Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (36 page)

‘We assume so. We never saw him again
and we haven’t seen her.’ She shut her eyes for a moment. ‘We
haven’t seen our daughter for thirteen months. Or heard from her, or heard
anything about her. We don’t know if she’s alive or dead, happy away from us
or wretched. We don’t know if she wants us to find her, but we’ve tried and
tried to. We just want to know if she’s all right. She doesn’t need to come
home, she doesn’t need to see us if that’s what she wants. We contacted the
police but they said there was nothing they could do about a twenty-year-old woman who
had gone of her own free will. We even hired someone. Nothing.’

‘Did she have a mobile
phone?’

‘She did, but it doesn’t seem to
be operational.’

‘And this Edward Green looked very
similar to this man.’ Karlsson pointed at the poster of Robert Poole tacked to the
board beside him.

‘It looks just like him. But if
he’s dead, where’s our daughter?’

She stared at Karlsson. He knew she wanted
some kind of
reassurance, but he couldn’t give it.
‘I’m going to send two officers home with you. They’ll need access to
any documentation you have, the names of doctors. We’ll be taking this
seriously.’

When they had gone, he sat in silence for
several minutes. Did this make things better or worse?

Beth Kersey started with the photographs of
her family. She had taken them with her when she’d left, on his instructions, but
she hadn’t looked at them. It was too painful and stirred up feelings in her that
only confused and distressed her. He had looked at them, though, for a long time, when
he’d thought she was asleep, and then he had wrapped them up in plastic bags and
stowed them away with his other bags.

Now she laid them in front of her, one by
one. She had a large box of matches that she had taken from the deck of the boat up the
path one night, and she lit a match for each picture, letting it flare and then die down
over a face, a group, a garden in spring. They were all lies, she thought bitterly.
Everyone smiles for a photograph; everyone poses and puts on a public face. There was
her mother with her camera expression, head a bit to one side, all tender and caring,
butter wouldn’t melt. And her dad, plump and sweet when everyone knew he was a
bully who’d made money by taking it from other people. Edward had explained it to
her, why it was wrong, why the money didn’t really belong to her father. She had
forgotten the details, but they didn’t matter. And her two sisters. There were
days when she could barely remember their names, but she could remember how they’d
been such goody-goodies, good at school and good at home, sucking up to their parents,
coaxing money and favours out of them with their winning smiles. She knew that now. Once
she had simply thought them better than her at belonging in
the world,
easier in their skins than her, blessed where she was cursed. Now she stared in the leap
of flame at Lily’s narrow face grinning between two tight plaits, Bea’s
solemn gaze. Then she was looking at herself. Elizabeth. Betty. Beth. She wasn’t
that person any more, sloppy and angry, anxious to please and knowing she
wouldn’t. She was thin now, muscle and bone. Her lip sneered under its gash. Her
hair was short. She had passed through fire and come out purified.

Josef was painting Mary Orton’s
skirting-boards white. As he drew the brush along the wood, he tried not to think about
his children. His chest burned when he pictured them at home without him, or when he
remembered the last time he had seen them. He had tried to hold them too tightly and
they had shrunk away from him, from the smell on his breath and the wildness in his
eyes. So he concentrated on the smoothness of the paint. He looked up from his work to
find Mary Orton standing behind him, her hands clutching a dishcloth and her face
anxious.

‘I can help?’

‘I want to show you
something.’

Josef laid the brush on the lid of the tin
and scrambled to his feet. ‘Of course, show me,’ he said reassuringly.

‘This way.’

‘She led him upstairs to her bedroom,
the one room of the house he hadn’t been into. It had high ceilings, patterned
wallpaper, and its large window looked out on to the garden where spring bulbs were at
last pushing their way through the cold soil. She went to a small bureau, opened it and
fumbled in the small drawer for something. He could see she was agitated. Her fingers
were clumsy and her breath laboured.

‘Here.’

She turned and put a folded piece of paper
into his hands and he stared down at the lines of blue ink, the frail, old-fashioned
handwriting, all the letters looped and crossed.

‘This is
what?’ he asked. ‘Really, my English not good, Mrs Orton.’

