by Nicci French
Forty-one
The Kerseys’ house was in Highgate, near the top of the hill. It was large and old, with gabled windows, uneven stone floors and low ceilings. From the kitchen where she sat, Frieda could see London spread out beneath her. An ancient spaniel lay curled near the fire. It twitched in its sleep and occasionally gave piteous murmurs. Frieda wondered what dogs had nightmares about.
‘Mervyn was going to be here as well, but at the last moment something came up. Well, actually, he just couldn’t face it.’ She grimaced at Frieda. ‘He’s taken this so hard. He feels it was his fault.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘Everything that happened with Beth. That’s being a parent for you, of course. Do you have children?’
‘No.’
‘You blame yourselves, of course you do. Anyway, it’s just me.’
‘Just you is fine. Thank you for seeing me. I work with Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson. I’m a doctor, not a detective.’
‘What kind of doctor?’
‘I’m trained as a psychiatrist but I work as a therapist.’
Frieda was used to the expressions that crossed people’s faces when she said this, but Lorna Kersey’s suggested something different – a flicker of anticipation, watchfulness.
‘Did your detective want you to talk to me because Beth was disturbed?’
‘Would you say your daughter was disturbed?’ Frieda asked. ‘Rather than simply unhappy and confused?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never known. I ask myself all the time. Was it because of her childhood? Were we bad parents? Did she need medical help or did she need understanding and kindness? I don’t know. I don’t know what the word means to people like you.’
‘Your daughter received treatment. Is that right?’
Lorna Kersey waved a hand in the air. ‘We were desperate. Counselling, therapy, drugs, you name it.’ She pinched the top of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, sharply, and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I hate to think of her out there, alone,’ she said. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate it. The thought of what she’ll do.’
‘Do you mean to herself?’
‘Well, yes. That too.’
‘To other people?’
‘I don’t know! I haven’t seen her for so long. I never thought she could manage on her own. I can’t imagine what she’s doing or how she is.’
‘What kind of drugs was she on?’
‘Why does that matter?’
‘What were they for? Were they anti-depressants?’
‘I can’t remember their name.’
‘But were they because she was depressed, or were they for something else?’
Lorna Kersey laid her hands flat on the table in front of her and stared at them. Then she looked up at Frieda. Her eyes seemed sore behind her round glasses. ‘She had these episodes,’ she said. ‘I’m an expert now. I’ve read the books, I’ve talked to experts. You’re not meant to say, “She’s a schizophrenic.” You say, “She had schizophrenic episodes.” That’s meant to make us feel better. Either way, they were terrifying.’
‘I know,’ said Frieda.
‘No,’ said Lorna Kersey. ‘If you don’t have a child, you can’t know.’
‘We’d like to try and help you find her.’
‘You think she may have killed him?’ whispered Beth’s mother. ‘You think my Beth may have murdered him?’
‘I’m not a detective.’
‘So what happens next?’
‘We need to find her for you.’
Forty-two
‘Are you ready for this?’ said Karlsson.
‘How do you mean?’ said Frieda.
‘I’m just trying to be encouraging. Wyatt’s got his lawyer with him. Don’t let him put you off.’
‘Put me off what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Karlsson. ‘I didn’t mean anything. Just be yourself. Remember, this is what you do, what you’re good at.’
‘What you want,’ said Frieda, ‘is for me to get Frank Wyatt to confess to killing Robert Poole.’
Karlsson held up his thumb and first finger, almost touching. ‘We’re this close to having the evidence to charge him. This close. But, yes, it would be helpful. I should warn you. I’ve just spent an hour with him. I dangled the idea of a manslaughter charge in front of him. I said he might even get a suspended sentence. But he’s not biting. So, it would be nice if you could work your magic on him.’
‘I’m interested in talking to him,’ said Frieda. ‘But I don’t want you to get your hopes up.’
