by Nicci French
Frieda stared at her. ‘You think I might have done it,’ she said at last.
Yvete flushed. ‘No! That’s not what I was saying at all. But it’s not a secret that you and Dr McGill were angry with him. You had every reason. He shafted you. He was just jealous.’
‘I promise you,’ Frieda said softly, ‘that I haven’t been near Hal Bradshaw’s house.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’
‘It was a monstrous thing to do. And I know that Reuben wouldn’t do that, however angry he was.’
‘Bradshaw said something else as well.’
‘What?’
‘You know what he’s like, Frieda. Insinuating.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘He said that he had some dangerous enemies, even if they didn’t do their own dirty work.’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Yes. But also that he has some powerful friends.’
‘Good for him,’ said Frieda.
‘Don’t you care?’
‘Not so much,’ said Frieda. ‘But what I want to know is why you do.’
‘You mean why should I care?’
She looked steadily at Yvette. ‘You haven’t always looked after my best interests.’
Yvette didn’t look away. ‘I have dreams about you,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Not the kind of dreams you’d expect, not dreams where you’re nearly killed or stuff like that. These are odder. Once I dreamed we were at school together – though we were our real age – and sitting next to each other in class, and I was trying to write neatly to impress you but I just kept smearing the ink and couldn’t form the letters correctly. They were crooked and childish and kept sliding off the page, and yours were perfect and neat. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to interpret my dreams. I’m not so stupid I can’t do that myself. In another dream, we were on holiday and were by a lake surrounded by mountains that looked like chimneys, and I was really nervous because we were about to dive in the water but I didn’t know how to swim. Actually, I can’t really swim – I don’t like getting my head under water. But I couldn’t tell you because I thought you’d laugh at me. I was going to drown so I didn’t look like a fool in front of you.’
Frieda was about to speak, but Yvette held up a hand. Her cheeks were crimson. ‘You make me feel completely inadequate,’ she said, ‘and as if you can look into me and see through me and know all the things I don’t want people to see. You know I’m lonely and you know I’m jealous of you and you know I’m crap at relationships. And you know …’ Her cheeks burned. ‘You know I’ve got a schoolgirl crush on the boss. The other night I got a bit drunk, and I kept imagining what you’d think of me if you could see me lurching around.’
‘But, Yvette –’
‘The fact is that I nearly let you get killed, and when I’m not having dreams I’ve been lying awake and wondering if I did it out of some pathetic anger. And how do you think that makes me feel about myself?’
‘So you’re making amends?’ Frieda asked softly.
‘I guess you could call it that.’
‘Thank you.’
Frieda held out her hand and Yvette took it, and for a moment the two women sat across the table from each other, holding hands and gazing into the other’s face.
FIFTY-SIX
Frieda was dreaming about Sandy. He was smiling at her and holding out his hand to her, and then Frieda, in her dream, realized it wasn’t Sandy at all – that it was actually Dean’s face, Dean’s soft smile. She woke with a lurch and lay for several minutes, taking deep breaths and waiting for the dread to subside.
At last, she rose, showered, and went into the kitchen. Chloë was already sitting at the table. There was a mug of untouched tea and what looked like a large album in front of her. She was bedraggled, her hair unbrushed and her face grimy with yesterday’s mascara. She looked as though she had hardly slept for nights. She was like an abandoned waif – her mother was going through a messy crisis and barely thought about her, her friends had been taken away from her, and her aunt had absented herself at her time of need. She lifted her smudged, tear-stained face and stared blindly at her.
Frieda took a seat opposite her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I guess.’
‘Can I get you some breakfast?’
‘No. I’m not hungry. Oh, God, Frieda, I can’t stop thinking about it all.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I was lying in bed and I kept imagining what they were feeling at that very moment. They’ve lost everything. Their mother, their father, their belief in their past happiness. How do they ever get back to an ordinary kind of life after this?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about you?’
‘I didn’t sleep so well either. I was thinking about things.’ Frieda walked across the kitchen and filled the kettle. She looked at her niece, who had her head propped on her hand and was dreamily staring at the pages of the album in front of her.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘Ted left his portfolio. I’ll give it back to him but first I’ve been looking through it. He’s an amazing artist. I wish I was just a tenth, a hundredth as good as he is. I wish –’ She stopped and bit her lip.
‘Chloë. This has been hard for you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said harshly. ‘I know he just thinks of me as a friend. A shoulder to cry on. Not that he does cry on it.’
‘And probably,’ said Frieda, ‘your own feelings are rather complicated because of everything he’s been through.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean there’s something extremely attractive about a young man who’s so surrounded by tragedy.’
‘Like I’m a grief tourist?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘It’s all over now,’ said Chloë. Her eyes filled with tears and she went on staring at the book in front of her.
