by Nicci French
He pulled off the headphones.
‘It’s Polly, isn’t it?’
‘Lola,’ she said. ‘Lola Hayes. I came to see you a few days ago.’ She waited for him to remember, then added, ‘About my dissertation. You suggested Frieda Klein.’
‘That’s right.’
‘The thing is, it’s not going very well.’
He sighed. ‘Come in. Tell me the problem.’
She took a seat. He looked at her, in her buttercup-yellow skirt and her red duffel coat, her eyes large and trusting, and thought how young she seemed for her age.
‘You said I should deconstruct her,’ Lola said. ‘Dismantle her.’
‘Did I?’
‘So I tried to see her, and some of the people who know her.’
‘That’s probably not necessary. You’re not on a journalism course.’
‘Nobody could tell me anything, really. So here I am.’
‘With a dissertation due in two weeks’ time.’
‘I know. What shall I do?’
‘Make a plan.’
‘That’s all very well,’ she said.
He could hear the cantata still coming from the headphones on the desk and tried to hide his impatience. ‘What have you found out so far?’
‘That she’s been involved in lots of scary things, that her lover was killed and she was injured, that she loves walking – she’s got a thing about following secret rivers. That she –’
‘Stop right there.’ Simon Tearle held up a hand.
Lola stopped.
‘Psychogeography.’
‘What?’
‘The effect of the environment on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. Look at Frieda Klein’s experience in one or two of the key cases she was involved in through the lens of her urban surroundings.’
‘Really?’ Lola wrinkled her nose doubtfully.
‘Go and explore. Follow in Frieda’s footsteps. Radical wandering.’
He replaced his headphones, leaned back and closed his eyes. He heard the door click shut.
Dugdale sat at his desk with the preliminary results from the autopsy in front of him. He’d had very little sleep, but he had just had a shower and put on a clean shirt: that always helped. He glanced across at Quarry. He looked tired. Worse than tired. That morning several newspapers had carried ominous stories about ‘The Hampstead Murders’.
‘Is it the same killer?’ asked Quarry.
Dugdale stared down at his breakfast, a bacon and tomato sandwich with tired shreds of lettuce trailing from it. ‘Let’s think about that, shall we?’
Quarry looked blank.
‘How they are similar?’ said Dugdale.
‘Are you wondering or asking?’ said Quarry.
‘I’m asking.’
‘Location.’ Quarry could feel his mobile ringing in his pocket once more: Maggie, he thought. He tried to concentrate.
‘We’ve already agreed. Anything else?’
There was a silence. Then Quarry added cautiously, ‘They’re both out of the ordinary.’
‘That’s true. It doesn’t take us very far but it’s true.’
‘Both planned.’
Dugdale nodded unenthusiastically.
‘Apart from that, they’re completely different. They’re a week apart. Geoffrey Kernan lived in Barking, Lee Samuels in Royal Oak. Kernan was forty-seven, Samuels thirty-two. Kernan sold toilet supplies, Samuels was an engineer, currently out of work. As far as we can tell, they had no connection to each other. No shared interests, no friends in common.’
‘You’re missing something,’ said Dugdale. He passed a piece of paper across. ‘Look at the words I’ve highlighted.’
‘Modacrylic fibres,’ Quarry read. ‘I’ve no idea what that is.’
‘It was found attached to Samuels’s skin. Around the legs and torso and even his face. I called Forensics. It’s a fabric used in work clothing, linings of coats, rugs.’
‘I’ve still no idea.’
‘Look at the other highlighted words.’
‘Flame-resistant.’
‘Yes. He was wrapped in flame-resistant fabric.’
‘So he wouldn’t burn?’
‘That’s right. But why?’ He waited a couple of seconds, then continued, ‘Why do you put a body on a fire? To get rid of it, dispose of the evidence. Right?’
Quarry nodded.
‘But Samuels was put in a fire in protective garments, meaning he wouldn’t quickly be burned. Why?’
