Friday on My Mind (6 page)

‘So,’ said Hussein, ‘now we have not one but two violent
men turning on you in the past few weeks. One of whom has gone missing and one of whom has been killed.’

‘That’s enough.’ Tanya Hopkins rose and looked down at Frieda, expecting her to do the same.

‘It probably is nearly enough,’ she agreed, staying put. ‘But I want to say that Miles is an unstable young man who might be a danger to others, but above all to himself. That’s why I reported him missing. I’m sorry he hasn’t been found or returned.’ For the first time, she seemed to relax, speaking without her cool formality. ‘As a matter of fact, it was him I was expecting to find in the morgue.’

‘Miles Thornton?’ Hussein remembered the quiver that had passed over Frieda Klein’s face.

‘Yes. Not Sandy.’

‘I see.’

‘He felt I had betrayed him when I was involved in having him sectioned some months ago. In a way, of course, I had. And, of course, in a way I had betrayed Sandy as well. He must have thought me heartlessly cruel. Sometimes I think that of myself.’

Tanya Hopkins sat down heavily again. ‘I don’t think we need to continue this particular line.’

‘Dr Klein, would you give us permission to search your house?’

‘My house?’ A look of distress momentarily tightened her face. ‘What for?’ Hussein waited impassively. ‘No, I don’t think so. If you want to go through all my private possessions, I think you should get a search warrant.’

‘Very well.’

‘Now we really are going.’ Tanya Hopkins rose for a second time and Frieda Klein also stood. She gazed first at Hussein and then at Bryant.

‘You’re looking in the wrong direction,’ she said. ‘And all the time you’re doing that, the man who actually killed Sandy is allowed to get away with it.’

‘You mean Dean Reeve.’

‘Yes. I mean Dean Reeve. You seem to be a woman who wouldn’t accept other people’s versions of the truth. Follow up what I’ve said.’

‘Dr Klein –’

‘I know that patient tone of voice. Please don’t
Dr Klein
me. You’ve already decided that I’m deluded.’

‘You’re worse than deluded. You’re obstructive.’

‘You mean about the search warrant? All right.’ She shrugged wearily. ‘Search my house. Where do I sign?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Tanya Hopkins, taking her by the elbow and pulling her towards the door, ‘a client can be their own worst enemy. We are now leaving.’

‘Dr Klein?’

Frieda, Hussein and Tanya Hopkins all looked round. It was the man leaning against the wall.

‘Yes?’ said Frieda.

‘Can I ask a question?’ he said.

‘Who are you?’ Frieda asked. ‘I have no idea why you’re here.’

The man blinked again. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t introduce myself. My name’s Levin. Walter Levin.’

‘I mean, who
are
you?’

‘I’m nothing to do with the investigation. I’m on secondment from the Home Office. It’s a bit difficult to explain.’

‘Any questions need to go through me,’ said Tanya Hopkins.

‘It’s not about this case.’ Levin straightened himself.
‘I’ve been reading your file.’ He beamed. ‘Fascinating stuff. Absolutely fascinating. Gosh. About the case of that girl you helped find. In the house in Croydon.’

‘Please.’ Hussein was exasperated. ‘We’re in the middle of an investigation.’

‘It’s all right.’ Frieda looked at him properly for the first time, taking in his smiling face and his sharp eyes. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I was curious,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t clear from the case file what aroused your suspicion in the first place.’

Frieda thought for a moment. It all felt so long ago, as if it had happened to someone else.

‘A patient came to see me. He turned out to be a fake. It was part of a newspaper story. But he told me a story about cutting his father’s hair as a child. That sounded strange and there was something real about it. I wanted to discover where that story came from. That’s all.’

‘Golly,’ said Levin, vaguely.

‘Is that what you came to ask?’ said Hussein. ‘About a two-year-old investigation?’

‘No. I wanted to see Dr Klein in person,’ said Levin. ‘So fascinating, you know.’

‘What for?’ said Hussein. ‘What are you doing here, aside from being fascinated?’

Levin didn’t answer. He just looked at Frieda with an expression of puzzlement. ‘I’m awfully sorry about all this,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Frieda.

Hussein had been involved in many searches and she had become familiar with the different ways that suspects behaved. Sometimes they were angry, sometimes upset, even traumatized. Rummaging through drawers in front of them could feel like a constant, insistent, repeated violation. Sometimes the suspect accompanied her around the property, telling her about it, as if she were a prospective buyer.

Frieda Klein was different. As the officers moved around her house, through to the kitchen, upstairs, opening cupboards and drawers, she just sat in her living room, playing through a chess game on the little table with an air of deep concentration that surely must have been fake. Hussein looked at her. Was she in shock, or angry, or in denial, or stubborn, or sulking? Once Klein looked up and caught her eye and Hussein felt that she was looking right through her.

There was a thumping sound, someone coming down the stairs two at a time. Bryant came into the room and placed something on the table. Hussein saw that it was a leather wallet.

‘We found that upstairs,’ said Bryant. ‘It was in a clothes drawer. At the bottom, wrapped in a T-shirt. I’ll give you one guess who it belonged to.’

