by Nicci French
‘They got pretty sick of me on my paper as well,’ said Fearby.
‘So you must be feeling chuffed with yourself.’
‘Is that what you’ve dragged me out here to tell me?’
‘Are you finished with the story?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fearby. ‘Conley didn’t kill Hazel Barton. Which means someone else did.’
‘The police are not currently pursuing other leads. As you know.’
‘Yes,’ said Fearby. ‘Is that it?’
‘I was wondering if you had any avenues of enquiry?’
‘Avenues of enquiry?’ said Fearby. ‘I’ve got a room full of files.’
‘I was having a drink once,’ said the man, in a casual tone, ‘and someone told me that on the morning of the Hazel Barton murder, a few miles away in Cottingham, another girl was approached. But she got away. That’s all. It was just something I heard.’
‘Why wasn’t this given to the defence?’
‘It wasn’t thought relevant. It didn’t fit the pattern. Something like that.’
‘So why are you telling me now?’
‘I wanted to know if you were interested.’
‘That’s no good to me,’ said Fearby. ‘That’s just pub chat. I need a name. I need a number.’
The man got up. ‘It’s one of those things that irritate you, that won’t let you go,’ he said. ‘You know, like a little stone in your shoe. I’ll see what I can do. But that will be it. One call and then you won’t hear from me again.’
‘You were the one who called me.’
‘Don’t make me regret it.’
Frieda ordered a black coffee for herself, a latte and a Danish for Sasha. She sat at the table and opened the newspaper. She turned page after page until she reached the article she was looking for. Just a few minutes earlier Reuben had been shouting down the phone at her about it, so she was prepared. She skimmed it quickly.
‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly, as if she’d been jabbed. There was a detail she hadn’t expected.
‘What’s happening with your home improvement?’ Sasha asked. ‘I knew that Josef was giving you a new bath. I didn’t realize it would take so long.’
‘I’ve almost forgotten what my old bathroom was like,’ said Frieda. ‘Or what it was like to have a bathroom.’
‘He probably thought of it as a kind of therapy for you,’ Sasha said. ‘Maybe a hot bath is the one experience you allow yourself that’s a complete indulgence with no redeeming moral features. So he thought you’d better have a good one.’
‘You make me sound … bleak.’
‘I think it was also therapy for Josef.’
Frieda was puzzled. ‘Why would it be therapy for Josef?’
‘I know that you were there when Mary Orton was killed. I know how terrible it was for you. But Josef knew her as well. He looked after her, repaired her house. And she looked after him. Her Ukrainian son. Better than her English sons.’
‘That’s true,’ said Frieda.
‘When that happened to her and to you, it hit him hard. I have the feeling that when something bad happens to him, he doesn’t talk about it. He gets drunk or he makes something for someone.’
‘Maybe,’ said Frieda. ‘I just wish his therapy wasn’t so messy. And so loud.’
‘And now you’re getting written about in the papers again. Do you ever get sick of being picked on?’
Frieda let a few moments go by. ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know about this, but there’s something you should know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘These researchers targeted four psychotherapists. I’m one, of course. Reuben’s another. One of them is Geraldine Fliess. They probably chose her because she’s written about extreme mental disorders. And the other is James Rundell.’
Neither of the women spoke immediately and they didn’t need to.
‘Who brought us together, I suppose,’ said Sasha.
‘And got me arrested.’
Rundell had been Sasha’s therapist. When Frieda had discovered that he had slept with Sasha while she was his patient, she had not only confronted Rundell but attacked him in a restaurant and been taken to a police cell, from which Karlsson had rescued her.
‘Does the article mention me?’ said Sasha. ‘Sorry. I know that sounds selfish. I didn’t mean that.’
‘It doesn’t mention you,’ said Frieda. ‘So far as I can see.’
‘You don’t need to worry, you know. I am better. That’s all in the past. It doesn’t have power over me any more.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘In fact …’ Sasha paused, and Frieda looked at her enquiringly. ‘In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell you but there didn’t seem to be a right time. I’ve met someone.’