‘Someone wanted him found?’ suggested Quarry.
Dugdale slapped his desktop irritably. ‘We now know he was killed at least a week ago. We also know his girlfriend reported him missing on September the twenty-ninth, but it wasn’t taken very seriously. So?’ He looked at him, his eyebrows raised.
‘So whoever killed him waited before displaying the body,’ said Quarry.
‘That’s right.’
There was a long pause.
‘Is it all right if I say something? It’s probably meaningless.’
‘You can say anything here.’
Quarry hesitated. He wasn’t sure if his boss really meant that. ‘Normally if you put a body on a fire, it’s to dispose of that body. But we think he did this as some sort of display.’ Dugdale didn’t reply, so Quarry went on, ‘But if you go to the trouble of protecting the body, that’s not just a display. If they hadn’t done that, it might have been difficult to identify the body. But maybe it was important that we identified it. Maybe that’s part of the point.’
Dugdale frowned. He was fidgeting with his pen.
‘Just like Kernan,’ said Quarry.
‘Just like Kernan.’ Dugdale nodded approvingly.
‘So it is the same killer.’ Quarry felt a jolt of excitement. This could be big, the kind of thing that made a career.
‘It’s possible,’ said Dugdale, finally. ‘It’s definitely possible.’
‘This is going to be big, isn’t it?’ said Quarry. He’d had another idea. Something he should do. But this time he didn’t share it with his boss.
‘I’m only going to tell you things that you’d find from other officers.’
‘Of course.’ Liz Barron gave Dan Quarry her most engaging smile.
‘I’m not going to do anything that would compromise cases.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. The way I see it, we’re just making each other’s jobs a little bit easier. Everyone wins and no one loses, right?’
‘Right.’
‘You can give me advice, steer me in the right direction, keep me one step ahead of the competition.’ She patted Quarry’s shoulder. ‘Don’t look so anxious.’
‘If it were ever to get out …’
‘This is my job. It won’t get out.’ She sat back. ‘And, of course, in return for your help, we’ll cover your expenses.’
Quarry winced. That was why he was doing it, why he had to do it, but he didn’t like it being said out loud.
She nodded at him, her glossy hair swinging, then dipped her hand into her bag and pulled out a notebook. ‘I think we understand each other, Dan. Now, there’s something I’m interested in following up. Perhaps you can help me.’
ELEVEN
Lola overslept. And she had to have breakfast before she started out: it was her favourite meal of the day. She put a teabag in a mug, poured boiling water over it, then washed up a dirty pan that was in the sink from last night and made herself a poached egg on a toasted, thickly buttered muffin.
Then she rummaged around at the bottom of the wardrobe and found the old pair of walking shoes that used to belong to her flatmate Jess before Jess’s feet had had a growth spurt. Lola wasn’t sure that she’d ever actually worn them herself, but she thought she ought to dress for the task ahead. She saw that the sky was overcast; rain might be coming.
She had made some very basic preparations. She had googled psychogeography, just to make sure she wasn’t getting it wrong. It was, she discovered, about playfulness, about d
rifting around urban environments, about getting away from your normal routes, about opening yourself up to randomness. It sounded perfect, nothing like work at all. She’d even thought of inviting a couple of friends along. They could make a day of it, grab a coffee, a sandwich, end up with a drink at a pub. But then she read an article that to achieve this new awareness it had to be done alone. That made sense. Lola could imagine that if she went with friends like Ellie or Ben, they’d just spend the whole day talking and wouldn’t even notice where they were going. The question was, where to go. Lola had flicked through her notes on Frieda and saw that the River Lea and the Regent’s Canal in East London came up several times. She consulted the map on her phone. It looked like a good starting point. She found a pen and a notebook that would fit in her jacket pocket, and that was all she needed. She took a bus over to Clapton Pond, walked through the park and there, almost like magic, was a river. She had never seen it before, never even heard of it.
