by Nicci French
‘Four. Blood splash. Here, here and here. And substantially more there, of course, where the body was. Exhibit four, or should that be five: in that bin there,’ he pointed, ‘we found a very dirty kitchen towel covered with more blood. We took it away for DNA testing. Somebody had used it to clean himself up.’
‘And that would be …’
‘Exhibit six: fingerprints, containing traces of the victim’s blood, all against that wall. There. What do you think?’
‘What do I think? What do you know?’
‘We can construct a very plausible scenario. Someone – a man wearing size forty-one shoes – entered. Presumably he was let in by the victim, but we can’t be sure. There was no sign of a forced entrance. They had some kind of a struggle in the hall, then went into the bedroom where the victim was bludgeoned to death with a weapon as yet unfound. The perpetrator must have got splashed with the victim’s blood and he wiped himself with the cloth and flung it into the bin. I take it he was feeling unsteady by then. He leaned against that wall, leaving several very satisfactory fingerprints. Then he left.’ Tate beamed at them. ‘There.’
‘And the fingerprints belonged to?’
‘Russell Lennox.’ Tate’s triumphant smile faded. ‘Aren’t you impressed?’
‘No, I’m sorry. I really am. But there’s being careless and there’s being really careless.’
‘You know all about that, Mal. Murderers are almost always in an almost psychotic state because of the stress. They suffer memory loss. I’ve found wallets, jackets at crime scenes.’
‘You’re right,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’m not going to say no to a clear result.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Tate.
FORTY-SEVEN
When Frieda and the Lennox children had arrived at her flat, it was far from the calm place of refuge she had wanted for them. Instead, it felt like a battle zone. Shoes of all shapes and sizes lay in the hall, with coats piled up by the banisters; bags and satchels, spilling their contents, led into the living room. Music was playing loudly. The air was thick with the smell of cooking: onions, garlic, herbs. She had to pause for a moment and take a few deep breaths. She felt as if she had led them all on stage. She heard loud voices, the rattle of glasses, like a party. As she stepped into the living room, Josef and Chloë looked up. She saw the bottle of wine on the table, the glasses, a bowl of nuts.
‘It’s all right,’ said Chloë. ‘Reuben’s making supper. I thought it would be nice for you not to think about it for once. He says it’s his speciality. Oh, hi, Ted!’ She blushed and smiled.
Then the door opened and Reuben peered round, his face flushed and beaming. Drunk, thought Frieda. Drunk as a lord.
‘Hello, Frieda. I thought we all needed a slap-up meal and since you won’t come to me I thought –’ He noticed the Lennoxes bunched in a corner, dazed and scared. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realize. You must be the poor kids whose mother died.’
‘Yes,’ said Judith, faintly. Dora started to snivel.
‘Very tough,’ said Reuben. ‘Very very very tough.’ He lurched a bit. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But for now, I’ve made enough for an army. The more the merrier. And the food is ready.’ He gave a sweeping bow and winked at Judith.
‘I don’t think it’s the right night,’ Frieda said firmly. ‘We need to have a bit of quiet here. I’m sorry.’
His expression curdled. He glared at her and raised his eyebrows, ready to pick a fight.
‘Don’t be mean, Frieda!’ Chloë was indignant. ‘He’s been working for hours on this. You don’t mind, do you, Ted?’ She put a hand on his shoulder and he stared at her with stupefied eyes.
‘Nah. It’s OK,’ he said listlessly. ‘It doesn’t really matter one way or another.’
‘I don’t think –’ began Frieda.
‘Great!’
Josef had already laid the table with unfamiliar plates that Frieda never used. He must have found them at the back of a cupboard. But when he laid them out on the table, it added to her impression that she was a guest in her own house and a stranger in her own life. He filled tumblers with water from a jug. Then Reuben drew a large blue casserole dish from the oven, his hands swathed in two tea-towels. Frieda already knew what it was. Reuben’s speciality, his fallback dish, his comfort food, ever since she had known him, was a particularly hot, spicy and meaty chilli con carne. When he triumphantly lifted the lid, the sight of the meat and the purple kidney beans almost made her gag.
