by Nicci French
‘He’s a leading authority,’ said Karlsson.
‘She was just trying to answer the question.’
‘Then why didn’t she answer it more clearly?’ said Karlsson.
‘She doesn’t see the world the way we do. But she did her best.’ Frieda led them along the front of the house to where a walkway passed along the side. It was blocked off at the far end. ‘Drake’s Alley,’ she announced.
‘And?’ said Karlsson.
‘Michelle Doyce collects things,’ she said, ‘brings them back to her flat and arranges them.’
‘Are you saying she collected a dead body?’
‘I think that’s what she told us.’
There was a long silence while Karlsson thought hard.
‘You think Michelle Doyce found a dead body here and carried it back to her flat?’
‘She wouldn’t need to carry it,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s – what? – fifteen, twenty feet from here to her front door. And it was an emergency. She must have thought she was helping him.’
Karlsson nodded slowly. His face wore a look of concentration. And almost, Frieda thought, a kind of rueful amusement.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good. Stand back now. This might be a crime scene. I don’t think we should blunder in.’
‘What about your commissioner?’
‘I’ll inform him,’ said Karlsson. ‘In due course.’
The three of them stood and gazed into the alley. It was a muddy, gravelly path, littered with pieces of paper and shopping bags; used needles were strewn around. A bin bag had been dumped in the far corner.
‘Bradshaw might still be right,’ said Frieda. ‘Michelle might have been talking about men and women. You know, boats and rivers.’
‘Someone needs to go through all that stuff,’ said Karlsson, as if she hadn’t spoken. He took out his phone. ‘Fortunately there are people who do this for us.’
In February, the days are still short. She knew it was February, and she even knew the date because she had made herself a calendar. She had been good at art at school; it had been her favourite subject. Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could make herself remember the feeling, when she was very little, of dipping the thick brush into the pot of paint, then running it across the blank page, seeing the bright, steady line following it.
The pictures in this calendar were of trees. A tree for each month. When she was a girl, she had had a sketch pad, which she kept in the top drawer of her desk. In it, she had made a painting of each of the trees in her garden: ash, oak, beech, hornbeam, false acacia; apple tree and plum tree and walnut tree. She had spent hours shading in the trunks, trying to get the leaves right. She never painted towns, houses, people – all those eyes staring at you, faces peering out of windows when you didn’t know you were being looked at. Strangers behind you, or in corners, in shadows. She preferred empty landscapes. She liked the desert and the sea and wide lakes.
He had brought her the paper, several pencils and coloured crayons. He hadn’t brought a sharpener, though, so she’d had to use the knife she pared potatoes with. There was a page for the tree, and a page that she divided into a grid for all the days. Thirty days have September, April, June and November … It had taken ages, but she had time. That was one thing she did have, while she was waiting. She had sat at the little table and, instead of a ruler, she had used a book about gardening that he had left behind on one of his visits. She couldn’t write down the days that each date fell on – that would have been too complicated and, anyway, she had made the calendar in September and now it was the following year. 2011: February 2011.
In each square she wrote down what she had done during the day. It wouldn’t give anything away:, she never put down things that were important. She wrote: ‘20 press-ups’, ‘2 cups of tea’, or ‘bad migraine’, things like that. She had run out of migraine tablets, but he would bring them when he came. She only put a small star in the top right-hand corner of each square on the days that he was with her. That was how she knew that it was three weeks and three days since he had been there. He had never been away that long, not even when he was on a mission.
The tree for February was a beech, although few except her would recognize that because its branches were bare. She liked the smooth grey bark of a beech tree and the fluted column of its trunk. At the trunk’s fork, she had put in the tiny initials of her name and his. Nobody would ever see it, but she knew it was there – like a lover’s carving. She did it with each tree, in a different place. It was a secret code. She hadn’t even told him because perhaps he wouldn’t like it, but after this was over, she would tell him and he would wrap his arm around her shoulders and kiss her on the top of her head or on the side of her jaw just beneath her ear and tell her how proud he was of her and of what she had endured for his sake. He needed her. Nobody had ever needed her before. It was because of this that she had given up everything: her home, her family, her comfort, her safety, herself.
