by Nicci French
He gazed at her and felt a ripple go through him, as if he had become liquid. He had seen her so often, but obliquely, at a distance. It had been eight years since they had looked at each other in the face, their eyes meeting. Her hair was different. She had dyed it. Otherwise she had barely changed. Perhaps the lines around her eyes, at the corners of her mouth were etched a little deeper, the skin on her cheekbones drawn a little tighter, but this was the same face that had haunted him. Now he was seeing it up close: the eyes, dark bright eyes that were almost black, whose gaze he could feel on him like something physical; the smooth aquiline nose, the full lips, slightly parted.
She stood very upright, taller than he had remembered, her hands by her sides. He looked at her body, the slope of the shoulders, the curves of her breasts in her blue shirt, her hips in the tight black jeans. She wasn’t like the others. There was nothing pleading about her. There was no giveaway breathing, no widening of the gaze that signalled fear.
If this moment could just go on for ever. But it was time.
He took the knife from his pocket. He didn’t raise it, just felt the heft of it, comfortable in his palm. Nine-inch blade. German steel. The dark, heavy holster, cool in his grip. It had cut the throat of Jessica Colbeck, like scissors through silk.
People always looked at the knife, hypnotized by its edge, by its gleam. But she didn’t. He saw her looking into his eyes, almost with concern for him.
He thought of saying something but there was nothing to be said. They both knew. She would be grateful, really. Welcoming. She had always known this was coming.
Hal Bradshaw looked up as the door banged open and two men came in with a clatter, breathing heavily: Dugdale and Quarry. Dugdale glanced at Bradshaw, then turned to Lola.
‘Remember me?’ he said.
Lola let her head drop forwards but Dugdale grabbed her by the hair on her crown and pulled her head sharply up.
‘You are in a world of trouble,’ he said.
‘You can’t do that,’ Bradshaw said.
Dugdale looked slowly round at him but he didn’t release his grip on Lola. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘I told them on the phone.’
‘Tell me.’
‘She said she’d killed Frieda Klein. I think she means she’s responsible. Not that she actually …’ Bradshaw’s voice faded to a mumble.
Dugdale pushed his face close to Lola’s. ‘You sent Karlsson to the wrong place. You knew that, didn’t you?’
Lola murmured something.
‘What?’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Listen,’ said Dugdale. ‘We have no time. We have a police alert across London. We’ve got three helicopters in the air.’
Lola shook her head and Dugdale pulled his hand away. He spoke more gently. ‘Lola,’ he said, ‘if you think you’ve got some bargain with Reeve, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. If he wants to kill someone, he’ll kill them. He doesn’t care what you do.’
Tears were starting to run down Lola’s face.
‘It’s probably too late. You’ve done what he wanted. Just tell us where Frieda was going.’
Lola looked at Dugdale and at Quarry and at Bradshaw and at the nurse, who was now standing on the far side of the room. She swallowed, hesitated and spoke in a slow croak: ‘Where his brother died.’
Dugdale looked at Quarry, then back at Lola. ‘If you’re lying, Lola, I swear to God I’ll get you put away somewhere you’ll never get out of.’
‘It’s true.’
The two men ran out of the room, Dugdale shouting instructions as they made their way up the stairs and out to the waiting car. ‘And ring Karlsson,’ he said.
FIFTY-ONE
‘What have you heard?’ It was Chloë on the phone and she was weeping so hard Reuben could barely make out the words. He pictured her face, young and tragic, her mascara smudged. ‘What have you heard?’ she said again.
‘Nothing more.’
‘Oh, God. Oh, Reuben.’
Karlsson was running now, gripped by a terrible dread. His leg, the one that had been broken, was aching and he had a pain in his side. His mobile buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out.
‘She’s gone to the place where Reeve killed his brother,’ said Dugdale. ‘Officers are on their way there. It’s where the canal –’
So he’d guessed right. Excitement pumped through him. ‘I know. I’m nearly there,’ he said.
He pushed the mobile back into his pocket. The sun had risen higher in the sky. He ran on, into the shining mist.
‘What’s happening to Frieda?’ asked Alexei.
Reuben looked at his anxious face; the boy had his father’s doleful brown eyes. ‘Let’s see if we can find your dad,’ he said, and held out his hand. ‘We should all be together.’
A helicopter spun into view above Karlsson. It sank lower so that he could see its blades. Lower still, and now it was hovering like a giant insect. Below it lay the canal, smoking in the autumn air.
Lola sat with her knees pulled up and her head lowered and her hands over her ears. Her eyes were shut and she rocked slowly back and forward, back and forward.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please please please.’
Three police cars, lights flashing and sirens sounding, screeched to a halt. Twelve officers scrambled out. They ran towards the footpath that led to the canal. The road-sweeper at the end of the street could hear their feet on the ground; it was like drums beating, he thought.
Young Eli Abel was in the front. He belonged to a running club and he moved easily away from the others, arriving at the bridge first. He was only just out of college, and he was thinking to himself how amazing it was that one of his first cases involved Frieda Klein and Dean Reeve. His gran wouldn’t believe him when he told her what he’d been up to today.
