by Nicci French
Frieda lifted her upright. ‘Give me your phone.’
Lola handed it over. Frieda pushed the window down and threw it out.
‘What are you doing? That’s the second phone you’ve thrown away. It’s only pay-as-you-go. Nobody can trace me.’
‘Wait,’ said Frieda. ‘We’ll talk soon.’
They got out of the taxi in Camden High Street, almost back where Lola had joined the canal. Frieda started walking briskly along the pavement. She led Lola into Marks & Spencer.
‘We’re going to get you some clothes,’ she said.
‘Why? What clothes?’
‘Everything you need. But nothing that needs trying on for size.’
She picked out underwear, a high-necked black T-shirt and black leggings, a soft, baggy sweater the colour of aubergines, a waterproof jacket and a pair of white trainers with green laces. Frieda paid but then, instead of leaving, led Lola to a changing room, went in with her and pulled the curtain shut.
‘I thought you didn’t want me to try anything on.’
‘Take everything off,’ said Frieda.
‘What’s this about?’ said Lola. All the bounce had gone out of her. She looked grubby and exhausted.
‘If I’m going to keep you safe, then we’re starting from zero. First, empty your pockets.’
There were only a few coins, the key to Lola’s flat and her purse.
Lola unbuttoned her jacket, took it off and hung it on a hook. She kicked her shoes off. Then she pulled her top over her head, unclipped her bra and slipped it off. She unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down with her knickers and stepped out of them. Teetering awkwardly, she took her little socks off. She stood naked in front of Frieda, who saw how passive she had become. There was a dazed expression on her face.
Frieda tipped the new clothes out of the bag. She examined Lola for several seconds.
‘Take your watch off,’ she said. ‘And your earrings.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘But if we get rid of everything, we don’t need to think about it.’
Lola handed the watch and earrings to Frieda, who tossed them into the empty plastic bag. She put Lola’s clothes into the bag as well.
‘You can get dressed now.’
As Lola put the clothes on, Frieda searched through the wallet. She handed the small number of coins to Lola. A credit card, a driving licence, a student union card and several store cards she put into her own pocket.
‘Don’t you trust me with those?’
‘You can’t use them if you don’t have them.’
Then Frieda tossed the wallet into the bag as well.
‘That was a present from my parents,’ said Lola.
‘Is it worth dying for?’
Lola looked at herself in the full-length mirror. ‘I look like someone else.’
Frieda followed her gaze. ‘You don’t look conspicuous. That’s all that matters. Now we need to go. We’ve already been here too long.’
As they walked out of the shop, Frieda crammed the shopping bag into a bin on the street. Lola started to protest. ‘I suppose I’m not allowed to say that those clothes and my watch meant something to me,’ she said.
Frieda looked at Lola with an expression that wasn’t too far away from a smile. ‘You should never own anything that you would mind losing,’ she said.
THIRTY-THREE
Lola had become used to these trips across London. This time they took the Overground east from Camden Road, then changed at Highbury and Islington and headed south. They got out at Shadwell and walked along Cable Street, then turned down a side-street lined with small houses built in the sixties, set slightly back from the road, with porches and miniature front lawns. Frieda took a key from her pocket and opened the door of number three. The hall smelt of lavender. Lola glanced at the mirror on the wall then immediately looked away: she didn’t want to see her face. It didn’t look like her any more.
Suddenly two pale shapes streamed past them.
‘Oh!’ she said, startled.
‘I’m cat-sitting,’ said Frieda.
Lola sat down heavily on the stairs and gazed at Frieda, standing there so calmly in this comfortable, clean little house.
‘Cat-sitting?’ she said. She started to laugh, a hard sound that ricocheted round the hall. Frieda stepped forward and the laughter changed to a hacking sob. Lola leaned down, her head between her knees, and her shoulders shook under the soft new jumper.