‘This was the meal I used to cook as a student,’ he said, to Chloë. ‘You’ll need to build up a few dishes for when you go to college. And you’re a bit peaky, if I may say so,’ he told Judith. ‘Red meat is what you need!’
‘You didn’t make a salad as well, did you?’ Frieda asked.
Reuben left the room and returned with a fairly small green salad. He ladled the chilli on to the plates and passed them round. When he had finished, he poured wine into the glasses.
Chloë took a mouthful of chilli, flinched and coughed. ‘It’s really hot,’ she said, with a gasp. She took a gulp of water.
‘Water only makes it worse,’ Reuben said. ‘Wine’s better.’
Josef took a large forkful and munched. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Feel it in the chest.’
Frieda toyed with the food. She took a salad leaf in her fingers and put it into her mouth. Ted drank a glass of wine as if it was water and, without asking, poured himself another. Dora simply stared at her plate and then at Frieda with her huge beseeching eyes.
Judith prodded the greasy pile in front of her. ‘It’s very nice, but I think I’m going to go and lie down,’ she said. ‘Can I lie on your bed for a bit?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve been having revenge fantasies about that bastard Hal Bradshaw,’ said Reuben, loudly and cheerily, as Judith left the room.
‘Who’s he?’ asked Chloë, looking anxiously at Ted.
‘He’s the bastard that conned me and Frieda and set us up to public ridicule. I keep imagining different scenarios. Like I’m walking past a lake and I see Bradshaw drowning and I just watch him as he sinks below the surface. Or I come across the scene of a car accident and Bradshaw is lying on the road and I just stand and watch him bleed out. I know what you’re going to say, Frieda.’
‘I’m going to tell you to be quiet right now.’
‘You’re going to tell me that fantasies like that aren’t very healthy. They’re not therapeutic.’ He stressed the last word as if there was something disgusting about it. ‘So what do you think?’
‘I think it might be a better revenge fantasy if you rescued Bradshaw from drowning. Or staunched his bleeding. And I think you’ve had too much wine and this is not the night.’
‘That’s not much fun,’ said Reuben.
‘No,’ chimed in Ted. His cheeks were blotchy and his eyes bright. ‘Not fun at all. Revenge should be bloody.’
‘A dish served cold,’ announced Chloë. ‘We’re doing it for GCSE.’
‘Staunched?’ said Josef. ‘Served cold?’ He was drunk too, decided Frieda.
‘I’ve been planning a real revenge with Josef,’ said Reuben.
Frieda looked at Josef, who had just taken a mouthful. He made an effort to chew and swallow it.
‘Not the planning so much,’ Josef said. ‘The talking.’
‘There are things builders know how to do,’ Reuben continued, apparently unaware of the tangible air of distress in the room. ‘Josef can gain entry. You hide shrimps inside the curtain rails and behind the radiators. When they start to rot, the smell will be staggering. Bradshaw won’t be able to live in his own house. Then there’s more subtle things you can do. You can loosen a water-pipe connector beneath the floorboards, just a little, just so there’s a drip of water. That can cause some serious damage.’
‘That’s awesome,’ said Ted, in a loud, harsh voice. His eyes glittered dangerously.
‘This is just a fantasy you’re talking abo
ut,’ said Frieda. ‘Right?’
‘Or I could do worse than that,’ said Reuben. ‘I could tamper with the brakes on his car – with Josef’s help, of course. Or torch his office. Or threaten his wife.’
‘You’d go to prison. Josef would be sent to prison and then deported.’
Reuben opened another bottle of wine and started to fill the glasses again.
‘I’m going to take Dora to her bed,’ said Frieda. ‘And when I come back, I think you should go. You and Josef are going home.’
‘I’m having a second helping,’ said Reuben. ‘More, Ted?
‘Reuben, you’ve gone far enough.’
But a few minutes later, when she came back into the room, Reuben began again. She knew him in this mood – petulant and dangerous, like a sore-headed bull.
‘I think you’re being pious about this, Frieda. I’m an advocate for revenge. I think it’s healthy. I want to go round the table and everyone has got to say the person that they would like to take revenge on. And what the revenge would be. I’ve already named Hal Bradshaw. I’d like him to be tied to a mountain top naked for all eternity and then every day a vulture would come and eat his liver.’ He grinned wolfishly. ‘Or something.’
