Текст книги "Friday on My Mind"

Автор книги: Nicci French

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

31

Karlsson tried to think it through clearly, but it was like he was in a storm. Where would she go? She knew now, so the sensible thing would be just to call the police. Wouldn’t it? But she didn’t have a phone. All right. Get in a cab. Straight to the police. But, first, Frieda never seemed to do the sensible thing and then Hussein had said she hadn’t. And was this really the sensible thing? Did she actually have evidence that would convince the police? Did she realize the danger she was in? He knew that if he did nothing, or didn’t think of the right thing, something would happen. Something that he would hear about on the news.

He took out his phone and stared at it helplessly. It felt like that terrible phase where you had lost something and you were looking in the places you had already looked in. He dialled Reuben’s number. He answered immediately as if he had been waiting for the call.

‘I know, I know,’ Reuben said. ‘The police called me.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing much. A couple of names. Obviously I mentioned that she was most likely to go home or to her consulting room.’

‘I’ve been through that with them. They’re already on to it. I thought maybe she’d turn to you. You’re her old friend, her therapist.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She’s known you longer than anyone. I thought she might turn to you.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Reuben. ‘I mean, I’m not her therapist. Not any more. That was long ago, when she was training. In the last couple of years, she was seeing someone else, someone she really rated.’

‘What’s their name?’

‘It was …’ There was a long pause. Karlsson wanted to shout at Reuben to fucking remember. ‘Thelma something.’

‘Do you think she might go to her at a time like this?’

‘It’s not likely but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘Then I need a name. A proper name. And a number.’

‘Wait. I think I know where I can find it. I’ll call you back.’

Karlsson felt so agitated that he couldn’t stay still. He was shifting from foot to foot. He could hear a rushing sound in his ears. He stared at his phone, willing it to ring. He started to count. He promised himself that it would ring before he got to ten. It rang at fourteen.

‘Thelma Scott,’ said Reuben.

Karlsson got her number and dialled it instantly, praying that she wasn’t with a client or abroad or asleep. He was almost taken aback when a woman’s voice answered.

‘Dr Thelma Scott?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name’s Malcolm Karlsson. I’m a police detective and I’m a friend of Frieda Klein and this is very urgent. Have you seen her?’

There was a pause. He tried to imagine how he himself would react to a call like this. Did it sound trustworthy?

‘Not for a while,’ said Scott. ‘I know that she’s been in some sort of trouble.’

‘She’s in trouble now. I mean, not trouble, but danger. I need to find her urgently.’

‘I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen or spoken to her for several weeks.’

‘I need to find her. This moment.’ He made himself stop and think. ‘If things were really urgent, where would she turn? The police are trying all her friends, but I thought she might contact you.’

‘I haven’t heard from her. I’m truly sorry.’

‘All right,’ said Karlsson, in a dull voice. None of this was working. He was about to say goodbye when Scott spoke again.

‘Did you say you were called Karlsson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you the detective?’

‘I’m a detective.’

‘She mentioned you. Have you considered that she might turn to you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But …’ he was bewildered ‘… she doesn’t know where I am.’

‘Doesn’t she know where you live?’

Karlsson stared at his phone. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said.

He looked up and down the road. Taxi after taxi passed him, coming up from the City, but they were all taken. He called Hussein on his phone.

‘I’m at Manning’s flat,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘It’s clean.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘No, really clean. It smells of bleach, like a laboratory. This place has been scoured.’

‘He’s a lawyer. He knows about evidence. So you’ve got nothing.’

‘I didn’t say that. Even lawyers can’t clean in the cracks between floorboards. We’ve got hair from the pipe under his sink. There are stains behind the radiator in the living room. Something happened here. I’m sure of it.’

‘Have you got him?’

‘Once we’ve got this back to the lab.’

‘No, I mean got him. Arrested him.’

‘There’s no sign of him or of Frieda.’

‘I think she might be at my place. You’re nearer than me, only a few minutes away.’

He managed to flag down a taxi and gave the address. He settled down in the back.

‘Stupid stupid stupid,’ he muttered to himself.

Frieda rang the bell. There was no answer. She knocked at the door. No answer. But she knew where Karlsson kept a spare key. Next to the door there was a pot with a plant that didn’t look very well.

‘People will look under the pot,’ Karlsson had told her, ‘because that’s where people keep keys. And they won’t find one. And they’ll give up. So they won’t notice that there’s a loose brick next to the path and that there’s a key hidden under that.’

