Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (15 page)

‘But we had the body.’

‘What does that prove?’ said
Frieda. ‘Dean and Alan were identical twins. They even shared the same
DNA.’

Now Karlsson frowned. ‘What’s
your evidence for this?’ he asked.

‘It’s just a feeling,’
said Frieda. ‘Because of what happened to Alan. Or Dean. I always felt strange
about it but I couldn’t pin it down.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said
Karlsson. ‘He couldn’t fool his own wife. He wouldn’t know about their
life, he wouldn’t know who their friends were.’

‘He was only there for a matter of
days. He refused to do anything, see anyone. It was a perfect way of escaping – in full
view of everyone. It gave him the opportunity to really escape – to escape without
anyone realizing he’d got away.’

‘So where is he?’ said Karlsson.
‘According to your theory.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘There’s no evidence.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said
Frieda. ‘And there won’t be.’

‘Just your feeling.’

‘You see, that’s why you should
think twice about giving me a contract. And I should think twice about signing one.
I’m not like a policeman and I don’t want to be.’

The desk sergeant knew the type.
They’d come into the station as if they’d wandered in out of the rain.
They’d glance at
the desk, then look around, at the posters on
the wall, maybe even start reading them. Sometimes they’d lose their nerve and
just leave. Otherwise they would make their way across, casually, as if it didn’t
matter. This woman was in her late forties, she thought, perhaps older. Smartly but
unshowily dressed, professional, as if she’d come on her way home from work. Old
workaday shoes, but polished. She didn’t look like the victim of a crime. It took
her several minutes to approach the desk and peer through the security grille.

‘Can I help you?’ the sergeant
asked.

‘It’s my neighbour,’ she
said. ‘He lives in the flat upstairs.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘He’s disappeared.’

The sergeant assumed her most comforting
expression and embarked on the explanation she gave every week or two, about how common
it was for people to go away and, unless there was a particular reason, there was almost
certainly no cause for concern.

‘No,’ said the woman.
‘I’ve got a key. I feed the cat when he’s away and water his plants. I
went to check. The mail was just piled up on the doormat. The food in the fridge had
gone off. There was no food in the cat’s bowl. The cat wasn’t there, thank
God. He comes in and out on the sill and there’s a sort of shelf he walks along to
get down on the roof of the bike shelter in next door’s front garden.
Something’s happened.’

The desk sergeant sighed. ‘This is an
adult male?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said the woman.
‘It’s completely out of character. What can you do?’

The desk sergeant walked across to a filing
cabinet and, after trying one drawer and then another, returned with the form.

‘We fill out this form,’ she
said. ‘Then we’ll put the details
on the computer, and if
his name comes up anywhere, it’ll pop up on the screen.’

‘Aren’t you going to look for
him?’

‘This is the normal procedure,’
said the sergeant. ‘Unless it’s an emergency.’

‘I think this is an
emergency.’

‘They usually turn up,’ the
sergeant said. ‘But let’s start with the form. What’s his
name?’

‘Bob,’ said the woman. ‘I
mean Robert. Robert Poole.’

Frieda walked from Gloucester station. Tiny
flakes of snow were catching in her hair and melting on the streets. She had thought all
the snow was over, that the bitter cold of the winter was lifting at last. Perhaps this
was the end of it, like a reminder of what they were leaving.

She arrived at the church early, walking
quickly past the photographers and journalists already gathered at the entrance, and
took a seat at the back, next to the wall. Gradually, other people started to slide into
the pews, pulling off hats and gloves, removing their thick coats, glancing around and
nodding at people they knew in a blend of conviviality and self-conscious seriousness. A
group of young people arrived together, and Frieda guessed they were Kathy’s
fellow students, with cheeks flushed from the cold. She picked up the order of service
and looked through the hymns they were to sing. The church filled and people had to
squeeze into pews or stand at the back. An elderly couple walked slowly up the aisle,
the woman leaning on the man’s arm as they made their way to the front.
Kathy’s grandparents, she guessed. A man in a long camel coat passed her pew and
she recognized Seth Boundy. Kathy Ripon had been his student and researcher and he had
sent her to her death. He and Frieda.