His feet clattered on the iron bridge. A helicopter hung above him, its noise inside his skull. Mist lay in ribbons on the brown water. Leaves fell like petals and drowned.
Eli Abel stared down. He blinked. He saw a shape in the water. He stopped, screwed up his eyes. He saw a body, face down. ‘Here!’ he shouted, above the roar of the helicopter. ‘Here!’
Then he was running across the bridge and down the steps, onto the path. He couldn’t remember his training. Should he wait for back-up? Take off his boots?
Too late. He was in the water, cold and sludgy, up to his chest. His boots sank into mud. He imagined the rats in here, swimming in the murk with their yellow teeth and thick tails. Weil’s disease, he thought, as he waded towards the shape.
He could hear shouts from the shore and the deafening drone of the helicopter. More sirens from the road. Wait till I tell people, he thought. Water trickled down his neck and splashed in his face. The sun was in his eyes and it was hard to see what was in front of him.
He reached the shape half submerged in the water and put out his hand. But for a brief moment he hesitated, and the sun made strange shapes on the surface of the canal, like a moving pattern. He remembered the rotating lamp he had had as a child, when he’d been afraid of the dark. All night the lamp had thrown underwater creatures onto the walls, seahorses and fish and mermaids.
He’d never seen a dead body before, never touched one. He made himself clutch an arm and the figure shifted slightly and when he’d touched it once, it was all right. He took it by its shoulders and started hauling the weight towards the bank and someone was shouting his name encouragingly, and now another officer was beside him and then there were hands reaching down and the object was lifted clear and he was scrambling onto the path and as he stood up, water dripping from him, he realized it had only taken seconds after all.
‘Turn it,’ said a voice.
Eli looked down as the sodden shape was rolled over, and with a sickening lurch he saw the head seem almost to detach itself from the body: the throat was cut from ear to ear. The bloodless face stared at him. It looked like it was smiling.
Horrified, he looked away
and that was when he saw her. She was in the shadows, sitting with her back against a young ash tree. Her legs were folded under her and she was absolutely still, so that, for a moment, he thought she was part of the tangled undergrowth. A trick of the misty light, he thought. But no. She was real. Her face was very pale; her eyes were very dark. She was staring straight ahead, but not at anything or anybody. Just staring.
For a moment, Eli Abel stood transfixed. And then behind him he heard a cry and turned to see a tall man with dark hair running with a limp towards them, on his face an expression of such anguish that it seemed wrong to look. He stopped briefly at the body of the man lying on the path and his face changed, contorted, like he might weep. He straightened up, though, and walked towards the silent figure, halting a few steps away; waiting.
At last she moved slightly, as though some spell had been broken. She looked up at the tall man and she didn’t smile and neither did he, but he took another step forward and held out his hand, and after a few seconds she took it.
She stood up. Her clothes were soaked through. There was blood on her neck and on her cheek. Her hair was wet.
‘Karlsson,’ she said. Her voice was low and clear.
He didn’t let go of her hand. ‘Frieda,’ he said. ‘It’s over. You’re free.’
At this moment, more officers ran down the steps. At their rear, overweight and out of breath, was DCI Dugdale. He stopped and surveyed the scene, his eyes taking in the body laid out on the path, then Frieda standing a few yards away.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
Events moved quickly after that, like they were choreographed. Ambulances arrived, and more police cars. Tapes and barriers were put up. The SOC arrived. The public were turned away. Some of the press managed to get through, but by then there was a tent over the body; the only pictures anyone managed to get were of dozens of officers beside the canal, some in uniform and others wearing white overalls.
In the midst of this speed and efficiency was the speechless figure of Frieda. When Dugdale asked her what had happened, she simply stared at him.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, unnerved by her gaze and by the splashes of blood on her cheek. ‘Take your time. You must be in shock. But just tell me this. How did he die?’
She looked away from him, over the canal.
‘Frieda?’
‘He had a knife,’ she said. ‘A long, sharp knife.’
She went up the steps with an officer and Karlsson. Someone from the crowd of people behind the barriers called her name but she didn’t look up. Cameras flashed. Soon the whole country, the whole world, would know that Dean Reeve was dead.
A paramedic tried to put a blanket round her shoulders but she pushed it away and climbed into the waiting car. Karlsson followed her.
They sat side by side but not touching. As he looked at her, blood slid from her hairline, down her forehead.
‘You’re hurt,’ he said.
She put up a hand and wiped away the thread of watery blood. ‘It’s not mine.’
He wanted to put his hand on hers, but he didn’t dare. There was a quality to her stillness that felt dangerous, as if she might burst into flames.
FIFTY-TWO
A television van was parked at the entrance to Saffron Mews and there were journalists milling around. Josef, carrying several heavy shopping bags, pushed past them all and let himself into Frieda’s house. He went first into the kitchen where he fed the cat, watered the basil plant and put fresh flowers in the vase. Then he took milk, butter, yoghurt and coffee beans out of the bags and stacked them in the fridge.
He went into the living room and checked that the fire was ready to be lit, minutely shifting the chair so that it was in the right position.
