by Nicci French
Michelle Doyce opened her eyes. The light dazzled her so much that she could see nothing except blue and yellow dots popping her eyes. Slowly a face took shape. She heard the words and felt the voice’s fingers, cool and slow on the side of her face. She knew the face. The woman with the dark eyes and clear voice.
‘You,’ said Michelle Doyce.
‘Yes,’ said the woman, close, so she could feel her clean breath. ‘It’s me.’
Forty-seven
Karlsson took Frieda by the crook of her arm, in an unfamiliarly protective gesture.
‘They’ve had their rights read to them and they both have legal representation with them now. As you can imagine Tessa Welles is aware of her legal situation.’
‘Have you been in with them already?’
‘I was waiting for you.’
‘I came as soon as I could. I didn’t want to leave Michelle alone.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘For a woman in Hell, she’s all right. I called Jack. She knows and likes him. He’s not threatening. She finds the colour of his hair soothing. I said I’d go back later. And I’m going to call Andrew Berryman, a doctor who knows about Michelle. We’ve got to help her. She’s a suffering human being, not a medical curiosity. We can’t just leave her here in wretchedness and confusion and fear. We owe her that much at least.’
Karlsson looked at her with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I used her as bait,’ said Frieda. ‘That seems to be what I do with people I’m supposed to be caring for. She was like a worm with a hook pushed through her and I did it to her.’
‘You got the fish, didn’t you?’
‘First, do no harm,’ said Frieda.
‘What?’
‘It’s the oath that doctors are meant to swear.’
Tessa was sitting in the interview room, her hands folded on the table in front of her, looking composed, although Frieda noticed that there were shadows under her eyes and every so often she licked her lips. The man who sat beside her was in his late fifties; he had a thin, clever face; his eyes were bright and watchful.
Yvette and Karlsson sat opposite Tessa; Frieda took a seat to one side. Tessa swung her head round and stared at her; there was a very faint smile on her lips, as if she knew something that Frieda didn’t.
‘Miss Welles,’ said Karlsson, courteously. ‘You understand your rights and that everything you say is being recorded.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve been arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of Michelle Doyce last night. We shall also be questioning you in respect of the murders of Robert Poole and Janet Ferris. Is that clear?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa, in a detached tone.
‘Your brother is next door. We’ll be talking to him as well. We just wanted to hear your side of the story first.’
Tessa looked at him and said nothing.
‘All right. Perhaps you should hear our version of your story.’ Karlsson picked up a folder and leafed through it, allowing the silence to settle around them. The muscle in Tessa’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t move.
‘Robert Poole,’ said Karlsson, at last. ‘You met him in November of 2009, when he came to your office with Mary Orton, who wanted you to make a new will in his favour. You chose not to proceed. You mistrusted his motives.’
Tessa stared straight ahead, not meeting Karlsson’s gaze.
‘You were quick to recognize that,’ said Frieda. ‘It was impressive.’
‘But then you saw him again,’ continued Karlsson. ‘What happened?’
‘I’ve nothing to say,’ said Tessa.
‘It won’t matter.’ Karlsson turned to Frieda. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘We’re not here to listen to speculation,’ said the solicitor. ‘If you have questions to put to Miss Welles, then go ahead.’
‘I’m inviting Dr Klein to put a scenario to your client. That’s a kind of question. She can then confirm or deny it.’ He looked at Frieda, who had been thinking hard.
She pulled a chair over from the wall and sat beside Karlsson, facing Tessa. Now Tessa stared at Frieda. For a moment she thought of the children’s game where you had to stare at each other and try not to laugh.
‘I never met Robert Poole,’ Frieda said. ‘I’ve never even seen a photograph of him. At least, not when he was alive. But I’ve met so many people he got involved with that I almost feel I knew him. When you refused to execute the will, most people would have felt humiliated or exposed but he would have been intrigued by you. He was used to having power over people, but you’d escaped him. You were a challenge. So he got back in touch. What did he say? Perhaps he wanted to explain the situation to you, show you it wasn’t the way you thought.
‘You were intrigued as well, and a bit amused. There was something charming about the way he just wouldn’t give up. So you began an affair with him out of a certain curiosity, just to see how he worked.’
A contemptuous smile formed on Tessa’s face. ‘That pornographic fantasy says more about you than it does about me,’ she said.
‘And then he fell for you. He saw you as a kindred spirit. You encouraged him, and he told you about Mary Orton, Jasmine Shreeve, Aisling and Frank Wyatt.’
‘And Janet Ferris,’ said Yvette harshly.
‘Leave that for a moment,’ said Frieda. When she resumed, it was almost as if she were talking to herself, puzzling something out. ‘There was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Jasmine Shreeve, Mary Orton, the Wyatts, his victims. They were obviously hiding things, in their different ways, and they felt guilty and ashamed and upset. They contradicted themselves. That’s what people do. They’re not coherent. Things don’t add up. But you weren’t like that. Your relationship with Poole was completely uncomplicated. You were the only person he never got to. It was just about the money.’
She glanced at Karlsson, who nodded.
