‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s written by Liz Barron. Who
is she?’
‘I’ve met her,’ said
Frieda. ‘She knocked at my door.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing. Now shut up. I need to read
this.’
Frieda took a sip of her tea. She took a few
deep breaths and then she forced herself to read the article word by word. She read the
story on the front page and when she turned it to continue reading she gave a start.
Accompanying the story was a photograph of Janet Ferris and the sketched portrait of
Robert Poole that she herself had made, using the photo of his decomposing face. She
finished the rest of the article slowly and deliberately, word by word. Then she sat
back.
‘What does it say?’ said
Jack.
‘Read it for yourself.’
‘I don’t
really want to. Can’t you just tell me?’
‘All right,’ said Frieda.
‘I think the basic point is that at a time when the police force is facing severe
funding cuts it’s inappropriate that they should be hiring a therapist. Especially
a discredited one. Especially when they already have qualified experts, like Dr Hal
Bradshaw.’
‘Is he the one who appears on
TV?’
‘That’s what they say. And
somehow they’ve tracked down Poole’s neighbour, Janet Ferris. She’s
not happy with the way things are going.’ Frieda picked up the paper and looked
for the exact quotation. ‘“The police aren’t taking this seriously
enough,” she says. “Nobody seems to care. Bob Poole was a lovely man, and he
was generous to a fault. He used to bring little gifts over, on the spur of the moment.
We swapped books, even did a picture swap. He said it was like a change of scene for us
both. I returned it, of course. I returned everything that belonged to him,
there’s nothing left. But I still can’t believe I’ll never hear his
knock at my door or see his smiling face. He has been abandoned by everybody yet I will
never forget him.”’
‘How did the journalist find out about
this woman?”
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did they talk to Karlsson?’
said Jack, angrily. ‘Did he stand up for you and tell them all that you’ve
done?’
Frieda ran her finger down to the end of the
article. ‘“A police spokeswoman said, ‘It is not our policy to comment
on operational matters but Dr Klein is not playing any significant part in the inquiry.
We are always grateful for co-operation from any member of the public.’ She said
that the investigation was continuing.”’
‘That’s not exactly a ringing
endorsement,’ said Jack. ‘How does it make you feel, being written about
like that? Don’t you feel violated?’
Frieda smiled.
‘Violated? Are you being my therapist now?’
Jack looked embarrassed and didn’t
answer.
‘So what would you say if you were my
therapist?’
‘I’d ask you how the article
makes you feel.’
‘And you wouldn’t ask if I feel
violated?’
‘I wasn’t saying that as a
therapist,’ said Jack. ‘By the way, how does it make you feel?’
‘It makes me feel like somebody
else’s property,’ said Frieda. ‘Which I don’t like.’
Jack picked up the newspaper and looked at
it. ‘“Abrasive brunette,”’ he said. ‘That doesn’t
seem quite right.’
‘Which? Abrasive or
brunette?’
‘Both. And “dodgy”.
That’s completely out of order.’ He put the paper down. ‘What I
don’t understand is why you put yourself through this.’
‘Now
that’s
a good
question,’ said Frieda. ‘And if you were my therapist, we would spend a lot
of time discussing it.’
‘Can’t we spend time discussing
it even if I’m not your therapist?’
Frieda rummaged in her bag until she found
her phone.
‘Do you ever switch it on?’ he
said.
‘I’m switching it on now,’
she said. ‘I switch it on when I need to use it and then I switch it off
again.’
‘I’m not sure that’s
really the point.’
Frieda dialled Karlsson’s number.
He picked up after a single ring.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you,’ he said.
‘How did they find Janet
Ferris?’
‘You mean the journalist?’
‘That’s right.’
There was silence on the line.
‘Are you still there?’ asked
Frieda.
‘Look,’ said
Karlsson, ‘everybody knows that the press have contacts on the force.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said
Frieda. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s a bloody disgrace,’
said Karlsson. ‘But regrettably there are officers who leak material. For a
fee.’
‘It didn’t take long to become
public.’
‘It’s not exactly a state
secret. We’re funded from people’s taxes. But I’m sorry. And I’m
sorry that we didn’t seem to be putting up much of a defence on your
behalf.’
‘If Yvette Long objects to me being on
the case, I’d rather she expressed it to me or to you than to a journalist.’
