by Nicci French
‘I know his mother was killed.’
‘She was a nice woman, with a decent husband, close family, good friends, neighbours who liked her. We thought we’d got the man who did it, all simple and straightforward. It turns out that he couldn’t have and we’re back where we started. Except that it makes even less sense.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frieda said neutrally.
‘Dr Bradshaw has a theory.’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Frieda said quickly. ‘That’s one of the perks of being pushed out.’
Karlsson looked suspicious. ‘Is there some problem with Bradshaw?’
‘Does it matter?’ Frieda didn’t say anything further, just waited.
‘You wouldn’t come to the house with me, would you? Just once? I’d like to discuss it with someone I trust.’
‘What about Yvette?’ asked Frieda, although she already knew she was going to say yes.
‘Yvette’s terrific – apart from the fact that she let you get nearly murdered, of course. She’s my trusted colleague, as well as my attack dog. But if I want someone to look at a house, just to get the smell of it, have a thought or two, I’d ask you – I am asking you.’
‘As a friend.’
‘Yes. As a friend.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow morning, when the house is empty?’
‘That would suit me fine.’
‘Are you serious? I mean, that’s great. Shall I send a car?’
‘I’ll make my own way.’
I met a neuroscientist called Gloria today, who I think you’d like a lot (you see, I’m making friends for you out here). We talked about free will – does it exist etc. She was arguing that with everything we know now about the brain, it’s impossible to believe there is such a thing, and yet it’s impossible not to believe in it at the same time and to live our life as if we have choices. A necessary delusion.
It’s a beautiful evening, with a full moon shining on the river. I wonder what it’s like in London – but, of course, it’s nearly morning for you now. You’re asleep. At least I hope you are. Sandy xxxx
SIXTEEN
So it was that the very next day Frieda once more walked past the Roundhouse, past the little café where Ted and Chloë had drunk hot chocolate the evening before and the larger one where an aeroplane nose-dived down the wall and music throbbed, into Margaretting Road. Karlsson was already outside, drinking coffee from a paper mug that he raised in salute as she came towards him. He noticed that she walked more slowly than she used to, and with a slight limp.
‘You came.’
‘I said I would.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘As long as you’re sure no one’s in?’
‘I’m certain. The family has been staying with neighbours. The house is still officially a crime scene.’
‘And Hal Bradshaw?’
‘Fuck him.’ The vehemence of Karlsson’s response surprised her.
Frieda followed Karlsson through the front door. Although the window was still broken, the barriers had been cleared away and the forensic team had gone. But the house had the special emptiness of an abandoned place, already neglected and musty from disuse – and, of course, it was the place where a woman (a wife, a mother, a good neighbour, Karlsson had said) had recently been murdered. As Frieda stood in the silent hallway, she felt that the house somehow knew it and felt abandoned.
A large photograph, the frame cracked and the glass smashed, was propped against the wall and she bent down to look at it.
‘The happy family,’ said Karlsson. ‘But it’s usually the husband, you know.’
Official family photographs that are framed and hung in the hall are always happy. Everyone has to stand close together and smile: there was Ted, not as gangly and dishevelled as she’d seen him, with the smooth face of youth; there was the elder of the girls, her arresting pale eyes and nimbus of coppery curls; the youngest daughter, skinny and anxious, but grinning despite her train-track braces, her head tipped slightly towards her mother’s shoulder. There was the husband and father, as proud and protective as a husband and father is meant to look when he’s standing with his family grouped around him for the picture that will represent them – he had greying brown hair, jowly cheeks, his eldest daughter’s eyes, eyebrows that tilted at a comic angle, a face that was made to be cheerful.
And there she was, standing in the centre with her husband – in a flecked sweater, her soft hair tied back loosely, her candid face smiling out of the picture. One hand on the shoulder of her elder daughter, who sat in front of her, and one against her husband’s hip. It was a touching gesture for the official portrait, thought Frieda, casual and intimate. She bent closer and stared into the dead woman’s eyes. Grey. No makeup that she could see. Small signs of age drawing down her mouth and creasing her brow. Smile marks and frown marks, the map of our days.
‘Tell me about her. Describe her,’ she said to Karlsson.
‘Her name is Ruth Lennox. Forty-four years old. A health visitor, and has been since her younger daughter started school; she had several years out when the children were small. Married to Russell Lennox,’ Karlsson pointed to the man in the photo, ‘happily, from all accounts, for twenty-three years. He’s an executive in a small charity for children with learning difficulties. Three kids, as you see – your Ted, Judith, who’s fifteen, and Dora, thirteen. All at the local comp. Has a dragon of a sister who lives in London. Both her parents are dead. On the PTA. Good citizen. Not rich, but comfortable, two modest but stable incomes and no big outgoings. Three thousand pounds in her current account, thirteen thousand in her savings account. Healthy enough pension pot. Donates to various charities by standing order. No criminal record. Clean driving licence. I’m using the present tense but, of course, last Wednesday she sustained a catastrophic injury to the head and would have died instantly.’
‘Who did you think it was, before you discovered it couldn’t be?’