‘Once you discovered how much money he had,’ Karlsson said, ‘and how he’d got it, the idea was simple. The best person to steal money from is someone who’s stolen the money himself because he can’t go to the police. Did he tell you about the money to try and impress you? So you and your brother decided to help yourself. Harry knew about bank transfers and setting up fake accounts. Con the conman.’
‘No,’ said Frieda.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It wasn’t just stealing stolen money,’ she said. ‘It was even better than that. When did you discover that he was using a stolen identity? Did he boast about it to you? Or did Harry discover when he checked up on him?’ Tessa just stared at her, but didn’t speak. ‘Because that’s even better,’ Frieda continued. ‘Not just stolen money that won’t be reported to the police, but stolen from a non-existent person, someone with no history.’
‘It wasn’t me …’ Tessa began, but stopped.
‘Was it Harry’s idea?’ said Frieda. ‘It doesn’t matter. You know, I’ve tried not to think about the last few minutes of Robert Poole’s life. You probably imagined that a threat would be enough, like in the old days when you could get a confession just by showing the instruments of torture.’ Suddenly, she felt as if she were alone with Tessa and her voice became quiet. ‘What was it? A bolt cutter? A pair of secateurs? But he didn’t believe you, did he? He didn’t think you, Tessa Welles, would really go through with it. So you crammed a rag of some kind into his mouth and then you did it. It’s hard to cut off a finger, the bone and the tendon and the gristle, but you, or Harry, did it and he told you what you wanted to know to get at the money. Then you strangled him. But that was easy after the finger.
‘But this wasn’t an improvisation. It wasn’t a Plan B. You knew about the Wyatts. You knew Poole had helped himself to her necklace. You knew where you were going to dump the body in order to frame Frank Wyatt.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the solicitor. ‘Is there a question somewhere in this?’
‘It’s all a question,’ said Karlsson. ‘Will Tes
sa Welles admit to it?’
The solicitor looked at Tessa, who shook her head.
‘Robert Poole’s flat was interesting,’ continued Frieda. ‘I don’t mean your painting, which was hanging in Janet Ferris’s kitchen. We know about that. I mean that you weren’t clever enough about the evidence in his flat.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Karlsson, twisting his head to look at her. ‘There wasn’t any.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘They left everything relating to his victims, but there was no reference to Tessa at all. Pages had been torn out of Poole’s notebooks but the names of the victims were left there. Which suggested that the pages had been torn out by someone else.’
‘What it suggested to you is not evidence,’ said Tessa’s solicitor.
‘You killed Robert Poole,’ said Karlsson. ‘You killed Janet Ferris.’
‘The coroner’s verdict was suicide.’
‘You killed Janet Ferris,’ repeated Karlsson. ‘And you tried to kill Michelle Doyce because you thought she knew something.’
There was a faint flicker in Tessa’s face.
‘She didn’t.’ Frieda leaned forward once more. ‘Michelle Doyce was no threat to you. She had nothing to tell me; I just let you and Harry believe that, God forgive me.’
‘That’s enough for now,’ said her solicitor, standing up.
‘You would have killed her, just in case,’ Frieda continued quietly. ‘You and your brother. How does it feel?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How does it feel to find out what you’re capable of?’
‘Enough. My client has nothing further to say.’
‘You’re going to have to think about that, Tessa. Over the years.’
Harry Welles was wearing a thick grey pullover and black jeans. It was the first time that Frieda had seen him casually dressed: he had always been in a suit or a smart jacket, carefully groomed and impeccable. She considered him: many people would think him an attractive man. He had the self-conscious charm of one who is confident of getting his own way. Olivia positively cooed when she talked of him.
She took her seat in the corner and met his eyes. His solicitor was a woman, young, trim and pretty, who gestured with her hands whenever she spoke, and sometimes tapped her pink-tipped fingers on the table.
He had no comment about the torture of Robert Poole, no comment about his murder, nothing to say about the planted evidence and the dumping of the body, silence over Janet Ferris’s death.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Karlsson. ‘You were caught in the act of attempting to murder Michelle Doyce. It’s cut and dried. You’re going down, you and your sister. You’ve got nothing to lose. Why not tell us? It’s your last option.’
‘As you say,’ replied Harry, pleasantly, ‘you don’t get it.’
‘You think nobody is quite as clever as you,’ said Frieda. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘I was wondering when you’d speak.’
‘You and Tessa think that you’re superior to everyone else and it makes you feel impregnable.’
‘It takes one to know one.’
‘And contemptuous.’
‘I wasn’t contemptuous of you, was I? On our little dates?’ He raised his eyebrows at her.
‘Our dates?’ Frieda gazed at him speculatively. ‘Do you want to know what I thought about them? I’ve been on dates with other men, and sometimes they were interesting, and sometimes they were embarrassing, and sometimes they were charged with possibility. With our dates, there wasn’t anything. It was like a performance. There was nothing behind the words.’
‘Fuck you. You won’t be so calm when everything comes out. You like your privacy, but I know things, Frieda. You’ll be surprised by the things I know.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I know about your family, your father, your past.’