‘Really? Who is he?’
‘His name’s Frank Manning.’ Her face took on a soft and dreamy expression.
‘You have to tell me more than that! What does he do?’
‘He’s a barrister – a criminal barrister. I only met him a few weeks ago. It all happened so quickly.’
‘And is it …’ She hesitated. She wanted to ask Sasha if this Frank was single and free or, like several of Sasha’s previous relationships, there were complications. She feared for her beautiful young friend.
‘You want to know if he’s married? No. He’s divorced and he has a young son. Don’t look at me like that, Frieda! I trust him. If you met him you’d know what I mean. He’s honourable.’
‘I want to meet him.’ Frieda took Sasha’s hand in hers and pressed it. ‘I’m very glad. I should have guessed – you’re looking very radiant.’
‘I’m just happy – I wake up in the morning and I feel alive! I haven’t felt like this for so long. I’d almost forgotten how lovely it is.’
‘And he feels the same.’
‘Yes. He does. I know he does.’
‘I have to meet him. See if he’s good enough for you.’
‘I’ll arrange it. But, Frieda, you, Reuben, him, all in the article. Is that just a coincidence?’
‘The man running the research project is a psychologist called Hal Bradshaw. He works with the police and we were on the case that nearly got me killed.’
‘And you didn’t get on?’
‘We disagreed about various aspects.’
‘Do you mind if I have a look at the article?’
Frieda pushed the newspaper across the table. Sasha leaned over and peered at it, not reading it through but seeing it in flashes. She took in the headline:
SILENT WITNESSES
She saw a row of photographs. A picture of Frieda that had been in another press report, a photograph of her taken in the street, caught unawares. There was a picture of James Rundell, more youthful than when she’d been involved with him, and a much older picture of Reuben. He looked like a psychoanalyst in a French New Wave movie.
She read the intro: ‘A disturbing new report suggests that therapists are failing to protect the public from potential rapists and murderers.’
She moved her finger down the page, searching for Frieda’s name.
When confronted with a patient showing the classic signs of a murderous psychopath, Dr Frieda Klein offered no treatment and made no attempt to report him to the authorities. When questioned about why she had failed to report a psychopath to the police, Dr Klein responded that she had ‘had some concerns’ about the patient but that she ‘wouldn’t discuss them with anyone but him’. In fact, Dr Klein had refused to treat the patient.
Frieda Klein, a 38-year-old brunette, hit the headlines earlier this year when she was involved in a shocking incident in which two women were knifed to death and Klein herself was hospitalized. An eighty-year-old woman, Mary Orton, was killed in a crazed attack by a knife-wielding schizophrenic, Beth Kersey. Police accepted Klein’s explanation that she killed Kersey in self-defence.
The leader of the research project, Dr Hal Bradshaw, commented: ‘While it is understandable to feel
sympathy for what Dr Klein has gone through …’
‘That’s nice of him,’ said Sasha.
‘Of who?’ said Frieda.
‘Bloody Hal Bradshaw.’ She turned back to the paper.
‘While it is understandable to feel sympathy for what Dr Klein has gone through, I think there is a serious question of whether she is a risk both to her patients and to the public at large.’
Dr Bradshaw spoke of the urgent issues that his research has raised. ‘It brings me no pleasure to expose the failings in the analytic community. We tested the responses of four psychoanalysts and of those only one acted responsibly and called the authorities. The other three failed in their responsibilities both as healers and as protectors of the public.
‘When he talked to me, one of the patients in the study, Seamus Dunne, is still angry about his experience: “I was told that Dr Klein was a top expert, but when I gave her the story that showed I was a psychopath, she didn’t react at all. She just asked irrelevant questions about food and sleeping and things like that. She seemed like her mind was on other things.’”
Sasha threw down the paper. ‘I know I’m supposed to say something comforting to you, but I literally don’t know how you can bear this. You’ve become this object out in the world that people kick around and throw things at and tell lies about. The idea of this guy coming to you and saying he was in need and asking for your help and it was all a trick – don’t you feel violated?’
