‘He’d been under a lot of
pressure. Sometimes people just need to escape.’ He gave a small wince that Frieda
noticed, as she took in the new lines in his thin face, the silver threads flecking his
dark hair, and the patch of stubble that he’d missed while shaving.
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t
feel right. Something’s happened.’
‘You haven’t answered my
question,’ he said.
‘Which one?’
‘The one about why you didn’t
call me about the hearing. I’d like to have helped. You got a kidnapped child
back. You got kidnapped
children
back. The idea that you should be hauled in
front of some jobsworth is fucking ridiculous.’
Frieda looked at Karlsson with the sharp
expression that always made him feel wary. ‘It’s not ridiculous,’ she
said. ‘I’ve got to answer for what I do and Alan is free to complain about
me.’
‘I’d have spoken up for
you,’ said Karlsson. ‘So would the police commissioner. I could probably
have got the home secretary.’
‘That’s not the issue. The
question was whether I betrayed my duty to my patient.’
‘Which you didn’t.’
‘I had different duties,’ Frieda
said. ‘I tried to balance them. I’d like to talk to Alan about it but it
looks like that won’t be happening.’
Karlsson started to speak but gave up.
‘As it happens, this isn’t really what I was here about. Look, if you
don’t want a coffee, can we go for a walk? You like walking, don’t
you?’
‘Don’t you have
a car?’
‘With a driver,’ said Karlsson.
‘We can walk and then he can pick me up.’
Frieda’s expression turned suspicious.
‘This isn’t something to do with work, is it?’
‘It’s nothing big,’ said
Karlsson, hastily. ‘It’s something I thought might intrigue you.
Professionally. You’d be paid for your time. There’s someone I’d like
you to have a word with. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Have a chat with her, tell me what
you think. That’s all.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Which way?’ said Karlsson.
Frieda pointed behind him. ‘Through
Primrose Hill.’
‘All right. Just give me a
moment.’
After he’d given instructions to the
driver, Karlsson and Frieda walked along the street and turned into a cul-de-sac that
ended at the park. In silence they walked up a hill, then looked down at the zoo and the
city beyond it. It was a cold day and, through a break in the clouds, Karlsson could see
the Surrey hills, far to the south.
‘You know all about this,’ he
said. ‘Tell me something interesting.’
‘Not long ago some foxes got into the
penguin enclosure,’ she said. ‘They killed about a dozen of them.’
‘That wasn’t really what I
meant.’
‘It’s what came into my
mind,’ said Frieda.
‘They should have jumped into the
water.’
‘You don’t know what
you’re going to do in a crisis,’ said Frieda. ‘Until it happens. So
what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’
As they walked down the slope and the view
flattened out, Karlsson told Frieda about Michelle Doyce, the house in Deptford and the
decaying body that had been found
propped up on her sofa, with a comb
in his hair and lipstick on his mouth.
‘We thought it might have been natural
causes or an accident, but there’s a bone in the neck that only breaks when
you’re strangled.’
‘The hyoid bone,’ said
Frieda.
‘I thought you were a
psychotherapist.’
‘I studied medicine before. As you
know.’
‘Anyway, you’re right. Sometimes
you’re strangled and the hyoid bone doesn’t break. But if the hyoid bone
does break, you’ve been strangled. I think I’ve got it the right way round.
The point is, the man was murdered.’
‘Where is this woman?’ said
Frieda.
‘She’s back in a psychiatric
hospital, which she should never have left. As far as I can make out, she was living
with a dead body for five days or more. From the look of it, she was serving him fucking
tea and iced buns. Now, she could be the most brilliant actor in the world, but I think
she’s insane and she’s not making any sense at all. She probably still
killed this man somehow and she’s probably going to spend the rest of her life in
the bin but …’ Karlsson paused. ‘I’d like to see what you make of
her.’
‘I’m not the right
person,’ said Frieda, without even looking round.
‘Aren’t you
intrigued?’
‘Not especially. Nor am I properly
qualified. I’ve never done abnormal psychiatry. My area is the unhappiness of
ordinary people. There are plenty of experts. I could probably dig up some names for you
but there must be people you use.’
‘It’s not about examining
her,’ said Karlsson. ‘They’re probably doing that at the moment. I
want someone to talk to her. We can’t do that. Well, we can do it. It’s just
that we
don’t know what to say and we don’t understand what
she says back to us. That’s what you do.’
‘I don’t know,’ said
Frieda, doubtfully.
