Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (37 page)

‘A rather crappy
picture,’ said Karlsson. ‘I don’t think that’s worth stealing. I
prefer the one of the fish.’

‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘Look
at the wall where the picture was.’ Frieda picked up the picture and held it next
to the mark. ‘It’s not the same size.’

‘But …’ Karlsson began, and
stopped.

‘Maybe it’s the same size as the
fish painting that was hanging here until the woman took it back,’ said
Newton.

‘But that was only here for a few
weeks,’ said Frieda. ‘Those marks take years.’

‘I don’t know what this is
about,’ said Karlsson. ‘Poole might just have got tired of his pictures and
moved them around.’

‘You’re right. That’s
possible. Let’s see.’ Frieda lifted the pine-tree painting off the wall.

‘Different shape,’ said
Karlsson. ‘See?’

Then in turn Frieda took down the other
three paintings. In each case the mark was smaller than the painting.

‘There we are,’ said Karlsson.
‘Poole did some rehanging before he disappeared. I’m not sure this was worth
coming all the way down to Balham to see.’

Frieda didn’t reply. She just looked
at Karlsson, then at Newton. A smile slowly appeared on his face.

‘They shouldn’t all be
smaller.’

‘What do you mean?’ said
Karlsson.

‘Shall we rearrange them?’ said
Frieda.

‘What do you mean?’

She picked up the Madonna and Child and held
it against one of the patches on the wall. ‘What do you think?’

Newton shook his head. ‘The
picture’s too big.’ She moved it along the wall. ‘That’s
right,’ he said.

She did the same with the other pictures,
holding them one by one against the shapes on the wall while Karlsson and
Newton nodded or shook their heads. They were left with two pictures
and two spaces. The pine tree was slightly smaller than one space and much larger than
the smallest. The seascape was larger than both spaces.

‘They don’t fit,’ said
Karlsson.

‘That’s right.’

‘Now there are two pictures,’
continued Karlsson, ‘and two spaces, which neither of them fits. It’s doing
my head in and I don’t even know why I should be caring about it.’

‘But it’s interesting,
isn’t it?’ said Frieda.

‘He could have got rid of a
painting,’ said Newton, ‘and bought two new ones.’

‘They came with the flat. He
wouldn’t have got rid of them. Except this one.’ Frieda touched the picture
of the pine tree. ‘It’s cheap and nasty but it’s new, don’t you
think?’

Karlsson examined the shiny frame. ‘It
does look new.’

‘It must be around here
somewhere,’ said Frieda.

‘What?’ said Karlsson.

‘One of the pictures.’

‘Where?’

‘It’ll be somewhere. Down the
side of something, somewhere out of the way.’

Newton found it under Poole’s bed,
where it was stowed with an old mattress. He carried it through with an air of pride. It
was a picture of a windmill and a horse. There was something synthetic about the colours
so it seemed to shimmer.

‘No wonder he kept it under the
bed,’ said Karlsson.

He took the painting and held it in front of
the larger patch. It was the right size. ‘All right. Now we’ve still got a
painting too many.’

‘No,’ said Frieda.
‘We’ve got
two
paintings too many.’

She walked across to the pine dresser that
stood by the
wall furthest from the window and knelt down beside it.
‘Look,’ she said.

Karlsson and Newton peered down. Frieda
pointed at two small depressions in the carpet.

‘It’s been moved,’ she
said. ‘Just a couple of feet. But …’ She paused for a moment.
‘Let’s move it back.’

The three of them took hold of the dresser
and moved it back.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Newton.

Where the dresser had been, there was
another patch on the wall. They could see at a glance that it was the same size as the
seascape but Karlsson held it up to confirm it.

Karlsson turned to Frieda. ‘So, what
the fuck does it mean?’

‘It means that someone’s been
here,’ said Frieda. ‘With all the risks it entailed, someone had to come
here.’

Back outside the house, Karlsson asked Jake
Newton if he could give them a moment. He and Frieda walked a few paces along the road.
When Karlsson spoke, it was without looking at her. ‘I talked to your friend
Reuben,’ he said.

‘What about?’