She put her face to the window and looked out at the grey sky that was darkening towards night. Days were short and nights were long, and it was cold and she wanted him to come.
Thirteen
At just past seven on the following morning, Frieda was standing at the door of a well-lit basement room in the police station. It was windowless and cold and there was even an underground smell, a tinge of decay and dirt. It was from the detritus in the alley that had been laid out on the surfaces with evident care, each item in its own space.
‘You wanted to see it,’ said Karlsson.
‘Is there anything?’
‘Judge for yourself.’ He entered the room and Frieda followed him. ‘Obviously we were looking for things like traces of human blood, bodily fluid, but even if there had been anything like that, the rain and melted snow would have washed it all away. If the body had been in that alley, it would have been about two weeks ago. Of course, it would have been nice to find his missing finger.’
‘There was nothing else?’
‘What? Like a wallet full of cards, or a set of keys with an address tag on them? No. We have a list of items.’ He waved a sheet. ‘The boys were very diligent. They even sorted things into categories.’ He glanced down at the paper. ‘Things like tinfoil cartons containing the remains of sweet and sour chicken, that kind of thing. Here. A souvenir for you. They’ll start putting it in bin bags at nine – all that effort just to repackage rubbish.’
Frieda glanced at the list: remains of one dead cat minus its tail, forty-eight syringes, two dirty nappies, seven condoms … She looked around the room, oddly compelled by what was clearly a forensic examination of everyday litter. She turned to Karlsson. ‘Is that it, then?’
‘As far as Crawford is concerned, the case is closed. I’m now investigating a nasty case of domestic abuse,’ Karlsson said, by way of answer. ‘Sixty-three stitches in the poor woman’s face from being repeatedly hit with a broken bottle, four fractured ribs and a badly bruised kidney. It’s the third time she’s been injured in the last eighteen months, and each time so far she’s withdrawn the complaint and gone back to her charming husband. I’m trying to persuade her to press charges this time.’
‘I don’t want to hold you up any more. Maybe you can just leave me here for a few minutes to look around.’
‘So you can find something we’ve missed?’
‘Now that I’m here.’
‘Be my guest. Get them to buzz me from Reception when you’re done.’
Karlsson left and Frieda closed the door. She took off her coat and laid it with her scarf and shoulder bag on a metal chair but kept her gloves on. The first category was the largest: rotten food. There were chicken bones with shreds of flesh hanging off them, apple cores, the remains of bread rolls with the toothmarks still visible in some, foil containers full of different kinds of unspeakable greasy gloop, a small heap of rotten pulpy tomatoes, a few knobs of chocolate, lots of flabby grey chips smeared with tomato, pieces of what Frieda took to be battered fish, fragm
ents of pies in different states of decay. She looked at them all swiftly and moved on to the next category, which was packaging: crisps packets, cigarette packets, sweet wrappers, old plastic bags, beer cans, Coke cans, cider cans, empty vodka and wine bottles, polystyrene cups. Then came clothing: one child’s flip-flop, two trainers with their soles peeled back, a woman’s once-white shirt from M&S missing an entire sleeve, a woollen scarf covered with what smelt like dog shit, a greying bra (size 36B), men’s running socks with balding heels.
Frieda moved on: nappies and condoms; syringes; dead tailless cat; unidentifiable very dead rodent with innards spilling onto the counter; newspapers and magazines, dating back as far as 23 January; flyers for various gigs and takeaways; fragments of broken pottery, including one nearly complete bowl with an Indian-tree pattern on it that reminded Frieda of her grandmother; batteries; the rusting casing of a mobile phone and three plastic lighters; coins in mostly one- and two-penny denominations, though there were a few euros as well.
The final space on the surface had been reserved for all that couldn’t be categorized: a small, dusty heap of cigarette stubs, matches, tiny scraps of paper and cardboard, hair grips, metal tabs from cans.