‘But what about when it had finished?’ said Chloë.
‘It would grow back every day. What about you?’
Chloë looked at Reuben, suddenly serious. ‘When I was nine, there was a girl called Cath Winstanley. In year four and the first half of year five, she spent the whole of every day trying to stop people talking to me or playing with me. And when a new girl arrived, Cath would become her friend straight away to stop her playing with me.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Frieda.
‘Mum knew. She just told me it would pass. It did. In the end.’
‘What would you like to do to her?’ said Reuben. ‘You’re allowed to do anything. This is fantasy revenge.’
‘I’d just like her to go through what I went through,’ said Chloë. ‘Then at the end I would appear out of a puff of smoke and say: “That’s what it was like.”’
‘That’s what revenge should be like,’ said Frieda, softly.
‘But you survived,’ said Reuben. ‘What about you, Josef?’
Josef gave a sad smile. ‘I don’t say his name. The man with my wife. Him I want to punish.’
‘Excellent,’ said Reuben. ‘So what punishments would you like to devise for him? Something medieval?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Josef. ‘If my wife is with him like me, how do you say it? Talk, talk, talk to him …’
‘Nagging,’ said Reuben.
‘Yes, the nagging,’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Reuben,’ said Frieda. ‘And you, Josef.’
‘What’s problem?’ said Josef.
‘Forget it,’ said Frieda.
‘What about you, Ted? If you could track down your mother’s killer? You must think about it.’
‘Out. Go home now,’ said Frieda.
‘No.’ Ted said loudly, almost in a yell. ‘Of course I think about it. If I could find my mother’s killer, I’d – I’d –’ He gazed around the table, his fist clenched around his wine glass. ‘I hate him,’ he said softly. ‘What do you do to the people you hate?’
‘It’s OK, Ted,’ said Chloë. She was trying to hold the hand that was clasping his glass.
‘Attaboy,’ said Reuben. ‘Let it out. That’s the way. Now you, Frieda. Who’s going to be the object of your implacable revenge?’
Frieda felt a lurch of nausea in her stomach, rising in her chest. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a chasm, with just her heels on the ground, her toes poking into the darkness and the temptation, always that temptation, to let herself fall forward into the deep darkness towards – well, towards what?
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not good at these sorts of games.’
‘Oh, come on, Frieda, this isn’t Monopoly.’
But Frieda’s expression hardened with a kind of anger and Reuben let it go.
‘The bath,’ said Josef, trying to make everything all right in his clumsy way. ‘Is OK?’
‘It’s very good, Josef. It was worth it.’ She didn’t tell him she hadn’t yet used it.
‘Finally I help,’ he said. He was swaying on his feet.
At last they had left. The soft spring dusk was darkening to real night. The clouds had blown away and the ghost of a moon was visible above the rooftops. Inside, an air of anticipation and dread filled the rooms. Even Chloë’s animation had petered out. Judith, who had come downstairs when she heard the front door slam, sat in a chair in the living room, her knees drawn up, her head pressed down on them, her hair wild. If anyone spoke to her and tried to comfort her, she would simply shake her head vehemently. Dora lay on a camp bed in Frieda’s study with a mug of cocoa beside her, which had cooled to form a wrinkled skin on its surface. She was playing a game of Snakes on her phone. Her thin plaits lay across her face. Frieda sat beside her for a few moments, without speaking. She turned her head and said, in a voice that sounded almost querulous: ‘I knew about Judith and that older man.’
‘Did you?’
‘A few days ago, when Dad was drunk, I heard him shouting at Aunt Louise about it. Is Judith going to be OK?’
‘In time.’
‘Did Dad …?’
‘I don’t know.’
Frieda went downstairs. Outside on the patio, Ted was smoking and pacing to and fro, his unkempt head enclosed in his giant pair of headphones. None of them could help the others, or be helped by them. They were just waiting, while Chloë barged around the house with cups of tea or firm, encouraging pats on a bowed shoulder.
Frieda had asked Ted if there was anyone she should call and he had turned his sullen gaze on her. ‘Like who?’