‘About the encounter they had with the
photographer outside your house. I wanted to be clear about what had happened.
Obviously, if the two of them had made an unprovoked attack on the man, it could
potentially be treated as a serious case of assault.’ Now Karlsson stopped. His
hands were in his pockets against the cold. ‘Reuben – Dr McGill – told me that the
photographer had obstructed your other friend, Josef, and then struck him. While Reuben
was trying to separate them, he inadvertently struck the photographer in the
face.’

‘Inadvertently?’

‘Yes. Since there
were no other witnesses …’

‘I was a witness,’ said
Frieda.

‘Apparently you only arrived when the
incident was almost over. Even if the photographer disputes their version, I’m
clear that no action will be taken.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t coach
Reuben about the best way of getting out of this?’

‘For God’s sake, Frieda, just
let it go.’

‘What do you think of people who just
let things go because it’s convenient?’

Karlsson took time to speak, breathing
deeply. ‘What I think, first, is that if there had been a conspiracy to pervert a
police inquiry between me and Reuben, then I would be dismissed and he would be struck
off. And what I think, second, is, don’t be so fucking pompous.’

This is how it begins, Frieda thought. Then
she looked harder at Karlsson. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said.
‘Of course, things are a bit, you know …’

‘Like, what things?’

‘Well, for example, family stuff. My
children are going to live in Spain with their mother.’

It took Frieda a few seconds to register
what he had just said. ‘That’s tough for you.’

‘Yes.’

‘How long for?’

‘Two years.’

‘Two years is a long time when
they’re so young.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Why is she taking them
away?’

‘Her new partner has been offered a
promotion there.’

‘Did you try to make her change her
mind?’

‘I’m not going
to stop her but she knows how I feel.’

‘How do you feel?’

Now he turned away, as if he was
embarrassed. ‘I work. I come back to an empty flat. I live for the days my kids
come – and now they won’t. Oh, I’ll go and see them, of course, and
they’ll come for holidays but he’ll be the real father.’

Fathers and their children, thought Frieda,
remembering Josef’s brown eyes but seeing Karlsson’s drawn face.

Jake Newton was talking on his mobile.

‘That arsehole Newton,’ Karlsson
said now, ‘wants to be taken on a tour of the custody suites.’

‘I can walk from here,’ she
said.

She touched him on the cheek with two
fingers, very lightly.

‘I haven’t told
anyone.’

‘I’m glad you told
me.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Well, thank you. And I’m sorry
to add to your troubles.’ And she was gone.

‘I’m glad you
called!’

Frieda was in her room, gazing down at the
wasteland outside the mansion block. Patches of grass and small scrubby plants were
springing up where the bulldozers had been. Children pelted across the open spaces. A
woman with a tiny ball of fluff on a lead pushed her way through a break in the fence
and stepped into the wasteland quite casually, as if it was a park.

‘Good. Although I was actually ringing
you on business.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s better than
nothing,’ Harry said ruefully.

‘I was hoping you could meet me at
Olivia’s house in the next few days and sort out her finances a bit. I don’t
think she’s filed her tax returns for years, or kept any records. It’s all a
bit of a mess. I thought while your sister sorted out her legal affairs, maybe you could
have a go at her financial ones.’

‘Tonight?’

‘What?’

‘I could come straight after a meeting
near Old Street. About six?’

‘Really?’ Frieda asked
doubtfully. She had been thinking of going straight home after her last patient and
spending a longed-for evening alone.

‘If your sister-in-law is available,
of course.’

‘I’ll call her now.’

‘And after, if you
felt like it, you could invite me to have a glass of wine with you.’

‘All right, I give in.’ She
smiled and put the phone down. That morning, she’d had an email from Sandy. He was
coming back to the UK for two weeks, he said: his sister was getting married. There was
a party at Lauderdale House in Highgate, which he and Frieda had once visited together.
He wanted to see her. Please. She had read the email and deleted it. But, of course, she
could still reply. She could still say yes. Or she could say no. No: that bit of my life
is over. I can imagine going on without you.