He went upstairs, stopping to check that there were towels in the bathroom, then proceeded to the balcony. He opened the door, noting with approval how it swung smoothly on its hinges, and stepped outside. There were several lavender bushes, a tub of herbs, the small ornamental tree and a long container where Chloë had planted bulbs for the spring. There was a clematis with bronze foliage that they had told him at the garden centre would have creamy white flowers in the winter months. There was a single wooden chair and Chloë’s table made of golden elm.
He sat on the chair and looked out over the rooftops. The fog had thickened again; everything was shrouded in soft greyness. Josef lit a cigarette; he pulled a bottle of vodka from his coat pocket and took a gulp. He gave a heavy sigh and closed his eyes.
Dr Jane Franklin, consultant pathologist, looked down at the body of Dean Reeve and then across at a group of students, masked and gowned in green.
‘Put out of your mind who this is,’ she said sternly. ‘This is a body. Our job is to establish the cause of death.’
She pointed at the neck with her scalpel. ‘You,’ she said. ‘What do you see?’
‘A lateral incision, cutting through … well, almost everything, really. The jugular vein, the carotid artery. The trachea looks damaged.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘He’d have bled out in about a minute, less maybe.’
Dr Franklin lifted Reeve’s right hand.
‘What about this?’ She looked at one young man. ‘You.’
‘He’s got short fingernails.’
‘No, no. Wounds, incisions.’
‘I can’t see any.’
She reached across the body and raised the other arm.
‘What about here?’
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Exactly. When people are stabbed, you normally find defence wounds on their hands and arms. They hold their hands up to protect themselves, like so.’ She raised her two arms in front of her face. ‘So what does that suggest?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Look at the wound again. What’s it like? Rough? Jagged?’
‘No, it’s smooth. Like surgery.’
‘How could that happen? On a towpath?’
‘He could have been restrained?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Dr Franklin. ‘But there’s no sign of bruising. No scratch marks. There is no other sign of injury, except here.’ And she pointed at the knee. ‘From which we removed this.’ She held up a little metal dish. On it was a little bullet or, rather, what looked like a bullet with the tip removed. ‘From this side, the knee looks intact. But this soft-point bullet entered from the rear. The soft point caused it to expand on impact causing catastrophic damage. He would have been immediately disabled.’
‘It looks like an execution,’ said another male student. ‘You shoot him, then cut his throat.’
‘Only one weapon was found at the scene,’ said Dr Franklin. ‘A German knife. Very sharp, the kind you would use to butcher an animal. And the kind that was used to murder Jessica Colbeck.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘What we do is describe the state of the body.’
When the students had moved away, Dr Franklin looked at the body again: stocky, with tattoos on the muscled arms, a soft pale stomach. That gaping wound. The face was ghastly, like white putty; the eyes were open, brown. She put a gloved thumb on their lids. It was foolish, she knew, but even when he was dead, she didn’t want Dean Reeve staring at her.
There were officers searching the scrubby undergrowth and there were police divers back in the canal. They had found the knife in the first dive, but now Quarry was telling them to look for a gun as well.
‘It must be somewhere,’ he said.
The three divers moved inch by inch along the soft grey mud of the canal floor, picking up all the things that people threw into the water – even the carcass of a bicycle – and all the creatures that had died in there and decayed. The officers combed through the brambles and the scrubby bushes. Hours passed. There was no gun.
Frieda had showered and put on the clothes they had given her at the police station: a white cotton shirt and some dark trousers, slip-on shoes that were slightly too large for her. She sat in f
ront of Dugdale and Quarry, her hands folded in her lap, a mug of tea untouched on the table.
‘Frieda,’ said Dugdale, leaning towards her. ‘You do understand you’re not in trouble.’
‘Yes, I understand that. Thank you.’
‘If anything, we should be celebrating. You got Dean Reeve. You beat him.’
‘I’m not quite in the mood for celebrating,’ said Frieda. ‘Too many people have died for that. Including Dean Reeve.’
‘Yes, of course, I see that. And you realize that we’ll need to take a statement. If you don’t feel ready for it, then we could do it at a later date.’
‘Now is fine.’
‘Also …’ Dugdale stopped for a moment ‘… I’m required to say that you’re entitled to legal advice.’
‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.’
Quarry switched on the recorder and identified the date and the place and everybody present.
‘We can go over this briefly,’ said Dugdale. ‘If necessary, we can take a more detailed statement later. First, can you tell us how Dean Reeve died?’
Frieda looked at Dugdale directly. She was pale, seemed tired, but calm.
‘I’m sorry. It’s a bit of a fog. I remember approaching the spot where it happened and then I remember the police arriving. Everything else is a blur.’
‘This must have been traumatic for you.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda.
‘So you can’t tell us how Dean Reeve died.’
‘No.’
Quarry frowned at the answer. It seemed out of character – though, of course, he had no idea what the character of Frieda Klein actually was. He had heard so much about her and now here she was, composed and severe, and even Dugdale, who was never flustered by anything, seemed slightly unnerved.
‘Were you expecting him? Did you know he would be there?’
‘I went for a walk along the canal. I was thinking.’
‘But he knew that you’d be there,’ said Dugdale. ‘Lola Hayes told him. Your friend betrayed you. What do you say to that?’