Frieda put a hand on her shoulder and waited for the sobs to subside. At last Lola lifted her head and stared at her blearily.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ Frieda said. ‘I’ll make you a hot drink.’
‘How did you get this place?’ asked Lola, once she was sitting at the table. There was a lava lamp on the side and on the white wall a picture of a harlequin.
‘Just a contact. It’s not important. You mustn’t open the curtains front or back, turn on overhead lights or make any loud noises. We enter and leave as discreetly as possible – and if we’re asked, we’ve come to feed the cats. Anything we use I must replace. This, for instance.’ She dropped a ginger teabag into a large green mug. ‘The people who live here are on holiday and nobody must know anyone is in here.’
Lola nodded.
‘Now, we have to talk.’ She passed Lola the mug of ginger tea. ‘Tell me how you’re feeling.’
Lola wrapped her hands round the mug and dropped her face so that Frieda couldn’t see her eyes. There was a long silence. When she spoke it was in a voice straining to be steady. ‘I don’t know how I am. Sometimes I feel calm, like I’m looking at myself from the outside and nothing is real, like I’m on the other side of a glass door.’ She looked up briefly, her face shiny from the tea’s steam. Frieda nodded at her but said nothing. ‘And sometimes I feel like there’s a rolling sea inside me and I’m drowning in it. But whichever it is, I see it all the time. See her. When I close my eyes, I see her looking up at me. I’ve never seen anyone dead before. Dead eyes are different. It’s hard to explain. And there was so much blood. I trod in it. They gave me new shoes at the police station, the ones you threw away. I smell it too. It’s like it’s coating the lining of my throat and nose.’
‘I’m very sorry about your friend,’ said Frieda, gently.
‘She’s got a name. Jess. Jessica Colbeck.’
‘I’m very sorry about Jess.’
Lola swallowed and started to breathe quickly, as if she had run up several flights of stairs.
‘If I hadn’t had this stupid idea of writing about you and then meeting Dean Reeve on the canal and then …’
‘And then what? You can’t blame yourself.’
‘I’m not blaming myself. I’m just wishing that none of this had happened. I wish I could just go back in time and none of this had ever happened. I don’t want to be here.’
‘What you saw was terrible. You can talk to me about it. You can say anything to me and I will listen. However, I can tell you that it will always be painful, but it will fade.’
‘I don’t want it to fade.’ Lola’s voice was fierce. Frieda, looking at her, thought how she’d grown up over the course of one terrible day. ‘I feel that would be a way of forgetting Jess.’
‘You won’t forget her. Neither will you remember her only as you do now, with horror and guilt.’
Lola dipped her head down again. Her shoulders were hunched forward and her hair had come untied and fell in limp strands.
‘Do you want to describe exactly what happened?’ asked Frieda.
Lola gave a violent shake of her head. ‘I can’t. Not yet.’
‘All right. Tell me what happened at the police station then.’
Lola gave a halting, disjointed account of her questioning by Dugdale, how he’d made her go over and over her account and made her feel guilty somehow, and a young man called Dan Something-or-other had written things down, and she’d signed a statement but her hand had shaken
so much it didn’t look like her signature. They’d given her tea and a sandwich but she had vomited it up in the toilet minutes later. They asked her where she would be staying and she’d given them the address of a friend, and they’d told her to keep herself available for more questioning. They wanted to give her a lift there but she said she would prefer to go alone, and then they wanted to call her parents, but she’d refused.
‘They’ll never understand any of this,’ she said. ‘They’ll blame me somehow.’ She gave a violent sniff and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Silly Lola,’ she said. ‘Look at what she’s got herself into now. What a bloody, bloody mess.’ Her voice broke up; the words came out in harsh, separated syllables.
‘No, Lola,’ said Frieda. ‘Nobody will blame you.’
‘You don’t know my parents.’
‘Did you get the impression that the police are making any progress?’
‘They just asked me questions,’ said Lola. ‘Lots and lots of questions, the same ones over and over again. They didn’t tell me anything.’
