerprint, and all she’d been able to offer were memories, fantasies, dreams that sometimes seemed to coincide. But was she just seeing patterns the way children saw shapes in clouds? There had been so many dead ends. Was this just another?
‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ said the cabbie. She was a woman. That was unusual.
‘Is there a main entrance?’
‘There’s only one that’s open,’ said the cabbie. ‘There’s a back one but it’s locked up.’
‘The front one, then.’
‘I’m not sure if it’ll be open yet. It’s sunrise to sunset.’
‘The sun’s rising now. Look.’
It was just before eight o’clock, and Christmas Eve.
A few minutes later, the cab pulled up. Frieda paid and got out. She looked at the ornate Victorian sign: ‘Chesney Hall Cemetery.’ Alan had said that he had the fantasy of visiting a family grave where he would like to lie on the grass and talk to his ancestors. Poor Alan. He didn’t have a family grave that he could visit, or not one that he knew of. But did Dean Reeve? The large gates of the cemetery were shut but beside them was a small open entrance for pedestrians. Frieda walked inside and looked around. It was vast, the size of a town. There were rows and rows of tombstones in avenues. There were statues, broken pillars, crosses. Dotted here and there were mausoleums. One area to the left looked grown over, the graves almost disappearing under foliage. Her breath steamed in the cold.
Ahead, down the main avenue, Frieda saw a simple wooden hut. She saw that the door was open and a light was visible through the window. Did cemeteries keep registers? She started to walk down and as she did so, she glanced at the graves on either side. One caught her eye. The family tomb of the Brainbridge family. Emily, Nicholas, Thomas and William Brainbridge had all died in the 1860s before they had reached ten years of age. Their mother, Edith, had died in 1883. How had she managed it, growing old alone with her dead children dwindling into the past? Perhaps she had had other children to look after, children who had grown up and moved away and were now buried somewhere else.
Something, a rustle perhaps, made Frieda turn round. Through the railings, she could see a figure, indistinct at first, as it moved along, and then it appeared in the entrance and she recognized it. Her. Their eyes met: Frieda looked at Terry Reeve and Terry Reeve looked at Frieda. There was something in her gaze, an intensity that Frieda had never seen before. Frieda took a step forward but Terry turned and moved away; she disappeared out of sight. Frieda ran back the way she had come but by the time she had got out of the cemetery there was no sign of Terry. She looked around desperately. She ran back down the avenue and reached the hut. An old woman was sitting behind an improvised desk. There was a Thermos flask in front of her and a notice saying ‘Friends of Chesney Hall Cemetery’. Probably she had a loved-one lying out there somewhere, a husband or child. Perhaps this was where she felt at home, among family. Frieda took out her purse and rummaged through it.
‘Have you got a phone?’ she said.
‘Well, I’m not -’ the woman began.
Frieda found the card she was looking for. ‘I need to make a call,’ she said. ‘It’s to the police.’
After she had gabbled out her message to Karlsson, Frieda turned back to the old woman.
‘I need to find a family grave. Can I do that?’
‘We have plans of the cemetery,’ the woman answered. ‘Almost all of the graves are listed on it. What’s the name?’
‘Reeve. R-E-E-V-E.’
The woman stood up and moved over to a filing cabinet in the corner. She unlocked it and brought out a thick ledger, filled out by hand in black ink that was faded, and started leafing through it with slow deliberation, licking her forefinger from time to time.
‘We have three Reeves listed,’ she said at last. ‘Theobald Reeve, who died in 1927, his wife Ellen Reeve, 1936, and a Sarah Reeve, 1953.’
‘Where are they buried?’
The woman rustled in a drawer and brought out a printed map of the cemetery.
‘Here,’ she said, placing her finger on the point. ‘They’re all buried close to each other. If you go up the central path and take the third path on your -’
But Frieda was gone, snatching the piece of paper from her hand and running. The old woman watched her, and then she took her place once more at her desk, unscrewing the lid of her Thermos flask, waiting for the bereaved to come and pay their respects. Christmas was always a busy time.
Frieda tore up the central path and took the path on the right that was narrow but well-worn. On either side were gravestones, some quite new, made of white marble with clear black words etched into them. Others were older, grown over with lichen and ivy, or had tipped backwards. It was hard to make out the names of some of the dead who lay there and Frieda had to run her fingers over the ridges of the letters to make them out. The Philpotts, the Bells, the Farmers, the Thackerays; those who had died old and those who hadn’t made it out of their teens; those who still had flowers placed there and those long-forgotten.