There was another silence on the line. ‘I suppose she already has expressed it to
you. That’s OK.’
‘It’s not like that,
Frieda.’
She glanced at Jack, who was staring rather
guiltily at the
Daily Sketch
. He looked up and Frieda made a gesture at him,
trying to convey that she would only be a minute. ‘What is it like?’
‘That article was bollocks. Bollocks
about you and bollocks about the case going nowhere.’
‘It makes you and your team look
ridiculous. Whatever the phrase was …’
‘“Dodgy Doc”.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Frieda was about
to ring off when she remembered something. ‘I feel bad about Janet Ferris.
I’d like to go and see her.’
‘She was talking rubbish to that
journalist. Don’t let it get to you.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said
Frieda. ‘I think she needs someone to talk to.’
‘She’s a lonely woman,’
said Karlsson. ‘I think she had a bit of a crush on Poole. But it’s not our
job to hold her hand. We just need to find who killed him.’
‘I’ll see her
in my own time,’ said Frieda. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t charge
you.’ She switched the phone off and put it back into her bag.
‘It was good to see you, Jack,’
she said. ‘Now I’ve got to go and pay someone a call.’
‘You’re not going to hunt that
journalist down and kill her, are you?’ said Jack. ‘Don’t bother.
She’s not worth it.’
Frieda smiled. ‘She was
interesting,’ she said. ‘First she was like someone who wanted to be my
friend. Then she wanted to tell my side of the story. Then she threatened me. As you can
see, I’ve already forgotten about it. But she’d better not find herself
drowning in a lake with me as the only person looking on.’
‘You’d dive in and save her
anyway,’ said Jack. ‘I know you would.’
‘Only to make her feel guilty,’
said Frieda.
‘She wouldn’t. And then
she’d write another piece about you, misrepresenting you.’
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘Maybe
I’d let her drown then.’
They walked out together and Frieda hailed
a taxi. She sat back and gazed out at the unfamiliar south London streets. They drove
past parks, schools, a cemetery, and it might have been in another part of England,
another part of the world. She thought of Janet Ferris and the reporter, Liz Barron.
Frieda had just slammed the door on her but Janet Ferris hadn’t. She would have
invited her in, made tea for her, talked to her, grateful to find someone who wanted to
listen. Janet Ferris was a woman who had been ignored, who was somehow at the edge. And
then, suddenly, she had found herself involved in a big story, the murder of someone she
knew and cared for, and even then she had been ignored. Nobody had wanted to hear her
story. At least Liz Barron had sat in her flat and let her talk.
Frieda rang Janet Ferris’s bell but
there was no answer. She silently cursed herself for arriving without phoning ahead. She
looked at the bells. Flat one was Janet Ferris. Flat two was Poole. She pressed the bell
for flat three, then pressed it again. A voice came from a little speaker, so crackly
that she couldn’t make out the words. She said who she was and that she wanted to
see Janet Ferris, but she didn’t know if she was being heard. She waited and then
heard steps. The door was opened by a tall young man with blond hair and wire-rimmed
spectacles, wearing a sweater and jeans, and with bare feet.
‘What is it?’ he said. His
accent was foreign.
Frieda remembered the
file: a German student upstairs. ‘I want to see Janet Ferris,’ she said.
‘But she’s not in. I wondered if you knew where she was.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m
upstairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t see her come and go.’
Frieda peered into the hallway for piled-up
mail. She couldn’t see any. ‘This is going to sound strange,’ she
said. ‘I’m working with the police on the murder. I’m a bit worried
about Janet’s state of mind. Do you have a key to her flat?’
‘You have identification?’
‘No. I mean, not as police. I’m
a therapist. I work with them.’ The man looked reluctant. ‘I’d only be
a minute. Just to check she’s all right. You can come in with me.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said.
‘One minute.’ He bounded lightly up the stairs.
Frieda wondered what she was doing. More of
the dodgy doc. He came quickly back down.
‘I am not sure of this.’ But he
unlocked the door anyway and stood back, calling Janet’s name.
Frieda stepped through the doorway and was
immediately hit by the smell. Horrible and sweet at the same time: she recognized it as
the smell of shit.
