by Nicci French
“It’s good she’s allowed out alone,” said Frieda.
“She’s all right, Kaz is,” said the warder. “They’ve kept her here for her own good, really. It’s like her home.”
The warder left them and Frieda and Berryman approached her. They introduced themselves and sat on either side of her. Small and wizened, she was almost lost between them.
“We’ve just seen Hannah Docherty,” said Frieda. “We saw your work on her. Your tattoos.”
Kaz had finished her cigarette. She took a cigarette paper from her pocket and a pack of tobacco, then assembled a new one. Her hands were trembling and there was the occasional breath of wind so the process was halting and spasmodic. Frieda and Berryman watched her in silence until the new cigarette had been lit.
“How does it work?” Frieda continued. “Do people design their own tattoos?”
“Depends.”
“What about Hannah’s?”
“Long time ago mostly.”
“I wanted to know why she chose those tattoos.”
“Ask her.”
“You know we can’t ask her.”
“You can ask her,” said Kaz. “Won’t say nothing.”
There was a strange wheezing, coughing sound, which Frieda realized was a laugh.
“She has a dragon on her back.”
“I do lots of dragons.”
“Why do people want them?”
Kaz looked up at Frieda in disbelief. “Fucking locked up, aren’t we? Dragons are freedom.”
“Then there was a devil. What was that about?”
“It’s your demon.”
“You mean, like your personal demon?”
“No. Like you deal with your own demons, right?”
“Is that something Hannah particularly wanted?”
Kaz shook her head. “They’ve all got their demons. There’s lots of demons here.”
“Then there was the skull, which I suppose is death.”
“Maybe. But they all like skulls. I do good skulls.”
“And the butterfly.”
“The butterfly’s girls. You know, and . . .” she moved her hands around “. . . like life. Like going from one thing to another, like a butterfly. Things change.”
“We’re not getting anywhere,” said Frieda. “Wasn’t there anything Hannah specially wanted? Something that was personal to her?”
“That was years ago. Don’t see her much. She’s funny.”
Frieda closed her eyes and tried to remember all the marks on Hannah’s pale skin. There was so much clutter, so much noise. What was left? What hadn’t she thought of?
“There was a little one,” she said. “Not much more than a line. And a little scrawl at the front. A pattern.”
“A locket,” said Kaz.
“What?”
“I just remembered when you said. A locket. That’s what she asked for.”
“What for?”
“It was her ma.”
“You mean it reminded her of her mother?”
“It was her ma’s. She found her dead. All she knew her by was her locket. She wanted it on her neck. Couldn’t have the real one.”
“But . . .” Frieda began, and then she stopped. Suddenly she stood up. “We’ve got to go.” She looked at Kaz. “Thank you for your help. But we have to go. I’ve got something to do.”
Kaz muttered something that Frieda couldn’t properly make out.
“What was that?”
She muttered again.
“Trouble?” said Frieda. “Did you say that Hannah is trouble?”
Kaz shook her head. “She’s in trouble.”
INTERLUDE FOURTEEN
“You look well,” says Hal Bradshaw.
“I feel well,” says Mary Hoyle. “I feel very well.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
When Levin saw her he said simply, “Well?”
“I’ve got it.”
He nodded at her. “Good.”
And then Frieda understood—like a light going on in a room that had been wrapped in shadows, and she could see clearly at last.
“You always knew,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” He took off his glasses and polished them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s what I was brought in for. Nothing to do with ticking boxes. You knew all along. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He beamed at her.
“You knew I wouldn’t stop.”
“And you didn’t.” His tone was still genial.
“You used me.”
“If you’ve found the answer, isn’t it worth it?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s always the point.”
Without saying another word, Frieda took the file he was holding and walked briskly back to her house. She needed the walk to calm herself down, to settle herself down, to prepare herself.
She arrived at home, threw off her jacket, then opened the file and spread the contents—the photographs of the Docherty crime scene—on her table. She started to arrange them. What was it that Jane Farthing had said? The photographer had been working in the area, so he had arrived very quickly. One by one she put the photographs of Rory Docherty and Aidan Locke back in the file until she was left with those of Deborah Docherty. That was the name written on the back of the prints but, of course, they were really of Justine Walsh.
She leaned down and looked closely. It was growing dark and she couldn’t see clearly enough. She went upstairs, fetched her desk light, plugged it in, placed it on the table and switched it on. There. There were three photographs showing the battered head. Then, slowly and deliberately, she moved the photograph on the right to the left. And then she knew. She picked up her phone and dialed Ben Sedge.
“Can you do me a favor?” she asked.
Frieda, Ben Sedge and Yvette Long were shown into a conference room. It had a long, laminated table, ten leatherette chairs and a view over West Norwood on a rainy Tuesday morning: car showrooms, super stores and the steel framework of a tall building flanked by giant cranes. The three sat down at the table.
“Thanks for sorting this out,” said Frieda.
Sedge gave a nod of acknowledgement.
“What’s this about, Frieda?” asked Yvette.
“I already told DCI Sedge. I’m done with this. I just wanted to pass on a couple of things and move on.”