Hussein looked at Klein. She couldn’t see any hint of shock or surprise or concern. ‘Is it yours?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know whose is it?’

‘No.’

Then why do you have it? And why do you keep it hidden?’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’

‘How did it get there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shall we look inside?’ continued Hussein. She thought that she should be feeling triumph.

Frieda looked at her with her dark eyes burning and didn’t say anything.

Hussein snapped on her rubber gloves and Bryant handed her the wallet. He was grinning broadly. She opened it up.

‘No money,’ she said. ‘No credit cards. But several membership cards.’ She pulled one out and held it up so that Frieda could see. ‘The British Library,’ she said. ‘Dr Alexander Holland, expiry date March 2015.’ And another. ‘The Tate, expires November 2014. This is not an old wallet.’ She looked at Frieda. ‘You don’t seem very surprised. How did it get here, Dr Klein?’

‘I don’t know. But I can guess.’

‘Guess then.’

‘It was planted, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘By Dean Reeve.’

Glen Bryant gave a loud snort. Hussein laid the wallet on the table.

‘I think you’ll need to talk to your lawyer again.’

Tanya Hopkins looked puzzled when Frieda arrived for their Thursday morning meeting with a middle-aged man in
a suit and dismayed when she introduced him as Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Hopkins.

‘I’m here as a friend,’ said Karlsson. ‘To give advice.’

‘I thought that was
my
job.’

‘It’s not a competition.’

Hopkins was clearly dubious. ‘If DCI Hussein knew that a colleague was attending a meeting with a suspect and her lawyer …’

‘This is my day off. I’m simply meeting a friend.’

Hopkins turned to Frieda, who had walked over to the window and was staring out. Hopkins’s office overlooked the canal basin in Islington. Children in bright yellow life jackets were paddling in two canoes.

‘Are you involved in the investigation in any way?’ Hopkins asked.

‘No.’

‘Have you had any privileged access?’

‘No.’

‘I’m Frieda’s lawyer, not yours. If I
were
yours, I’d drag you out of this room by the scruff of your neck.’

‘So I’ve been warned.’

The three of them sat down on chairs around a low glass coffee table. Hopkins opened a pad of paper. She took out a pen and removed the cap. ‘We have been instructed to report to Altham police station tomorrow at ten. It’s all but certain that they’ll charge you with Alexander Holland’s murder.’

She looked around as if she were expecting a response but there was none. Karlsson was staring at the floor. Frieda seemed to be thinking hard but she didn’t speak.

‘You’ll be granted bail,’ said Hopkins. ‘But you’ll have
to surrender your passport. There’ll be certain conditions attached, but they shouldn’t be a problem. So, now we need to think of our strategy.’

‘Our strategy?’ said Frieda.

‘I’ve got a barrister in mind. Jennifer Sidney would be a perfect fit.’

‘She did the Somersham trial,’ said Karlsson, with a grim smile.

‘Is there something funny?’ asked Frieda.

‘Not exactly funny. But if she can get Andrew Somersham off, she can get anyone off.’

‘It was the right verdict,’ said Hopkins. ‘On the evidence.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘Well, we want the right verdict as well.’

‘Why have a lawyer at all?’ said Frieda.

‘What?’

‘If I’m charged …’

‘You’re going to be charged.’

‘All right, when I’m charged, I would just like to go into court and tell my story, truthfully, and then they choose to believe me or not believe me.’

Hopkins laid her pen down softly. Karlsson saw that she had gone quite pale. ‘Frieda,’ she said quietly. ‘This isn’t a time for grandstanding or giving a philosophy lecture. This is an adversarial system. The Crown has to make a case against you. All you have to do is to rebut the specific accusations they make. You don’t have to prove that you’re innocent, you don’t have to win a prize for virtue. You have to not be definitely guilty. That’s the way the system works.’

Frieda started to speak but Hopkins held up her hand. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘So far, I’ve had to stand by while you’ve
sabotaged your own case. If you want to carry on doing that, you can get yourself another lawyer or no lawyer at all. But, first, hear me out.’

Frieda nodded her acquiescence and Hopkins continued: ‘The basic strategy is obvious. It all comes down to the wallet. There’s a whole lot of other prejudicial evidence – or so-called evidence – but they can’t use it. Just so long as you stay disciplined.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You mustn’t mention your Dean Reeve theory.’

‘Why?’

‘If you even mention his name, they can bring up everything. Your involvement in the death of Beth Kersey, the death of Ewan Shaw, the arson attack on Hal Bradshaw’s house, your various arrests for assault.’

‘And?’

‘
And?
’ said Hopkins. ‘It’s my belief that if those incidents are put before a jury you are overwhelmingly likely to be convicted and you will spend the next fifteen to twenty years in prison. But, as I said, there is no reason for them to be introduced. No, it all comes down to the wallet. Now, isn’t it possible that the last time you met Mr Holland, he left his wallet by mistake?’

‘No,’ said Frieda.

There was a pause.

‘Frieda,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’m not sure if you quite appreciate how serious this is.’

‘They found the wallet hidden in a drawer,’ said Frieda. ‘If Sandy could have left it there – with his cash and credit cards removed – I would have said.’

