Friday on My Mind (5 page)

‘Sit down,’ said Frieda to Josef. ‘We’ll be done soon.’

‘Not
that
soon,’ said Hussein, tartly.

Josef sat on a chair to one side, just out of Hussein’s eyeline. She felt certain that Frieda had invited him to be present while she was being interviewed. It made her feel as if she was being checked on and anger rose in her. She looked round at Josef, who was regarding her with utter impassivity.

‘Did
you
know Mr Holland, Mr Morozov?’

‘Three years,’ he said. ‘Four years. Frieda’s friend is my friend.’ And he gave her a nod, as if he were warning her.

‘Do you live here?’ she asked.

‘Here in England?’

‘Here in this house.’

‘No.’

She turned back to face Frieda. ‘About a third of all his calls were to you,’ she said.

‘Is that a question?’

‘You might like to comment.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘We found objects connected with you in his flat.’

‘What sort of objects?’

‘Photographs, for example.’

‘When you’ve spent years together, there are going to be remnants.’

‘Are there remnants of Mr Holland here?’

‘Probably.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t think of any just now.’

‘You sound defensive.’

‘What would I be defending myself from?’

‘You know what I don’t understand? If I had been close to someone and they had been found horribly murdered, and I’d been the one who identified the body and then the police had wanted to talk to me about it, I would be racking my brains and trying to come up with anything, anything at all, that could help them. I would produce any information that could be helpful. I’d probably try to help so much that it would almost be annoying.’

‘You’re saying that you want my help?’

‘From what I hear, that’s what you do. I was told that when you get interested in a case, nothing will stop you getting involved.’

‘I don’t think that’s quite all you heard. I assume you’re quoting Commissioner Crawford here and that he didn’t mean it as a compliment. But if you want my help, I’ll do anything I can. Of course I will.’

‘I don’t want your help,’ said Hussein. ‘I want you to do your duty as a citizen.’

Now Frieda looked at Hussein with a sharpness in her dark eyes that was new. Her face was paler, her jaw clenched slightly. ‘All right,’ said Frieda, in a softer voice, so that Hussein had to lean forward to hear it. ‘This might
not be the help you’re wanting, but I believe I know who murdered Sandy.’

‘And who is that?’

‘A man called Dean Reeve.’ Frieda paused for a moment, as if waiting for a response. ‘I’m not a detective, but when someone identifies a suspect in a murder case, I at least expect you to get out a notebook and write the name down. Otherwise it might not appear on the record and I want this on the record.’

‘I don’t need to write it down. I’ve read your file.’

‘I’m surprised I’ve got a file. It’s not as if I’ve been convicted of anything.’

‘Well, if you take information from here and there and print it out and gather it together, it becomes a file. And one of the things that emerge in this file is your repeated accusations against Dean Reeve for various murders and attacks. The problem being that Dean Reeve died five years ago.’

‘If you’ve read the file, you’ll also know that I don’t accept he’s dead.’

‘I saw that.’

‘Dean Reeve is still alive and he is a very dangerous man. He has some warped notion of looking after me, or perhaps of controlling me. If he believed that Sandy was pestering me, he could easily have killed him. He would do it with pleasure.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again and gazed at Hussein, waiting for her response.

‘I have heard what you say,’ said Hussein, eventually.

‘All I ask,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you look at this file of mine with your own eyes, not Crawford’s or Bradshaw’s.’

Hussein stood up. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I will. But I expect you to be straight with me as well.’

‘Straight with you? Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘I told you. I’ve read your file.’