‘You talk about unhappiness,’
said Karlsson. ‘You know what Yvette said? I mean, DC Long. You remember her,
don’t you? She said she thought Michelle was the unhappiest person she’d
ever met in her life. I didn’t completely see it myself but that’s what she
said. She may not be ordinary but she’s unhappy.’
When Frieda turned to Karlsson this time, it
was with a look almost of alarm. ‘What do you think I am? Some kind of misery
junkie?’
‘Only in a good way,’ said
Karlsson.
‘Tell me something.’
‘What?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘What do you mean, all
right?’
‘You seem troubled.’ She
hesitated, then added, ‘More than usually so, I mean.’
For a moment Karlsson thought of confiding
in her. It would be a relief to tell someone and hear their words of sympathy and
advice. But then he felt a flash of irritation: Frieda was a professional listener and
he didn’t want to talk to someone whose job it was to listen. He wanted someone
who would be on his side, an intimate. He simply smiled and shrugged and said,
‘So, will you do it?’
Frieda entered the cobbled mews and
approached her home – a narrow house squashed between a flat and a garage – with a
familiar feeling of relief. She found the key and opened the door, taking off her coat
to hang it on the hook in the hall, removing her boots and sliding her feet into the
slippers that waited. Every morning when she left she would lay a fire ready for her
return, and now she went into the living room,
turned on the standard
lamp and knelt down by the hearth. She struck a match and held it against the balled
newspaper, watching the flames curl up and gradually catch the kindling. It was a matter
of pride to her to use only one match, and she waited to make sure the fire had caught
before going into the kitchen and filling the kettle. The light on the answering machine
was winking and she pressed the ‘play’ button, then turned to take down a
mug from the cupboard.
‘Hello, Frieda,’ said a voice,
and she stood ambushed and absolutely still, her hand pressed hard against her stomach.
‘You haven’t answered my emails so I thought I’d ring. I need to
say …’
Frieda pressed the ‘off’ button.
The voice ceased mid-sentence and she stared at the machine as if it might suddenly come
to life again. After a few moments, she went to the sink and ran the water cold, then
splashed her face. She made a pot of tea, waited for it to brew, then poured herself a
large mug and took it to the living room where she sat in her chair by the fire, which
was burning steadily but not yet giving out true heat. Outside, the drizzle strengthened
to steady rain. Sandy: the man she had allowed herself to love and who had gone away a
year and a month ago. Sometimes there were days, even weeks, when she didn’t think
of him at all, but still the sound of his voice made her stomach churn and her heart
beat faster. Yet she hadn’t answered his emails. Mostly she hadn’t even read
them. She had deleted them as soon as they appeared and then made sure she emptied the
trash folder on her computer so she wouldn’t be tempted to retrieve them. He had
asked her to go to America with him, and she had refused; she had asked him to stay, and
he had said he couldn’t. What was there left to discuss?
Eventually she went back into the kitchen
and listened to the rest of the message. It wasn’t long: Sandy simply said he
needed to talk to her and wanted to see her again. He didn’t
tell her he loved her, or missed her, or wanted her back; but he said there was
‘unfinished business’ between them and his voice sounded strained and
hesitant. Frieda imagined him speaking the words – the way he frowned when he
concentrated; the furrow between his eyebrows; the shape of his mouth. Then she erased
the message and went back to the fire.
Later that day Karlsson also listened to a
message on his voicemail that sent a sharp pain through him. He had to sit down and wait
to recover.
He had just come back to his ground-floor
Highbury flat after having dinner with a friend from university and his wife. They saw
each other rarely, perhaps once a year, and each time the gap between them seemed to
grow wider. Like Karlsson, Alec had studied law at Cambridge, but where Karlsson had
joined the Met, Alec had kept on track and was now a senior partner in a law firm. His
wife, Maria, was a lecturer in politics; she was tiny, sardonic and endlessly energetic.
They had three children who had been up when Karlsson arrived, bearing a bottle of wine
and a tired bunch of flowers. He had sat in the living room with this apparently perfect
family, the children in their pyjamas, the youngest still in nappies, and had felt
melancholy wash over him: he was an underpaid and overworked detective. His wife had
left him and now lived with another man. His two children were growing up without him to
tuck them into their beds at night or teach them how to ride a bike, kick a ball, swim
their first length of the local pool with their faces almost submerged under the
turquoise water.
Now he listened to the message his wife had
left on his mobile.
