Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (20 page)

He stopped. ‘I thank you,’ he
said, and put his hand on his heart, making his curious little bow.

They looked up at Mary Orton’s large
detached house.

‘Is big house for one woman,’
said Josef.

‘Her husband’s dead,’ said
Frieda. ‘Her children left home a long time ago. She probably doesn’t want
to leave. Maybe she wants somewhere for the grandchildren to stay.’

Josef looked up at the house and Frieda
looked away from it at Josef’s face. She liked that expression, the expression of
someone engrossed in something she couldn’t see. ‘What do you think?’
she said.

He pointed up to a window on the second
floor.

‘You see a crack there,’ he
said. It was like a dark thread running down from the sill. ‘The house move a bit.
Not so much.’

‘Is it bad?’ she said.

‘Not so bad,’ said Josef.
‘Is London.’ He held out his flat hands and shifted them about horizontally.
‘Is on clay. You have no rain and then much rain and the houses moved and you
know …’ He mimed something, like a tired person flopping down.

‘Settle,’ said Frieda.

‘Settle,’ said
Josef. ‘But not so bad.’

The front door opened before they had even
approached it. Mary Orton must have noticed the two strangers staring up at her house.
Frieda wondered how much time she spent gazing out of the window. She was wearing dark
blue corduroy slacks and a checked shirt. Frieda saw that she must once have been
beautiful. She was still beautiful, in a way, but her face was more than wrinkled. The
flesh looked like brown paper that had been folded and folded and folded again, then
flattened out. Frieda introduced herself and Josef.

‘Did the detective tell you that we
were coming?’ she said, catching herself talking a bit loudly, as if Mary Orton
was slightly deaf and slightly stupid.

She bustled them into the house and through
the hall into a large kitchen that looked out on a shockingly large garden. There were
two substantial trees at the end and more gardens on the other side and opposite. It was
like looking at parkland. While Josef and Frieda were gazing at it through the French
windows, Mary Orton busied herself behind them, making tea and getting out two cakes,
putting them on plates and cutting slices.

‘A very small piece, please,’
said Frieda. ‘Half that.’

Josef took Frieda’s and ate it as well
as his, drank tea and had a slice of the other cake. Mary Orton turned a grateful look
on him.

‘If Josef has quite finished,’
said Frieda, ‘he can have a look at what needs doing. He’s very
good.’

Josef put his plate into the sink.
‘That is a very nice cake, both of them.’

‘Have some more,’ said Mary
Orton. ‘It’s just going to waste.’

‘I will have some more later,’
said Josef, ‘but first, what things was the man doing for you?’

‘It’s so
terrible what happened,’ she said. ‘So very awful.’ She passed a hand
over her face, seeming dazed. ‘And the detective, the woman, said that he was
killed. Is that really possible?’

‘I think so,’ said Frieda.
‘I’m not a policeman. I’m just a …’ She stopped for a
moment. What was she? ‘Just a colleague.’

‘He was so helpful,’ she
continued. ‘So reassuring. He made me feel in safe hands. I haven’t felt
that since my husband died, and that was a long time ago. He said the house needed a lot
of work. He’s right, of course. I’ve let it go dreadfully.’ She
reached over for a packet of cigarettes and an ashtray. ‘Do you mind?’
Frieda shook her head. She lit a cigarette. ‘There were all sorts of things that
needed doing, and he and a couple of men who worked for him patched things up here and
there. But the main thing was the roof. He said that other things could wait, but once
the roof starts going and water gets in …’

‘Is true,’ said Josef.
‘The roof is important. But outside no scaffolding. Is gone?’

‘No,’ said Mary Orton.
‘They worked at it from the inside.’

‘What?’ Josef wrinkled his
face.

‘How long was he here?’ asked
Frieda.

‘A long time,’ said Mary Orton,
with a smile. ‘I can’t remember. Of course, they weren’t here all the
time. They sometimes had to go and do other jobs. But I was flexible about
it.’

‘And now it’s still
leaking,’ said Frieda. ‘At least, that’s what I heard.’

‘He hadn’t finished,’ said
Mary Orton. ‘Suddenly he didn’t come any more. I missed him – not just for
the repairs. Now we know why. It’s so terrible.’ Her old face seemed to
crumple even more. She turned her head away to hide her expression.

