‘The problem,’ said Reuben,
refilling the glass with vodka and taking another gulp, ‘is that you’re
losing sight of whether you’re a therapist or a detective.’ He stared into
the glass. ‘You don’t know whether to catch people or cure them.’
Frieda took her hand away from her face and
sat up straighter. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘The point is that a
therapist is what you are when someone comes to see you in a room and takes on the role
of the patient. You’re not a therapist to everyone you meet. You can’t
be.’
‘No,’ said Frieda, but not with
certainty. ‘No, you’re probably right.’
‘This is good for sad days,’
said Josef, filling three shot glasses to the brim. They each took one, raised it to the
others, and swallowed it in one go. Even in her wretchedness, Frieda noticed how
gradually Reuben was shedding his virtuous abstinence and returning to his old self.
‘You need to sort this out,’
said Reuben. ‘In your own head.’
‘I’ll think about it. I need to
get this right. Now, you’ve got to go out soon, right?’
‘Christ, Frieda! You should have been
a spy.’
‘You’ve just shaved –
there’s still a fleck of foam on your neck, and you never shave in the evenings –
and you’ve looked at your watch twice.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Just someone I met. Marie. Or
Maria.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I’ll just have to avoid using
her name.’
‘I’ll be on my way soon. First,
can one of you get me some milk from the fridge?’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please.’
Josef fetched a carton of semi-skimmed milk
from the fridge and handed it to her, with a glass, but Frieda took a saucer from the
cupboard instead and went out into the hall where she had left a cardboard box by the
door. Josef
and Reuben followed her curiously. She prised open the box
and put her hand inside.
‘Out you come,’ she said, and
lifted the cat Robert Poole and Janet Ferris had called Mog or Moggie on to the floor.
It stood quite still for a few moments, its back arched and its tail high in the
air.
‘Where did you get that? Has it got
fleas?’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘Janet
Ferris wouldn’t have let it get fleas.’ She poured some milk into the saucer
and put it under the cat’s nose. It sniffed at it suspiciously, then lapped at it
with a flicking pink tongue. Only when the saucer was empty did it move away and
delicately start to wash itself, licking the side of its paw, then swiping it over one
ear and down the side of its face.
‘So, would you like a cat,
Reuben?’ Frieda asked.
‘Ah, yes!’ Josef squatted on the
floor beside her and put out one stubby finger, making strange crooning noises and
speaking in a language Frieda didn’t understand. The cat gave a piteous mew.
‘I’m allergic,’ said
Reuben, hastily.
‘Is hungry,’ said Josef.
‘How can you tell? Do you talk in cat
language?’
Josef stood up and disappeared into the
kitchen, the cat trotting behind him. They heard the fridge door open.
‘That cold chicken is not for
cats!’ Frieda shouted after him, then turned to Reuben and asked, ‘Are you
really allergic?’
‘I wheeze and come out in
hives.’
‘I guess I’ll have to keep
him.’
‘I don’t believe it. Frieda
Klein with a pet?’
‘It’s not a pet. It’s a
punishment,’ she said. ‘And now it’s time for you to go.’
She almost pushed them
out, and when the door was closed she leaned back against it, as if to keep it shut. She
took a deep breath and then another. Suddenly she heard a sound, something she
couldn’t make out. Was it from inside the house or outside? Far away or near? She
opened the door and just a few yards away she saw a jumble of bodies – she
couldn’t make sense of it. It was a mixture of impressions: shouting, swearing, a
fist, the sound of blows. Figures were sprawling on the ground entangled with each
other. As she stepped forward she saw Reuben, Josef and someone else she couldn’t
make out, gripping and hitting each other, rolling round. She shouted something
incoherent at them and tried to grab one – it was Reuben’s moleskin jacket – and
an arm struck her and knocked her back. She sat down heavily. But her intervention had
broken the spell. The men disentangled themselves, and Josef bent down to her.
‘You hurt?’
Frieda looked beyond him at Reuben. He was
panting heavily and there was a glow in his eyes that alarmed her. Another man, young,
dark-haired, anoraked, a camera hanging from his neck stood up and backed away. He
raised his hand and touched his nose. ‘You fuckers,’ he said.