‘I did make a will,’ she
whispered. There were tears in her eyes as she stared at him. ‘I was going to give
a third of it to him. We drew it up together and we got a neighbour down the road to
witness it. Look. Here is their signature and mine.’

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I
am wrong person here.’

‘Because they never come to see me.
They don’t care – and he cared.’

‘He?’

‘Robert. He spent time with me, like
you have. To them I’m just a burden. I suppose I should just burn this. Or is that
wrong?’

Josef stood and held the piece of paper in
his paint-smeared hand. He shook his head.

‘What shall I do?’

‘I don’t know. I give it to
Frieda.’

Frieda walked home across Waterloo Bridge.
They’d seen a film and then gone for a late meal at a Moroccan restaurant, where
the air had smelt of cinnamon and roasting meat. Afterwards, she had felt a sudden need
to be alone. He was obviously disappointed, but something was holding her back. He had
kissed her on the cheek and gone.

She walked slowly, and when she was halfway
across the bridge, she stopped as she always did. Usually it was to look upriver at
Parliament and the Eye and downriver at St Paul’s, but this time she just leaned
on the railing and stared down into the water. The Thames never seemed to flow as a
river should. It moved more like a vast tide, and with the tide there were eddies and
whirlpools and clashing currents. After a few minutes, she didn’t even see the
water. She thought of the film she had just watched and of Robert Poole, whoever
he really was. She thought of the traditional child’s fantasy
that you are the only real person in the world and everybody else is an actor. Poole had
been a sort of actor, taking on a different character for everyone he met, giving them
the person they needed, the person who would seduce them. Then she allowed herself to
think about Harry, in his light grey suit with his grey-blue eyes and his crisp white
shirt, the way he bent towards her when she spoke and took the crook of her elbow when
they crossed the road. The way he watched her and seemed to be trying to hear the things
she would not say. It had been such a long time since she had let anyone come near
her.

Gradually her thoughts stopped being
specific, stopped being about anything at all but swirling and dark, like the river
beneath her. Out of that darkness came a face and a name: Janet Ferris.

Frieda shivered. It was cold and exposed on
the bridge. As she turned towards home, she looked at her watch. It was a quarter to
midnight. Too late to phone Karlsson. She walked home quickly, got into bed and lay in
the dark, agitated, her eyes burning. She wanted it to be day again, but day took a long
time to come.

Frieda had seen three patients, one after
another. She was aware that her mind was partly elsewhere and she made a steely effort
to concentrate, to be professional, precise. Or was she just playing the part of the
attentive, sympathetic therapist? Maybe it was all a performance, once you got down to
it. After the final session she wrote her brief notes, walked outside, flagged down a
taxi, and twenty minutes later she was outside the house in Balham.

Karlsson and Jake Newton were standing on
the doorstep. Karlsson was talking on his mobile. He nodded at her but continued
talking. Newton smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’

Frieda found the greeting strangely
difficult to respond to. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘OK.’

‘Cheers. Karlsson put his phone into
his pocket. He looked at Frieda. ‘Afternoon.’

‘You didn’t have to come
yourself,’ said Frieda. ‘I just wanted someone to let me in.’

‘I was curious. I wanted to know what
you were up to.’

‘And I want to see what a consultant
does,’ said Newton.

‘I thought
you
were a
consultant,’ said Frieda.

‘Pretend I’m not
here.’

‘By the way,’ said Karlsson,
‘there’s something else.’ And there, outside Janet Ferris’s
home, he told Frieda about Beth Kersey and her involvement with Robert Poole. Frieda
frowned as he spoke.

‘That must account for Poole’s
missing days,’ she said.

‘It may,’ said
Karlsson.

‘You’ve got to find this
woman.’

‘Well, yes. That was our
plan.’

‘And you need to find out about her
medical history.’

‘We’d thought of that as
well.’

‘If you get the name of the
psychiatrist who treated her, I might be able to talk to him unofficially.’

‘We’ll see about
that.’

‘I thought criminal investigations
were about eliminating suspects,’ said Frieda. ‘In this case, new ones keep
popping up.’

‘In this case,’ said Karlsson,
‘it’s difficult to tell the suspects from the victims. But at least it stops
you thinking about Dean Reeve.’