The couple who lived in the flat under Alexander Holland’s hadn’t known him very well but he’d been a pleasant, friendly, unobtrusive neighbour. He’d had visitors but they were never loud; several women had come to see him but they weren’t aware of any particular one. They often saw him early in the morning when he went for a run. His assistant at the university, Terry Keaton, a round-faced youngish woman with blonde hair cut in a fringe, hadn’t seen him since the summer holidays began. She had liked him a lot and was obviously distraught. She didn’t know of any tensions either at work or in his personal life – but he kept himself to himself, although he was always friendly and respectful. She hadn’t come across Frieda Klein. His oldest friend, Daniel Lieberman, whom he had been at primary school with, said that he had last seen him on Sunday, June the eighth, twelve days before his body had been found. They had played squash and then gone for a couple of drinks; he had been fine. Yes, Lieberman had met Frieda Klein a few times. He confirmed that his friend had been upset at the separation – and added that he had returned from the States to be with her, which had made it doubly traumatic when they broke up. When Sophie Byrne asked him what he had made of Dr Klein, Lieberman had pulled a face. ‘You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her. But Sandy adored her.’

His colleagues were shocked and mystified. His sister was full of grief and a pent-up rage against Frieda Klein for whom he’d given up his prestigious job in America and who had shortly after ended their relationship. His doctor confirmed he had been in good health as far as he knew. He had money in the bank.

One woman came forward when she heard about his death, saying she had met him in a bar at the end of May, on Friday the thirtieth. She had gone back with him and they had had several more drinks before they spent the night together. She hadn’t seen him again; he obviously hadn’t been interested in anything beyond a one-night stand.

On 11 June, nine days before his body was found, he had taken two hundred pounds from a cash machine. He had bought groceries at the Turkish shop on Caledonian Road. He had sent two texts to Frieda Klein and rung her once that same day – and also talked to his sister and to a friend in the States late in the evening. The pub at the end of his road thought he might have gone in there for a drink around then. The mail hadn’t been opened since then. It was likely, therefore, that he had been murdered on 12 or 13 June.

‘Is that what we’ve got?’ asked Hussein.

It wasn’t quite. That afternoon, a woman called Diane Foxton had walked into Altham police station, saying she needed to speak to an officer about Alexander Holland. Hussein went to talk to her. The woman was obviously having chemotherapy: she had lost her hair and had mauve patches under her eyes; she was painfully thin.

‘I didn’t know whether I should come – I thought it was probably nothing – but my husband persuaded me. So here I am.’ She made a gesture with her skeletal hands.

‘It’s about Alexander Holland?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘Oh, not at all. But when I saw his face on the TV, I recognized him.’

‘Where from?’

‘I only saw him the once, but I wasn’t going to forget it. I was walking home and he was suddenly there.’

‘There?’

‘Yes. He came tumbling onto the pavement, so he almost sent me flying. He was shouting. Properly shouting. His face was so angry it made me scared. I thought he was going to do something violent. He had a half-filled bin bag in his hand and he flung it at her. A few things fell out onto the pavement, a T-shirt and a book, and he bent down and picked them up and threw them at her as well. He looked half mad.’

‘Her, you say? He was shouting at a woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was her he threw the bag at?’

‘Yes. I assumed he was returning things to her or something.’

‘Was she with him on the pavement?’

‘Not with him but at the door, which is a few yards from the road, and –’

‘Hold on, Mrs Foxton. Can you tell me exactly where it was? What door?’

‘I thought I said. That medical place in Primrose Hill.’

‘Do you mean the Warehouse?’

‘I don’t know the name. It’s on Wareham Gardens.’

‘That’s the one. And the date?’

‘It was a week ago last Tuesday – I was on my way home from the doctor’s. Around three thirty.’

Hussein made a mental calculation: 10 June. Ten days before Alexander Holland had been discovered floating in the Thames with his throat cut; at the most, three days before he died. And the same day that Frieda admitted to having ‘glimpsed’ him.

‘What did the woman look like?’

‘I didn’t really look at her. Pale-skinned. Dark hair, I think. Not blonde, anyway.’

‘Any idea of her age?’

‘Not really. Not very young but not old either. Mid-thirties or forty, perhaps.’

‘Was she responding?’

‘No. I don’t think she said much, if anything. Someone else came and joined her. A man. He looked as though he might get involved but she stopped him.’

‘How?’

