‘That article was bollocks. Bollocks about you and bollocks about the case going nowhere.’
‘It makes you and your team look ridiculous. Whatever the phrase was …’
‘“Dodgy Doc”.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Frieda was about to ring off when she remembered something. ‘I feel bad about Janet Ferris. I’d like to go and see her.’
‘She was talking rubbish to that journalist. Don’t let it get to you.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Frieda. ‘I think she needs someone to talk to.’
‘She’s a lonely woman,’ said Karlsson. ‘I think she had a bit of a crush on Poole. But it’s not our job to hold her hand. We just need to find who killed him.’
‘I’ll see her in my own time,’ said Frieda. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t charge you.’ She switched the phone off and put it back into her bag.
‘It was good to see you, Jack,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve got to go and pay someone a call.’
‘You’re not going to hunt that journalist down and kill her, are you?’ said Jack. ‘Don’t bother. She’s not worth it.’
Frieda smiled. ‘She was interesting,’ she said. ‘First she was like someone who wanted to be my friend. Then she wanted to tell my side of the story. Then she threatened me. As you can see, I’ve already forgotten about it. But she’d better not find herself drowning in a lake with me as the only person looking on.’
‘You’d dive in and save her anyway,’ said Jack. ‘I know you would.’
‘Only to make her feel guilty,’ said Frieda.
‘She wouldn’t. And then she’d write another piece about you, misrepresenting you.’
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I’d let her drown then.’
Thirty-five
They walked out together and Frieda hailed a taxi. She sat back and gazed out at the unfamiliar south London streets. They drove past parks, schools, a cemetery, and it might have been in another part of England, another part of the world. She thought of Janet Ferris and the reporter, Liz Barron. Frieda had just slammed the door on her but Janet Ferris hadn’t. She would have invited her in, made tea for her, talked to her, grateful to find someone who wanted to listen. Janet Ferris was a woman who had been ignored, who was somehow at the edge. And then, suddenly, she had found herself involved in a big story, the murder of someone she knew and cared for, and even then she had been ignored. Nobody had wanted to hear her story. At least Liz Barron had sat in her flat and let her talk.
Frieda rang Janet Ferris’s bell but there was no answer. She silently cursed herself for arriving without phoning ahead. She looked at the bells. Flat one was Janet Ferris. Flat two was Poole. She pressed the bell for flat three, then pressed it again. A voice came from a little speaker, so crackly that she couldn’t make out the words. She said who she was and that she wanted to see Janet Ferris, but she didn’t know if she was being heard. She waited and then heard steps. The door was opened by a tall young man with blond hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, wearing a sweater and jeans, and with bare feet.
‘What is it?’ he said. His accent was foreign.
Frieda remembered the file: a German student upstairs. ‘I want to see Janet Ferris,’ she said. ‘But she’s not in. I wondered if you knew where she was.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m upstairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t see her come and go.’
Frieda peered into the hallway for piled-up mail. She couldn’t see any. ‘This is going to sound strange,’ she said. ‘I’m working with the police on the murder. I’m a bit worried about Janet’s state of mind. Do you have a key to her flat?’
‘You have identification?’
‘No. I mean, not as police. I’m a therapist. I work with them.’ The man looked reluctant. ‘I’d only be a minute. Just to check she’s all right. You can come in with me.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said. ‘One minute.’ He bounded lightly up the stairs.
Frieda wondered what she was doing. More of the dodgy doc. He came quickly back down.
‘I am not sure of this.’ But he unlocked the door anyway and stood back, calling Janet’s name.
Frieda stepped through the doorway and was immediately hit by the smell. Horrible and sweet at the same time: she recognized it as the smell of shit.
‘Stay there,’ she said to the man, and walked through and into the living room with a lurching sense of what she was going to find. She almost bumped into Janet Ferris’s body, the legs. She looked up. An extension cable had been looped round a wooden beam. The other end was tied round Janet Ferris’s neck. Her body hung quite still, heavily and limply, as if it was a bag filled with sand. One leg was streaked with brown that ran down over her shoe and dripped on to the carpet. Frieda heard a sound behind her, a sort of gasp. She looked round at the pale, dismayed face.
‘I said to stay out,’ she said, but not angrily. He backed away. She fumbled for her phone. She felt calm but at first she couldn’t press the buttons. She couldn’t get her fingers to work. They suddenly felt big and swollen and clumsy.
Josef had never seen Frieda like this before: she, who was always so self-possessed, so strong and dependable, now sitting at her kitchen table, hunched over, her face half hidden by her hand. It made him anxious and protective, and it made him want to get her pot after pot of tea. He refilled the kettle as soon as he had poured the boiling water into the teapot. She hadn’t wanted vodka, although he thought it would do her good and put a bit of colour back in her face. He had baked her a honey cake the day before, spiced with cinnamon and ginger, whose rich smell when it was baking had reminded him of his mother, and also of his wife or, at least, the woman who used to be his wife, and had filled him with emotions both happy and sad. Now he tried to persuade Frieda to eat some, pushing the plate under her nose. She shook her head and pushed it away.
Reuben hadn’t seen Frieda like this before either, although he had been her supervisor and her friend for years, and knew things about her that probably no-one else in the world did. She wasn’t crying – even Reuben had never seen her cry, although once, during a film, she had been suspiciously watery-eyed – but she was visibly distressed.
‘Tell us, Frieda,’ he said. It was early evening, and in an hour or so he was supposed to be going on a date with a woman he had met in the local gym. He couldn’t remember if she was called Marie or Maria, and he was worried that he might not recognize her when she wasn’t dressed in Lycra, with her hair pulled back in a high pony tail, her cheeks flushed with exercise, a V of perspiration on her shapely back.
‘Yes. Tell us start to end,’ Josef said. He poured them all another cup of tea and then himself a shot of vodka to accompany it, from the bottle he’d slipped into his bag when the phone call from Frieda had come. He thought of laying his hand on the top of her bowed head, but changed his mind.
‘I knew she was lonely.’ Frieda’s voice was low; she spoke not to them but to herself. ‘When I read that story …’
‘Dodgy Doc, you mean?’
She looked up with a grimace.
‘Yes, Reuben, that one. It made me think about Janet Ferris all alone in her room, and how anyone knocking at her door would have felt like a friend. She is – was – a clever, attractive and affectionate woman and yet it seemed that she had somehow missed out on everything she most wanted in life. Robert Poole, coming in with his little gifts, confiding in her, must have meant a great deal to her. When I visited her, I could feel that she was distressed. But I put it out of my mind.’
‘You can’t save everyone.’
‘I went there and I encouraged her to open up to me, say what she was feeling. That’s a risky thing to do if you’re not prepared to deal with the consequences.’