“Move on?” said Yvette. “Since when do you move on?”
The door opened and two men in suits came in. They looked impatient, as if the meeting had already gone on too long. One of them was DCI Waite. The other was heavily built, with dark hair, parted on one side. His face was jowly, with pockmarked skin. “I’m DCI Lumsden,” he said. “DCI Vic Lumsden. And I’m in a hurry.” He nodded across the table. “Good to see you, Ben.”
“Likewise. Thanks for seeing us.”
“No problem. But we’ll have to be brief. I’ve got a meeting.”
Lumsden and Waite sat opposite them. Frieda felt as if she was trying to sell them something they didn’t want to buy. She looked at Waite. “I’m glad you could come too.”
“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,” he said.
“How’s the Erin Brack investigation going?” she asked.
“Don’t push it.”
“I’m just asking as a citizen.”
“I said don’t push it.”
“Hang on,” said Lumsden. “I think you’d better tell us what this is about.”
“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” said Frieda. “You’re the officer who didn’t reopen the Hannah Docherty case.”
“That’s right. I know about you too. I don’t really understand why you’re involved in this case but you’d better say your piece and we can get on with our work.”
With exaggerated care, Lumsden removed his wristwatch and laid it on the table in front of him. The clock was running.
“I went to see Hannah Docherty yesterday. She wasn’t very commun
icative. She’s not in a good way.”
“I’ve heard that,” said Lumsden.
“But I looked at her tattoos.”
There was a pause. Lumsden looked at Waite, then back at Frieda. He seemed to be barely suppressing a smile. “Her tattoos? Anything to report?”
“One of them is around her neck. I talked to the inmate who drew it. She told me it represents the locket that was on the body when Hannah saw it. It was what she used to identify her mother.”
“And this is interesting?”
“When I heard this I remembered the inventory of what was found on the bodies in the Docherty house. There was indeed a locket.”
“All right.”
“Here’s a photograph of the body at the crime scene.” Frieda took a photograph from the file she had brought with her and slid it across the table. Lumsden looked at the picture and flinched slightly. “I know,” said Frieda. “It’s horrible. But I meant you to look at the locket round her neck.”
Lumsden pushed the picture back to Frieda. “All right. Hannah has a tattoo of the locket. The locket is mentioned in the inventory. The locket duly appears in the crime-scene photo. What is the problem?”
“What I expected you to say was something like, “Hang on, the body isn’t Deborah Docherty, it’s Justine Walsh. Why is the locket on her neck?”’
“Because the murder was staged,” said Lumsden.
“So what you’re saying,” said Frieda, “is that whoever killed Deborah Docherty, removed the locket from her neck and placed it on the neck of the dead Justine Walsh in order to aid the false identification. Is that what you’re saying?”
Lumsden thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Good. I agree.”
“Well, I’m glad you agree, Doctor. But we already knew that the murder was staged. We already knew that whoever killed Justine Walsh also killed Deborah Docherty. You’re telling us nothing new.”
Frieda pushed the photograph back across the table. “The photograph is time-coded. What time does it say?”
Lumsden took a pair of glasses from his pocket and put them on. “Two thirty-eight,” he said.
Frieda took another photograph from her file. “Look at the time on this one.”
He leaned down. “It’s earlier. Two eleven.”
“Look more closely.”
“At what?”
“At her neck. At the locket.”
Lumsden looked up. “What the fuck?”
“It’s not there.”
Lumsden passed the photograph to Waite. “What’s that mean?” he said.
“Think about it,” said Frieda.
“I am thinking about it and it makes no sense.”
Slowly Frieda turned her gaze to Ben Sedge. “Mostly, when people commit murder, they go blank. Sometimes they don’t even remember doing it. They go haywire. But you didn’t.”
Everything was happening in slow motion. The faces of Lumsden and Waite clicked through expressions: incomprehension, incredulity, and then a strange dawning. Sedge stared at her. He opened his mouth and from his chest came a booming sound. He was laughing, but it didn’t sound like laughter. “You are certifiably insane,” he said.
Frieda gazed at him, into his blue eyes. “It wasn’t an impetuous crime, and even when things went a bit wrong, you kept thinking clearly all the way through. When you arrived at the Docherty household with the dead body of Aidan Locke, you found Justine Walsh there instead of Deborah.”
“You are insane,” repeated Sedge. “This is ridiculous. Vic, tell her to shut up.”
Lumsden didn’t move. His jaw hung loose. She could see sweat on his forehead.
“Justine Walsh was looking for her daughter and you killed her. You then dressed her in Deborah Docherty’s nightie and arranged her as if she were Deborah Docherty, in the bed beside her dead husband.”
Sedge rose. “I’m not staying to listen to this crap.”
But Yvette had now stationed herself by the door and the big man stood in the center of the room, his arms hanging by his sides. He looked like a bull trapped in a bullring.
“Stay where you are,” said Frieda. “We talked about different stories last time we met. This is the true story. You killed Justine Walsh. You killed Rory Docherty. I think that might have been hard. You put him facedown: probably you couldn’t bear to look at his face. After all, what had that little boy done to you?”