‘No pressure,’ said Karlsson, as he opened the door and led her into the interview room. Frank Wyatt was sitting at a table. The jacket of his grey suit was draped over the back of his chair. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt. Beside him was a man dressed in a suit and tie. He was middle-aged, and not so much balding as thinning. His pale scalp showed through his short dark hair. As the door opened, they drew apart from each other, as if they had been caught saying something embarrassing.
‘Mr Joll,’ said Karlsson, ‘this is my colleague, Dr Klein.’ He waved Frieda towards the chair opposite the two men, then went and stood to one side, slightly in the background, so that Frieda felt he was looking over her shoulder, checking on her. As Frieda arranged herself on the chair, Karlsson stepped forward and pressed a button on the sound recorder on the table. She saw a digital counter but she couldn’t read the figures.
‘This is a resumption of the interview,’ said Karlsson, sounding slightly self-conscious. ‘We’ve now been joined by Dr Frieda Klein. Mr Wyatt, I’d like to remind you that you’re still under caution.’
He nodded at Frieda, then stepped back behind her, out of her sight. Frieda hadn’t really thought about what she was going to say. She looked across at Wyatt. His eyes flickered. He was angry and defensive. Both his hands were resting on the table, but Frieda could see that they were trembling.
‘What did you think of Robert Poole?’ she said.
He gave a sort of laugh. ‘Is that the best you can come up with? What do you think?’
‘Do you want me to answer that?’ asked Frieda. ‘Do you want me to tell you what I think?’
The lawyer leaned across. ‘I’m sorry. Mr Wyatt is here as a courtesy. He has made it clear that he is eager to co-operate but, please, if you have relevant questions, then ask them.’
‘I’ve just asked a question,’ said Frieda. ‘And then Mr Wyatt asked me one. Now, he can answer mine or I can answer his.’
Joll looked at Karlsson as if appealing to his authority to a put a stop to all this. Frieda didn’t turn round.
‘What I’m meant to say,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you found out that Robert Poole had slept with your wife and that he’d stolen your money. He’d cheated you and made a fool of you. You had to get back at him.’
There was a pause.
‘Yes?’ said Joll. ‘Is there some question at the end of this?’
Frieda continued to gaze at Wyatt. He leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Is that what you wanted me to say?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And I don’t care, really.’
‘What I want to know is why, when you started to see what was going on, you didn’t confront your wife. Why didn’t you talk to her instead of hiding your feelings away and brooding over them?’
Now Wyatt leaned forward, his head in his hands. He mumbled something.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘I couldn’t make that out.’
He looked up at her. ‘I said, it was complicated.’
‘You found out, but you couldn’t talk to your wife about it. So what did you do?’
Wyatt looked uneasily around, over Frieda’s shoulder at Karlsson, at Joll. She felt he was avoiding her gaze.
Suddenly Karlsson spoke. ‘You confronted him, didn’t you?’
Wyatt didn’t reply.
‘Well?’ Karlsson’s tone hardened.
Wy
att looked at the floor. ‘I talked to him,’ he said, in a low voice.
‘Stop this,’ Joll said. ‘I need a moment alone with my client.’
Karlsson gave a thin smile. ‘Of course.’
Outside, Karlsson broke into a grin. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘If his lawyer’s got any sense, he’s telling him to confess.’ He glanced at Frieda and frowned. ‘You should be enjoying this. You know, the thrill of the chase.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a chase to me,’ she said.
After a few minutes, they had resumed their positions. For Frieda it felt artificial now, as if they were all actors, resuming a rehearsal after a break for tea.
‘Mr Wyatt would like to explain,’ said Joll.
Wyatt coughed nervously. ‘I talked to Poole about the money.’
‘I bet you did,’ said Karlsson.
‘When I asked him about it, it was more complicated than I expected.’ Wyatt was speaking in a low, miserable tone. ‘You’ve heard about him. When he talked about the money, it sounded convincing, or sort of convincing. He talked about his business plans. We ended up having a drink. It almost felt like I was the one in the wrong.’