‘A local druggie with a record, but it turns out that he has a rock-solid alibi. He was caught on CCTV somewhere else at the time of her death. He admitted to breaking in, stealing some stuff, finding her body and fleeing the scene. We didn’t believe him, but for once in his life he was telling the truth.’
‘So the broken window was him?’
‘And the burglary. There was no sign of a break-in when a neighbour came round earlier – we know Ruth Lennox must have been already dead. Obviously the implication is that she let the killer in herself.’
‘Someone she knew.’
‘Or someone who seemed safe.’
‘Where did she die?’
‘In here.’ Karlsson led her into the living room, where everything was tidy and in its proper place (cushions on the sofa, newspapers and magazines in the rack, books lining the walls, tulips in a vase on the mantelpiece), but a dark bloodstain still flowered on the beige carpet and daubs of blood decorated the near wall.
‘Violent,’ said Frieda.
‘Hal Bradshaw believes it was the work of an extremely angry sociopath with a record of violence.’
‘And you think it’s more likely to be the husband.’
‘That’s not a matter of evidence, just the way of the world. The most likely person to kill a wife is her husband. The husband, however, has a reasonably satisfactory alibi.’
Frieda looked round at him. ‘We’re taught to beware of strangers,’ she said. ‘It’s our friends most of us should worry about.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Karlsson.
They went through to the kitchen and Frieda stood in the middle of the room, looking from the tidily cluttered dresser to the drawings and photos stuck to the fridge with magnets, the book splayed open on the table. Then, upstairs, the bedroom: a king-sized bed covered with a striped duvet, a gilt-framed photo of Ruth and Russell on their wedding day twenty-three years ago, several smaller-framed photos of her children at different ages, a wardrobe in which hung dresses, skirts and shirts – nothi
ng flamboyant, Frieda noticed, some things obviously old but well looked-after. Shoes, flat or with small heels; one pair of black leather boots, slightly scuffed. Drawers in which T-shirts were neatly rolled, not folded; underwear drawer with sensible knickers and bras, 34C. A small amount of makeup on the dressing-table, and one bottle of perfume, Chanel. A novel by her side of the bed, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, with a bookmark sticking out, and under it a book about small gardens. A pair of reading glasses, folded, to one side.
In the bathroom: a bar of unscented soap, apple hand-wash, electric toothbrush – his and hers – and dental floss, shaving cream, razors, tweezers, a canister of deodorant, face wipes, moisturizing face cream, two large towels and one hand towel, two matching flannels hung on the side of the bath, with the tap in the middle, a set of scales pushed against the wall, a medicine cabinet containing paracetamol, aspirin, plasters of various sizes, cough medicine, out-of-date ointment for thrush, a tube of eye drops, anti-indigestion tablets … Frieda shut the cabinet.
‘No contraceptives?’
‘That’s what Yvette asked. She had an IUD – the Mirena coil, apparently.’
In the filing cabinet set aside for her use in her husband’s small study, there were three folders for work, and most of the others related to her children: academic qualifications, child benefit slips, medical records, reports, on single pieces of paper or in small books, dating back to their first years at primary school, certificates commemorating their ability to swim a hundred metres, their participation in the egg-and-spoon race or the cycling proficiency course.
In the shabby trunk beside the filing cabinet: hundreds and hundreds of pieces of creativity the children had brought back from school over the years. Splashy paintings in bright colours of figures with legs attached to the wobbly circle of the head and hair sprouting like exclamation marks, scraps of material puckered with running stitch and cross stitch and chain stitch, a tiny home-made clock without a battery, a small box studded with over-glued sea shells, a blue-painted clay pot, and you could still see the finger marks pressed into its asymmetrical rim.
‘There are also several bin bags full of old baby clothes in the loft,’ said Karlsson, as she closed the lid. ‘We haven’t got to them yet. It takes a long time to go through a house like this. Nothing was thrown away.’
‘Photo albums?’
‘A whole shelf given over to them. She wrote the date and occasion under each. She didn’t do motherhood by halves.’
‘No.’
Frieda went to stand by the window that overlooked the garden. There were drifts of blossom around the fruit tree, and a cat sat in a patch of sunlight. ‘There’s nothing here she wouldn’t want to be seen,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I always think that nobody’s life can tolerate a spotlight shone into its corners.’
‘But?’
‘But from everything you tell me and everything I’ve seen, hers seems entirely ready for the spotlight, don’t you think? As if this house was a stage.’
‘A stage for what?’
‘For a play about being good.’
‘I’m supposed to be the cynical one. Do you mean you think nobody can be that good?’
‘I’m a therapist, Karlsson. Of course that’s what I think. Where are Ruth Lennox’s secrets?’