‘Just put a hand on his arm or something. I’m not sure. I was more concerned with the man on the pavement. He was that far away from me.’ She held her hands apart to show Hussein. ‘I couldn’t get past him.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘The man kicked at a rubbish bin and strode away and she picked up the bin bag, put the book and T-shirt back into it, and tied it up. She seemed quite calm. Calmer than I would have been. Then she went back inside. That was it. So nothing actually happened. I just thought – well, I thought it might be helpful. Maybe I’m wasting your time.’

‘You’re not wasting our time. We’re grateful to you, Mrs Foxton.’

‘It gives me a shivery feeling, remembering his face. So angry. And then to know he’s been murdered. I’d have been less surprised if he’d been the one doing the murdering.’

The next time that Hussein met Frieda Klein, the Tuesday after the body had been found, it was at the police station, and a solicitor was present. Hussein sat on one side of the table and they sat opposite her. Nobody wanted tea or coffee; there was no small talk.

Hussein had met Tanya Hopkins once before. She was a middle-aged woman, plump, with greying hair and a face bare of make-up. She wore soft, rumpled clothes with flat shoes and there was a maternal air about her – but her grey eyes were shrewd and when they got down to business she was incisive.

‘I have several questions,’ said Hussein.

Frieda Klein nodded and rested her hands on the table in front of her. She didn’t seem nervous and she kept her dark eyes on Hussein’s face, but there was a subdued air about her.

‘It is very clear that Alexander Holland was still obsessed with you. Would you like to tell me something about that obsession?’

Hopkins leaned over to Klein and murmured something that Hussein couldn’t make out. Klein didn’t reply but just gave her a curious smile.

‘It’s all right,’ she said to Hussein. ‘Sandy and I broke up about eighteen months ago.’

‘You broke up with him.’

‘Yes. He found it hard to accept that something that was once so important to both of us was over. I wouldn’t call that an obsession.’

‘He was wearing your old hospital tag on his wrist.’

Frieda’s face was serious. ‘People can be strange,’ she said.

‘Indeed. I understand that he came back from America in order to be with you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that he was very supportive of you when you found yourself involved in a case that stirred painful memories for you.’

‘You can call it by its proper name. When I was a teenager I was raped. I went back to my home town to find out who had done that. Yes, he was very supportive.’

‘And yet you ended it.’

There was a pause. Hussein waited. Frieda said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that was a question. Yes, I ended it. You cannot stay with someone simply out of gratitude.’

‘Was he extremely angry?’

‘He was upset.’

‘Angry?’

‘Sometimes being upset takes the form of anger.’

‘Eighteen months later, he was still angry?’

‘He was still upset.’

‘Did you ever encourage him to think there was a chance?’

‘No.’ Her voice was clipped. ‘I did not.’

‘You never got back together with him?’

‘No.’

‘Yet he rang you or texted you almost every day, sometimes several times a day.’

Frieda had been speaking in a quick, precise tone. Now she paused and when she spoke it was almost in a sigh. ‘It was painful.’

‘For you or for him?’

‘For both of us, of course. But probably more for him.’

The door opened and Bryant came in, shutting it quietly behind him. He nodded at Frieda, introduced himself to Tanya Hopkins and pulled a chair to the table. Hussein waited until he was sitting before she spoke again.

‘Did you talk to him when he called?’

‘Not very often. At first I did, but not recently. I thought it would be …’ She frowned. ‘Counterproductive,’ she said at last.

‘When you did talk, what were the conversations like?’

‘I don’t understand the question.’

‘It’s quite simple. Did he plead with you, shout at you, insult you?’

‘Sandy was a proud man.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘You’re making him sound …’ she slightly lifted a hand from the table, then let it drop ‘… disordered.’

‘Was he disordered?’

‘He was in a dark place in his life. So he probably did all those things. Usually I didn’t answer his call. I let it go to voicemail.’

Hussein pulled the photocopy of the dates and times that had been found at the dead man’s flat. ‘Do you recognize this?’

Frieda looked at it. ‘That’s when I’m scheduled to be at the Warehouse,’ she said, in a low voice.