‘And then you went to Karlsson? Tell me about that. Wasn’t he helpful? Why are you here?’
Lola took a long time to answer, and when she did, it was in a low voice. ‘Don’t be angry with me. If you’re angry with me, I couldn’t bear it. I know I’ve done everything wrong.’
‘I won’t be angry.’
‘I didn’t ask about him and I didn’t see him. I was going to but then I didn’t. I can’t rely on anyone. You’ve taught me that. Except for you. That was all I could think of. I had to get in touch with you. Nobody else.’
‘I see.’ Frieda looked at her with knitted brows.
‘I had this night – this awful night. It was like a terrible dream, but I was awake. I haven’t slept at all. I didn’t want to go to our place until it was light. I couldn’t walk along the canal in the dark. So I wandered around. I went into the Underground and just rode up and down the Northern Line, and I kept thinking he’d be there. Every time the doors opened in a station I thought he’d step in. I knew I should go back to the police station. There’s this Italian café near the Barbican I’ve been to a few times and they stay open until five a.m., and I went there and I ordered tea and a pastry and I sat there for about two hours without touching either, and then when I came to go I didn’t have enough money to pay.’ She gave a gulp. ‘This sweet guy paid for me and then he kind of asked me on a date. The old me would have said yes – he was cute. But of course I couldn’t. I walked to Liverpool Street station and I sat in this grotty waiting room and I waited until it was light and then I came to where I thought you were. I had to walk because I had no money left and I was so tired and scared I kept having to stop and hold on to things and I wanted to lie down and roll into a little ball and never move again or open my eyes. And you were gone. You were gone.’
She lifted the mug and took a large gulp of the cooling tea. Great tears rolled down her face.
‘You must be completely exhausted,’ said Frieda.
Lola nodded. ‘I am. But how will I ever sleep again? I’ll dream about it.’
‘Perhaps. But you need to get some rest.’
‘I know I shouldn’t have gone to see Jess. I was stupid. But I got a direct message from her saying I had to go and see her. Saying it was very, very urgent.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘She said not to tell anyone. And you’d have told me not to go.’
Frieda looked into Lola’s swollen, bloodshot eyes. ‘Let’s not spend time on what you think I would have done,’ she said. ‘We need to think about now. From now on you’re not going to have a phone and you’re not going to have your computer.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘It’s not a matter of trust. It’s very hard to be on your guard all the time – especially someone like you.’
‘What am I like?’
‘Naturally trusting. So if you don’t have them, you can’t make a mistake with them. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I trust you. What matters is that you trust me. If you think I’m unreasonable or unreliable or unsafe, you can walk out now, and find someone who will protect you. But if you decide to stay, then it’s on my terms. Is that something you can manage?’
‘What’ll I actually do?’
‘Read a book. A book won’t give our location away. There are lots of books in the living room. Most of them are strange self-help books or books about cats, but there are a few novels. I think you should have a bath, the water’s piping hot. And then see if you can have a nap. Tomorrow I’ll buy you a sleeping bag – this once you can sleep in their sheets.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Dan Quarry was driving away from the lock-ups and trying to work out how many hours’ sleep he had had in the last three days. Eight, perhaps? He had gone beyond tiredness into a kind of tipsy alertness, where everything seemed to have sharp outlines, where sounds were more vivid and where his thoughts sprang at him, like creatures that had been crouching in the undergrowth, waiting. He knew he should go home, shower, crawl into bed for a while. His skin itched. He felt as though tiny insects were crawling all over him. He wished he had changed the sheets; for a moment he let himself think of his old home, the one Maggie had thrown him out of, where the sun came in through the back windows in the evening, and where his daughter would climb on his lap when he came home tired.