Frieda took a sip of her coffee. ‘Sasha, if it wasn’t you, I’d say it wasn’t a problem and that it comes with the territory. And I’d say it was all quite interesting if it wasn’t happening to me.’
‘But it is me, and it is happening to you.’
Frieda smiled at her friend. ‘You know, sometimes I wish I wasn’t doing this job at all. I’d like to be a potter, that’s what I’d like. I’d have a lump of clay on my wheel and it wouldn’t matter what I was feeling or what anybody was feeling. At the end of it, I’d have a pot. Or a cup. Or a bowl.’
‘If you were a potter,’ said Sasha, ‘I’d be lost or worse. And you don’t want to be a potter anyway.’
‘That’s nice of you to say, but you would have got better on your own. People usually do, you know.’
Frieda pulled the newspaper back to her side of the table and glanced at it again.
‘Are you going to do anything about it?’ Sasha asked.
Frieda took a notebook from her bag and flipped through it until she found the page she wanted. ‘You know people who are good with technical things, don’t you? Finding things on the Internet.’
‘Yes,’ said Sasha, warily.
‘I want to see Seamus Dunne. I’ve got his phone number but I don’t know where he lives. There must be ways of finding out.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Sasha. ‘If you’re going to get into a fight again and get arrested, Karlsson may not be able to get you out again.’
‘It’s nothing like that,’ said Frieda. ‘I just need to talk to him. In person. Can that be done?’
Sasha looked at the notebook. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. She took her phone from the table and punched the number into it.
‘What are you doing?’ Frieda asked, but Sasha just held up her hand.
‘Hello,’ she said, into the phone, in a nasal tone quite different from her own. ‘Is that Mr Seamus Dunne? Yes? We’re actually trying to make a delivery to you and our driver seems to have the wrong address. Can you confirm it for me?’ She picked up a pen and started writing in Frieda’s notebook. ‘Yes … Yes … Yes … Thank you so much, we’ll be right with you.’ She pushed the notebook across to Frieda.
‘That wasn’t quite what I meant when I said I needed technical help.’
‘No violence, please.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
EIGHTEEN
‘No,’ said Seamus Dunne, when he saw Frieda. ‘No way. And how do you even know where I live?’
She peered over his shoulder. Student house. Bare boards. Bikes in the hall. Still-packed boxes.
‘I just want to talk to you.’
‘Talk to the newspaper. Or Bradshaw. It wasn’t my responsibility.’
‘I’m not interested in any of that,’ said Frieda. ‘Or the article. It was just something you said.’
Dunne’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Is this a trick?’
Frieda almost laughed at that. ‘You mean, am I coming to see you under false pretences?’
Dunne shook his head nervously. ‘Bradshaw said we were all in the clear. It was completely legal.’
‘I told you,’ said Frieda. ‘I don’t care. I’m here to say two things. Let me in and I’ll say them. Then I’ll go.’
Dunne seemed in an agony of indecision. Finally he opened the door and let her in. She walked through the hall to the kitchen. It looked as if a rugby team had had a takeaway and not cleared up, then had a party and not cleared up, had got up the next morning, had had breakfast and not cleared up. And then left. Seamus Dunne was a bit old for this.
He noticed her expression. ‘You look shocked,’ he said. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It reminds me of being a student.’
‘Well, I’m still a student,’ he said. ‘It may not look like much, but it’s better than the alternative. So, I guess you’ve come to shout at me.’
‘Do you think you deserve to be shouted at?’
Dunne leaned back on the counter, almost dislodging a pile of plates topped by a saucepan containing two mugs. ‘Dr Bradshaw told us about an experiment where a researcher sent some students to different psychiatrists and they just had to say they had heard a thud inside their heads. Every single one of them was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a psychiatric hospital.’
‘Yes, I know the experiment,’ said Frieda. ‘It wouldn’t be allowed today.’
