‘Of course.’
Frieda suddenly felt so weary and dispirited she could hardly bring herself to speak. ‘What is it now,’ she asked. ‘Is there a new complaint?’
Thelma took a tabloid from her bag. ‘Have you read today’s paper?’ she said.
‘I don’t read newspapers.’
Thelma put reading glasses on and opened it. ‘“Shrink in street brawl”,’ she read. ‘There’s a picture of the photographer. It probably looks worse than it really is. “Friends of controversial therapist Dr Frieda Klein set on press photographer, Guy Durrant …” Well, I don’t need to read the whole article out.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I suppose the report is broadly accurate.’
Frieda took the paper from Thelma’s hands and looked at it. The story was written by Liz Barron again. She handed the paper back. ‘Broadly,’ she said.
‘Who were the friends?’ said Thelma.
‘I’ve just come out of the office of one of them,’ said Frieda, pointing behind her.
‘Reuben?’ said Thelma. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t pay much attention to gossip,’ said Thelma, ‘but I heard a story about you a year or two ago. It involved a colleague of mine and a fight in a restaurant in Kensington. It was probably exaggerated.’
‘I ended up in a police cell,’ said Frieda.
‘I notice he didn’t press charges. There was probably a reason for that.’
‘Yes, there was. Look, is this some disciplinary issue?’
Thelma looked puzzled. ‘If you mean, do I endorse public fighting by accredited psychotherapists – or even between accredited psychotherapists – then the answer is no.’ Thelma stood up. She was several inches shorter than Frieda. ‘I came because I was worried about the pressure on you.’
‘That’s very kind of you, but this really isn’t the best time, Dr Scott.’
‘I just wanted to make sure you were clear about the BPC hearing. You weren’t reprimanded. You weren’t censured. I hope you understand that.’
‘You came all the way here to tell me so? Thank you. That’s a kind gesture.’
Thelma studied her closely. ‘I’ve looked you up,’ she said. ‘I’ve read some of your work. It’s not entirely a battle, you against the rest of the world.’
‘I know. I’ve got a few people with me. I mean in my battle against the rest of the world.’
Thelma pushed a hand into the pocket of her donkey jacket and pulled out Underground tickets and then a business card. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘If you need someone to talk to some time.’
‘Frieda thinks Janet Ferris was murdered,’ said Karlsson. ‘Might have been murdered.’
Yvette took the coffees from a tray and passed them around the table. She looked at Jake Newton, who had spent the last couple of days assessing human-resource management. ‘Did you want one?’ she said.
He looked at the mugs as if they were a part of his evaluation. Chris Munster tore a sachet of sugar and tipped it into his.
‘No,’ Newton said. ‘No. I think I’ll pass on that.’
Yvette took packets of sandwiches from a plastic bag. ‘Cheese and celery for you, boss. Tuna and cucumber for you, Chris.’ She tossed the packets across the table. ‘Chicken for me.’ She looked at Newton. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘I’m just a fly on the wall,’ said Newton. ‘You don’t need to feed me.’
‘Flies on the wall still have to eat,’ said Yvette. While Newton looked puzzled by that, as if he was trying to work out whether there was an insult behind it, she continued, ‘Is Frieda coming to the meeting to explain her theory?’
‘She’s seeing patients this afternoon,’ said Karlsson.
‘How does the arrangement with her work?’ said Newton.
‘Good question,’ said Yvette.
‘This isn’t really the time or the place,’ said Karlsson, ‘but she receives a small retainer and she is entitled to expenses. None of which she has actually claimed. But I can provide you with details later, if you want.’
‘Thanks,’ said Newton. ‘I’d like that.’
‘She is also entitled to confidentiality,’ continued Karlsson, ‘which, unfortunately, she did not get when someone in this building leaked details of the investigation to the press.’
‘Whoops,’ said Newton, cheerfully.
‘Nor did she receive proper support,’ added Karlsson, staring at Yvette, who turned pink and dropped her gaze.
‘So,’ said Munster, ‘why does Frieda think Janet Ferris was murdered?’
‘It’s partly an instinct,’ said Karlsson. ‘She felt that Janet Ferris wasn’t in a suicidal frame of mind. She should really be here to put her own case, but she said it was partly based on an assessment of her mood. Also, she had left her cat locked in. She didn’t seem the sort of woman who would do that.’
‘I guess that the point about being suicidal,’ said Yvette, ‘is that you don’t worry about things like that any more. If you want to look after your cat, you don’t kill yourself. Have they done the autopsy yet?’
‘I just got off the phone with Singh.’
‘And?’
‘He said that death was caused by asphyxia. That and the state of the body …’
‘What do you mean “state of the body”?’ asked Newton.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said Yvette.
‘She shat herself,’ said Munster.
‘Really?’ Newton’s eyebrows went up.
‘Loosening of the sphincter is a feature of hanging,’ said Karlsson. ‘As it is of other forms of death. It wasn’t so much the evacuation of the bowels as the, er …’ He made a gesture with his hands.
‘The disposition,’ Yvette supplied.
‘The splatter,’ added Munster.
‘Please,’ said Karlsson. ‘Singh said there were no signs of any other injury, no bruising on her body. So, he said his view was that the death was a suicide. I asked him if he was sure Janet Ferris hadn’t been strangled before she was hanged. He said one could never be sure. I asked him if it was possible that she was hanged forcibly. He said it wasn’t impossible, but in that case he would have expected bruising, perhaps on the upper arms, and there wasn’t any.’
‘So what was his final opinion?’ asked Yvette.
‘His provisional opinion is that it was suicide.’
‘Well, there we are.’
‘His job isn’t to provide a theory,’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s to report on the state of the body. Our job is to keep options open.’
‘We’ve got lots of options open,’ said Yvette. ‘They’re all bloody open.’
‘That’s why we’re having this meeting.’ Karlsson took an angry bite from his sandwich and the others waited for him to swallow. ‘At any moment, Crawford is going to ask where we’ve got to and, to be honest, I don’t exactly know what we’re going to say. We don’t know who Poole really was. We don’t know within five days when he was killed, so we can’t check alibis in any useful way. We don’t know where he was killed, so we’ve got sod-all forensics. We know roughly how he was killed but we don’t know why his finger was cut off.’ He paused for thought. ‘We know too bloody much about why he might have been killed. He was a conman and a thief. If someone fucked my wife, I’d want to kill them. If someone fucked my wife and got her to steal my money, I’d want to cut his finger off, feed it to him and then strangle him with my bare hands. If someone cheated my mother I’d want to kill him. If someone tried to get my mother to change her will so that she’d leave everything to a fucking conman, I’d want to kill him. If someone blackmailed me over my drinking problems, I’d also want to kill him. So …’
‘But the Orton sons’ alibis check out. Jeremy Orton was tied up day and night with some company takeover deal, and Robin Orton was in bed with flu.’