‘Where was this?’ asked Karlsson.
‘At our house. My wife was out. She didn’t know – didn’t know I knew.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us about the meeting before?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Wyatt. ‘It was difficult to explain.’
‘That’s true,’ said Karlsson. ‘And you haven’t managed to explain it. Frieda? Is there anything you want to say?’
‘I want to go back to my original question,’ she said. ‘What do you think of Robert Poole now?’
‘I don’t know that I can answer that,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what does it matter what I think?’
‘It does matter,’ said Frieda. ‘Some people would say that you couldn’t do anything worse to a man than what he did to you.’
‘Thank you for that,’ said Wyatt. ‘Is that what they pay you for?’
‘What interests me,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you really don’t seem all that angry with him.’
Now Wyatt became wary, uneasy, as if Frieda were laying a trap for him to walk into. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘What did you mean when you said that talking to Poole was complicated?’
‘I meant just what I said.’
Frieda left a silence before speaking and looked at Wyatt closely. ‘I never met Poole,’ she said. ‘I’ve only heard about him. But it sounds to me as if when people met him they thought he recognized them, that he knew them. And that can be uncomfortable.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I wonder,’ said Frieda, ‘whether you really feel that in some strange way you almost deserve what he did to your wife. I was going to say did to you, but that’s not what you feel, is it?’ She left another silence. ‘What I’m wondering is whether you feel that Robert Poole was looking after your wife in a way that you hadn’t been doing for a while.’
Wyatt swallowed nervously. He flushed. ‘That sounds a bit pathetic.’
‘I don’t think it’s pathetic at all,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you think it’s possible that when you learned about what Robert Poole had done, even when you learned he’d been sleeping with your wife, you didn’t feel all that angry? A man is supposed to feel angry with the man who has slept with his wife, but it wasn’t quite like that, was it? Or not only like that.’ Now Wyatt was staring at her blankly. ‘I believe that you were confused. You were humiliated, of course. Maybe you had some fantasy of revenge. But I believe you’re a thoughtful man, and mainly you thought about your marriage, about your children. Perhaps you wondered how could you have let things get that bad.’
When Wyatt spoke it was in little more than a whisper. ‘What’s your point?’
‘You’d gone to sleep in your marriage,’ said Frieda. ‘Robert Poole showed you something. Maybe he even woke you up.’
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Wyatt, slowly. ‘Everything was a lie, everything I’d believed in.’
‘Have you talked to your wife about that feeling?’
Wyatt shrugged. ‘A bit. It doesn’t make much sense to me, so it’s hard to talk about it to someone else.’
‘You should try.’
Joll coughed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m not clear about the relevance of this.’
‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘I agree. I think we can stop for the day.’
As they left the interview room, he gestured at Frieda to follow him.
‘What was that?’ he said. ‘We had him. We were on the verge of getting him to plead. What was all that? Where was the old Frieda?’
Frieda looked at him with a curious expression. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have met him?’
‘Who?’
‘Robert Poole.’
Karlsson seemed to be having trouble speaking. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. And nor should you, Frieda – because he’s dead and beyond your attempts to understand him or rescue him or change what happened.’
Chloë was waiting. Frieda noticed that she had washed her hair and put on a clean white shirt over her miniature stretchy black skirt. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and looked vulnerable and childlike. There wasn’t any sign of Olivia.
‘Tapas OK? asked Frieda.
‘I don’t eat meat any more.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘And only sustainable fish.’
‘Fine.’
‘There aren’t many of them.’
The restaurant was only a few minutes away, in Islington, and they walked there in silence. It had been raining earlier and the car headlights wavered in the long shallow puddles. Only after they’d taken their seats at a rickety wooden table by the window did Frieda speak.
‘Did you get to school today?’
‘Yeah. I said I would.’
‘Good. Was it all right?’
Chloë shrugged. Her face was slightly puffy, thought Frieda, as though she had cried a great deal. Her arms were covered by her shirt, so she couldn’t see if she’d been cutting herself again.