“Vic,” said Sedge. “Vic, you don’t believe this, do you? This is me she’s talking about.”
Lumsden stared at him, his face wiped clean of any expression. The silence in the room was absolute. “Go on,” he said to Frieda.
She nodded and looked back at Sedge. “You smeared Rory’s blood downstairs, just to confuse things. Which it did. Then you had to find Deborah Docherty, kill her and bury her. Her locket. That was another inspiration. You make an anonymous call to the police and make sure you’re first on the scene and put the locket on Justine Walsh. All you need is to get poor, troubled, traumatized Hannah to make the identification and you’re free. There was a bit of a problem, though. A junior officer, Jane Farthing, went straight up to the room and called in reinforcements. The photographer was in the area and arrived too early. But you made a fuss about him contaminating the scene, got him out and put the locket on. But you didn’t realize he’d already taken a photograph.”
“It could have been anyone,” said Sedge. “Anyone.” His voice cracked. “It could have been anyone,” he repeated.
“Jane Farthing?” said Frieda. “The photographer? I’m sure DCI Lumsden will check. And DCI Waite could check with the staff at the Thamesmead Gazette : someone came asking about Erin Brack and what she knew. Because, of course, there was a fifth murder, thirteen years later.”
“Vic?” repeated Sedge. “Vic?”
“Yes,” said Lumsden, slowly. “I will check.” He gazed at Sedge with an expression of puzzlement.
Frieda had seen dynamite demolish buildings from her consulting-room window. After the explosion they would stand for a few moments, holding their shape, then their edges would lose solidity and all of a sudden the edifices would waver, then dissolve into a shower of bricks and mortar. Now Sedge’s face lost its fixed expression of outrage; his body seemed to fold in on itself. He no longer looked tall, bulky and strong, but diminished. For a moment he staggered backwards. Yvette stepped forward, pulled his chair out for him and he sank on to it. He lowered his head into his hands. No one said anything. There was no sound in the room, except for the hum of the heating and the drip of rain outside.
When he looked up at last, he spoke to Frieda. “My wife said I was a good man,” he said. “And I am. I am. I joined the force because I wanted to make the country a better place. I’m a good man who’s done bad things.”
Frieda stared at him. She was thinking of all the people she had known who somehow managed to separate what they did from who they were—as if there was a single, irreducible self that was untouched by experience. Sedge had killed five people and wrecked the life of a sixth, yet he still believed that his true self, the self he felt to be fundamentally good, was intact.
“I loved her,” said Sedge.
“Deborah.”
“And she loved me. We met because of Hannah. She came to the station once when Hannah had got into trouble again and we talked.”
“That wasn’t in the records.”
“It was. It isn’t now.”
“You are entitled to a lawyer,” said Lumsden, suddenly, his voice gravelly. “If you’re going to make a statement, you can call someone.”
“I’m not making a fucking statement, Vic. I’m making a confession.” He nodded at Frieda. “I’m making a confession to you.”
“What for?” Frieda felt almost dulled by the misery of it. “Who is there left to forgive you?”
“We were in love. She was like no one I’d ever met. She made me alive. I was going to leave Laurie and she was going to leave Aidan. If
she’d kept to her promise, this would never have happened. But then she changed her mind.”
“Because of Rory?”
“There was that business with his bastard of a teacher. He was in a bad way.”
“And she also had a late abortion. I assume you were the father.”
“I’d always wanted a child. Laurie couldn’t—” He broke off. “Deborah thought she was too old to get pregnant, but it happened. It was meant to be. Then, without even talking to me about it, she murdered our child. She did that and then she left me.”
“So you killed her.”
“I needed to show her what it’s like to lose everything.”
“And Rory? What had he done?”
Sedge looked entirely impassive. “She killed my child.”
“And Hannah? Was she just collateral damage?”
“There had to be someone to blame. She was on the way down anyway.”
“So she basically deserved what she got?” said Frieda.
“Deborah told me that Aidan was going to see Hannah to sort things. Playing happy families. That was my chance to really show them.”
“But you didn’t know Deborah would go to see her as well, when he didn’t come back.”
“It worked out all right.”
“And then poor deluded Erin Brack.”
“You know how it is. You plug one leak and it just starts somewhere else.”
INTERLUDE FIFTEEN
Mary Hoyle lies awake, happy in the knowledge of what is happening elsewhere. It’s like she’s doing it with her own hands, as if she’s wielding the blades herself.
And then she’s asleep and then, for a moment, she doesn’t know if she’s awake or asleep. She can feel a pressure on her chest and on her neck. A face is looking down at her, eyes looking into hers, as if in curiosity.
“Look,” says Hannah Docherty.
Look at what?
“The children,” says Hannah Docherty. “Think of children.”
Mary Hoyle could say to Hannah Docherty: I think of the children every night. I think of them and I don’t care. But she can’t say it and she can’t call out or scream because there is something around her neck, a cord or a wire. Her arms are flapping helplessly, uselessly. It’s all too late.