Frieda sighed. She put on her coat and scarf and slung her bag over her shoulder. But she didn’t leave at once. She stood in the middle of the room, looking from one section to the next, frowning. Then she walked over to the flyers and picked through them again. She extracted one and, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she left the room, shutting the door behind her.
‘Is that it?’ said Karlsson. He was sitting behind a desk piled high with paper. On the shelf behind him Frieda saw the photographs of his two little children, a flaxen-haired girl with a cleft in her chin, like his, and an older boy with big, anxious eyes. She had met them once, when she had visited his flat in Highbury, but couldn’t remember their names.
‘It’s not local.’ Frieda pushed the torn, crumpled, grubby flyer under Karlsson’s nose. ‘All the others were from nearby. This one’s got a Brixton area code. Look.’
‘And?’
‘So why was it there?’
Karlsson leaned back, his hands behind his head. ‘Amazing how people get about these days,’ he said companionably. ‘Look at me. I travelled all the way in to work from Highbury and this evening I’m actually going to visit someone in Kensal Rise. That’s nothing compared to Yvette. She comes in from Harrow.’
‘This is from a little alleyway. It’s not a place for passers-by.’
‘There were people buying drugs in the house. People shooting up in the alleyway.’
‘With receipts?’
‘Even heroin addicts buy things.’
‘Have you noticed the writing on the back?’
Karlsson turned it over and smoothed out the paper. ‘“String”,’ he read out loud. ‘“Straw. Cord. Stone.”’
‘Do you make anything of it?’
‘I presume it’s a shopping list. Maybe whoever wrote it is a DIY enthusiast. There are a lot around nowadays. If I had to guess, judging from my own experiences last year, I’d say that someone’s planning to grow strawberries in their garden.’
‘What about the letters?’
‘C, SB, WL. I don’t know, Frieda. You tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Let’s see, Cabbage, Salted Butter, Waxed Lemon. Or Cointreau, sesame bagels and washing liquid. Fun as this is, I don’t really have the time.’
‘I can see that.’
Karlsson pushed the flyer back at her. ‘Listen, I know I persuaded you to get involved. I know you’ve put a lot into this. I know you think we’re wrong about Michelle Doyce. I know Hal Bradshaw is a wanker and his theories are hot air dressed up in pompous language. What’s more, I even know it’s possible, even likely, that Michelle Doyce wasn’t the actual murderer. But I’ve got a crime nobody gives a toss about, I’ve got a corpse with no name, I’ve got a single witness who makes no sense and is in a psychiatric hospital where she belongs. I’ve got a management consultant with pointy shoes looking over my shoulder, and I’ve got a commissioner who’s already moved on. What would you do?’
Frieda held up the flyer. ‘Follow this up.’
‘Sorry.’
Frieda was about to leave when she thought of something. ‘Is there a photo of the body?’ she said. ‘Just the face.’
‘Of course,’ said Karlsson, suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘Could I have a copy?’
‘You can’t show it to anyone, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s not in a good way.’
‘Even so,’ said Frieda.
‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘But it had better not end up on your Facebook page.’
‘Can I get it on my way out?’
‘As long as you promise to go.’
As she left, she remembered his children’s names. Mikey and Bella, that was it.
Fourteen
Frieda sat down at her desk. She opened her drawing pad and stroked the grainy page gently, the way she always did, almost as a superstition. She took the photograph out of its buff envelope and laid it on the desk. The creamy eyes of the dead man stared up at her. Except they weren’t staring up at her. When you look at a face, you concentrate on the eyes because you feel you’re looking in at a person who can look back at you. But these eyes were just a clouded vacancy. The whole head was puffy and swollen. The flesh had cracked on the temple and in the right cheek.