His hasty shuffle was very different from
the stately stride she associated with him; his head was down and his collar pulled up,
as if he didn’t want to be noticed. But perhaps he felt Frieda’s gaze upon
him, for he turned, briefly glanced at
her, then dropped his eyes and
moved on. At last Kathy’s family arrived: her parents, hand in hand, and behind
them two young men, awkward in unaccustomed black suits, hair brushed, faces shaved
raw.

The coffin was carried by the
undertakers’ assistants, young men with professionally sad expressions. Frieda
pictured the swollen remains that lay inside, then the young woman’s shrewd,
pleasant face. As the congregation sang ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’, she
thought, as she had thought every day for the last fourteen months, that if it
hadn’t been for her, Kathy would still be alive, and her parents wouldn’t be
sitting with hunched shoulders in their pew, pale and old. A child would be dead but
Kathy would be alive. A young woman with a long, sad face went to the front and played
the flute. One of Kathy’s brothers read a poem, but couldn’t reach the end.
He stood in front of them, his face working furiously, and everyone leaned forward,
willing him on, tears rolling down cheeks. The vicar stood and said a few words about a
life cruelly cut short, about how at last her parents could bury their daughter. He
mentioned a merciful God and the triumph of good over evil, of love over hate. Frieda
closed her eyes but she didn’t pray.

At last it was over. The coffin was carried
slowly out into the feathery snowfall and Kathy’s family followed. Frieda waited
until most of the mourners had left. Then she slipped out of her pew and stood in front
of Seth Boundy. ‘It was good of you to be here,’ she said.

‘She was my student.’ His eyes
flickered from her face to the stone floor.

Snow was now starting to settle on the
gravestones and the roofs of cars that were parked outside. People milled about, hugging
each other. Frieda had no intention of staying for the wake. As she reached the gate,
she brushed against a tall man.

‘Hello,
Frieda,’ said Karlsson.

‘You didn’t say you were
coming.’

‘Neither did you.’

‘I had to. She died because of
me.’

‘She died because of Dean.’

‘Are you getting the train
back?’

‘There’s a car waiting. Would
you like a lift?’

Frieda considered for a moment.
‘I’d rather go home alone.’

‘Of course. You might like to know
that a Robert Poole has been reported missing.’

Frieda looked startled and Karlsson smiled,
his stiff face softening for a moment. ‘Who by?’ she asked.

‘A neighbour. A woman in the flat
below. It’s in a house down in Tooting.’

‘Then what the hell are you doing
here?’ she asked. ‘Why aren’t you in Tooting, tearing the place
apart?’

‘Yvette’s down there today. She
can handle it.’

‘Of course.’

‘But are you available?’

Frieda hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘It’s a perhaps.
This …’ She gestured behind her at the church and the mourners. ‘This
doesn’t make me want to be involved again. Ever.’

‘It doesn’t get better,’
Karlsson said. ‘Unless you stop caring. I’ll call you.’

The journey to London took two hours, and
Frieda would have been able to get back in time for her afternoon session, with Gerald
Mayhew, an elderly and wealthy American banker who had woken up one morning to find
himself inexplicably stricken with grief for his long-dead parents.
But she had cancelled all her patients that day, and when she arrived at Paddington,
she took the Bakerloo Line to Elephant and Castle, and walked through the slush and
sleet towards a block of council flats on the New Kent Road. They were grey and
unprepossessing, with metal grilles over the ground-floor windows, and a treeless
courtyard where a single toddler rode round and round on his tricycle, his body bulked
out by quilted layers and his nose dribbling in the icy wind.

Frieda took the stairs and went up to the
fourth floor, then along the concrete corridor to a brown door with a knocker and a
spy-hole. She knocked and waited. A chain pulled back, an eye peered out.

‘Yes? Who is this?’ It
wasn’t the voice she had been expecting.

‘I’ve come to see –’ She
nearly said ‘Terry’, but caught herself in time. ‘Joanna Teale.
She’s not expecting me. My name is Frieda Klein.’

‘The doctor?’

