Day of the Dead

by Nicci French

  ‘I can’t go to Frieda Klein’s grave. She’s still alive. At least I assume she is. Nobody seems to know where she is. Or if they do, they won’t tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean her grave. But everybody’s got someone they miss. Is anybody connected with Frieda Klein dead?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ said Lola. ‘You should read what I’ve read. It’s like a war zone.’

  ‘So there must be someone,’ said Jess. ‘Someone special.’

  Lola thought for a moment. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  At Olivia Klein’s house in Islington, a drinks party was ending, just a few people left, empty glasses and bottles standing on every surface. Olivia picked up a bottle and shook it to see if there was anything left in it, then tipped the last of the sparkling wine into her glass. She wore a red dress and high black shoes that were beginning to pinch her toes horribly.

  ‘Fifty,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’m fifty!’

  ‘How does it feel?’ asked the young man with tawny hair and a flowery shirt who stood by her side.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it feels like, Jack. Like a scandal. Like a bad joke that’s been played on me.’

  He looked at her. He always had the feeling that Olivia was about to unravel: her hair escaping from its clips, her clothes somehow temporary, her make-up often smudged, her mood skittering from euphoria to despair. He was trying to think of something comforting to say when Chloë came towards them.

  ‘I’ve put some pasta on,’ she said. ‘And Josef has made a spicy sauce. You should probably have something to eat.’

  ‘A scandal,’ repeated Olivia. ‘An outrage.’ She glared from her daughter to Jack and back again. ‘It feels like yesterday that I was your age and life was in front of me.’ Jack saw with alarm that tears were standing in her eyes. ‘Why did you two ever break up,’ she said, her voice wobbling.

  ‘Mum. Don’t. Come and eat something.’

  ‘You were so sweet together.’ Olivia sniffed. ‘Even if Frieda didn’t like it that the student she was supervising was going out with her beloved niece. And that’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought she’d come.’

  ‘Frieda?’

  ‘Why isn’t she here?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘I thought she’d make an exception. I’m fifty.’

  ‘Pasta,’ said Chloë, encouragingly. She took the glass out of Olivia’s hand, put it on the mantelpiece and pulled her towards the kitchen.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one knows.’

  ‘I bet Josef does.’

  ‘I not know,’ said Josef, from the stove where he was stirring a pungent tomato sauce.

  ‘Well, I wish she was here. It’s not the same without her.’

  TWELVE

  Lola was surprised when the woman in the little hut at the entrance said it was four pounds to enter. ‘I’ve never paid to go into a graveyard before,’ she said. ‘What if I want to visit the grave of a relative?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. But just suppose.’

  ‘Then you don’t pay.’

  The woman was quite old. She had beautiful blue eyes in a face of folds and creases, silver hair. Lola assumed someone she loved was buried in the cemetery and that was why she worked there. She wanted to ask her, but there were people waiting behind her, so she paid her four pounds, took a map, and went in.

  She was glad she had done a search on the Highgate Cemetery website before coming because she wouldn’t have known where to start. She stood at the top of the main avenue and saw graves spread out in every direction, up grassy banks, beneath the trees and in thick tangles of undergrowth. Like a city, she thought, and a small shiver passed through her. She knew that Alexander Holland, known to his friends as Sandy and once the lover of Frieda Klein, was buried in the eastern half of the cemetery, next to some railings, and she looked at the map to find which way she should go.

  It was a damp, foggy day, wet leaves underfoot and the light muted. There were few people around, though a middle-aged man was carefully tending a plot, picking out weeds. It took Lola some time to get to Sandy’s grave because she kept getting diverted, now by a broken angel, now by an inscription. Some of the stones were new but some had almost disappeared beneath the ivy and their lettering was rubbed away; nature was taking over. Some of the thousands of people buried here had died old, but others were barely out of babyhood. She didn’t know why she had never come here before: you could spend days, she thought, just wandering around among the stones and brambles, mouldering figures leaning towards you out of the undergrowth. She passed a couple, hand in hand, and wondered if they were tourists, or perhaps they had a child buried here. She nodded at them and said good morning, hoping they’d stop so she could talk to them, but they walked past without slowing.

  She did at last find Sandy’s grave, a simple low headstone set between two larger memorials. The inscription just gave his name and his dates. There were two miniature cyclamen growing there and someone had put a beautiful round stone between them. She took several photos, zooming in, crouching down to get a clearer view.

  Lola stayed by the grave for a few minutes. She wondered what she should do next. How could she turn this into a dissertation? She gazed around her. There was a woman sitting on the bench nearby. She had short silver hair and tortoiseshell spectacles, and she was reading a book. She looked intellectual and forbidding.

  ‘Hello,’ said Lola, approaching her.

  The woman looked up from her book. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you tell me where Karl Marx is buried? I can’t go without seeing him.’

  The woman pointed back up the hill.