‘Is it all right if
Josef takes a look?’

‘Of course,’ said Mary Orton.
‘Shall I show you?’

Josef smiled. It was one of the few times
Frieda had seen him smile since his return. ‘I know the way to the roof,’ he
said.

When Josef had gone, Frieda looked around
the kitchen. There were snapshots of children on the dresser, all in little frames.
‘Are they your grandchildren?’

‘Yes. They’re more grown-up now,
of course.’

‘Do you see much of them?’

‘My two sons don’t live in
London. They come to see me when they can in holidays. I have friends, of
course.’

She sounded almost defensive. Frieda picked
up one of the pictures. It was a primary-school photograph dated 2008. Three years ago:
a long time in a child’s life, she thought.

‘It must have been quite nice just to
have Robert Poole around,’ she said.

‘Oh, well, he was a kind young
man,’ said Mary Orton, seeming embarrassed. ‘He asked me about my life, took
an interest. When you get old, people usually stop seeing you. You become invisible. But
he wasn’t like that.’

‘Attentive,’ Frieda said.

‘Yes, I suppose he was. It’s
hard to believe he’s dead.’

There was a thump on the stairs and both
women turned as Josef came into the kitchen.

‘Mrs Orton.’ He stood solidly in
front of her. ‘There is a small leak. I fetch my bag from the car and in just five
minutes I stop the water. Then maybe just one day’s work, or two days. I fix it
for you. All fine.’

‘That would be wonderful. Can you do
that?’

‘No problem. I go to the car.
Frieda?’ He nodded at her. ‘Mrs Orton, you excuse us one moment?’

Frieda followed him out into the hall.
‘Everything all right?’

Josef pulled a
contemptuous face. ‘The roof. That all bullshit. I know it when I don’t see
scaffolding. He did nothing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, he did nothing up there. Bit
of banging maybe, no new roof.’

Frieda was baffled. ‘Maybe you just
didn’t see what he’d done.’

‘Frieda,’ said Josef, ‘I
show you if you want. I go there, I climb up ladder in top bedroom and I shine torch. I
look at roof boards, rafters. There is some new boards, some …’ he waved his
hands around, searching for the word ‘… felt, but is nothing. And the water
is coming in.’ He tapped his head. ‘Maybe she’s …’

‘All right,’ said Frieda.
‘You should go ahead and fix the hole.’ She put out a hand and touched his
shoulder. ‘And thanks, Josef.’

He shrugged and went outside. Frieda thought
hard for a couple of minutes, then walked back into the kitchen. She sat down next to
Mary Orton at the kitchen table and pulled her chair even closer, so they could talk in
low voices.

‘I want to ask you something. Can you
tell me how much you paid Robert Poole?’

Mary Orton blushed red. ‘I don’t
really know,’ she said. ‘I just paid him in bits, from time to time. I
didn’t really think of the amount.’

Frieda leaned closer, put her hand on the
woman’s forearm. ‘I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t important,
but could you show me your bank statements?’

‘Well, really …’

‘You don’t have to show
me,’ said Frieda, ‘but if you don’t, I’m afraid the police will
come and look anyway.’

‘All right.’ Mary Orton nodded.
‘But it feels a bit strange.’

She left the room. Frieda
heard sounds on the stairs, going up and then coming down. Mary Orton came back into the
kitchen and put a bundle of papers on the table. ‘They’re in a complete
mess,’ she said. ‘My husband used to do all that sort of thing.’

Frieda found the current-account statements
and arranged them in order of date, then started to scan them. After just a few seconds,
she felt her heart beating faster. She could feel it pulsing in her neck. She put the
last sheet down and turned to Mary Orton.

‘I was only making a rough count.
Maybe I missed a couple of payments. But I make it about a hundred and sixty thousand
pounds you paid him. Does that seem right?’

Mary Orton took another cigarette from her
packet and lit it. Her hands were trembling and it took two matches to get it alight.
‘Yes, it could be. But roofs are horribly expensive, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda.
‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

There had been eight names or pairs of
names in Robert Poole’s notebook. Yvette read them out. ‘One: Mrs Mary
Orton.’

‘We’ve talked to her. She
definitely knew Robert Poole – probably best of anyone we’ve come across so
far.’