Frieda had suspected that quite a lot of people hid their keys under loose bricks, but she hadn’t said anything. Fortunately, because she lifted up the brick and there was the key. She let herself into the house. Inside she could smell something, like food that had been left out. She could make herself coffee, but what she should probably do first was clear up. And she would start with throwing away whatever it was that she could smell. But before that, she would phone Karlsson. As she looked around for the phone, there was a gentle knock on the front door.

Frieda felt a moment of relief. But at the very moment she pulled the door open, she suddenly wondered why Karlsson would knock at his own front door and she knew that, of course, he wouldn’t, and then the door was pushed hard against her and Frank was inside and the door was slammed shut. She turned and ran towards the back of the house. He was nearly on her – she could hear him breathing and feel the heat of his body. She felt him behind her, hands on her shoulders, and she was slammed forward into the wall, and everything went sparkly yellow, then slammed again in another direction, through a door. She saw other colours, a clown mobile hanging from the ceiling, a poster of a football. Something from deep inside her mind told her she was in a child’s bedroom. Karlsson’s children’s bedroom. She pushed back but it was hopeless. Frank towered above her. She felt a blow on the side of her head and staggered back against the wall.

Now everything happened very, very slowly, as if she were watching it through frosted glass and with muffled ears. Frank had his left hand on her neck, pinning her against the wall. She felt something uncomfortable against her back. Probably the corner of a picture frame, she thought, and it seemed that she had a lot of time to think, that she could just let this happen, sink quietly into blackness and rest. Frank’s face, his fierce eyes, were close to hers now. She saw the whiteness of his cotton shirt. He was breathing heavily. The feel of it, the smell of it reminded her of something. What was it? And then she remembered Lev, talking to her as he delivered her to that flat in Elephant and Castle. What was it he had said? All or nothing? Was it something like that? She didn’t look away from Frank. She mustn’t distract him. Her eyes stared straight into his eyes. What strange things eyes were.

She felt in her pocket. Yes. And, yes, she remembered his words. None of the way or all of the way.

Frank raised his right hand and she saw a glint, the blade of a knife. He moved his face closer now, so that when he spoke it was in little more than a whisper.

‘You can’t speak. There’s nothing to say. I cut Sandy’s throat with this. But he was unconscious. You won’t be. I want to watch.’

As he was talking, Frieda was remembering her first year at medical school, anatomy. What were they? Subclavian and carotid. She gripped on it in her pocket. She delicately pulled her hand from her pocket. One chance. Only one chance. Then her hand pulled up and the blade snapped open. Up and in. Lev had said it was sharp. Very sharp. It must have been, because Frieda felt no resistance, almost as if the handle pressed against the white cotton had no blade. But within a second a rosette of the deepest scarlet spread around it.

Frank looked down in puzzlement and mild irritation, as if he had noticed an untied shoelace or an open fly. He stepped back and Frieda held onto the handle of the knife and pulled it back. There was a gurgling sound and she felt something warm and wet on her face and her jacket. She looked down at the sticky redness. Had she been stabbed as well? She looked back at Frank.

‘You fucker,’ he said. ‘You’ve …’

He couldn’t say any more. The knife fell from his grasp. He tore at his shirt. The blood was coming out of him, not like a hose but in spurts. He looked down at his chest with a kind of interest. Spurt, nothing, spurt, nothing. He made a few staggering steps. Everything seemed to be turning red. The rug, bedspread, even a picture on the wall. Then his legs gave way and he fell heavily, out of control, half propped up against a low child’s bed. His eyes already looked blurry, unfocused.

Frieda took a few steps towards him, still clutching the knife, but she immediately saw that he was no kind of threat. She remembered her training again. Arterial bleeding. What was it her prof had said? Arteries pump, veins dump. How long did he have? A minute? Two? She thought of Sandy, the man beside her in bed, walking beside her, dead on that stainless steel. Was she going to watch him die, just as Frank had been about to watch her die? The thought instantly made her mind up. She sprawled across Frank, sitting on his thighs. He was looking straight towards her but Frieda wasn’t even sure if he was aware of her. She ripped at his shirt, tore a rag off, and pushed it against the wound, as hard as she could manage, with almost her whole weight on it. She could hear herself panting. Had the blood flow stopped? There was so much of it, on him, on her, everywhere around, that it was hard to tell.

Some sort of spark appeared in Frank’s eyes. Was it anger? Frieda leaned closer to him. There was a strange intimacy. She could smell his breath. It was sweet.

‘If you try anything,’ she said, ‘anything at all, I let go and you die. Got that?’