But of course, she thought, several hours later and sitting at Number 9 – her friends’ café near where she lived – real secrets aren’t found in objects, in schedules, in the words we speak or the expressions we put on our faces, in underwear drawers and filing cabinets, deleted texts, and diaries pushed to the bottom of the bag. They are lodged far deeper, unguessable even to ourselves. She was thinking about this as she faced Jack Dargan, whom she supervised and, even during her convalescence, met at least once a week to track his progress and listen to his doubts. And Jack was a thorny ball of doubt. But he never doubted Frieda: she was the constant in his life, his single point of faith.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ Jack was saying animatedly. ‘Don’t look anxious – I’m not going to let down my patients or anything. Especially not Carrie.’ Since discovering that her husband Alan had not left her but had been murdered by his twin, Dean Reeve, Carrie had been seeing Jack twice a week and he seemed to have done better than even Frieda, who believed in him, had expected. He laid aside his self-conscious pessimism and his awkwardness and concentrated on the woman in distress.
‘What is this favour?’
‘I’ve written a paper on trauma and before I send it out I wanted you to look at it.’
Frieda hesitated. Trauma felt too close for her to review it dispassionately. She looked at Jack’s flushed face, his tufty hair and ridiculous clothes (today he was wearing brown, balding jeans, a second hand yellow-and-orange shirt that clashed with his colouring and his hair, and a green waterproof even though the sky was cloudless). In his confusion, he reminded her of Ted Lennox, of so many other raw and self-conscious young men.
‘All right,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘You can always ask.’
‘But you won’t always answer. I know.’ Jack avoided her eyes. ‘I’m only asking because the others won’t and –’
‘What others?’ Frieda interrupted.
‘Oh, you know. The usual suspects.’
‘Am I that scary? Go on, then.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘That’s what you – they – wanted to ask?’
‘Yes.’
‘The paper you’ve written was just an excuse?’
‘Well, yes. Kind of – though I have written it. And I would like you to look at it if you have time.’
‘And I’m assuming that you’re asking me because you’re worried that I’m not.’
‘No – well, yes. You seem –’ He stopped.
‘Go on.’
‘Brittle. Like an eggshell. More unpredictable than you usually are. Sorry. I don’t mean to offend you. But maybe you aren’t taking your recovery seriously enough.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of you?’
‘Well – yes.’
‘Tell everyone – whoever takes it upon themselves to be worried for me – that I’m fine.’
‘You’re angry.’
‘I don’t like the thought that you’ve been discussing me behind my back.’
‘Only because we’re concerned.’
‘Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.’
Later that afternoon, Frieda had a visitor she wasn’t expecting who brought the recent past flooding back. She opened her door to find Lorna Kersey standing on the doorstep, and before Frieda had time to say anything, she had stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a bang.
‘This won’t take long,’ she said, in a voice high and cracked with rage.
‘I won’t pretend I don’t know why you’re here.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs Kersey.’
‘You killed my daughter and now you say you’re sorry for my loss.’
Lorna Kersey’s daughter, Beth, had been an unhappy and dysfunctional young woman who suffered from paranoid delusions and who had killed Mary Orton. Frieda had got to the house too late to stop her. The vividness of the flashbacks in which she remembered Beth standing over her with a knife, and re-experienced the blade slicing through her, still woke her in the night, drenched in sweat. She had known that she was dying, felt herself sliding into darkness and oblivion – yet she had survived and Beth Kersey had not. The police had called it self-defence and even Karlsson hadn’t believed Frieda when she insisted that it was Dean Reeve who had killed Beth and saved her life.
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Frieda, steadily. It would do no good to tell Lorna Kersey she hadn’t killed her daughter. She wouldn’t believe her, and
even if she did, what did that matter? Beth, poor lonely Beth, was dead, and a mother’s anguish was etched into Lorna Kersey’s face.
‘You came to me and you got me to tell you things about Beth we never told anyone. I trusted you. You said you would help find her. You made me a promise. And then you killed her. Do you know what it feels like to bury a child?’
‘No.’
‘No. Of course you don’t. How can you bear to get up in the morning?’
Frieda thought of saying that Beth had been very ill, that in her frantic sickness of the mind she had slaughtered an old woman and would have killed her, Frieda, as well. But of course Lorna Kersey knew all of that. She wanted someone to blame and who more obvious than Frieda?
‘I wish there was something I could say or do that would –’
‘But there isn’t. There’s nothing. My child’s dead and now she’ll never be all right. And you did that. In the name of helping people, you destroy them. I’ll never forgive you. Never.’
Frieda – you sounded a bit distracted today. I know that something is up but in spite of everything that’s passed between us, you’re not very good at confiding in me, are you? Why? Are you scared of being beholden – as if I’ll have some hold over you? I think you feel you have to deal with things by yourself, as if it’s some kind of moral obligation. Or maybe you don’t trust other people to help you. I guess what I’m saying is that you should – can – trust me, Sandy xxx
SEVENTEEN
The Sir Philip Sidney was a pub on the side of a busy road. It looked lost and abandoned between a petrol station and a furniture store. When Fearby walked in he recognized his man immediately and he knew at the same moment that he was a policeman, or an ex-policeman. Grey suit, white shirt, striped tie, black shoes. Slightly overweight. Fearby sat down beside him.
‘Drink?’ he said.
‘I was just leaving,’ said the man.
‘What’s your name?’
‘You don’t need to know,’ said the man, ‘because we’re never going to meet again. You know, we all got pretty sick of you. On the force.’