Karlsson stood up, with a violence that sent his chair skidding across the floor. ‘As your solicitor should have said, this interview is over.’
He turned off the tape recorder, then went to the door and held it open for Frieda. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then looked at Harry for the last time.
‘You called him Bob,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You asked about Bob Poole when we were in the pub. That was stupid of you, don’t you think? After that I knew for certain. One word, Harry. One syllable.’
Then she left the room, her chin raised.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Karlsson.
‘I’m fine.’
‘That stuff he said about –’
‘I said, I’m fine. It’s all right. It’s over.’
‘You’re sure.’
‘But there’s something else.’
‘Go on.’
‘Dean Reeve. Hear me out. I know he’s alive. I think I sense him sometimes. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m in danger.’
She didn’t go straight back to the hospital but took the bus to Belsize Park and walked towards the Heath. After a long winter’s corridor of darkness and unyielding cold, spring was arriving – in the new warmth of the air, in the daffodils that were everywhere. The sticky buds were just beginning to unfurl on the horse-chestnut trees. After the ice and the darkness, balmy days would arrive, long evenings and soft mornings.
She rang the bell, waited, rang again.
‘What?’ said the voice on the intercom, sounding cross.
‘Dr Berryman? It’s Frieda Klein.’
‘It’s Sunday. Don’t you ever bother to ring ahead?’
‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’
‘You are talking to me.’
‘Not like this. Face to face.’
There was an exaggerated sigh, and then he buzzed her up. She followed the stairs to the top flat, where he was waiting by the open door. ‘I was playing the piano,’ he said.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not much progress.’
‘I’ve come about Michelle Doyce.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any developments?’
‘Yes. You and I are going to make sure she is put in a more appropriate institution, where she is properly cared for and can be surrounded by the things she loves.’
‘We are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Not because she is a medical curiosity but because she’s in distress and she is our responsibility.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Frieda nodded at him. ‘It was you who gave her the teddy, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Pink, with a heart stitched on to its chest.’
‘The shop had a lousy selection.’
‘Don’t worry – I won’t tell anyone. You don’t know how much trouble it caused,’ said Frieda. ‘But it was a nice thing to do. And it helped, in a way.’
As she walked down the stairs, she heard the sound of badly played Chopin behind her.
Forty-eight
‘Did you see the news today?’ Yvette asked Munster. ‘Money for the police is being cut by twenty-five per cent. How the hell are we going to manage that? I’ll probably be working at McDonald’s in six months. If I’m lucky.’
‘It’s about efficiency,’ said Munster. ‘Cutting bureaucracy. Frontline services won’t be affected.’
‘Crap,’ said Yvette. ‘The bureaucracy is me, sitting here trying to prepare a file for the CPS. How’s that going to be cut? That’s what that idiot Jake Newton was here for, wasn’t it? Looking for who to cut. Where is he, by the way?’
‘I suppose he’s writing his report, just as we’re writing ours. Speaking of which, we’ve got to explain these pictures for our report.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Yvette. ‘I was hoping someone else would deal with them. It’s like, I don’t know, like an old sweater. A bit of wool comes loose and you think you’ve sorted it but then something’s gone wrong with the
sleeve. What I can’t understand is that you’ve killed someone, you’ve got the body dangling in front of you and you start rearranging the pictures. And moving furniture around. Is this just some crazy theory of Frieda Klein’s? Couldn’t they have just moved two of the pictures? Take the big one to cover the patch, move the furniture. Replace the smallest picture with the one they’d brought. Wouldn’t that be simpler?’
‘There’s a reason why not. I just can’t think of it.’
Karlsson came into the room, followed by Frieda.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Karlsson.
‘We were talking about the pictures,’ said Yvette. ‘For the report. We can’t get it straight in our heads.’
‘Frieda?’ Karlsson turned to her and waited.
Frieda considered for a moment. Yvette thought she seemed tired, dark around her eyes.
‘OK,’ she began. ‘Six pictures of different sizes. Poole took the third smallest, stowed it under his bed and replaced it with the picture he’d taken from Tessa Welles, the one he gave to Janet Ferris and that she then put back.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘Poor thing. Sometimes I think it’s people’s attempt to do the right thing that destroys them. Anyway, imagine the scene. Tessa and Harry Welles have killed her. The picture they have brought is too small for the space, but it will fit where the second smallest picture hung. The second smallest picture will fit where the smallest picture hung. There is still a gap, which they cover with the next biggest picture, so they move each picture to cover the smaller patch. This leaves them with one large blank patch, which they cover by moving the dresser, and one little painting, which they take away with Tessa’s.’
‘Wasn’t there an easier way?’
‘It depends how you look at it,’ said Frieda. ‘You’ve got to remember that they were in a state of extreme stress. There was a body hanging in front of them. They were having to improvise. They solved one problem at a time, and I think they managed it pretty well. There was another reason as well. By moving all the pictures, they disguised which was the important one.’
‘I think I’ll have to see it written down,’ said Munster.