‘Mal? It’s Julie. We need to
talk.’ He could tell from her
slightly slurred words that
she’d been drinking. ‘You can’t just think this will go away if you
ignore it and it’s not fair on me. Call when you get this. It doesn’t matter
what time.’
Karlsson went into his kitchen and pulled
out a bottle of whisky. He’d drunk several glasses of wine already but felt
clear-headed. He poured himself a generous slug and added a splash of water. Then he
picked up the phone again.
‘Hello?’ She had definitely had
several drinks: there was a wobble to her voice.
‘I got your message. Can’t this
conversation wait until morning? It’s nearly midnight, we’re both
tired …’
‘Speak for yourself.’
He swallowed his anger.
‘
I’m
tired. And I don’t want us to have an argument about
this. We should think about what’s best for Mikey and Bella and not rush into
things.’
‘You know what, Mal? I’m sick to
death of thinking about what’s best for Mikey and Bella. I’ve spent my adult
life thinking about what’s best for you, what’s best for them, being
understanding about your work, your shifts, putting everyone first. It’s my
turn.’
‘You mean it’s Bob’s
turn.’ Bob was his wife’s partner. They lived together in Brighton, and when
the divorce came through, they planned to marry, so Karlsson supposed he was really
Bella and Mikey’s step-father. He took them to school each morning on his way to
work, and he read stories to them each evening. Karlsson had seen photographs of Bella
beaming on his solid shoulders, and Mikey had told him how Bob had taught him to play
French cricket on the beach. Apparently he might buy them a dog. Now Bob had been
offered a job in Madrid, and Julie wanted to move the family out there – ‘just for
a couple of years’.
‘Madrid’s not Australia,’
she was saying. ‘You can fly there in a couple of hours.’
‘It’s not the
same.’
‘And think what a wonderful experience
it would be for them.’
‘Children need their father,’
Karlsson said, wincing at the platitude.
‘They’d still have you. That
won’t change. And they could have holidays with you. It won’t be for a
couple of months anyway – you can spend lots of time with them until they go.’
I’m losing them, thought Karlsson,
staring at the phone he clutched in his hand. First they moved to Brighton, now
they’ll go all the way to Spain. I’ll be a stranger. They’ll hang back
when they see me, hide behind Julie, get homesick when they’re in my home.
‘I can refuse,’ he said. ‘I still have joint custody.’
‘You can stop us going. Or try to. Is
that what you want?’
‘Of course not. But do you want me to
barely see them?’
‘No.’ Julie sighed heavily. He
heard her suppress a yawn. ‘But tell me what we’re going to do, Mal. We
can’t really compromise on this.’
‘I don’t know.’ Karlsson,
however, was already sure that he was going to agree. He felt trapped in the sort of
argument they’d had when they were together. He felt defeated and lonely.
The knife had its own special drawer, where
it lay wrapped in plastic, with the whetstone. Sometimes she lifted it out and laid it
on the table in front of her, studying the dull gleam of its long blade, perhaps
touching its edge cautiously to feel the fresh sharpness. It sent a shiver of excitement
and dread through her, something almost sexual. She never used it for cooking: she had a
blunt kitchen knife for that. She kept it ready. One day it would have its use.
Now she lifted the hatch cautiously; it used
to creak but
she had poured a few drops of cooking oil on to its hinges
so it levered open quietly. The wind blew directly into her face, cold and carrying a
few drops of rain. It was very dark on the river. There was no moon tonight and no
stars. The lamps on the barges that lined the bank, those that were occupied, had been
extinguished and only a few lights in the distance glimmered. She pulled herself out and
stared around. On the marshes, a long way off, someone had lit a fire. The orange flames
flickered against the sky. She squinted but could not make out any figures beside it,
black cut-out shapes. She was alone. Water slapped very gently against the side of the
boat. When she had first come here, she had been unsettled by the sound and the slight,
occasional motion, but now she was used to it. It was like the blood inside her body.
She was used to the night sounds as well – the wind in the trees and in the thick rushes
that sounded sometimes like a moan, the rustle of rodents from the bank, the sudden
shriek of the owls. There were foxes here, and fat rats with long, thick tails. Herons
and white swans that looked at her with their wicked eyes. Mangy cats. She had had a cat
once, with a white tip to its tail and silky ears; it used to wash itself so
fastidiously and purr like a steady motor. But that was a long time ago, in another
life, and she was another person now.