Frieda leaned over her shoulder as she turned the large pages. She saw a beautifully exact drawing of an apple, a bulbous self-portrait as reflected in a convex mirror, a painstakingly precise tree. ‘He’s good,’ she said.
‘Wait,’ said Chloë. ‘There’s one I want to show you.’ She leafed over page after page until she was almost at the end. ‘Look.’
‘What is it?’
‘Look at the date. Wednesday, the sixth of April, nine thirty a.m. That’s the still-life drawing he had to do for his mock A level. It’s also the drawing he did on the day his mother was killed. It almost makes me cry just to look at it, to think of what was about to happen.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Frieda, and then she frowned, turning her head slightly. She heard the kettle click behind her. The water had boiled. But she couldn’t attend to it. Not now.
‘It bloody is,’ said Chloë, ‘it –’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Frieda. ‘Describe it to me. Tell me what’s in it.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
‘All right. There’s a watch and a bunch of keys and a book and an electric plug thing and then …’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something leaning on the book.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t tell.’
‘Describe it.’
‘It’s sort of straight, and notched, like a sort of metal ruler.’
Frieda concentrated for a moment in silence, so hard that her head hurt.
‘Is that what it is?’ she said finally. ‘Or what it looks like?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Chloe. �
�What’s the difference? It’s just a drawing.’ She slammed the portfolio shut. ‘I need to take it into school,’ she said. ‘To give to Ted.’
‘He won’t be at school,’ said Frieda. ‘And, anyway. I need that book today.’
Karlsson stood in front of her but he didn’t look at her. ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he said at last.
‘I know. This won’t take long.’
‘You don’t understand, Frieda. You shouldn’t be here. The commissioner doesn’t want you here. And you’ll not make your case any better with Hal Bradshaw if you start hanging round the station. He already thinks you’re an arsonist and a stalker.’
‘I know. I won’t come again,’ said Frieda, steadily. ‘I want to see the murder weapon.’
‘As a favour? But you’ve called in the favour, Frieda. And I’m in huge trouble now. I won’t bother you with the details.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘But I need to see it. And then I’ll go away.’
He stared at her, then shrugged and led her down the stairs into a basement room, where he opened a metal drawer.
‘This is what you want,’ he said. ‘Don’t put fingerprints on it, and let yourself out when you’ve finished.’
‘Thank you.’
‘By the way, Elaine Kerrigan has confessed to the murder of Ruth Lennox.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry. I think Russell Lennox is about to confess as well. And the Kerrigan sons. The whole station will be full of people confessing and we still won’t know.’
And he left.
Frieda pulled on plastic gloves and lifted out the large cog, placing it on the table in the centre of the room. It looked as if it should be in the machinery of a giant clock, but the Lennoxes had had it on their mantelpiece as a sort of sculpture.
She opened Ted’s artbook at the page dated Wednesday, 6 April and put it on the table as well. She stared from cog to drawing so hard that everything began to blur. She stood back. She walked round the table so that she could see the cog from every angle. She squatted on the floor and squinted up at it. Very delicately, she tipped the object, swivelled it, held it so that it flattened out in her view.
And then at last she had it. Viewed at a certain angle, levered back and twisted, the heft object looked like a straight notched line. The same straight and notched line that she could see among the items that Ted had drawn for his mock art A level, on the morning of Wednesday, 6 April.
Frieda’s face became expressionless. At last she gave a small sigh, put the cog back into the metal drawer, which she slid shut, pulled off the gloves and left the room.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Louise Weller and her family lived in Clapham Junction, in a narrow red-brick terraced house set slightly back from the long, straight road, lined with plane trees and regulated by speed humps. The bow windows downstairs had lace curtains, to prevent anyone looking in, and the door was dark blue with a brass knocker in the middle. Frieda rapped on it three times, then stood back. The spring weather had turned cooler, and she felt a few welcome drops of rain on her hot skin.
The door opened and Louise Weller stood in front of her, holding a baby to her chest. Behind her the hall was dark and clean. Frieda could smell drying clothes and detergent. She remembered Karlsson telling her about the sick husband and imagined him lying in one of the rooms upstairs, listening.
‘Yes? Oh – it’s you. What are you doing here?’
‘Can I come in, please?’
‘This is probably not a good time. I’m about to feed Benjy.’
‘It’s not you I’ve come to see.’
‘They don’t need to be disturbed. They need stability now, a bit of peace.’
‘Just for a moment, then,’ said Frieda, politely, and stepped past Louise Weller into the hall. ‘Are they all here?’
‘Where else would they be? It’s a bit cramped, of course.’
‘I mean, all here at the moment.’
‘Yes. But I don’t want them troubled.’
‘I’d like a word with Ted.’
‘Ted? Why? I’m not sure that’s appropriate.’
‘I’ll be brief.’