Frank gave a kind of a groan but whether it was a response or a moan of pain or just nothing at all, she couldn’t tell. She managed to free her right hand and move towards his neck. Another groan.

‘I need to check your pulse,’ she said.

It was slow. His blood pressure was falling. Now there was the sound of sirens and a car pulling up and ringing and banging on the door. Frieda’s face was almost against Frank’s and she saw a flicker.

‘I can’t answer the door,’ she said. ‘If I get up, you’ll bleed out by the time I’m back. We’d better hope that they can break it down.’

It seemed that they couldn’t. There was more ringing on the door and banging and then finally, the sound of the door opening. Frieda shouted something and there was a sound of steps. She looked round and saw a young police officer step into the room, the shocked expression on his face, then actually step back out. Almost immediately the room seemed full. She saw uniforms and faces she couldn’t make out.

‘Jesus, Frieda, what’s happened?’

She saw Karlsson’s appalled face. Hussein was beside him.

‘I can’t move,’ she said. ‘If I move he’ll die.’

Karlsson was looking around his children’s room. Frieda could see that there was even blood on the mobile above the bed. Her whole body felt stiff and sticky with it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘So sorry.’

Different people were staring at Frieda and at Frank and some of them went pale. She heard the sound of someone vomiting. Then there were men and women in green overalls lugging bags. One of them, a young man, red-haired, leaned over and stared at Frieda’s hands on Frank’s chest.

‘Fuck,’ he said. He turned to Frieda, then looked at her hands, at the blood. ‘Are you a doctor?’

‘Yes. Of a kind.’

‘What did this?’

‘I did,’ said Frieda. ‘With a knife.’

‘All right,’ said the man, slowly. ‘Keep your hands there.’ He glanced around. ‘Jen, get on the other side. Gauze.’

A young woman rummaged through a bag and produced what looked like a toilet roll. She unravelled it and ripped off a sheet.

‘What’s your name?’ said the man.

‘Frieda Klein.’

‘OK, Frieda. On the count of three, you’re going to remove your hands and get them out of the way. One, two, three.’

Frieda raised her hands and at the same moment felt herself lifted up and away from Frank. She was laid down, almost forced down, on a stretcher.

‘Are you injured?’ a voice said.

‘No,’ said Frieda.

‘She’s bleeding,’ another voice said.

‘I’m not bleeding. It’s not my blood.’

But it all felt too tiring and she just lay back and felt hands on her and the stretcher was being carried down the hall and the sun was in her eyes and the flashing lights and then she was inside the ambulance and the doors were slammed and there was the sound of the siren and then the doors were opened again and Frieda just saw the blue sky briefly, then strip lights. The stretcher became a trolley. To one side she saw a police uniform, the officer struggling to keep up. There was still all that to deal with. The trolley stopped in a corridor. There was a murmured conference, that endless search in every hospital for space, for a room or a bed. She heard a man shouting and swearing. Something was thrown. Men in uniform ran past her, down the corridor. The shouts continued, then became muffled. Finally her trolley was pushed into a cubicle and she was lifted onto a bed.

A doctor leaned over her. She was young, the age of one of Frieda’s own students. Frieda slowly gave her name and age and address. Her mind was clearing and she felt a dull ache of tiredness.

‘So where does it hurt?’ asked the doctor.

‘It doesn’t hurt anywhere.’

The doctor looked down at Frieda with an expression of dismay. Frieda followed her gaze.

‘This blood isn’t mine,’ she said. ‘I just need to get home and wash it off.’

‘I don’t …’ The doctor started to speak, then stopped. ‘I need to see someone.’

There was a blue curtain at the end of the cubicle. The doctor pulled it aside and disappeared. Within a couple of minutes she was back.

‘Apparently you need someone to look at your head,’ said the doctor.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Someone’s on their way down from Neurology to assess you.’

Frieda looked at her watch. ‘I’m leaving in five minutes,’ she said.

The doctor’s eyes widened in dismay. ‘You can’t,’ she said.

‘You’ll find that I can.’

‘I’ll need to check.’ The young doctor rushed back out through the curtain. Frieda sat up on the bed. She held up her hands and looked at them. She wiggled the fingers. It all seemed fine. Time to go. The curtain was pushed aside and a man stepped inside. He was dressed in jeans and white tennis shoes and a short-sleeved checked shirt. He had curly dark hair and he was unshaven.

‘This cubicle’s taken,’ said Frieda.

With a frown, the man picked up the clipboard that was on a hook at the end of the bed. ‘I’m meant to have a look at you.’ He put the clipboard down and saw Frieda properly for the first time.

