by Nicci French
‘All right, everyone,’ said Frieda. ‘Say what you’ve got to say.’
Josef looked puzzled. ‘Is nothing.’
Frieda stared accusingly at Reuben.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘the point of an evening like this is that you can be with friends and eat good food, or at least some kind of food, and you don’t have to be hassled by people asking how you are.’
‘Which suits me.’
‘But this is ridiculous.’
‘Reuben …’
‘Hold on.’ He gulped his wine, as if he was taking on fuel. ‘Let me list just some of it. This is a group of your friends, by the way. First, you’ve told us that when you were younger, you were the victim of a serious sexual assault.’
‘I don’t like the word “victim”.’
‘I’m sorry about that. And, also, you never even talked about this to your own therapist, i.e. me. There’s also …’ Reuben remembered himself. ‘Well, other things.’
‘What other things?’ Sasha asked.
‘I can tell you now,’ said Frieda. ‘Since she’s dead.’ And she told them about Becky.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Sasha.
‘And now,’ Reuben continued, ‘you’ve suddenly broken off with a man who was devoted to you. Have I left anything out?’
‘My mother’s dying. Josef might have told you something about it. She’s been diagnosed with a high-grade inoperable glioma, which is as bad as it sounds, and probably has no more than a few months to live. But it’s all right because our relationship broke down years ago. So there you are, you have all the information.’
There was a brief silence.
‘It sounds worse than it is.’
‘That can’t be true,’ said Sasha.
‘Well, actually, it is true. A year and a bit ago, I was not in a good place. You all rallied round and I was, am, grateful. Now I’m feeling strong. Everything you say – about the rape, about Becky’s death, about Sandy, about my mother dying – is true. But it doesn’t have power over me.’ She took a large mouthful of red wine. ‘I feel I have power over it. That I am at last in control of something that I should have confronted years ago.’
Now Frieda looked at Josef. ‘So what do you say about this?’ For some reason, his opinion mattered the most.
‘Is your mother,’ he said. ‘That is the big thing.’
Frieda paused for thought. ‘Is it? I ran away from her and all of that years ago. And now it looks like I’ve gone back. For years I didn’t care whether or not my mother was alive and now I suppose I’m going to watch her die. I swore I’d never go back to Braxton and now I’m there. When he did that to me, all those years ago, he couldn’t get at me, not really. He must have thought he had power over me, but he didn’t. Not really, not in an important way.’
‘But you left,’ said Reuben. ‘And you never went back.’
‘Yes.’ Frieda sounded almost puzzled, as if the idea had occurred to her for the first time. ‘That’s right. I felt I had to leave and now I feel I have to go back.’ She looked at Sasha. ‘Does that make sense?’
When Sasha spoke it was mainly to Josef, as if there were something that needed explaining.
‘My first therapist was a man,’ she said. ‘He made me feel connected in a way I hadn’t felt for years. So I slept with him. That was when I met Frieda. She rescued me from that.’
A slow smile appeared on Josef’s face. ‘I hear that. You hit him with the fist.’
‘Well …’ Frieda began.
‘And go to prison.’
‘Not exactly prison. It was a police cell. And only for a few hours.’
‘The point is,’ continued Sasha, as if there’d been no interruption, ‘if Frieda says she has to do something, well, she has to do it.’
‘No hitting,’ said Josef.
At the end of the evening, Reuben wanted to call Frieda a cab but she said, as she always did, that she wanted to walk. He came out on to the pavement to say goodbye. As they hugged, Frieda couldn’t avoid the look on his face. ‘What?’ she said.
‘I understand what you said in there. But are you sure you’re not just someone running into a burning building?’
‘Someone has to run into burning buildings.’
Early the next morning, she got a text from Eva: Becky Capel funeral on Friday 11 a.m. Coming? xx
Frieda stared at it. She had a sudden flash of the memory of Maddie Capel standing in her front room just a few weeks earlier. It was so vivid that she could almost smell the perfume. Maddie wouldn’t want her at the funeral. But then she remembered Becky, her pinched and anxious face, her pleading voice, her courage.
‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘Yes, I think I must.’
Karlsson and Yvette were sitting in Commissioner Crawford’s large office, facing him across his large desk. His face was red and Yvette’s face was red as well. When Karlsson was angry he became stern, controlled and quiet; when she was angry, she was abrupt and inarticulate. Her flush had left a tidemark on her neck. Karlsson could see that she was sweating. The commissioner’s words flowed past him – performance indicators, dwindling resources, the public face of the police – but her almost palpable distress touched him. She was like a clumsy child, her own worst enemy.
‘That’s all for today,’ said the commissioner, suddenly. He’d had enough. It was nearly lunchtime. ‘Get me the list by tomorrow, Yvette.’
‘There’s something else we need to discuss,’ said Karlsson.
The commissioner looked suspicious.
‘There’s a case we need to consider reopening.’ Karlsson lifted his leather briefcase on to his lap and slid across the folder of notes he had painstakingly made. ‘It’s all in there. I think you’ll find it convincing.’
Crawford waved the folder impatiently away. ‘Give me the gist, for God’s sake. What case?’