Frieda had been the one who realized that
Dean Reeve’s wife Terry was actually the little schoolgirl, Joanna Teale, who had
been snatched more than twenty years previously. She had also insisted to Karlsson that
Joanna be treated like a victim, abducted and brainwashed for decades, rather than a
perpetrator – although sometimes Joanna had made it hard for others to take her side.
She was self-righteous, aggrieved and unapologetic. She treated her parents – who were
almost as derailed by her reappearance as they had been wrecked by her going – with a
kind of angry indifference and her elder sister, Rose, with contempt. It had been a
shocking reunion for them all. Frieda, after the first few weeks, had kept out of
everyone’s way, until now.

The chain pulled back and the door opened.
On the
doormat stood a young woman with a tight bright ponytail and
over-shaped eyebrows. She was wearing a short skirt, long socks over her thick tights
and had a striped cotton scarf wrapped round her neck, though it felt warm inside to
Frieda. She held out a hand. ‘I’m Janine,’ she said. ‘Come
in.’

‘Is Joanna here?’

‘She’s in there with
Rick.’

‘Rick?’

‘Rick Costello. Joanna, you’ve a
visitor.’

‘Who is it?’ Hoarse and slightly
slurred – that was the voice Frieda had been expecting.

‘You’ll never guess. Talk of the
devil. Shall I take your coat?’

‘Can you tell me who you are
first?’ asked Frieda. ‘You seem to know me but I certainly don’t know
you.’

‘I’m working with
Joanna.’

‘In what way?’

‘I’m helping her tell her
story.’

‘Her story?’ said Frieda,
cautiously. ‘Are you a writer?’

‘Me? No. I’m just the PR her
publisher has hired to make sure she reaches the largest possible audience. It’s
such a terrible story – and the strength it’s taken her to survive. Tragedy and
redemption. With a real-life monster, as well. But you don’t need me to tell
you.’ Janine looked at Frieda with a knowing smile. ‘I’ve heard about
your role.’

Frieda took off her coat. All of a sudden
she had a headache, like a band wrapped around her skull. ‘So she’s writing
a book?’

‘It’s all done. We’ve been
working on it for days. I’m just privileged that I’ve been chosen to help
her. But you’re a counsellor so you know all about enabling people, don’t
you? She’s through here.’

Janine led Frieda into a small room, hardly
big enough for
the large leather sofa and the deep, bulky armchair.
The room was thick with smoke – and sitting in the thickest part of the cloud was
Joanna, curled up at one end of the sofa with her bare feet tucked under her. Last time
Frieda had seen her, her dark hair had been dyed blonde; now it was a metallic chestnut.
But she had the same slumped posture and the same heavy-set face. It was pale, overlaid
with tan makeup. A cigarette hung from her lower lip and an overflowing ashtray stood on
the small table at her elbow. Her large body was squeezed into a pair of skinny jeans
and a leopard-print top. The folds of her white stomach showed, and Frieda glimpsed the
Oriental tattoo there. A young man with a pink baby face, spots on his forehead, was in
the armchair. He was looking at Frieda suspiciously. His trousers had ridden up his
legs, exposing yellow socks and shiny white shins.

‘Hello, Joanna,’ said
Frieda.

‘You didn’t say you were
coming.’

‘No.’

‘Why are you here, after all this
time?’

‘I came to see how you were getting
on.’

Joanna sucked on her cigarette.
‘It’s not just coincidence?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Now that I’m setting the record
straight.’

‘I didn’t know about
this.’

‘This,’ said Joanna,
complacently, nodding towards the young man and jerking more ash from her cigarette,
‘is Rick.’

Frieda nodded to Rick, who held out a limp
pink hand.

‘He’s my editor.’

‘Of your book?’ He didn’t
look like Frieda’s idea of a publisher.

‘From the
Sketch
.’

‘I thought you were writing a
book.’

‘It’s being serialized,’
said Rick.

‘I see.’

Janine bobbed her head so that her ponytail
swung. ‘Can I get you coffee?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘So you didn’t know?’
Joanna asked again. ‘You haven’t been sent to spy?’

‘To spy on what?’

‘On me, on all of this.’

‘It’s too late for that,’
said Rick. ‘We’re pretty much done and dusted. It’s being lawyered as
we speak.’

Frieda perched herself on the sofa and
looked at Joanna, trying to ignore the two others. ‘You’ve written a
book?’

‘That’s right.’

‘About what happened?’