‘Stay there,’ she said to the
man, and walked through and into the living room with a lurching sense of what she was
going to find. She almost bumped into Janet Ferris’s body, the legs. She looked
up. An extension cable had been looped round a wooden beam. The other end was tied round
Janet Ferris’s neck. Her body hung quite still, heavily and limply, as if it was a
bag filled with sand. One leg was streaked with brown that ran down over her shoe and
dripped on to the carpet. Frieda heard a sound
behind her, a sort of
gasp. She looked round at the pale, dismayed face.
‘I said to stay out,’ she said,
but not angrily. He backed away. She fumbled for her phone. She felt calm but at first
she couldn’t press the buttons. She couldn’t get her fingers to work. They
suddenly felt big and swollen and clumsy.
Josef had never seen Frieda like this
before: she, who was always so self-possessed, so strong and dependable, now sitting at
her kitchen table, hunched over, her face half hidden by her hand. It made him anxious
and protective, and it made him want to get her pot after pot of tea. He refilled the
kettle as soon as he had poured the boiling water into the teapot. She hadn’t
wanted vodka, although he thought it would do her good and put a bit of colour back in
her face. He had baked her a honey cake the day before, spiced with cinnamon and ginger,
whose rich smell when it was baking had reminded him of his mother, and also of his wife
or, at least, the woman who used to be his wife, and had filled him with emotions both
happy and sad. Now he tried to persuade Frieda to eat some, pushing the plate under her
nose. She shook her head and pushed it away.
Reuben hadn’t seen Frieda like this
before either, although he had been her supervisor and her friend for years, and knew
things about her that probably no-one else in the world did. She wasn’t crying –
even Reuben had never seen her cry, although once, during a film, she had been
suspiciously watery-eyed – but she was visibly distressed.
‘Tell us, Frieda,’ he said. It
was early evening, and in an hour or so he was supposed to be going on a date with a
woman he had met in the local gym. He couldn’t remember if she
was called Marie or Maria, and he was worried that he might not recognize her when she
wasn’t dressed in Lycra, with her hair pulled back in a high pony tail, her cheeks
flushed with exercise, a V of perspiration on her shapely back.
‘Yes. Tell us start to end,’
Josef said. He poured them all another cup of tea and then himself a shot of vodka to
accompany it, from the bottle he’d slipped into his bag when the phone call from
Frieda had come. He thought of laying his hand on the top of her bowed head, but changed
his mind.
‘I knew she was lonely.’
Frieda’s voice was low; she spoke not to them but to herself. ‘When I read
that story …’
‘Dodgy Doc, you mean?’
She looked up with a grimace.
‘Yes, Reuben, that one. It made me
think about Janet Ferris all alone in her room, and how anyone knocking at her door
would have felt like a friend. She is – was – a clever, attractive and affectionate
woman and yet it seemed that she had somehow missed out on everything she most wanted in
life. Robert Poole, coming in with his little gifts, confiding in her, must have meant a
great deal to her. When I visited her, I could feel that she was distressed. But I put
it out of my mind.’
‘You can’t save
everyone.’
‘I went there and I encouraged her to
open up to me, say what she was feeling. That’s a risky thing to do if
you’re not prepared to deal with the consequences.’
‘You were only kind,’ said
Josef, soothingly.
‘Sticking-plaster kind,’ Frieda
said, and Josef looked confused. He took a mouthful of vodka, then chased it
down with tea. ‘Kind to get her to give me her confidences and
expose her feelings. Then I went away and filed my report for Karlsson and forgot about
her. I’d ticked her off my to-do list.’
‘Ticked her off?’
‘It means – oh, never mind.’
Reuben took Josef’s vodka and absent-mindedly drank it, then filled the glass
again, drank half and handed it to Josef, who emptied it. ‘Are you saying you
should have been more aware of her state of mind or that you helped to create
it?’
‘I don’t know. Me, the police,
that journalist – we all just used her. She was grieving.’
‘He was just her neighbour.’
‘He made her feel hopeful.’
‘There is that.’
‘When I first came on to this case,
the police didn’t really care about it. Karlsson was different, but basically they
wanted to close the file. They thought the victim would turn out to be some drug-dealer
or drop-out, and the murderer was a madwoman who would be locked away in a hospital for
the rest of her life. Then when we discovered who Robert Poole was, it still
didn’t matter that much because he was some kind of creepy conman. Who really
minded that he was dead? Janet minded. And now she’s dead too.’