‘The case of Dean Reeve.’
His face darkened. ‘The Dean Reeve who died?’
‘There’s reason to believe that he isn’t dead.’ He sensed Yvette shifting beside him. She knew of Frieda’s belief that Dean had not died, but had killed his identical twin, Alan, although she had not realized Karlsson had decided to believe her or that he was going to pursue it officially. He should have told her, but it was too late now.
‘What reason?’
‘It is possible,’ continued Karlsson, carefully, ‘that he faked his death and is still at large. In fact, there are several things that point to such a conclusion. The widow of his brother, Alan, believes that it was her husband who died. Also, there are question marks over the death of Beth Kersey, the arson attack on Hal Bradshaw’s house, the …’
‘My God,’ said the commissioner. ‘My God, it’s that fucking woman again.’
‘Beth Kersey?’
‘Not fucking Beth Kersey. Fucking Frieda Klein. Is she meddling again?’
‘Dr Klein has convinced me that we need to reopen the case. That we would be failing in our public duty if we did not do so. It’s all in the folder.’
‘This is a woman who assaults her own colleagues as well as innocent members of the public.’
‘No,’ said Yvette indignantly. ‘That was –’ Karlsson put a warning hand on her arm and she subsided.
‘She actually killed a young woman, allegedly in self-defence. We’ll never know the truth of that. She was even connected with burning Hal Bradshaw’s house down.’
‘She wasn’t connected in any way to that,’ said Karlsson, but Crawford only snorted. ‘She was crucial in solving the Robert Poole case and the case of those missing girls.’
Crawford impatiently waved away Karlsson’s words. ‘She may have made a certain contribution and it has been duly acknowledged. But haven’t you been paying attention? You sit here protesting about resources and in the same breath you want to reopen an investigation into a case we closed years ago. We are rightly held to account by the public and the public need to feel assured that their money is being spent responsibly. Here you a
re, taking a good indicator and turning it into a bad one.’
‘But if Dean Reeve is alive …’
‘I am not going to reopen a case that is closed. Now go – and take your ridiculous file with you.’
When Frieda arrived at the church, the mourners had gone inside. There was just a line of black cars along the high street. A group of men in dark suits were clustered by one of the vehicles. Frieda heard the sound of laughter. Two of them were smoking. As she walked inside, an usher handed her a card.
‘Are you family?’ the man asked.
Frieda just shook her head and edged along the row of pews right at the rear, on her own. She felt as if she was there and not there, observing without being seen, a kind of ghost returning to the scene of … well, what? She looked down at the card. Hymns, poems, pieces of music. Becky was too young to have arranged her own funeral. These would have been chosen by others. What Becky would have liked. Would have: the tense of the dead. There were good funerals, funerals that were the acknowledgement of a life fully lived, but not this one. The death of a teenage girl.
As a vantage point, her position was not particularly helpful. One reason Frieda had come was to see who else was there. What she could mainly see was the back of people’s heads. Little bald patches, glossy young hair, lots and lots of hats, rippling as if in a breeze. Suddenly there was organ music that seemed to come from every direction and the congregation stood up. She sensed a movement to the side of her and, with a shock, she saw that it was the coffin being carried down the aisle. The actuality of it, the presence of it, the sheer thingness of it, hit Frieda like a punch: the honey-coloured wood of the coffin and what she knew was inside, the frail dead body.
As the coffin moved to the front on the shoulders of the six death-suited men, she heard something else, beneath the organ music. At first she wasn’t sure what it was but then it became clear. It was crying, but it wasn’t the normal, English crying of discreet gulping sobs. Frieda now saw and heard that the church was full of young girls, rows and rows of them. They must have been Becky’s school companions, and they were crying in a chorus that was like nothing she had ever heard before. It was more like the sea or the wind than something human and it didn’t stop. It seemed to feed on itself. The music ceased and a priest at the front coughed and called for silence but the swirling noise continued. A hymn was announced and sung but the crying was sustained throughout and afterwards, while the service continued. It wasn’t moving exactly. Frieda kept thinking that all of these howling girls couldn’t have been Becky’s friends, and that they were drowning the authentic grief of the real friends and family. For some of the girls it proved too much and from time to time one or two of them, faces streaked with running black mascara, were led out. The ceremony passed in a haze. ‘Abide With Me’, ‘Jerusalem’ and the Lord’s Prayer. Her father, a solid man with a tanned face, read out some memories of Becky, her love of life, her sense of humour, her dreams. It sounded like a teenage girl downloaded off the Internet. An uncle read a poem, but Frieda couldn’t really make it out. She just saw his shaking hands and his red, damp eyes.
And then it was over. The coffin was carried out for a private cremation later, the family filed after it, then the congregation stood up and turned to make their way out as well. Frieda started to recognize people. There was Eva, in a battered straw hat, who smiled and waved at her. Her expression turned to shock and sombre distress as she remembered where she was. There was Lewis, in a faded blue jacket and open-necked shirt. He looked as if he was on his way to the pub. He whispered to someone and Frieda saw it was a teenager and that he looked like Lewis. In fact, he didn’t just look like Lewis, he looked more like the Lewis she had known and once even loved than the real Lewis did. Beside his son, the father now seemed a faded carbon copy of himself.