  ‘It’s my first time here,’ said Lola. ‘I can’t believe I’ve never come before. It’s amazing. Spooky – but in a good way. Don’t you think? Do you come here often?’

  ‘No.’ The woman closed the book and slid it into her bag, then stood up.

  ‘I’m only here now because my tutor suggested I come. Oh, look, there’s a wren in the bush. I love wrens. And blackbirds. Except I always feel the female blackbird has a raw deal, being brown. That way?’

  She walked back up the hill, the way the woman had pointed. Sure enough, there was Karl Marx’s bust staring down at her, enormous and solemn. Lola found the sight unexpectedly funny. She took a photo with her phone, then another of the view down through the graves in the dim light. She slid her phone back into her pocket, frowned, and an idea slid into her mind like a cold blade. She turned to run back to the entrance. The main avenue was empty. She dashed out of the gate and looked up and down the hill. In the distance, she could see a figure walking swiftly away and she sprinted towards it.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. Her voice came out in a gasp.

  The woman with silver hair who had been sitting on the bench turned. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Well, yes. Yes, you can.’

  The woman waited.

  ‘You’re Frieda Klein.’ Her certainty wavered. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s expression didn’t alter.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ the woman said drily. ‘My name’s Ursula Edmunds.’

  ‘I’ve been looking for someone called Frieda Klein and it would have helped me a lot if it had been you. I’m doing a dissertation on her, you see, except it’s not going very well.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said the woman, and walked away.

  Lola hesitated, confused, then hurried after her.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘I know it is.’

  The woman turned towards her, her eyes stern behind her glasses. ‘Which way are you going?’

  ‘This way,’ said Lola, eagerly.

  ‘Good. Then I’ll be turning off here.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then. I’m not really going anywhere.’

  ‘That wasn’t the point.’

  ‘Now I know you’re Frieda Klein. Professor
Bradshaw said you were difficult.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lola Hayes.’

  ‘Are you listening to me, Lola?’

  Lola nodded several times.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Go away right now. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Well, I hear you, of course. I can’t help but hear you. Why have you dyed your hair?’

  ‘You seem to have difficulty in listening to what is being said to you.’

  ‘That’s what my father always says. Do you miss him very much?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you miss Sandy? Is that why you go and sit by his grave? What happened to him was awful. I think that’s why I’m finding it hard to write my dissertation. My tutor says I should deconstruct you, whatever that means, but instead I keep imagining what these last years have been like for you. How scary, knowing that Dean Reeve is still out there.’

  ‘Stop right there.’ She faced Lola. Her face was pale and her eyes glowed.

  ‘You are Frieda, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I knew you were,’ said Lola, and impulsively she put her arms around the woman as they stood together on the pavement. ‘You poor thing. Everything you’ve been through. You must feel so sad and alone.’

  But Frieda Klein pushed Lola away. She looked at her steadily and Lola had the strangest feeling of being looked not at but into, a gaze going right into her most secret part.

  ‘Do you realize what you’re doing?’ said Frieda, softly. ‘Getting involved in my life is a dangerous thing to do.’

  ‘It’s just for a dissertation.’

  ‘You’ve been talking to people I know, looking for me.’

  ‘And now I’ve found you.’

  ‘You won’t find me again. And you must never tell anyone that you did so once.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t need to understand. Leave me. Forget you met me. Stop trying to find out about me.’

  ‘Shall we have coffee together first?’

  For the first time, Frieda’s face lost its stony expression. Lola thought she was trying not to smile.

  ‘You really are persistent, aren’t you? All right, come with me.’

  ‘You saw Hal Bradshaw,’ said Frieda, as they sat with their coffee. She thought how young Lola seemed, with her soft round face and the scattering of freckles on her nose.

  ‘Yes.’ Lola glanced at her doubtfully. ‘I don’t think he likes you very much.’

  ‘I don’t think he does.’

  ‘I met the journalist Liz Barron as well.’

  ‘You have been busy.’

  ‘And your friends Reuben and Josef.’

  Frieda winced slightly. ‘You saw them?’

  ‘Yes. I went to Reuben’s house. They didn’t tell me anything, though.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Your niece was there too.’

  Frieda looked away from Lola, out of the window. ‘Did she seem all right?’

  ‘As far as I could tell. Haven’t you seen them recently? Why is that?’ She leaned forward and said, in a loud whisper, ‘Are you in disguise?’

  Frieda drew back, frowning at her. ‘Why did you go to the cemetery?’

  Lola told her about Simon Tearle. ‘I’m following in your footsteps.’

  ‘You mustn’t do that.’

  ‘It’s been quite fun.’

  ‘I’m serious. You must stop.’

  ‘I’ve been to bits of London I didn’t even know about. The cemetery – and then I walked along the River Lea as well. It made me think I’d quite like to live on a houseboat – maybe not in the winter. There was one with a whole garden on its roof. Look.’

  She took out her phone and started scrolling through it.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this great?’

