But no. That wasn’t allowed. That was
what Edward said, what the voices had been saying. Everything went wrong when she
thought about what Beth wanted. Everything had always gone wrong. Beth was bad. Beth was
the bad person inside her head. What was important was to think of other people. Edward.
Everyone else was the enemy. Especially Beth. She would deal with Beth later. But first,
dimly, distantly, she felt she should eat, like putting fuel in a car. She just needed
to get there, do what Edward wanted, and that would be enough. She found some pieces of
the chicken, dry and hard. She chewed at them. She took the last of the bread, rock hard
now, smeared it thickly with butter and pushed it into her mouth, chewing it into a
thick paste that
was difficult to swallow. She needed to wash the
paste down with water. Glass after glass of water. The milk smelt of cheese but she
drank it anyway. The heavy, full feeling was a comfort, weighing her down, stopping her
floating away.
She came out on deck and stepped on to the
towpath. It was sunny and cold. The sunlight hurt her. She could even hear it. The
voices wouldn’t stop, even in the daytime. Just nagging and nagging at her.
‘Leave me alone, leave me
alone,’ she said. ‘I can hear you. I’m doing it. Just leave me alone.
They said it to me already, all right?’
Now she heard another voice and this one was
just stupid and it was even worse than the others. This voice came out of a real person
and he was standing on the towpath next to her. He had long hair and a sort of patchy
horrible beard, as if he was ill or something. The man was reaching out and touching her
and she could even smell him, he was so close, but she couldn’t see him properly
because of the brightness of the sun, which dazzled her. He was a dark shape, with
sparks around his edges, like when the sun shone on the ripples on the canal. Then she
remembered. She had it with her. She’d been sharpening it the whole night long,
like her dad used to. She pulled it out and held it in front of her and the funny thing
was that she suddenly saw the man clearly and he looked so surprised.
But it didn’t matter, really, because
the main thing was that she had somewhere to go. She turned away from him, where
he’d sat down like a fool, and ran away along the towpath, away from the sun.
Like many doctors’ addresses and
phone numbers, Emma Higgins’s were unlisted, which meant that it took Frieda three
phone calls, two quite long conversations, a promise to
meet up for a
drink, an Underground journey and a short walk before she found herself outside a smart
terraced house in Islington, just off Upper Street. She hadn’t dared to phone. She
had only one chance and it would be better face to face.
The woman who opened the door was wearing a
purple knee-length dress and large earrings. She had on her party makeup, heavily lined
eyes and red lips, blusher on her cheeks. Frieda could hear a hum from behind her and
there was a glow from what must be the kitchen at the back of the house. It looked as if
she had interrupted a dinner party.
‘Are you Dr Higgins?’
‘Yes,’ she said, puzzled and
irritated.
‘I work as a consultant with the
police and I’d like to talk to you for just a couple of minutes.’
‘What?’ said Dr Higgins.
‘At this time of night? We’ve got people here.’
‘Just one moment, that’s all. A
patient of yours, Beth – or Elizabeth – Kersey, went missing a year ago. She’s
still missing but she was involved with someone who was later murdered.’
‘Beth Kersey? Missing?’
‘That’s right. I wondered if you
could tell me anything about her.’
There was a pause. Dr Higgins seemed to be
remembering something. ‘Of course I can’t,’ she said, with an almost
disgusted expression. ‘She was a patient of mine. You know that. What the hell do
you think you’re doing, coming to my house at night, asking me about something
private?’
‘I don’t need to know any
clinical details,’ Frieda said. ‘I want to find her and I’d like to
know, even in general terms, about the kind of risks involved with her
condition.’
‘No,’ said Dr Higgins.
‘Absolutely not. And, in fact, I want your name, so I can make a complaint about
your behaviour.’
‘You’ll need
to get to the back of the queue,’ said Frieda.
‘What are you talking about? And if
you’re working with the police, where are they? How did you get my
address?’
A man appeared beside her, in a blue cotton
shirt, loose outside his blue jeans. ‘What’s going on, Emma?’
‘This is someone who says she’s
a doctor …’
‘A psychotherapist,’ said
Frieda.
‘Even worse, she says she’s a
psychotherapist and she wants to know about Beth Kersey.’