Now here she was, just before six, in
Olivia’s house again. Kieran, the funeral director’s accountant, was there
as well. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a large pile of broken china laid out
in front of him on a sheet of newspaper, a tube of superglue and a piece of pink
sandpaper. Frieda watched as he patiently matched fragments, his glasses perched on the
end of his nose and a look of concentration on his face. He was happy, she thought, lost
in his task.

‘He’s mending all my favourite
broken china,’ said Olivia, exuberantly. ‘Tessa’s sorting out my
alimony, your new friend Harry’s dealing with the tax, and Kieran’s putting
my life back together.’

‘And what are you doing?’ asked
Frieda, feeling irritated by Olivia’s radiant assumption that someone would always
sort out the havoc she created.

‘Me? Pouring wine? No? Tea,
then?’

‘Tea would be good.’

‘Tessa’s coming as well. Did I
tell you?’

‘No.’

‘Just to drop off
some forms I need to sign or something. You know that woman has
literally
saved
my life.’

‘That might be putting it too
strongly. Where’s Chloë?’

‘Out with friends, I imagine. I
haven’t seen her.’

‘It’s Wednesday.’

‘Yes?’

‘Does she often go out on a school
evening?’

‘Frieda, she’s seventeen. What
were
you
doing when you were seventeen?’

There was a knock on the door and Frieda
went to answer it. Harry and Tessa stood on the doorstep, and once again she was struck
by how similar they were. Harry, looking serious, was wearing a dark suit and a pale
green shirt. He smiled at Frieda and his face softened, but he didn’t greet her
with his usual effusiveness. Tessa nodded at Frieda and held up a thick brown
envelope.

‘I’ll get Olivia to sign these
and be on my way,’ she said.

‘It’s good of you to bring them
round in person.’

‘I was more or less passing,’
said Tessa. ‘It seemed simpler, and I’m trying to speed things up a
bit.’

Olivia called from the kitchen, offering
coffee or something stronger. Everything had to be personal for her, thought Frieda. She
couldn’t just have a solicitor or a financial adviser: she needed to make them
into her friends, spectators of her personal dramas. She kissed Tessa, then took
Harry’s hand in both of hers and held it for longer than necessary. She introduced
them both to Kieran, who nodded, blushed and returned to his painstaking work. She put
her large signature on the papers Tessa laid in front of her, then kissed her again, in
farewell.

She turned to Harry. ‘How are we going
to do this? I’ve tried to collect any of the old statements and receipts
I’ve got, but I warn you, I’ve let everything slide
dreadfully.’

‘We should go into your living room,
away from these two, and start trying to put some order into your affairs,’ said
Harry, gravely. ‘It will take some time. This is just the start when I’ll
assess your needs, but we’re going to try and build up some kind of record for you
and see what we’ve got. Anything you’ve kept will be useful and I can try to
fill in the gaps. I’m going to create a system for you that you should be able to
keep to in the future. All right?’

‘I already feel in safe hands,’
said Olivia, beaming up at him. Frieda wondered if she was on some new kind of
medication.

‘Good,’ said Harry.

Frieda scrutinized him for any hint of
mockery or contempt, but could find none. He seemed more like a doctor with a patient
than a financial adviser with a client.

‘Right!’ said Olivia. She swept
the bottle of wine from the table and grabbed a glass.

‘Just tea for me,’ said Harry.
He glanced briefly at Frieda. ‘Will you still be here when we’re
done?’

‘It depends on how long you
take.’

‘I’d say about an
hour.’

‘In that case, I’ll be
here.’

‘Good. There’s something
I’d like to say to you.’

Frieda helped Kieran mend pottery. Some of
the pieces she recognized: the old Indian tree platter that had belonged to a set her
grandmother used to own. It must have passed to David, and from him into the unsafe
hands of Olivia. The white bone-china teapot whose handle Kieran now stuck expertly back
into place, delicately sanding away the tiny ridge of glue that was left when it dried.
She remembered
– she thought she remembered – her mother pouring tea
from it. It gave her a strange feeling to see these pieces lying in broken bits on
Olivia’s cluttered table, yet there was something consoling in the way Kieran was
putting them back together. He felt her gaze and glanced up. ‘It’s
satisfying,’ he said. ‘And restful.’