‘Two: Frank and Aisling
Wyatt.’

‘Who also knew him, though not so
well.’

‘Three: Caroline Mallory and David
Lewis, the couple in Brixton who were our initial lead and say that they met him just
the once. Then four, there’s a name you’ll know: Jasmine Shreeve.’
Yvette paused, as if expecting a reaction.

‘Am I meant to know who she is?’
said Karlsson.

‘She presented a makeover show a few
years ago. I think it was mainly broadcast in the day.’

‘When did you get the time to watch
daytime TV?’

‘I never actually saw it. She told me
about it. She said she had met Poole. She had no idea why anyone would want to kill
him.’

‘We’ll need to interview these
people in more detail,’ said Karlsson. ‘What about the rest?’

‘Those are the only ones who actually
met him.’ Yvette looked down at her notes. ‘After that, there’s the
Coles, out in Haywards Heath, a retired couple who have no idea who he is or any memory
of meeting him; Graham Rudge, single, a head teacher of a private school, who lives up
near Notting Hill, and also says he’s never met anyone called Robert Poole,
although he wonders if someone of that name called him
once –
can’t remember where, can’t remember when. A young couple in Chelsea, Andrea
and Lawrence Bingham, just back from their honeymoon, both something in the City. And
someone called Sally Lea. We have no idea who she is.’

‘Is that the lot?’ asked
Karlsson.

‘Yes.’

‘These people, do they have anything
in common?’

‘Chris and I talked about that. They
all live in completely different parts of London, and a couple of them are outside the
city. Mary Orton and Jasmine Shreeve live fairly near where he lived. The Wyatts live
near where the body was found. They all have different occupations. They’re
different ages, different social types. Some of them said they knew him, others
didn’t. None of them know each other. There doesn’t seem to be any link, as
far as we can see.’

‘So we have eight names and absolutely
nothing to link them, not even knowledge of the victim.’

‘They’re all well-off,’
said Chris Munster, hesitantly.

‘Some are well-off and some are very
well-off,’ agreed Yvette. ‘You should see where the Wyatts live. It’s
like something in a magazine.’

‘I’ll pay them a
visit.’

‘So.’ An hour later, Karlsson
leaned forward across his desk. ‘What do you say? Are you in or out?’

‘I’m still not sure this should
be on a formal basis.’

‘You know, Frieda, I think we’re
doing a strange sort of dance. What you like is when I ask you not to do something and
then you do it anyway, or when you go ahead and do something that you’re not meant
to do, then tell me afterwards. You know what? If you were going to be your own
therapist, you might decide that you have trouble committing yourself.’

‘You want me sign an
oath and fill out all the right forms?’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘I’m not really a team player,
especially in a team that isn’t sure it wants me.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘What about Yvette Long?’

‘Yvette? What about her?’

‘She dislikes and disapproves of
me.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Are you blind?’

‘She’s just protective of
me.’

‘She thinks I’ll get you into
trouble. She may be right.’

‘That’s my problem. But if you
don’t want to work with me, fine. Just say so, once and for all, and I’ll
not bother you again. But we can’t carry on in this half-arsed way with you
popping in and out and nobody knowing quite what you’re up to. It’s decision
time: yes or no?’

Frieda looked at him and he looked back at
her. At last, she nodded. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

‘Good,’ said Karlsson, seeming
almost surprised by her decision. ‘That’s good. There’ll be some
paperwork. You’ll need to sign a contract.’

‘Is this all to do with health and
safety?’

‘No, it’s about police work,
which mainly consists of filling out forms. And now you can come with me and visit the
people on Robert Poole’s list who actually knew him. This nice young man
doesn’t seem to have been so nice after all – and he doesn’t seem to have
been Robert Poole after all, either.’

‘Can I ask you a favour before we
go?’

‘Go on.’

‘Alan Dekker.’

Karlsson’s expression became wary. He
put his chin on his
steepled hands and looked at Frieda.
‘We’ve been through this before …’

‘I know.’

‘You’ve nothing to go on,
Frieda. A feeling.’

‘I know Dean is alive.’

‘You don’t know. You
believe.’

‘I firmly believe. If Alan’s out
there, there must be obvious ways of tracking him down. That’s what you do,
isn’t it?’