Louse Weller stared at her, then shrugged. ‘I’ll call him,’ she said stiffly. ‘If he wants to see you. Come through into the drawing room.’
She opened the door beside them and Frieda stepped into the front room with the bow window. It was too hot and had too much furniture in it, too many little tables and straight-backed chairs. There was a doll’s buggy parked by the radiator, with a flaxen-haired blue-eyed doll propped in it. She found it hard to breathe.
‘Frieda?’
‘Dora!’
The girl’s face had a greeny pallor and there was a cold sore at the corner of her mouth. Her hair wasn’t in its usual plaits but hung limply around her face. She was wearing an old-fashioned white blouse and looked, thought Frieda, like a figure in a Victorian melodrama: pitiable, abandoned, acutely distressed.
‘Have you come to take us away?’ Dora asked her.
‘No. I’ve come to see Ted.’
‘Please can we go to yours?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s not possible.’ Frieda hesitated, taking in Dora’s scrawny frame and her pinched, dejected face.
‘Why?’
‘Your aunt is your guardian. She’ll take care of you now.’
‘Please. Please don’t let us stay here.’
‘Sit down,’ said Frieda. She took Dora’s hand, a parcel of bones, between both hers and gazed into the girl’s eyes. ‘I’m so very sorry, Dora,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about your mother, and I’m sorry about your father. I’m sorry you’re here, not with people you love – though I’m sure your aunt loves you in her way.’
‘No,’ whispered Dora. ‘No. She doesn’t. She tells me off about mess and she makes me feel like I’m in her way all the time. I can’t even cry in front of her. She just tuts at me.’
‘One day,’ said Frieda, slowly, feeling her way, ‘one day I hope you’ll be able to make sense of all of this. Now it must just feel like a terrible nightmare. But I want to tell you that these bad days will pass. I’m not telling you that it will cease to be painful, but the pain will become bearable.’
‘When will Dad come back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Her funeral’s next Monday. Will you come to it?’
‘Yes. I’ll be there.’
‘Will you sit with me?’
‘Your aunt –’
‘When Aunt Louise talks about her, she makes this horrible face. As if there’s a bad taste in her mouth. And Ted and Judith are so angry about her. But –’ She stopped.
‘Go on,’ said Frieda.
‘I know she had an affair. I know she did wrong and cheated on Dad. I know she lied to us all. But that’s not how I think of her.’
‘Tell me how you think of her.’
‘When I was ill, she used to sit on my bed and read to me for hours. And in the mornings, when she woke me up, she’d always bring me a cup of tea in my favourite mug and put her hand on my shoulder and wait till I was properly awake. Then she’d kiss me on my forehead. She always had a shower in the morning and she smelt clean and lemony.’
‘That’s a good memory,’ said Frieda. ‘What else do you remember?’
‘When I was being bullied, she was the only person in the world I could talk to about it. She made me feel less ashamed. Once, when it was really bad, she let me stay home from school and she took the day off herself and we spent hours in the garden, dead-heading the roses together. I don’t know why it made me feel better, but it did. She told me abo
ut how she was bullied at school. She said I had to go on being who I was, being kind and nice.’
Dora stopped. Tears stood in her eyes.
‘I think she sounds like a lovely mother,’ said Frieda. ‘I wish I’d met her.’
‘I miss her so much I want to die. I want to die.’
‘I know,’ said Frieda. ‘I know, Dora.’
‘So why did she –’
‘Listen to me now. People are very complicated. They can be lots of different people at the same time. They can cause pain and yet still be kind, sympathetic, good. Don’t lose your memories of your mother. That’s who she was to you and that’s real. She loved you. She may have been having an affair but that doesn’t alter the way she felt about her children. Don’t let anyone take her away from you.’
‘Aunt Louise says –’
‘Fuck Aunt Louise!’
Ted was standing in the doorway. His hair was greasy and lank and his face looked mushroomy in its unhealthy pallor; there were violet smudges under his eyes and a prickling rash on his neck. Small sprouts of a young man’s beard were beginning to appear on his chin. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Frieda wondered if he’d even been to bed, let alone slept. As he approached, she could smell sweat and tobacco, a yeasty unwashed aroma.
‘What are you doing here? Couldn’t keep away?’
‘Hello, Ted.’
Ted jerked his head at Dora. ‘Louise wants you.’
Dora got to her feet, still holding Frieda’s hand. ‘Will you come and see us?’ she asked urgently.
‘Yes.’
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
The girl left the room and Frieda was left with Ted. She held up his portfolio. ‘I’ve brought you this.’
‘You thought I might be worrying about where it was? I’ve had other things on my mind.’
‘I know. DCI Karlsson told me that your father has confessed to the manslaughter of Zach Greene and he’s under suspicion of murdering your mother.’