Frieda turned on him an expression that was
almost fierce. ‘I think about Dean Reeve every day. And when I go to sleep, I
dream about him.’

‘What can I say?’ said Karlsson.
‘I’m sorry. But now, why are we here? What’s this about?’

‘I wanted to see Poole’s flat as
well,’ said Frieda.

‘Let’s see it, then.’
Karlsson took out a bunch of keys and examined the paper labels attached to them. Nobody
spoke as they made their way into the house and then up to the flat. As they stepped
inside, Frieda recognized the musty smell of a house nobody lives in, of a place where
nothing is moved, no window opened, no air breathed. They stood in the main room. Frieda
felt constrained: she’d wanted to be alone for this. ‘Did you bring the
photographs?’ she asked.

Karlsson took out a file from his bag.
‘These were taken when Janet Ferris’s body was found.’

‘That’s no good,’ said
Frieda. ‘What about before, when you first came here?’

‘We don’t have photographs of
that.’

‘Why? Wasn’t
it a crime scene?’

‘No. It wasn’t. Not that we knew
of. And we had the room. We didn’t need to photograph it.’

‘Fine,’ said Frieda.

She stood in the middle of the room and
looked around, slowly, trying to examine everything.

‘What are you looking for?’ said
Newton.

‘Shut up,’ said Frieda.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please, just give me a moment.’

There was a long silence. The two men looked
at each other awkwardly, like people who had arrived too early at a party and were stuck
with each other. Finally, she turned to Karlsson. ‘If you closed your eyes, would
you be able to describe everything in this room?’

‘I don’t know. Most of
it.’

Frieda shook her head. ‘Years ago, I
didn’t take many notes after my sessions. I thought that if it was important
I’d remember it. My remembering it would be a sign it was important. But I changed
my mind. Now, if it’s important, I write it down.’ She pulled a face,
signalling frustration. ‘I don’t know. There’s something, but I
can’t quite grasp it.’

‘What is it?’ said Karlsson.

‘If I knew …’ she began.
Then she frowned. ‘Can we go downstairs? Do you have the key to her
flat?’

Karlsson pulled out the bunch of keys.
‘Somewhere here,’ he said. ‘I feel like a gaoler in an old
movie.’

‘How do you decide when to give
up?’ said Newton, as they were walking downstairs.

‘Is this for your report?’ said
Karlsson.

‘I’m just curious.’

‘There’s never a moment. But the
urgency goes, people are reassigned.’

Karlsson unlocked the door and they walked
into Janet
Ferris’s flat. Frieda found this abandoned space
sadder. There was a mug on the table, a book next to it. She could imagine Janet Ferris
walking in, picking it up and carrying on. She tried not to think of that. It was a
distraction. She looked around the room. She felt she was searching for something – and
suddenly she found it. She turned to Karlsson. ‘Do you see that picture? Of the
fish.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you like it?’

He smiled. ‘I think it’s lovely.
But you’ll have to leave it here. Nowadays we’re not really allowed to help
ourselves.’

‘When I first saw Poole’s flat,
this painting was there. Not here.’

‘Really?’

‘You read the newspaper article. Janet
Ferris said that Poole used to lend her things. Among other things, he gave – or lent –
her a painting, and she lent him one of hers. She said she returned it and took hers
back.’

Karlsson’s brow furrowed.
‘Interfering with a crime scene,’ he said, then caught Frieda’s eye.
‘Or a semi-crime scene. Well, no harm done.’

‘We should go upstairs again,’
said Frieda.

Back in Poole’s flat, Frieda stood
once more in the centre of the room. She looked at the pictures on Poole’s wall.
There were five: the Eiffel Tower, a Madonna and Child, a sun in a seascape, a poppy
field and a pine tree with the moon behind it. Frieda took a pair of transparent plastic
gloves from her pocket and put them on. ‘I bought these from the chemist,’
she said. She glanced at Newton. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to charge
them to the taxpayer.’

She walked to the picture of the Madonna,
lifted it from the wall and stepped back. She placed the picture on the desk. She turned
to Karlsson. ‘What do you see?’