‘Maybe that’s a pity,’ said Dunne, ‘because it was pretty revealing, don’t you think? But you don’t want to hear that.’
‘The way I see it,’ said Frieda, ‘people who weren’t really psychopaths were sent to therapists and only one of them made the mistake of taking them seriously.’
‘So what were the two things you wanted to say?’
‘I was interested in what you said in the article.’
‘I thought so.’
‘No, not the way you think. You said I asked you about irrelevant things, food, sleeping. By the way, how is your sleeping?’
‘Fine.’
‘No, really. Do you sleep through the night? Or do you still wake up?’
‘I wake up a bit. Like most people.’
‘And what do you think about?’
‘Stuff, you know. I go over things.’
‘And your appetite?’
He shrugged and there was a pause. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Do you know what I think?’
‘You’re probably about to tell me.’
‘When you came to see me, pretending to be looking for help, I think you subconsciously used that as an excuse to really ask for help.’
‘That’s just Freudian rubbish. You’re trying to catch me out.’
‘You’re not sleeping properly, you’re not eating properly. There’s this.’ She gestured at the kitchen.
‘That’s just a student kitchen.’
‘I’ve seen student kitchens,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve lived in student kitchens. This is a bit different. And, anyway, you’re – what? Twenty-five, twenty-six? I think you’re slightly depressed and finding it difficult to admit to anyone or even yourself.’
Dunne went very red. ‘If it’s subconscious and you think I don’t want to admit it even to myself, then how do I disprove it?’
‘Just think about it,’ said Frieda. ‘And you might want to talk to someone about it. Not to me.’
There was another pause. Dunne picked up a dirty spoon and tapped it against a stained mug. �
��What was the other thing?’ he said.
‘That story you told me.’
‘Which? The whole thing was a story.’
‘No. About cutting your father’s hair and feeling a mixture of tenderness and power.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘It felt distinct from everything else, like an authentic memory.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you. It was just something I said.’
‘It wasn’t your memory?’
‘I learned it.’
‘Who told you to say it?’’
‘It was in my pack – I don’t know. Dr Bradshaw, maybe, or whoever made up our characters.’
‘Who actually gave you your instructions?’
‘One of the other researchers. Oh – you want his name?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Why? So you can go and make him feel guilty as well?’
‘Is that what I made you feel?’
‘If you want to know, I felt really nervous, coming to you like that. A bit sick. It wasn’t easy.’ He glared at Frieda. ‘His name’s Duncan Bailey.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘You want his address as well?’
‘If you have it.’
Seamus Dunne muttered something, but then tore off the top of an empty cereal box that was lying on the floor and scribbled on it before handing it to Frieda.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And remember what I said about talking to someone.’
‘Are you going now?’ Seamus Dunne seemed taken aback.
‘Yes.’
‘You mean that’s the end of it?’
‘I’m not quite sure it’s the end, Seamus.’
Jim Fearby had gone back through his files to make sure he had all the facts in his head. He always made notes first in the shorthand he had learned when he’d joined the local newspaper in Coventry as a junior reporter, more than forty years ago. Nobody learned shorthand now, but he liked the hieroglyphic squiggles, like a secret code. Then, on the same day if possible, he would copy them into his notebook. Only later would he put it all on to his computer.
Hazel Barton had been strangled in July 2004; her body had been found lying by a roadside not many miles from where she lived. Apparently she had been walking home from the bus stop, after the bus had failed to arrive. She was eighteen years old, fresh-faced and pretty, with three older brothers, and parents who had indulged and adored her. She had planned to become a physiotherapist. Her face smiled radiantly from the newspapers and TV screens for weeks after her death. George Conley had been seen standing over her body. He had been arrested at once and charged soon after. He was the local weirdo, the blubbery, unemployed, slow-witted loner, who lurked in parks and outside playgrounds: of course he did it. And then he confessed and everyone was happy, except Jim Fearby, who was a stickler for detail and never took anyone else’s word for things that happened. He had to read the police reports, had to rake through the files, thumb through law books.