The man looked startled, then angry.
‘Beth Kersey? Do you know her?’ he said.
‘No.’
The man took Emma Higgins’s left hand
and held it up. ‘Do you see that? What do you think it is?’
There was a pale line, three or four inches
long, on Dr Higgins’s forearm.
‘It looks like a scar,’ said
Frieda.
‘It’s called a defence
wound,’ said the man. ‘Do you know what that is?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Frieda. She
looked at Dr Higgins. ‘Did Beth Kersey do that to you?’
‘What do you think?’ said the
man.
‘I need your opinion,’ said
Frieda. ‘She’ll have been without her medication for a long time. What are
the risks?’
‘The answer is “No
comment,”’ said Dr Higgins. ‘As you well know, if you want access to
her medical records you need a court order. And I’m also going to make that
complaint.’
She shut the door without another word.
Frieda stood by the railings and, as she dialled Karlsson’s number, she heard
raised voices from inside, the man saying something and Dr Higgins answering
angrily.
Karlsson sounded tired. When she told him
about Dr
Higgins, she expected that he would be irritated by her
acting without telling him and interested in what she had found out. But he didn’t
react at all.
‘Don’t you see?’ she said.
‘She’s violent.’
‘It’s all in hand,’ said
Karlsson.
‘What do you mean? You need to step up
the search for her and you need to establish who may be at risk.’
‘I said, it’s all in hand. And
we need to talk.’
‘Shall I come into the station?’
said Frieda. ‘I’m seeing patients all morning but I could come
afterwards.’
‘I’ll come to you. When’s
your first patient?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
‘I’ll be outside your house at
seven fifteen.’
‘Karlsson, is something up?’
‘I’ll see you
tomorrow.’
‘Would you like to come in for
coffee?’ said Frieda.
‘No, thanks,’ said Karlsson.
‘You like walking, don’t you? Let’s go for a walk.’
He headed north, his hands plunged into the
pockets of his dark coat. His face looked swollen in the fiercely cold wind. When they
reached Euston Road, it was already jammed in both directions with the largely
stationary commuter traffic.
‘You’ve got to love it,
haven’t you?’ he said, and turned left, walking so briskly that Frieda had
almost to run to keep up with him.
She grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to
stop. ‘Karlsson,’ she said. ‘I know what this is about.’
‘What?’
‘When I was in the station, I saw Jake
Newton. He wouldn’t meet my eye. He’s delivered his report, hasn’t
he?’
Karlsson was silent, breathing out clouds of
vapour. ‘That sharp-suited little cunt,’ he said. ‘I cannot believe we
took that grinning little fucking oaf along with us and let him fart around with his
fucking fly-on-the-wall act.’
‘So he’s not too keen on
freelance contracts,’ said Frieda.
‘Oh, he’s keen on contracts. For
the office work, bureaucracy, management, there’ll be freelance contracts out of
our fucking arse.’
‘Karlsson,’ said Frieda.
‘You don’t have to do the big sweary policeman thing for my benefit.
It’s fine. So, I’m out.’
‘Yes, Frieda. You’re
out.’
‘Not that I was ever
really in. After all that, you never got a contract for me to sign.’
‘Well, that’s the whole point
about money-saving measures,’ said Karlsson. ‘You don’t expect them to
save money, do you? “Dysfunctional operational procedures”. Those were his
words. “Management organization unfit for purpose”. Those were more of them.
Do you know what makes it worse? I tried to impress him. I feel like some teenage boy
who’s tried to impress a girl he didn’t really like in the first place and
she’s laughed at him. It’s not just you. There are going to be cuts
everywhere.’
Frieda put her hand on his arm again, gently
this time. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.
‘And after all you did in this case,
getting the Welleses, I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s all right.’
He pushed his hands more deeply into his
pockets and looked embarrassed. ‘And despite me being sarcastic with you and
shouting, it was, you know … having you around … I mean,
anything’s better than someone like Munster.’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Me
too.’
‘How do you get out of this
place?’
‘This way,’ said Frieda, and
turned east. ‘But what about Beth Kersey?’
‘I told you,’ said Karlsson.
‘It’s in hand.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘You remember Sally Lea,
the name in Poole’s notebook?’
