Frieda nodded but said nothing. She stood up and refilled Carrie’s mug, adding more sugar.
‘He made me one cup of tea,’ Carrie continued, in a dreary voice. ‘That same day. Usually I made the tea but I’d done all the cooking and I asked him to get me a cup. He made a song and dance of it. He put the mug on a tray, with milk in a little jug and sugar in a china bowl, even though I don’t take sugar. I thought he was being funny and romantic. I didn’t get it. He just didn’t know, did he? He didn’t know how I took my tea.’
‘I’m so very sorry, Carrie,’ said Frieda.
‘I slept with him,’ cried Carrie. ‘I had sex with him. For the first time in months and months, because Alan – he couldn’t. It was good.’ Her face contorted as if she would throw up again. ‘It was the best it had ever been. Ever. Do you understand? Do you?’
Frieda nodded again.
‘And it wasn’t Alan. It wasn’t my darling, darling, hopeless Alan. Alan was dead, strung up like some criminal. And I didn’t know and I didn’t grieve and I fucked his foul, murdering brother and I was happy. I was so happy, lying tangled up in the dark with the man who killed Alan and then had sex with me and listened to me crying out in pleasure, oh, and then heard me telling him how it had never been this good before. Argh! This is – I can’t –’
She stood up, her face chalky, and rushed from the room. Frieda could hear her being sick again, then the lavatory flushing and water running. Carrie returned, sat down again and fixed her red-rimmed eyes on Frieda.
‘You are sure?’ she said.
‘Yes, I am. But I don’t have evidence. Not the sort the police would accept.’
‘Can’t you do a DNA test? I’ve got his toothbrush. His comb.’
‘Their DNA was the same,’ said Frieda. ‘Anyway. What matters is what you think.’
‘I believe you.’ She seemed flatly calm now.
‘Carrie, you must hold on to the fact that Alan did not leave you and he always loved you. You loved him and were loyal to him. You’ve got nothing to reproach yourself for.’
‘How could I not know, not feel it? And now I can never make it right. I can never take Alan in my arms again and hold him and comfort him and hug him to me until he feels safe again. I can never be forgiven by him. This is what it will be like until the day I die. Oh, my poor sweet Alan. Nothing ever went right for him, did it? Of course he wouldn’t have left me – how did I not know that?’
Through that dark, wet day, Frieda sat in the kitchen and listened as Carrie talked about Alan, about Dean, about her loneliness and childlessness, about grief and anger, hostility and self-disgust. She heard her talk of hatred – for Dean, of course, but also for her, Frieda, who had sucked Alan into a vortex from which he had never returned, for the police who hadn’t stopped him, for herself – and of her desire for revenge. She heard of Carrie’s early days with Alan, and how she had known on their first date that she would marry him because of the way he had said her name – with flushed shyness, and as if he was uttering some solemn and precious oath. Frieda made numerous cups of tea and, later, a boiled egg that Carrie listlessly poked pieces of toast into. Only when Carrie had called her friend and asked her to come over did she leave, promising to call her the following day, and even then, she didn’t go straight home by cab or train, but walked there through the London streets, winding her way westwards as the day turned to evening and the fog became sleety darkness. Her mind was crowded with thoughts and ghosts: Carrie’s staring white face, Alan’s eyes, which had always reminded her of a spaniel’s, timid and pleading, and the jeering smile of Dean, who had been dead but was now alive again. Somewhere in the world.
Twenty-one
‘So,’ said Karlsson to Yvette Long and Chris Munster, ‘this is what we have, and stop me if I get it wrong.’ He ticked items off his fingers as he spoke. ‘One, a murder victim, confirmed by DNA to be the Robert Poole who lived in the flat in Waverley Street, whose body was found naked in a disturbed woman’s room, having been collected from an adjacent alley, whose job we don’t know, whose friends haven’t missed him, and whose neighbour says that he was charming, helpful, kind and would always water her plants for her.’
Karlsson stopped and took a sip of water, then continued, ‘Two, Mr Poole’s bank statements.’ He picked them up and waved them. ‘The most recent of which show that he had just under three hundred and ninety thousand pounds in his current account. I don’t know what that’s about. We’re checking with the bank as we speak.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They should have phoned by now. Anyway, three, a flat of which Yvette made a preliminary search, as well as the scene-of-crime team. No passport, no wallet, in fact, no personal documents of any kind. Nor is he on Facebook or Twitter, or any of the other social networks. But there’s a notebook, with several pages ripped out, in which there are a handful of names, some addresses, scrawls and doodles. Correct, Yvette?’
‘Including the name of the couple in Brixton whom your old friend found.’
‘You mean Frieda Klein? She’s not an old friend, she’s someone who helped us. And now that you mention her, I should say that I want to use her on a more permanent basis.’
Yvette frowned. ‘What for?’
‘She can be useful to us.’
‘Fine.’
‘By which you mean not fine.’
‘It’s your decision,’ said Yvette, hating how her voice sounded. Her cheeks burned scarlet. She was sure that Frieda Klein didn’t turn an unbecoming red whenever she was embarrassed – but, then, perhaps Dr Klein never felt embarrassed.
‘That’s right, and I’ve made it, and now we can concentrate on Robert Poole. How far have you got with the names in the notebook?’
Chris Munster picked up a pad of paper. ‘We’re going to work our way through them. A few will be easy to find and others may take longer. We’ve already made an appointment to see a Mary Orton. We’re going straight after this meeting. She sounded rather flustered on the phone – she’s an elderly lady, lives alone. Apparently Robert Poole had been helping her repair her house in some way. We’re going to start distributing that visual we’ve had drawn up. That might flush out a few more people who knew him.’