  Frieda glanced down. For a few seconds she sat absolutely still. ‘Give that to me.’ She took the phone.

  And then she saw him.

  He was looking at her, thinner than she remembered, with his hair cropped very short but with the same smile. A man who sat fishing on the riverbank, a few yards from the spot where he had killed his twin brother. A man like her shadow, a man like a ghost.

  ‘What have you done?’ she said to Lola.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, I just –’

  ‘This is Dean Reeve.’

  There was a silence. Lola’s mouth was open and her eyes were wide.

  ‘You’re joking,’ she said at last.

  ‘You’re not safe.’

  Lola gave a nervous little laugh. ‘But you’re the one he’s after.’ She looked into Frieda’s eyes. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t know who I am. Is it really him? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lola put a hand to her mouth, incredulous. ‘I spoke to him. I feel dizzy. I’m in shock.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  Lola gestured helplessly. ‘I can’t answer that because it wasn’t important. He didn’t make an impression on me. I just chatted with people as I walked along. It’s called psychogeography. What that means –’

  ‘I know what it means,’ Frieda said, so sharply that Lola was surprised into silence. Frieda picked up a packet of sugar and rotated it between her fingers. ‘You might have got away with it,’ she murmured, as if to herself. Once again, she raised her eyes and looked at Lola directly. ‘So. You talked to the people you met?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Did you mention my name?’

  ‘No. I didn’t think they’d have heard of you.’

  ‘What did you say about what you were doing?’

  ‘Not much. Just a few vague things.’

  ‘Lola,’ said Frieda, in a gentler tone, ‘I’m not trying to catch you out. But this is serious. We need to know where we are – especially where you are. You just need to tell me what happened.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lola. ‘I just said to some of them – not all of them – that I was following in the footsteps of a woman, a psychologist or psychotherapist, I think I said. Yes, I did. Who investigated crimes and walked around London on her own. That’s all.’

  Frieda picked up Lola’s phone and flicked through the photographs, then stopped. ‘This one,’ she said, and handed the phone back to Lola. Lola looked at it. It was the picture of her and the fat fisherman.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You’re in the picture. Who took it?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Dean Reeve.’

  ‘All right, Dean Reeve took the photo.’

  ‘How long did he have your phone in his hand?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just took the photo. I mean, he had trouble getting it to work. Everyone does with other people’s phones.’

  ‘What could he find out from your phone?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Your number? Your name maybe?’

  Lola chewed a strand of hair, thinking. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘They come up as soon as you press on my contact list. Though he didn’t have that much time. Look. I’m sorry if I messed things up. If you think it’s a problem, I’ll just give up doing this stupid thesis and go back to my supervisor and get a new subject and act as if none of this ever happened.’

  Frieda shook her head. ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been reading up about me? People who cross Dean Reeve’s path get killed. There’s a bit of me that wants to just get up and walk out and leave you to deal with this.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Lola. ‘Why don’t you? I’m sorry I got mixed up with you. I’ll just find something else to write about.’

  ‘Something else to write about? None of that matters. That’s all done. Don’t you realize you’ve left your old life behind?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have to accept that.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

>   ‘It means that you can’t go home. You can’t go anywhere you normally go.’

  Lola had gone very pale and she was breathing in short gasps. ‘That’s just stupid.’

  Frieda reached across and put her hand on Lola’s. ‘Look at me. You need to stay calm. But you have to listen to me.’

  Lola picked up the phone and stared at the photo of Dean Reeve. Frieda could see that she was wondering if it could actually be true. Could she trust this woman? She waited for her to speak.

  ‘I can’t just walk out on my life,’ said Lola. ‘People will miss me. They’ll call the police.’

  ‘It won’t last for long,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s reaching the end. One way or another.’

  ‘The end?’ Lola’s expression was startled. ‘What end?’

  ‘Of his journey.’

  ‘And while he’s getting to the end of his journey, whatever that is, what am I meant to do?’ said Lola. ‘Wander the streets until somebody catches him?’

  ‘Go and stay somewhere. Somewhere you’ve never been before.’

  ‘Where? With what? I’ve got about thirty pounds in the bank. Can’t I just go to the police? I can show them this picture of Dean Reeve and I can say that you think I’m in danger and then …’ Lola obviously didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘And then?’

  ‘They’re the police,’ said Lola. ‘They’ll put me under protection and then go and find him and arrest him.’

  ‘The police have been failing to find him for years,’ said Frieda. ‘And when he wants to kill people, he kills them.’

  ‘Can I go with you?’ Lola said.

  Frieda blinked. ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lola’s face had brightened.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For a start, this is all about me. I wish it wasn’t but it is. The further you are from me the better.’

  ‘Where better to hide than with someone who’s hiding? I don’t know how to do this. You do. If I’m on my own, I’ll just do something stupid. I always do. It would just be for a few days. That’s what you said. I’ll be safe with you.’