‘Like your aunt.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘Don’t you have other relatives?’
‘You mean like our uncle in the States? He’s not much use, is he? No, it’s us and it’s Dad, and if he’s not there, there’s no one at all.’
She sat with him for a while, relishing the cool night air. Nothing in her life felt rational or controlled any more: not her house, which used to be her refuge from the violent mess of the world, not her relationship with these young people, who had turned to her as if she knew answers that didn’t exist, not her creeping involvement with the police again, not her unshakeable preoccupation with the shadowy world of the missing girl Lila. Above all, not her sense that she was following a voice that only she could hear, an echo of an echo of an echo. And Dean Reeve, keeping watch. She thought of Sandy, only halfway through his day, and wished that this day was over.
FORTY-EIGHT
The following morning Frieda woke everyone early and took them all to Number 9 for breakfast – a raggle-taggle crew of bleary-eyed, anxious teenagers, who seemed closer today to childhood than adulthood. Their mother had been murdered, their father was in a police cell and they were waiting for the sentence to fall.
She saw them all on to the bus, waiting till it drew away, then returned home. She felt drained and subdued, but she had things to do. Josef was building a garden wall in Primrose Hill; Sasha was at work. So Frieda took the train out from Liverpool Street, through the nearly completed stadiums and sports halls of the Olympic Park. They looked like toys abandoned by a giant child. Coming out of the station at Denham, she climbed into a taxi waiting at the rank.
A horse refuge named after a flower. Frieda had imagined rolling meadows and woodland. The taxi passed a large, semi-demolished set of warehouses, then a housing estate. When the taxi stopped and the driver announced that they had arrived, Frieda thought she must have come to the wrong place, but then she saw the sign: ‘The Sunflower Horse and Donkey Refuge’. The driver asked if she wanted him to wait for her. Frieda said she might be some time so he wrote his number on a card and gave it to her.
As the car drove away, she looked around. By the en
trance, there was a pebbledash house. There were deep cracks in the façade and an upper window was covered with cardboard. It seemed deserted. On the wall, to the side of the entrance, there was another sign, stencilled: ‘Visitors Report to Reception’. She walked into a yard lined with stable buildings made out of breeze blocks and concrete but no Reception that she could see. There were piles of horse manure and straw bales, and off to the side a rusting tractor with no tyres on the front wheels. Frieda stepped delicately across the yard, making her way between brown muddy puddles.
‘Is there anyone here?’ she called out.
She heard a scraping sound and a teenage girl carrying a spade emerged from one of the stable doorways. She was dressed in rubber boots and jeans and a bright red T-shirt. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’m looking for someone called Shane.’
The girl just gave a shrug.
‘I heard that a man called Shane works here.’
The girl shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Maybe he used to work here.’
‘I don’t know nobody called Shane.’
‘How long have you been working here?’
‘A few years. On and off.’
‘And you know everyone who works here?’
The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Course I do,’ she said, and disappeared back into the stable. Frieda heard the spade scraping on the concrete floor. She walked out of the yard on to the road where she had come in, looked at her watch and wondered what to do. She thought back to the conversation in the pub. Had she misunderstood somehow? Were they just trying to get her to go away? She started to walk along the road. There was no pavement, just a grass verge, and she felt vulnerable to the cars that were passing her with a rush of air and noise. As she got beyond the buildings, she reached a rough wooden fence that separated the field from the road.
She leaned on the fence and looked across. The field was large, maybe a quarter of a mile across, bordered on the far side by the busy A12, cars and lorries rumbling along it. The field itself was scrubby and abandoned, broken only by occasional clumps of gorse and, in the middle, a large, dead oak tree. And then there were horses, and a few donkeys, scattered around. They were old and mangy but they seemed contented enough, heads down, nibbling at the grass, and Frieda found it relaxing just watching them. It wasn’t much, perhaps, but better here than anywhere else. It was a strange scene, neither town nor country but something messily in between. It looked like land that had been neglected, unloved, half forgotten about. Maybe some buildings had been there, had been demolished and the grass and the gorse had grown back. One day someone would notice it again, next to the motorway, close to London, and they’d build an industrial estate or a service station, but until then it would struggle on. Frieda rather liked it.