‘Me? I don’t get it. Do you want
to come into the hall? It’s getting a bit chilly out here. And, um, your
friend.’
‘It’s OK. I won’t take
long.’ Frieda stepped into the hall, which still smelt of fresh paint. She pulled
the flyer out of her bag. ‘Do you recognize this?’
‘Well.’ The young man looked at
her warily, as if she might turn out to be a nutcase. ‘It’s a flyer.
Obviously. Andy’s Pizzas.’
‘Do you get them delivered here? The
flyers, I mean, not the pizzas.’
‘Yeah. I think so – all sorts of junk
comes through our letterbox.’
Frieda turned the leaflet. ‘And
this.’
He squinted, frowned. ‘I don’t
think it’s my writing. Or Cas’s. My wife. What is this?’
‘Are you using
Straw, String, Cord and Stone on your walls.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I’m
sure, actually. This is beginning to spook me out, if you don’t mind me saying
so.’
‘Sorry. There’s a drawing
I’ve got here. Can you tell me if it reminds you of anyone?’
She took her drawing out of the A4 envelope
she’d put it in and handed it to him. He stared at it. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘It bears a resemblance. There was a
guy – he was going to do our decorating. Really keen, as a matter of fact. Nice guy.
Very helpful. This looks a bit like him. And he wrote down the paints, now I come to
think of it. But we never used him, if that’s what you’re going to ask. He
just disappeared. Didn’t answer his phone or anything. Left us in the lurch.
That’s why we got this lot to come.’
Frieda tried to keep her expression steady.
‘When did he disappear?’
‘Well – maybe two weeks ago, something
like that. I don’t know exactly. Cas could probably be more accurate. Is there a
problem? Has he done something?’
‘What was his name?’ She heard
her own use of the past tense, but the young man didn’t notice.
‘Rob. Rob Poole.’
‘Do you have his address?’
‘No. Nothing. Just his mobile
number.’ He scrolled down on his phone and found it, jotted it on the back of
Andy’s worse-for-wear flyer. ‘He’s not answering it, though – I must
have left him half a dozen messages.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Not exactly. Could I have your name
as well, please, and your phone number?’
‘Why on
earth?’
‘I think the police might want to talk
to you about him.’
Reuben hadn’t put potatoes in the
oven: he’d made a greasy, rich lasagne, garlic bread and a green salad. The smell
greeted them when he opened the door, wearing an apron and his half-moon spectacles
balanced on the end of his nose. With one swift glance, he took in the state of Josef,
then stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulders.
‘Thank goodness you’re
back,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think I was actually going to have to
pay someone to mend my roof and assemble my bloody easy self-assembly chest.’
‘I not stay,’ Josef mumbled.
‘I just give hello and take my things.’
‘Can we come in?’ said Frieda.
‘It’s too cold to be standing out here.’
So, they bundled him inside, peeled off his
jacket and shoes, and Reuben pushed a bottle of beer into his hands and took him to see
where the leak came from, and somehow, ten minutes later, Josef was immersed in a
scalding hot bath. From where they sat in the warm, fugged-up kitchen, Frieda and Reuben
could hear him splashing and moaning.
‘What the fuck’s
happened?’ Reuben asked.
Both of them instinctively looked across at
the dog-eared photo stuck to Reuben’s fridge that Josef had put there more than a
year ago, when he’d first moved into Reuben’s house: his dark-haired wife
and his two dark-haired sons.
‘He was in Summertown, living on a
building site.’
‘Why didn’t he say?’
‘He’s ashamed.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘It’s lucky I really do have a
leaking roof.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well done for rescuing
him.’
‘I didn’t. I called him up for
advice on something.’
‘He’s here now,
anyway.’
Frieda nodded, then said, ‘By the way,
I’m going to Kathy Ripon’s funeral at the end of the week. I’ve been
thinking a lot about her death, and about Dean Reeve. I have these disturbing dreams
about him and they don’t go away when I wake.’
‘So he’s haunting you from
beyond the grave?’
‘I wish.’
That night she was sick. It started with
beads of sweat on her forehead and a horrible breathlessness, a taste in her mouth that
wouldn’t go away, and even when she lay down, she felt dizzy, her stomach
churning.