They ordered squid, roasted bell peppers, a Spanish omelette and a plate of spring greens. Chloë cut a tiny squid ring in half and then in half again, put it into her mouth and chewed very slowly.
‘Let’s take one thing at a time,’ said Frieda. ‘School.’
‘What about it?’
‘You did really well in your GCSEs. You’re bright. You say you want to be a doctor …’
‘No. You say that.’
‘Do I? I don’t think so.’
‘Anyway, people do. Adults. My dad. Teachers. There’s this road you’re expected to be on. You’re supposed to do your GCSEs and then your A levels and then you go to uni and then you get a proper job. I can see my whole life in front of me like a great slab of tarmac. What if I don’t want it?’
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stabbed her fork into the bright green pepper and juice spurted out. ‘I don’t know what the point of any of it is.’
‘You’ve had a hard time, Chloë. Your father left –’
‘You can use his name, you know. He’s called David and he’s your brother.’
‘OK. David.’ Even saying the name left a nasty taste in her mouth. ‘And Olivia has a new boyfriend.’
‘Guess where she is now,’ said Chloë.
‘I suppose she’s with Kieran.’
‘Wrong. Guess again.’
‘I can’t,’ said Frieda, uneasy under Chloë’s interrogation.
‘It’s that accountant or whatever he is. The one you brought round.’
‘I didn’t bring him round.’
‘I know what’s going on,’ said Chloë.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know I’m just a teenager, but even I can see that it’s really about you.’
‘I don’t even know where to start with that,’ said Fr
ieda.
‘I can see the way he looks at you. He’s using my mother as a way to impress you. What do you think of him?’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘Auntie Frieda, you’ve got a really bad habit of always answering a question with another question.’
Frieda smiled. ‘It’s lesson number one in therapist school,’ she said. ‘It’s the way of avoiding being put on the spot. So that whatever your patient says to you, you just say, “What do you mean by that?” And then you’re off the hook.’
‘But I’m not your patient. And you’re not off the hook.’
‘We were talking about your mother.’
‘All right then, let’s talk about my mother,’ said Chloë. ‘I think she doesn’t care about me.’
‘I think she cares a lot, Chloë. But, you know, she’s not just your mother, she’s a woman who feels she’s been humiliated, who’s worried about the direction of her own road, if you like, and who’s just met a new man.’
‘So? She’s still meant to be my mum. She can’t just behave like a teenager herself. That’s supposed to be me. It feels scary sometimes. Like there’s no solid ground for me, so that everything shifts under my feet.’
This was so exactly what Frieda felt about Olivia that she took a moment to answer. ‘You’re right. And maybe you and I could talk to her about it, try to explain what you’re feeling and draw up some ground rules. But give her a chance to change as well. Leave doors open. She can be good at acknowledging when she’s wrong.’
‘Why should I give her a chance when she doesn’t even notice me?’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘I don’t think it, I know it. She’s so wrapped up in her own mess, she can’t see mine. I get home and I don’t know what I’ll find. Sometimes she’s drunk. Sometimes she’s crying. Sometimes she’s hyper and wants to rush out to the shops with me to buy me ludicrously expensive clothes or something. Sometimes she’s shouting at me about Dad and what a wanker he is. Sometimes she’s in the bath and she doesn’t even wash it out after she’s used it – she leaves hair and tide marks all over it. It’s disgusting. I have to clear up after her. Sometimes she cooks and sometimes she forgets. Sometimes she wakes me up in the morning for school and other times she doesn’t. Sometimes she’s all over me, hugging me and telling me I’m her precious darling or something, and sometimes she snaps at me for no reason. Sometimes Kieran’s there – actually, it’s best when he is. He’s calm and kind and he talks to me. She doesn’t ask about my work, she doesn’t open letters from school, she forgot to go to my last parents’ evening. She couldn’t care less.’