‘I was never happy about that search. Did they warn you of your rights before asking you about the wallet?’

‘No.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Sandy didn’t leave it there,’ said Frieda. ‘He hasn’t been there for a year. A year and a half. All the cards in it were current.’

There was another silence. A longer one. Karlsson and Hopkins exchanged glances. When Karlsson spoke, he sounded tentative, almost scared.

‘There’s an obvious question, Frieda. But I’m not sure I want to ask it.’

‘Careful,’ said Hopkins.

‘As I said, I don’t know how it got there.’ Frieda turned her eyes on the two of them. ‘Though I can guess.’

‘Please,’ said Tanya Hopkins, sharply. ‘Let’s concentrate on what we know rather than follow your theories. That last time you met Sandy. That row at the clinic. He drops the wallet, you pick it up. You take it home, meaning to give it back to him.’

Frieda shook her head. ‘I’m not going to tell you something that simply isn’t true.’

Hopkins frowned. She looked discontented. ‘It’s not possible that there was a later meeting between you that you haven’t told us about?’

‘No.’

‘You meant you
did
meet him or you
didn’t
?’

‘I didn’t. The last time I saw him was on that Tuesday, outside the Warehouse.’

‘What I haven’t enjoyed about this case is that I keep discovering things you haven’t told me and they’re always bad things.’

‘You talked about strategies,’ said Frieda. ‘What other ones are there?’

‘If you’re reluctant to mount a defence, I suspect we could offer to plead guilty to manslaughter. I’ve got some psychologists who could come and testify on your behalf.’

Karlsson glanced nervously at Frieda. For the first time she looked genuinely startled. ‘What would they say?’ she asked.

Hopkins picked up her pen and tapped it thoughtfully on the table top.

‘You’re a victim of rape,’ she said. ‘You were the object of an attack that almost killed you. And there are witnesses that Holland made violent threats against you.’

‘They weren’t threats …’

‘I think I can virtually guarantee that you would receive a suspended sentence.’

‘So all I have to do is to confess to murdering Sandy,’ said Frieda. ‘And I get away with it.’

‘It’s not getting away with it,’ said Hopkins. ‘You’ll be on licence for the rest of your life. You’ll have a serious criminal conviction. But it may be better than the alternative.’

‘You make it sound tempting,’ said Frieda.

‘I’m just trying to lay out your options.’

Frieda looked at Karlsson, who was shifting uncomfortably in his chair. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’ve asked around,’ he said. ‘Hussein’s good. She’s clever and she’s thorough. She’s built a strong case. I want to warn you, I’ve seen this strategy from the other side. You challenge this bit of evidence, that bit of procedure, bit by bit, you get it all thrown out.’ He turned towards Hopkins. ‘You’ve probably thought of claiming that the police planted the wallet.’

‘I’ve thought about it,’ said Hopkins.

‘Careful,’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s the nuclear option. You don’t know whose case it’ll blow up.’

‘
They
didn’t plant it,’ said Frieda.

‘Were you there when they found it?’ said Hopkins.

‘Not in the exact room.’

‘Really? That might work. If the worst comes to the worst.’

‘The good thing about all these options is that they work just the same whether I did it or I didn’t.’

Hopkins was in the middle of a complicated doodle of cubes and cones; she paused and lifted her head. ‘If I weren’t so sweet-tempered, I might give you a lecture about the importance of a system that gives the accused the benefit of the doubt and doesn’t compel her to give evidence against herself or to reveal irrelevant personal information.’ She gave a smile. ‘But I am. So I won’t.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll meet at nine thirty tomorrow. There’s a café on the canal, just a few hundred yards from the station – it’s called the Waterhole. Come there. Then we’ll go into the station together and you will not say anything at all, apart from what you have agreed, in advance, with me.’

She held out her hand and Frieda shook it.

‘I know this has been difficult,’ said Hopkins. ‘But I’m confident that we can achieve a resolution that we’ll all be satisfied with.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t think I’ve been a good client. But I want to thank you for what you’ve done.’

‘Let’s not be premature.’

‘That’s my point,’ said Frieda. ‘I want to be clear that, whatever happens, I’m grateful.’

Karlsson and Frieda walked down the stairs. Outside on the pavement they looked at each other warily.

‘So what just happened in there?’ said Karlsson.

Frieda stepped forward and gave him a brief hug, then stepped back.

‘What was that?’ he said, with a nervous smile.

‘There was only one thing in there that really meant anything,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘That
you
were there.’

‘But I didn’t do anything.’

‘Yes, you did. You came. You broke the rules in a flagrant and unprofessional manner.’

‘Yes, I thought you’d appreciate that.’

‘Seriously. If it got out, I don’t know what would happen to you. It was an act of kindness and friendship and I’ll never forget it.’

‘That sounds a bit final.’

‘Well, you know, you should treat every moment as if it’s your last.’

Karlsson’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘You’re all right?’

‘I’m going to walk home, alone, along the canal. How could I not be all right?’

Karlsson stood and watched her go, straight-backed, hands in pockets, and he shivered, as if the weather had suddenly changed.