She picked up a soft lead pencil. She never drew faces or figures, only objects: bridges, bricks, iron railings, old doorways, broken pottery and lopsided chimneys. And normally, when making a drawing, she would be looking at the details, the flaws, the cracks, the discolorations. This time she wanted to see beneath them. What had he been like before? She started with what hadn’t changed: the eyebrows, the hair. The cheekbones were prominent, even with all the swelling and the decay. He had a firm chin. The lips were thin, the ears flat against the skull. What about the nose? She reduced it slightly. She could only guess the contours of the face and jaw line. Narrower but not gaunt, she decided. The hair was dark brown, so she made the eyes dark as well. She sat back and looked at it from a distance. It was a face, certainly. Was it the face? She folded it in half and put it in her shoulder bag.
In the computer forensics lab in the City, Yvette Long was standing at the shoulder of a young man with straggly hair and a ginger moustache. He was a forensic anthropologist and he was seated at a computer, pressing buttons and typing in information from a sheet of paper at his side. All the while, he hummed a tune, over and over again, that she supposed was from an opera, but she didn’t know anything about opera.
‘I’m using 3-D graphics for this,’ he said, breaking off mid-hum.
Yvette nodded. She knew – he told her every time she came down here.
‘TLC/Tk scripting,’ he added. ‘Very smart stuff.’
‘Mm,’ said Yvette. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew that a face was growing on the screen in front of them on the interlocking mesh of lines.
‘You understand it’s quite a generic image we’re producing. You could have a three-dimensional reconstruction made up from this.’
‘I don’t think we’ll be needing that.’
The face was quite thin, with a straight nose and ears that lay flat against the head. A high forehead. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A prominent Adam’s apple.
Although they couldn’t know it, it wasn’t so different from the face that Frieda had drawn, though the eyes were more vacant and the mouth less curved.
‘That’ll do,’ said Yvette. ‘That’ll do nicely.’
By eight forty, Frieda was in her consulting room. She had twenty minutes before her first patient, so she made herself a cup of tea and stood by the window that looked out on to the vast construction site. When she had first come there, that space had been a row of Victorian houses. She had seen families moved out, windows and doors boarded up. Then the squatters had arrived and t
hey, too, had been ejected. A fence had been put up round the area, with large signs warning the public to keep clear. Bulldozers and cranes had appeared; a wrecking ball had swung through the rooftops and walls, and whole houses had toppled as if made from matchsticks. Men in hard hats had drunk their tea on top of the rubble; Portakabins had been erected. A year ago, this site had been cleared of every last standing stone and had become an empty wasteland, waiting for the brand new development to begin. It was still waiting. There was one lonely crane still parked in the centre, and a Portakabin remained, though its windows were smashed, but all the diggers had gone, the workers had gone. The plan had been put on hold, like so many plans in this city, at this time. And in the meantime, kids had found their way in through gaps in the fence to reclaim the area; they stood about in gaggles in the evening, smoking cigarettes or drinking, and sometimes in the morning they would gather there before school.
Today eight or nine of them were playing football. Frieda watched them as they tore over the muddy, churned-up ground, yelling to each other to pass. Their school clothes were beginning to look the worse for wear. Perhaps nothing would ever get built here, she thought. Perhaps it would turn back to a kind of natural wilderness in the centre of the urban density where children could play, gangs could fight each other, and homeless people could retreat from shop fronts.
She heard footsteps outside. Putting down her mug, she stood for a while, clearing her thoughts and readying herself, then went towards her door and opened it into the waiting area. Joe Franklin sat on the sofa, his head tipped to one side as if he was listening to some sound only he could hear. Frieda had a chance to examine him before he noticed she was there: she had been seeing Joe for two and a half years now, twice a week if he managed to turn up, which he frequently didn’t. Today he was early, which was a good sign, and she saw that he was properly dressed: his buttons matched up, his shoelaces were tied, his jeans were held up with a belt, not sliding off his wasted frame, his hair was quite clean. She saw that his fingernails weren’t dirty and that he had shaved recently. What was more, as he turned towards her, his eyes were clear and he stood up in one smooth gesture, no longer toppling upwards like an old drunk. There were weeks and months when he could barely make it through the day, when all his efforts were a blind stumble through a slow-motion nightmare, and then there were times like this, when he emerged from the shadows.