‘So he knew your movements?’

‘He must have done.’

‘You told me at our last interview that it had been a long time since you had actually met him but that you had – what was the word? – yes,
glimpsed
him a couple of weeks before he was found dead. On Tuesday, June the tenth. Treat that as a question,’ she added, when Frieda just looked at her with her unnerving dark eyes.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I want to know more about this last encounter with him. What was his mood?’

Before Frieda could speak there was a knocking at the door. Hussein looked around angrily. She nodded at Bryant, who got up and opened it. He could be heard speaking to someone outside, then he returned. A man came in with him. He was dressed in a dark suit, with a sober dark blue tie. He had rumpled grey hair and tortoiseshell glasses and he gazed about the room blinking like an owl. He was carrying a brown file under his arm.

‘I wondered if I could sit in,’ he said.

‘This isn’t a public event,’ said Hussein.

‘I know, I know.’ He fumbled in an inside pocket and took out a small white card, which he handed to her. As Hussein examined it, he looked around, as if he were uncertain of where he was.

‘You’re not from the Met?’ said Hussein.

‘No,’ said the man.

‘I don’t quite understand who you are.’

‘There’s a number you can call, if you want,’ he said amiably.

‘I certain do want. Here, Glen.’ She handed the card over to Bryant. ‘Go and check this out, will you?’ She looked at the stranger. ‘We’ll wait until DC Bryant returns before we continue.’

‘Of course. Terribly sorry to be a nuisance.’

Bryant went out of the room and Hussein waited, clenching and unclenching her fists on the desk. Frieda Klein sat still and upright opposite her. When Bryant returned a few minutes later, he had an expression of comic bewilderment on his broad face, but he nodded at Hussein and whispered a few words in her ear.

Hussein’s mouth tightened with anger. ‘It looks like your friends are bigger than my friends,’ she said.

‘I’ll try not to be in the way.’

He didn’t sit down. He walked to the far corner of the room and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and holding the file against his chest. His expression was impassive.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, to the room at large. ‘Ignore me. I’m not part of the inquiry.’

‘You’d better not be.’ Hussein turned to Frieda. ‘Where were we?’

Frieda didn’t answer at once, but turned towards the man leaning against the wall, with a vague smile on his face. ‘I would prefer you to stand where I can see you, please.’

‘Fair enough.’ The man moved further into the room, so that he was to one side of Frieda. ‘Better?’

Frieda nodded, then turned her gaze back to Hussein. ‘You were asking whether I remembered Sandy coming to the Warehouse,’ she said. ‘And the answer is, yes, I do remember.’

‘And behaving in a violent manner?’

‘I don’t think I would call it that.’

‘Shouting, throwing a bin bag at you, kicking the dustbin. What would you call it?’

‘Agitated.’

‘All right. Let’s all it agitated. Why did you not see fit to tell me about this
glimpse
of your former partner?’

‘I didn’t think it relevant.’

‘You do realize that this was one of the last known sightings of him before he disappeared? You can safely assume that he didn’t have long to live. A day or two at the most.’

Frieda stared at her; her face was like a mask and her eyes glittered.

‘For eighteen months Alexander Holland has been harassing you, and then he is murdered. What have you got to say to that?’

‘That’s not a serious question,’ said Hopkins.

‘All right. I’m interested in how you seem to be surrounded by a network of violence and trauma. We’ve already talked about your previous history –’

‘Stop,’ said Hopkins. ‘If you have specific questions relating to the crime, Dr Klein can answer them.’

‘Can you tell me something about Miles Thornton?’

Frieda Klein frowned and leaned forward slightly. ‘Miles? Has he been found?’

‘No.’ Bryant spoke for the first time. ‘But you reported him missing, and I understand that he was also behaving violently towards you.’

Tanya Hopkins started to speak but Frieda turned towards her. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I know that you want to protect me from myself, but I want to answer these questions. Yes, I reported Miles missing. Yes, he could be violent and chaotic in his behaviour and was sometimes psychotic.’