‘Goodness,’ he said.

‘It’s not mine,’ Frieda said.

‘Yes, but still. What happened?’

‘I was attacked.’

‘Looks like you fought back.’

‘I had to.’

‘And you hit something big.’

‘The subclavian artery.’

‘Are they dead?’

‘I managed to stem the bleeding.’

‘Not all of it. From what –’ And then he stopped and looked at Frieda with a new interest. ‘I know you,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘All right.’

A slow smile spread across his face. ‘You need to take your shoes off and your socks.’

Frieda slipped them off.

‘Can you flex your toes?’ he said. She did so. ‘That’s fine. Do you know what day it is?’

‘Friday.’

‘Splendid.’

‘It began on a Friday and it ended on one.’

‘You’ve lost me there.’

‘Never mind.’

‘You came to my flat and took me to see a woman with a really interesting psychological condition.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Weren’t you working with the police?’

‘I was.’

‘How did that work out for you?’

‘It was mixed.’

‘Did you find out who did it?’

‘Yes. But I ended up in hospital that time as well. And it wasn’t just someone else’s blood.’

He took a penlight from his pocket. ‘Look up at the corner.’ He aimed the light at one eye and then the other. ‘I’m Andrew Berryman.’

‘I remember,’ said Frieda. ‘You were playing the piano. As an experiment into the ten-thousand-hours theory, where many hours each day of hard work trump innate ability.’

‘The experiment didn’t work,’ he said. ‘I gave up.’

‘Neurological abnormalities. That was your field, wasn’t it?’

‘It still is.’

‘I thought of getting in touch with you once or twice. For your professional opinion.’

He put his penlight back in his pocket. ‘You should have done,’ he said. ‘And you’re fine. Except …’ He rubbed the side of his face. ‘You say that the last time we met, it ended up with you in hospital. And now you’re here again. I don’t like blood. That’s why I went into neurology.’

‘I didn’t want this to happen.’

‘You’re a therapist, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t therapists believe that everything happens for a reason?’

‘No, they don’t.’

My mistake.’

‘So, have you finished?’

‘You’re probably in shock, after what you’ve gone through. So you should be kept under observation.’

Frieda stood up. ‘No. I’m done here.’

‘Are you planning on just leaving?’

‘That’s right. I only live a few minutes from here.’

‘You can’t walk the streets looking like that.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Berryman shook his head disapprovingly. ‘I’ll get you a lab coat. And I’ll walk you back.’

‘I don’t need that.’

‘I’ll walk you back, which will allow me to assess your psychological state. You can agree to that or I’ll have you forcibly restrained.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘You’re covered in blood. You’ve been brought by ambulance from a crime scene. You wanna bet?’

‘All right,’ said Frieda. ‘Anything. So long as I can leave.’

32

Josef had kept the plants watered and fed the cat, but a fine layer of dust lay over everything and there was a slightly musty smell in the rooms, whose windows had remained closed through the hot summer weeks of Frieda’s absence.

She worked slowly and methodically through the morning, vacuuming, wiping surfaces, pulling weeds from the pots on her patio. She took all of the clothes that she had worn as Carla to the charity shop a few streets away and put out clean towels. The fridge was empty, apart from a jar of olive paste and eggs long past their sell-by date that she dropped into the bin. She went to the shops and bought herself enough for the next few days: milk, bread and butter, some bags of salad and Sicilian tomatoes, salty blue cheese, smoked salmon that she thought she would eat that evening, raspberries and a little carton of cream. She let herself imagine the evening ahead of her, alone in her clean and orderly house, with the cat at her feet.

Then she went up into her study at the top of the house and wrote emails to her patients, saying that she was ready to start work again next week, and if they wanted to return they should let her know. Before she had sent them all an answer came back from Joe Franklin, simply saying: ‘Yes!’ She wrote his name in her diary on the days she had always seen him.

At three o’clock that afternoon she went out and took the Underground from Warren Street to Highbury and Islington, then walked the remainder of the way. She walked more slowly than usual, aware that she was putting off the moment when she would knock at Sasha’s door.

The door swung open and Reuben was standing in front of her, holding out his arms in welcome. She stepped into his embrace and he hugged her and ruffled her short hair, told her what she knew already – that she was back at last. Then there were quick light footsteps and Ethan flew into view. He was wearing red shorts and a blue T-shirt and holding an ice cream that was melting over his hand as he ran.

‘Frieda!’ he yelled. ‘I’m going to make a frog box with Josef and Marty.’

‘A frog box?’