And there were Vanessa and Ewan Shaw, both of them strained in formal clothes that were slightly too small for them. Each had an arm round a loudly sobbing daughter.
Frieda had hoped that she could slip away through a side door, but this church didn’t seem to have one. She joined the last of the group, who were queuing to get outside. As she emerged from the church she saw that the queue led past Becky’s father and then, a few rigid inches from him, Maddie Capel and an old woman, who was clearly Maddie’s mother. There was no escaping it. When Frieda found herself opposite Maddie, she gave a helpless shrug and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Maddie’s eyes narrowed slightly into what was almost a smile. She leaned towards Frieda, as if they were in a noisy, crowded room and there was a risk of not being heard. ‘How dare you?’ she hissed. ‘How dare you?’
‘I had to come.’
‘You’re not welcome here. You should never have come.’
‘You brought me.’
‘It’s OK, Maddie.’
Frieda recognized the soft voice before she turned and saw Greg Hollesley. ‘I’m just going,’ she said.
‘That’s best, under the circumstances.’ Greg stepped forward, took Maddie in his arms, and she pressed her face against his lovely jacket. He stroked her hair and murmured something into her ear. She lifted her head and he pushed her hair back and smiled at her. Smiled at her the way a lover does, thought Frieda, feeling suddenly queasy.
Frieda didn’t follow the other mourners. There was a reception in the church hall, but she couldn’t possibly go there. Instead she turned into the graveyard that surrounded the old church. She felt she needed to calm herself after her encounter with Maddie. She wandered along a row of small graves that she remembered from her childhood. This section was devoted to sailors who had been stationed on the nearby coast. Most of them were from just three or four ships that had been sunk in 1941 or 1942. Once, the sailors had been a few years older than her; now they were twenty years younger. She was looking at their ages, twenty, twenty-two, nineteen, eighteen, when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Frieda,’ it said. ‘Frieda Klein.’
She turned and was confronted by a tall man of about her own age. He had curly grey-blond hair, heavy-framed glasses, and wore a dark suit that almost smelt of understated money.
‘Hello, Chas.’
‘Someone told me you’d come back, but I didn’t believe it. And now here you are.’
‘Here I am.’
‘People are wondering why. Which means that we should talk.’
25
They drove to Chas’s house in Chas’s car, which purred expensively along the Suffolk lanes and smelt of leather and money. She thought of Josef’s old van with its rattling windows and wheezing engine and, for a moment, let the old homesickness for her London life fill her. Then she pushed it aside and glanced across at Chas, who looked like his car.
His house was on the seafront. It was a grand, red-brick, symmetrical Georgian building, with windows reaching almost to the floor, and an imposing porch. He led Frieda through the echoing hall and into the huge kitchen. Through the double doors, she could see a garden whose wrought-iron gate at the far end led on to the shingle beach. It was covered with yards of decking and copper bowls full of shrubs, and to one side was a built-in barbecue, an elaborate affair that could have fed thirty guests. Frieda took a seat. On the other side of the window was an abstract bronze sculpture that looked, she thought, like a vagina: was that its point? Beyond the wall and the gate lay the sea, which today was flat and grey, fading into the flat grey sky
‘The house was a wreck when we bought it. Stuck in the fifties. We gutted it and started from scratch.’
He waited for Frieda to say how beautiful it now was. She said nothing. He offered her wine but she asked for a glass of water. He put it in front of her, then took off his suit jacket and hung it on his chair, carefully smoothing out creases. His shirt was pale blue and beautifully ironed.
‘I’m sorry you can’t meet my wife. She works part-time for an events company down the coast. Keeping her hand in.’ He spoke of it with amusement, as if it were her hobby. ‘And, of course, my
kids are at school.’
‘How many do you have?’
‘Three. And you?’
‘None.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
He raised his eyebrows so they appeared above the thick frames of his glasses. His eyes were still that strange pale blue, with tiny pupils. Then he said, ‘So, you’re back.’
She was getting tired of people saying that to her. ‘For the time being.’
There was a shimmer of hostility in the air. She was sure that Chas could feel it too. It had always been there and time hadn’t changed it. Chas liked power over people. As she sat in his spectacular kitchen, she found herself wondering yet again why, as a teenager, she had spent so much of her time with a group of people very few of whom she had actually liked. Chas she had disliked and had resisted. However hard he had tried to win her over through flattery, complicity, exclusion, derision, she had been unmoving, and he had never forgiven her for that.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Various reasons. My mother’s dying.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, in his uninflected voice, with no hint of sincerity in it. ‘What are the other various reasons?’
‘I’ve been thinking about the past.’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Who from?’
‘You forget how quickly word gets around in Braxton.’
‘This isn’t Braxton.’
‘It isn’t London.’
‘Why did you stay here?’
‘Not everyone needs to run away.’
His voice was so neutral that it took Frieda a few seconds to understand he was insulting her. She was oddly cheered by his rudeness: it made her job much easier.