‘I’m fucking calling the police.’
‘Call the fucking police,’ said
Reuben, still breathing heavily. ‘You’re a fucking parasite. I’d like
to see you in court in front of a fucking jury.’
Frieda pushed herself up. ‘Stop
this,’ she said. ‘Stop this all of you.’ She looked at the
photographer. ‘Are you all right?’
‘You fuck off, too,’ he said
jabbing his finger at her. ‘I’m calling the police right now.’
‘Call the
police,’ said Reuben. ‘I want you to. I fucking dare you to.’
The photographer gave a strange, twisted nod
and walked away, out of the mews and round the corner. The three of them watched him go.
Reuben was touching the knuckles of his right hand, flinching slightly. Josef was
shamefaced.
‘Frieda …’ he began.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just
stop. Go. Go now.’
‘We’re just looking out for
you,’ said Reuben.
She couldn’t bring herself to reply.
She turned and left them, kicking the door behind her.
Frieda woke with the watery light of a
late-February morning. The cat was sitting on the end of her bed, staring at her with
yellow eyes, unblinking. She sat up. The brawl in the street had kept her awake and
infected her dreams in which, she knew, Dean Reeve’s face had smiled at her out of
shadows and corners. Why had it sickened her? Weren’t they just protecting her?
Didn’t she herself know what it was like to behave impulsively? She forced herself
to put it out of her mind.
‘What do you know?’ she asked.
‘What did he tell you and what did you hear?’
Perhaps this cat had seen Robert Poole die,
and then poor Janet Ferris string herself up and kick away the chair. Or was that really
what had happened? Frieda was uneasy with unformed thoughts and suspicions. She shivered
and got out of bed. The sky was a pale streaked blue. Today it was possible to believe
that spring might come, after such a long, cold winter. She showered and dressed in
jeans, then went downstairs, the cat threading through her legs and miaowing.
She’d bought some cat food from the late-night shop down the road when she’d
come home, and now she shook some dried pellets into a plastic bowl and watched while it
ate. Now what should she do? Let it out? But then it might run away, heading for its old
home, and get crushed by a car. Or leave it inside to pee all over her floor?
She’d have to get a cat flap. Sighing, she laid down several layers of newspaper
on the kitchen floor and shut the cat in there. She pulled on a
thick
jacket, picked up her manila folder and notebook, then left the house.
Number 9 was always busy on a Sunday
morning, but two people were just leaving the table in the corner and Frieda took her
place there. Marcus was behind the counter, operating the espresso machine, steam
hissing from its nozzles. Kerry was picking up plates from tables, delivering full
English breakfasts or bowls of porridge. But she stopped when she saw Frieda.
‘Hello, stranger.’
‘I’ve been a bit busy.
Where’s Katya?’
Kerry pointed and Frieda saw the little girl
at a table near the door that led into their flats, bent over a pad of paper and writing
furiously, her tongue on her upper lip. ‘I should be taking her swimming or to the
park,’ said Kerry.
‘She looks happy enough.’
‘She’s writing a story.
She’s been at it since half past six this morning. It’s about a girl called
Katya whose parents run a café. Cinnamon bagel?’
‘Porridge. And fresh orange juice.
There’s no hurry.’
Kerry left and Frieda pulled open her
folder. Inside was everything Karlsson had given her on the Robert Poole investigation,
and everything she had collected herself, including the
Daily Sketch
article
from yesterday, which she turned face down on the table so that the photograph would be
out of sight. She read through it all: the discovery of Robert Poole’s body by the
woman from Social Services; the autopsy; the state of Michelle Doyce’s room;
Michelle Doyce’s garbled account; the interviews with the people who lived in the
house with her; the interviews with Mary Orton, Jasmine Shreeve, the Wyatts and Janet
Ferris. She noted the brief, clear statement by Tessa Welles, appended by a paperclip to
the copy of Mary Orton’s unexecuted will, and the statements made by Mary
Orton’s sons, in which Frieda felt she could
hear their
aggrieved self-righteousness. She read about the money trail, struggling to make sense
of some of the vocabulary but understanding that Robert Poole’s money had been
removed by him from his bank account, transferred to another account that had been
opened in Poole’s name and then emptied. She looked through the notes about the
real Robert Poole, who had died years ago and whose photograph bore no resemblance to
that of their victim. She stared at the sketch she had made and the visual produced by
the police computers and read her own transcribed notes.