She managed to get to the toilet in time and
knelt beside it, her eyes stinging, her body cold and sweating, vomiting, half sobbing
and choking as she did so. She felt poisoned, every bit of her. But she had barely eaten
anything, not for days and days, and soon there was nothing left to vomit, so she just
retched and gasped, occasionally laying her forehead against the rim of the toilet, her
knees sore on the hard floor and her hair sticky, her mouth foul, every bit of her
unclean. She thought of hot baths, fresh sheets, lemon barley water, a cool hand against
her hot cheek, and retched again. Wanting to die. She mustn’t die. He would come.
That was all she knew or needed to know.
Frieda sat in the corner of the pub and
waited for Karlsson. He came across, balancing two whiskies and two packets of crisps.
He took a seat at the table and ripped open both packets.
‘I got salt and vinegar,’ he
said, ‘and cheese and onion. I didn’t know which you liked.’
‘Neither, really.’
‘You probably don’t like pubs
either,’ said Karlsson.
‘It’s better than the police
station.’
‘At least it’s an escape from
that guy Newton, following me around like a ghost.’
‘What’s he there for?’
‘Time and motion,’ said
Karlsson. ‘Blue-sky thinking. A fresh eye, that’s what the boss calls it.
He’s looking at our procedures, our management style. But I think I know what
he’s going to find.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The word is that there are going to
be budget cuts. Ten per cent, maybe even twenty or twenty-five. If young Jake draws some
diagrams to show we can catch more criminals with fewer officers, I think he’ll
find a receptive audience.’
They sipped their drinks and looked at each
other.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve made
your work more difficult.’
‘We got the file back,’ said
Karlsson. ‘Charges have been put on hold while investigations continue.
That’s roughly what I’ve said in the memo.’ He took a sip of his drink
and rubbed his face. Frieda thought he looked more tired than ever. ‘I
know why the commissioner did what he did,’ Karlsson continued.
‘Nobody cares much about a case like this. And I know why
I
did what I
did. But what I don’t understand is why
you
did what you did. Michelle
Doyce was never going to prison. She was going to get the medical help she needed. It
was all going to be sorted out. Don’t you have enough to do with your own
work?’
Frieda looked at him speculatively.
‘What does it matter why I did it? Maybe I don’t like untidy stories with
bits left over. There was a patient I had once, a young woman. You know that feeling
when you’ve left the house and you wonder if you’ve left the stove on? For
her it wasn’t just the stove. Perhaps she’d left a window open or the tap
running or shut her cat in her bedroom. She’d try and check them all before she
left but there was no way she could check everything, and then there was the thought
that while she was checking she might have opened another door or switched something on
by mistake. In the end she couldn’t leave home.’
‘How did you cure her?’
‘I wasn’t right for her. I sent
her to a behavioural therapist. But that’s not my point. What I’m saying is
that I’m a bit like that with stories. I couldn’t have left it like that,
knowing the body had been found outside in the alley but not knowing why, or who he was,
or whom he had left behind. It was like going out knowing the gas was on.’
Karlsson shook his head. ‘You
wouldn’t enjoy my job. I spend most of my life knowing that the gas is on and the
bath is overflowing and the window’s open.’
‘What makes you think I enjoy life as
a therapist?’ Frieda said. ‘So, what happens next?’
‘I’ve sent a couple of officers
down to talk to your couple in Brixton. Robert Poole is a pretty common name and, at
the moment, there’s nothing else. He’s as much a mystery
as he ever was.’
‘You mean, you know his name but
you’ve still no idea who he actually was?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What about his mobile number? Surely
that gives you a lead. Can’t you track him from that?’
‘His number was from a pay-as-you-go
phone, but we’ll see if we can do anything with it. We’ve got a facial
reconstruction done and we’ll distribute that – you know, “Have you seen
this man?” That, with his name, might do the trick, though usually the people who
get in touch are not what you’d call reliable witnesses. We’ve got one old
man who’s always seen every single person on the posters. Anyway, it’s worth
a try. And we’ll have another look at Michelle Doyce’s room. It is – I
should point out – not totally, completely, a hundred per cent certain that the body in
the room is this painter and decorator.’
‘They recognized the sketch I showed
them.’