‘The one we never found.’
‘It’s not a woman,’ said
Karlsson. ‘It’s a barge on the Lea river up near Enfield.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There was an incident yesterday. A
resident of the adjacent barge called the emergency services. He’d been stabbed
by a young woman. She had stolen food from him. She was acting
strangely, talking to herself, and when accosted, she pulled a knife.’
‘Beth Kersey,’ said Frieda.
‘Did they find her?’
‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘But
they found where she’d been living and a whole pile of Poole’s stuff,
papers, photos, the lot. Some officers are going to spend the day going through it, for
what it’s worth.’
‘What was this barge like?’ said
Frieda.
‘What can I say? A barge is a
barge.’
‘I mean inside, where she’d been
living.’
‘I didn’t see it myself. But
from what I heard, it was pretty gross. It sounds like she’d been stuck there on
her own, foraging for herself, ever since Poole died.’
‘Is that it?’ said Frieda.
‘Pretty gross?’
‘I know what you’re
saying,’ said Karlsson. ‘You want to go and look at it for yourself.
I’m sorry, Frieda. Look, I know it seems messy. We’ll probably never know
who Poole really was. We don’t know where he was killed. It looks like the money
that the Welleses took from him has been safely stashed somewhere beyond our reach.
Clearly that’s one of the things Harry Welles is good at.’ He stopped and
looked around. ‘But we got them. And the rest is in hand. We’ve put a
protective unit on the Kerseys until we find their daughter, which won’t take
long. From what I heard about the state of that barge, she won’t be able to look
after herself for long out in the big world –’ He stopped suddenly. ‘And now
I’ve got to get to work. Where the hell are we?’
Frieda pointed upwards at the BT Tower. They
were standing almost directly beneath it.
‘That looks familiar,’ said
Karlsson. ‘Didn’t there used to be a restaurant up there? A rotating
restaurant?’
‘Until someone set off a bomb,’
said Frieda. ‘A pity. I’d
quite like to go up there.
It’s the only place in London where you can’t see the BT Tower.’
Karlsson held out his hand and Frieda shook
it. ‘I should probably move to Spain,’ he said.
‘You’re needed here,’ she
said.
As they parted, Karlsson said, ‘At
least you can return to your real life now, Frieda. You can put all this mess behind
you. And Dean Reeve. Let him go, will you?’
Frieda didn’t reply. When he had
turned the corner, heading down towards Oxford Street, she stopped and leaned against a
lamppost. She felt the metal cold against her forehead as she took deliberate deep
breaths. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all
right.’
She took her phone from her pocket and
switched it on. There was a message and she called straight back. ‘Sorry,’
she said. ‘Things have been a bit funny, but it’s over now … Yes,
that would be good … No. Just come to my house.’
Frieda woke in darkness and felt the
unfamiliar presence. A sag in the bed, breathing, a touch against her thigh. She moved
as if to sit up, get out of the bed, get dressed, leave.
‘Easy,’ said a voice, and Frieda
lay down. She felt the sheet pulled back and a hand touching her body and his face
against hers, the touch of lips on her cheek, her neck, her shoulders.
‘A friend of mine was at a
dinner,’ said Sandy. ‘He was a feisty guy, always up for a disagreement. He
got into a row with a woman there, shouted at her, told her to fuck off, stormed out of
the place, slammed the front door, found himself in the street and realized he’d
walked out of his own house.’
‘All right,’ said Frieda.
‘I get it.’
‘It feels like
you’re always about to leave. Just get up and walk away somewhere.’
‘That’s what I do, when
I’m afraid. When I can’t sleep, which is most of the time, when my head is
buzzing, when I’m confused, when I feel I just can’t stay still, I go out
and walk. And walk.’
‘And lose yourself?’
‘No. I don’t lose myself. I know
my way around.’
She felt both his hands on her now, his face
on her.
‘You smell nice,’ he said.
Frieda didn’t know what she was
feeling. Suddenly she thought of herself as very little, her father throwing her in the
air and catching her; she was screaming and not knowing whether she was screaming with
pleasure or with fear. She ran her fingers through Sandy’s damp hair. She was damp
too. ‘I probably smell of you,’ she said.
They lay for a moment in silence, tangled in
each other.