Everything Lola saw was new and surprising. From the right a boat with – she counted them – eight rowers and a cox, just like the Boat Race, came towards her. A voice shouted and she looked round and stepped back. A man was cycling alongside the boat, shouting instructions. On the western bank of the river there were gleaming new apartment buildings, on the other side, trees and scrubby grass as far as she could see. Just a few yards away from her, two white swans and four mangy little grey ones were pecking at something in the water. What were they called? Swanlets? Lola looked at her phone again and scrolled on the map, this way and that. She saw that if she turned left, the river would take her through Tottenham and Enfield, past reservoirs and lakes and then gradually and messily out of London. But she had to turn right, heading back into town. She walked past a row of houseboats. On one of them a woman with long hennaed dreadlocks was stacking firewood on the deck. Lola and the woman got into conversation. Lola asked how she kept the boat warm, and washed and cooked, and whether the boat leaked.
The woman mainly laughed at her questions. ‘You get a new kind of rhythm,’ she said. ‘You manage.’ She talked about what it was like on summer evenings, putting out chairs on the path, having a barbecue, drinking with friends until the dawn came up over the marshes. Then Lola talked about how she was following in the path of a female psychotherapist who investigated crimes and that one of them had taken place here.
The woman frowned. ‘I think I remember that one,’ she said. ‘It was a guy and a girl who lived in one of the boats just along here. I can’t remember the details. It just became one of the stories people tell each other.’
Lola took a photograph of the woman outlined against a wall on the other side of the river. It had a huge mural of a sort of devil with a vast open mouth and ferocious teeth.
As she walked along the river she nodded at dog-walkers and runners and cyclists. She stopped and talked to a man in a yellow reflective jacket who was pushing a trolley along, picking up rubbish. For a mile or so she could almost have been in the countryside. Then she passed under what looked like a motorway, feeling the rumble of the lorries overhead, and emerged into the beginnings of the Olympic Park. She turned off the River Lea onto a canal that took her along the edge of Victoria Park. On the other side, terraced houses with gardens bordered the water. Lola almost felt envious: it would be like living on the canal, but you could have a proper bed and a bath at the end of the day.
The little canal joined the Regent’s Canal at the end of Victoria Park and there Lola turned right, still with the park beside her; she saw a young woman struggling with five dogs of different kinds, the leads all entangled. Lola took the leads one by one and helped her to get free. It turned out that, no, they weren’t her dogs. That was her job, taking dogs for a walk every day.
‘Is that a real job?’ Lola asked.
The woman looked a little offended and the dogs dragged her away into the park. Mainly, the towpath was lined with houseboats, but Lola reached a clear patch where three men had taken advantage of the space and were sitting fishing, each separated from the other by just a few paces. Lola took up position between the first two. On her left was an old man with a shock of white hair, a woolly hat and a bulky jacket. He was so enormously fat that Lola couldn’t see how his little camping stool could possibly bear his weight. On her right was a man who looked like his opposite in every way. He wore black workman’s boots, black jeans and a checked shirt, rolled up to the elbows. He was lean, tanned and his hair was cut very short. While the fat man was muttering to himself, or to the water, the lean man just looked straight ahead in total concentration.
‘What sort of fish do you get?’ Lola asked.
The fat man sniffed.
‘Get some tench,’ he said. ‘Some bream. Got a ten-pound carp once.’
‘Do you eat them?’
‘Eat them?’ The man gave a deep laugh that seemed to come from far inside his belly. ‘What do you think, mate?’ He looked across at his companion, who gave a shrug. ‘I’ve heard there’s a Korean place down in Bermondsey that’ll cook anything you bring them.’
Lola wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was it a racist comment or was it not a racist comment? She responded, as she generally did when she was confused, by talking about herself in a slightly uncontrolled way, saying, as she had said to the woman on the boat, that she was following in the footsteps of a psychotherapist who investigated crimes. Both of the fishermen looked round at her curiously.