‘Yes. I saw your sketch, and possibly
you should have talked to me before flashing it around, but all right, I accept that.
Actually, it’s not far off our own visual.’
Frieda drained her glass. ‘Thanks for
telling me,’ she said. ‘I won’t get involved like that
again.’
Karlsson gave a cough, as if he was
preparing to deliver a speech.
‘There was something else, Frieda. I
wanted to say, quite clearly, that, despite occasional differences of opinion,
you’ve been a great help and –’
‘This sounds like the sort of speech
you give when you’re firing someone,’ said Frieda.
‘No,’ said Karlsson.
‘Quite the opposite. We need to get on a proper footing. If you’re going to
do work with us, or
with me, from time to time, you should be a
consultant, with a contract and appropriate fees and agreed responsibilities. What do
you feel about that?’
‘Hang on.’ Frieda stood up and
went over to the bar, returning with two more whiskies.
‘Well?’ said Karlsson.
‘I’m not sure I’m
comfortable with the idea.’
‘Why ever not? It would just be making
it official.’
‘I’ll consider it,’ said
Frieda. ‘But at the moment all I can think of is reasons why not. I don’t
feel I’ve got anything more to contribute to this case. Once you find out properly
who Robert Poole is, you’ll find who did it. That’s the way it usually
works, isn’t it?’
‘A jealous lover,’ said
Karlsson. ‘That’s what it’ll be.’
‘Except for the finger.’ Frieda
frowned. ‘That looks more calculating.’
Karlsson gave a triumphant smile. ‘You
can’t stop yourself. You’re interested. She could have cut off the finger to
take back the wedding ring. For the gold. Or an extreme form of divorce. My wife would
have done that to me, if she could.’
‘It was the wrong finger,’ said
Frieda. ‘Anyway, the idea of a contract worries me. Then I’d have duties and
I’d have to be responsible. I helped you because I felt I needed to, and I
didn’t have to worry about justifying my expenses or ticking a box.’
‘Don’t say no,’ said
Karlsson. ‘I mean, don’t say no straight away without thinking it through.
Give it a few days. You see, I’m going to be the therapist for a moment
–’
‘Oh, please –’
‘No, honestly. I think you rather like
the idea of getting involved when you aren’t meant to, when you’re telling
people things they don’t want to hear. You have difficulty with being invited in.
Wasn’t there the old joke about not wanting
to join a club that
would accept you as a member? That’s you.’
‘There’s something else,’
she said.
‘About the case?’
‘Not this one. Remember I took that
neurologist Andrew Berryman along to see Michelle Doyce? That, incidentally, is the kind
of thing I wouldn’t be able to do if I was under contract.’
‘You’d have to ask in
advance,’ said Karlsson. ‘Which I know you don’t like
doing.’
‘And I’d have to justify it and
fill out a form and it would get turned down, but that’s not the point.
There’s something he told me that I can’t get out of my mind. While we were
talking about Michelle Doyce’s perceptual problem, he told me about a neurological
disease called Capgras Syndrome. Certain, very rare, cases of neural damage result in
the patient suffering the delusion that a close family member or friend has somehow been
replaced by an impostor.’
‘Sounds uncomfortable,’ said
Karlsson. He paused. ‘Well?’
‘The idea of it obsessed me. And I
didn’t know why. Then I thought about Carrie Dekker.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘She said that after Dean died, her
husband’s behaviour changed. Then, quite suddenly, he left her and disappeared. I
thought of Carrie with a husband who seemed to have been replaced by an
impostor.’
Karlsson’s face took on a bemused
expression and when he spoke it was as if his brain was working slowly. ‘I
don’t get this,’ he said. ‘Are you saying that Caroline Dekker was
suffering from an incredibly rare brain disease?’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘The
opposite, in a way. What kind of person could have the symptoms of Capgras Syndrome but
not the disease?’
‘I don’t know
what you’re talking about.’
‘If it wasn’t a
delusion.’
‘What do you mean?’ said
Karlsson. ‘Do you …?’ And then he stopped. ‘Oh, God. You
can’t be serious. We found Dean’s body. I met Alan afterwards. He was with
her.’
‘I was fooled by Dean. I was as close
to him as you are to me. I talked to him. I didn’t see a difference.’