He pulled over, got out of his car and lit a cigarette. It was a damp, grey afternoon, with no wind. The autumn leaves hung limply on the branches of the plane tree that stood in the centre of the tiny patch of green. He shut his eyes for a moment, but his tiredness made the world lurch beneath his feet, so he opened them again. He didn’t know this area of London at all. The sun was invisible in the sky’s thick grey and he couldn’t work out where the river was. On either side of the road there were small shops – kebab and fish-and-chip shops, pawnbrokers, shops selling household goods, a funeral director’s with dying lilies in the window. Above them were flats, but it was impossible to tell which were occupied and which deserted. Ahead was a jumble of low-rise light-industrial units, scrapyards, depots for vans. Quarry saw there was a gym as well, but its doors were boarded up and its windows shattered.
He finished his cigarette, dropped it and ground out its ember with his heel. Then he got back into the car. Much as he had expected, the forensic examination of the garage had produced almost nothing. There were no relevant human traces in the shed. Almost certainly the murders had happened elsewhere. There were multiple fingerprints but none that matched Dean Reeve’s. The lane had been used by dozens of other people; the items that had been collected – the condoms, the crisps bags, the clumps of hair that turned out to belong to a dog – took them nowhere.
The lock-ups belonged to a man called George Pearsall, who ran a building company in Swindon. The individual garages were sub-let in a mass of different arrangements, off the books, for cash. They hadn’t yet been able to find who Reeve had rented his from.
Phelps had trawled through online sites to see where the freezers had come from and had also drawn a blank. There was no way to track sales of second- or third-hand freezers.
As Quarry was about to drive away, his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the caller’s number.
‘Is that Dan Quarry?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘My name’s Ellie Hannan. You don’t know me. I was a colleague of Liz Barron. I came across your name in her notes.’
Quarry was thinking hard. He didn’t know what to say.
‘Are you still there?’
‘It’s not a good time,’ he said.
‘We’re all devastated by what happened to Liz. You must be too. I thought we could talk about it.’
‘I said, it’s not a good time.’
‘Can we talk later?’
‘Yes,’ Quarry said. ‘Later.’ Anything to get her off the line. He ended the call, turned on the engine and drove off. The grey day, the flat concrete landscape
seemed to weigh down on him. That abandoned car-wash. That place selling glass. The one selling tyres, a cluster of men lurking in the interior. Or that large building piled high with the odds and ends from people’s lives that no one wanted any more. On the pavement outside, there were rusting buggies, wheelbarrows, stacked chairs and two huge metal filing cabinets.
Quarry drew over and parked. Getting out, he walked back and peered in through the double doors. In front of him, a deep shelf was piled with old printers. Who on earth would buy second-hand printers? He stepped inside.
The room was massive, both wide and deep, and it was crammed with what at first sight looked like worthless junk, sorted into approximate categories. The printers were next to computers with dusty screens and trailing wires. The computers were next to the televisions, some of which reminded Quarry of his grandmother’s when he was a boy. There were giant speakers, DVD players, boxes of mobile phones. To his left were the bikes, stacked against each other, and as he looked Quarry saw a young man wheel two more through the doors at the back. Another man came through carrying a large box, obviously heavy. He realized that there were several figures working in the space, half hidden behind the walls of junk.
Quarry went further into the room. There were food mixers. There were mattresses. There were plastic Christmas trees, deckchairs, pitchforks, trowels. There were two chainsaws with blunted teeth. There were chests of all shapes and sizes. Vacuum cleaners. Buckets and mops. Microwaves, ovens, hotplates. Pots and pans. Piles of chipped plates. Old doors. Wellington boots. And at the far end there were fridges. And there were freezers.
‘Need help?’
Quarry turned. A man stood before him, enormous and pink-faced and bald, with blue eyes that looked like bright light would hurt them. The man was smiling, revealing small yellow teeth, but the smile disappeared when Quarry fished out his ID.
‘I’m trying to find out where some freezers came from.’
‘Freezers?’
Quarry pointed over the man’s shoulder. ‘You know what a freezer is, don’t you?’ He pulled the photos from his bag. ‘Recognize them?’