‘What’s her name?’ said the lean man.
‘You probably wouldn’t have heard of her,’ said Lola.
‘Murders?’ said the fat man.
‘Some murders,’ said Lola.
‘I’ve had some strange things on the end of my hook,’ said the fat man. ‘Sometimes it’s eels. I used to like an eel. But once I got a bit of wood with nails in the end and barbed wire.’
‘A fence post?’
‘No, for hitting someone with.’ The man resumed his deep, throaty laugh.
‘What sort of jobs do you do?’ asked Lola. ‘That give you time to fish here in the day.’
‘We come here to get away from questions like that,’ said the lean man.
‘My mistake,’ said Lola. ‘Mind if I get a picture?’ She brandished her phone.
‘Flattered, my love,’ said the fat man. ‘Mind you get my good side.’
‘Want to be in it?’ said the lean man.
She handed her phone to him and she knelt beside the fat man and put her hand on his ample shoulder.
‘Do you want the water or the path in the background?’
‘You decide.’
The lean man examined Lola’s phone.
‘Do you want me to show you how it works?’ said Lola.
‘I can do it.’
He took the picture and one for luck, and handed the phone back to Lola. Then she took a photograph of the two men.
‘Don’t steal our souls,’ said the lean man.
‘I’ll try not to.’
Further down the bank, Lola talked to a group of people her own age, who were sitting on a houseboat having an impromptu music session. She talked to a group of small children who were carrying balloons and whose faces were all painted as different animals. She talked to a man who was paddling down the canal on what looked like a giant surfboard. He told her he was on his way to Limehouse. She stopped at a café with tables on the towpath, drank a flat white and ate a piece of carrot cake. The waiter was from Peru and the woman behind the counter was from Sweden. She wanted to ask them whether they were worried about being expelled from the country but felt it might be a sore point with them. She wouldn’t be a good reporter, she thought. She found it too difficult to talk to strangers.
As she approached Islington, the houses became noticeably smarter, the office blocks more elegant, the crowds on the towpath denser. When she arrived at the end of the path where the tunnel disappeared under the hill at the Angel, she looked at her phone. She had taken over eighty pictures. Maybe she could just
present her dissertation as an exhibition of pictures. As she walked up the steep slope that led away from the canal, she thought: had that walk brought her closer, in some spiritual way, to Frieda Klein? She felt doubtful. She’d almost forgotten about her.
When she got home, her flatmate, Jess, was sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing-gown with a towel round her head. Her face was pink and smooth from the bath. She was going to a party in Mile End. She poured Lola a mug of tea.
‘Next year we should look for somewhere east,’ she said. ‘We spend half our time travelling there and the other half travelling back.’
‘I’ve just come from there,’ said Lola.
‘How did it go?’
Lola took out her phone and swiped through the pictures she had taken and talked about them.
‘There are some really creepy people on the canal, aren’t there?’
‘They weren’t creepy,’ said Lola. ‘They were nice. If you just talk to people, everyone’s the same, really.’
‘Well, that’s not true,’ said Jess. ‘Anyway, you wanted it to be creepy, didn’t you? Isn’t your dissertation about murder and kidnapping?’
‘I’m not sure what my dissertation’s about. I was just trying to get into Frieda Klein’s head, walk where she walked, see the people she saw, feel what she felt.’
‘And did you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know enough about her. Maybe I need to be a bit more specific. I should find the actual places that are most important to her.’
‘Have you been to her house?’
‘Yes, I looked through the window.’
‘Did you learn anything?’
‘It was in this little mews street just off Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road. It felt like a little quiet island in the middle of town.’
‘What about her work?’
‘I didn’t get anything from that. They wouldn’t let me past Reception.’
‘What about where she was born?’
‘That was out of London somewhere. I can’t be bothered with that.’
They sipped their tea.
‘Graves,’ said Jess.
‘What?’