Her porridge arrived and she sprinkled brown
sugar over the top and ate it slowly, not interrupting her work. She made herself go
through the
Daily Sketch
article once more, pausing, brow furrowed, when she
came to Janet Ferris’s appearance. Opening her notebook, she read what she had
jotted down after seeing Janet: her loneliness, her affection for Poole, which was both
romantic and motherly, her sense of duty. She’d put in brackets ‘cat’
after this: the cat had been her inheritance from Robert Poole; caring for it, she was
somehow still caring for him.
Frieda put down her spoon thoughtfully.
Depression is a grim and blinding curse: you can’t see outside it. You can’t
see hope, or love, or how spring will follow winter. Frieda knew this, better than most,
and yet she remained bothered by the cat. When Janet Ferris had decided to take her own
life, she hadn’t left food in the bowl for it or opened the window so that it
could get out.
At last she got up, put her jacket on, left
money on the table for her breakfast and, calling goodbye, went out into the street. The
wind was cool but not unkind. Usually on a Sunday morning, she would read the papers at
Number 9, then go to the flower market in Columbia Road. But today she walked instead
past Coram Fields and then up towards
Islington and to Highbury
Corner. She didn’t know if Karlsson would be at home, but even if he wasn’t,
the journey gave her time to collect her thoughts. As always, walking was a way of
thinking. The houses flowed past her, the pavements pressed against her feet and the
wind blew her hair back and filled her lungs.
At last she arrived at the Victorian
semi-detached house where he lived in the lower-ground-floor flat. She had only been
there once before, and then he had come to the door with his little daughter wrapped
round him like a koala bear. Today he was alone, wearing running shorts and a
sweat-drenched top, carrying a bottle of energy drink.
‘Do you want to shower
first?’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘You mean apart from everything
else?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Give me five minutes. You’d
better come in.’ Frieda went down the steps and into the flat, stepping round a
small tricycle and some red wellingtons. ‘Put the kettle on,’ he said, and
disappeared.
She heard the shower running, doors opening
and closing. It felt too domestic and intimate and she tried not to look at all the
photographs of Karlsson-the-son, Karlsson-the-father, Karlsson-the-friend. She filled
the kettle and turned it on, opened cupboards until she found coffee and mugs, watched a
blue tit on the bird table outside, pecking at some seed.
‘Right.’ He stood beside her in
jeans and a grey shirt, his face glowing and hair wet. ‘White, one
sugar.’
‘You can put your own sugar in.
You’re not having the kids today?’
‘Later,’ he said brusquely.
‘I’ll make it
quick, then.’
‘Why are you here?’
Frieda paused for a moment. ‘Before I
say anything else, I’d better warn you about something.’
‘“Warn”,’ said
Karlsson. ‘That means it’s not something good.’
‘Reuben and Josef were at my place
last night. They were trying to be consoling and they were drinking vodka and when they
left there was a photographer outside and –’
‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘Let
me guess. This is like you and the therapist in that restaurant. The incident that ended
with you in a cell.’
‘Some punches were
exchanged.’
‘What is it with you people? Was he
hurt?’
‘He was a bit knocked
about.’
‘Well, it was two against one. Or was
it three against one?’
‘I came out and stopped it.’
‘That might get you a reduced
sentence. Did he call the police?’
‘I don’t know,’ said
Frieda. ‘I don’t think so. I just wanted to warn you.’
‘We’ll have to see what happens.
What’s the immigration status of your Polish friend?’
‘He’s Ukrainian. And I
don’t know.’
‘Try to keep him out of it. If
he’s charged, he’ll probably be deported.’ Karlsson smiled thinly.
‘Any other crimes to report?’
‘No, it’s not that.’
Karlsson’s expression turned serious.
‘Yesterday must have been very distressing.’
‘I’ve spent this morning reading
through the file.’
‘Instead of sleeping in, which is what
you really need.’