‘For frogs to be in.’ Some ice cream plopped to the floor. He took a violent lick at the cone.

‘Who’s Marty?’

‘He works with Josef,’ said Reuben. ‘Ethan’s taken a shine to him.’

‘I see. Where is Josef?’

‘Here.’ And there he was, coming down the stairs. He stopped in front of her and, for a moment, couldn’t seem to find the words. His brown eyes gazed at her. ‘And glad,’ he said. ‘Very glad for this sight.’

‘Thank you, Josef.’ Frieda took one of his large calloused hands between hers and pressed it. ‘How’s Sasha?’

Josef glanced at Ethan, whose face was now covered with ice cream, then back at Frieda. He shook his head from side to side. ‘In bed,’ he said.

‘Mummy’s ill,’ said Ethan, brightly. ‘But only a little ill.’

Who was going to tell him about Frank? wondered Frieda, and when and how? It was going to be hard. ‘I’ll go and see her.’

She mounted the stairs. At the door to Sasha’s room she paused, listening. She could hear faint rasping sounds, like a muffled saw. Sasha was weeping. Reuben had told her on the phone that Sasha had been crying steadily since she had found out the truth. ‘Almost like a machine made for crying,’ he’d said. ‘With no variation, no diminution or increase.’

Frieda pushed the door and entered. The curtains were closed against the bright day; Sasha lay under her covers, a humped shape from which came the sound of sobbing that was like a distressed, strangulated breathing. In and out, in and out.

Frieda sat on the side of the bed and put out a hand to comfort the shape that rose and fell with the weeping. ‘Sasha,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Frieda.’ She waited but there was no response. ‘I’m here, Josef and Reuben are here. Ethan is here, and we’re all going to look after him. We’re going to look after you. You will come through this. Can you hear me? Nothing will be the same again, of course, and you won’t be the same, but you will come through.’

She sat on the bed for a while longer, then rose and opened the window so that the warm air came into the room. ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes. OK?’

There was a sudden sound and she stopped. ‘What are you saying?’ Frieda asked.

‘It was me.’ The words were barely discernible but, once said, they seemed to replace the sobbing in their repetitive lament. ‘It was me it was me it was me it was me.’

Frieda sat down on the bed again. ‘No. It wasn’t you. We don’t get to say that. Frank was a jealous and controlling man. He couldn’t bear to feel humiliated. Would something else have set him off? Maybe.’ She stroked Sasha’s hair. ‘We do things, some of them foolish or wrong, but we don’t know what the consequences will be. You slept with Sandy when you were feeling abandoned. I didn’t listen to what he was trying to tell me. We just have to live with that. A terrible thing has been done, but not by you. And you’re not going to be destroyed by it.’

Sasha was still murmuring the words but they had merged into a wretched trickle of sound. Frieda stood up once more and left the room. Josef and Reuben were in the small garden with Ethan, who was hammering a nail into a plank of wood, blissfully absorbed and supervised by Josef. Reuben was smoking a cigarette and talking on his mobile.

‘OK?’ he asked, when he ended the call.

She nodded. She felt she had no more words left inside her; the thought of talking, explaining, exhausted her. ‘I think I had better stay here for a bit,’ she said at last.

‘No,’ said Reuben.

‘What?’

‘No. You are going to stay in your own home, the home I know you’ve been homesick for.’

‘Someone has to be here.’

‘Indeed. Paz is arriving in about half an hour, with provisions.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

‘It’s not nothing, Reuben. It’s a lot. Everything you’ve all done.’

‘One day you’ll have to learn that you can’t do everything all by yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘And one day we will talk about all of this.’

‘One day.’

‘But for now, for God’s sake, go home.’

She went home. She had a long bath, then roamed through each room, making doubly sure everything was in its proper place. She ate smoked salmon on rye bread and drank a single glass of white wine. She played through a game of chess, with the cat on her lap, and she promised herself that tomorrow she would sit in the garret room and draw. She felt peaceful and immeasurably sad. She thought over these last weeks when she had stepped out of her life, living in strange, unlovely places and among marginalized people, free and unanchored and alone. Now she was back here in her beloved house, her possessions about her, schedules being reassembled and order re-established. She thought of Karlsson’s face as he had bent over her in his children’s bedroom, which was now daubed and sprayed with blood. Where was he now? Then she thought of Sasha, lying in her bed weeping, as if the weeping would never stop. Of Frank in his hospital bed, flanked by police officers. Of Ethan, who didn’t understand how his life had changed. Of Sandy, now just ash and memory, and the future he would not have.