‘Birmingham!’
‘Yes. Is that a problem?’
Frieda thought of her house waiting for her, of her friends who didn’t know where she was, of her cat whose bowl would be empty. She thought of Ted, Judith and Dora – but she couldn’t resist the strangeness of the encounter, the pull of this strange old man. She would call Sasha, and tell her to hold the fort.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a problem.’
FORTY-NINE
In the warmth of the car, Frieda felt herself sliding towards sleep. She had had several nights of insomnia, worse than usual, tormented in between by scraping, violent dreams, and was ragged and scorched-eyed with tiredness. But she struggled against sleeping in front of Fearby, this shabby bird of prey; she couldn’t let herself be defenceless in front of him. Yet it was no good, she couldn’t stay awake. Even as she let herself go at last, her eyes closing and her body softening, she was thinking how odd it was that she should trust someone she didn’t know at all.
Fearby turned off the M25 and on to the M1. This was a road he knew; it seemed fitting they should be driving it together. He slid some Irish folk music into the CD player, turned the volume down so it was only just audible, and glanced at her. He couldn’t make her out. She must be in her mid- to late-thirties – from a distance, she looked younger, with her slim upright body and her supple movement, but up close her face was gaunt; there were hollows under her eyes and a strained, almost haunted expression on her pale face. He hadn’t asked her what she did. Frieda Klein: it sounded German, Jewish. He looked at her hands, lying half folded in her lap, and saw they were ringless, with unvarnished nails cut short. She wasn’t wearing any jewellery or makeup. Even in sleep, her face was stern and troubled.
Nevertheless – and his heart lifted – he had a companion, a fellow-traveller, at least for a while. He was so used to working alone that it had become hard to tell where the outside world blurred with his private obsessions. She would be able to tell him: she had a good, clear gaze, and whatever motives she had for her own particular quest, he had felt her cool shrewdness. He smiled to himself: she didn’t like being ordered around.
She murmured something and threw up one hand. Her eyes clicked open and, in a moment, she was sitting up straight, pushing her hair off her hot face.
‘I fell asleep.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I never fall asleep.’
‘You must have needed it.’
Then she sat back once more and gazed out of the windscreen at the cars streaming past in the opposite direction.
‘Is this Birmingham?’
‘I don’t actually live in the city. I live in a village, or small town, really, a few miles away.’
‘Why?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Why don’t you live in the city?’
‘It’s where I lived with my wife and kids. When my wife left, I never got around to moving.’
‘Not from choice, then?’
‘Probably not. Don’t you like the countryside?’
‘People should think about where they live, make a deliberate choice.’
‘I see,’ said Fearby. ‘I’m passive. And you’ve made a choice, I take it.’
‘I live in the middle of London.’
‘Because you want to?’
‘It’s somewhere I can be quiet and hidden. Life can carry on outside.’
‘Maybe that’s what I feel about my little house. It’s invisible to me. I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a place to go. I’m an ex-journalist. What do you do?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
Fearby looked bemused. ‘Now that I wouldn’t have guessed.’
He didn’t seem to understand just how wretched he had let his house become. There was a gravelled drive almost entirely grown over with ground elder, dandelions and tufts of grass. The windowsills were rotting and the panes were filthy. He might have cleared away the dirt, but a general air of neglect lay over everything. In the kitchen, piles of yellowing newspapers were stacked on the table, which clearly wasn’t used for eating at. When Fearby opened the fridge door to look for milk that wasn’t there, Frieda saw that, apart from beer cans, it was quite empty. It was a house for a man who lived alone and wasn’t expecting company.
‘No tea, then,’ he said. ‘How about whisky?’
‘I don’t drink in the day.’
‘Today is different.’
He poured them both a couple of fingers into cloudy tumblers and handed one to Frieda.
‘To our missing girls,’ he said, chinking his glass against hers.
Frieda took the smallest stinging sip, to keep him company. ‘You were going to show me what you’ve found.’
‘It’s all in my study.’
When he opened the door, she was speechless for a few seconds, her eyes trying to become accustomed to the combination of frenzy and order. Briefly, she was reminded of Michelle Doyce, the woman to whom Karlsson had introduced her, who had filled her rooms in Deptford with the debris of other people’s lives, carefully categorizing litter.
Fearby’s study was dimly lit, because the window was half blocked with teetering piles of paper on its silclass="underline" newspapers and magazines and printouts. There were piles of papers on the floor as welclass="underline" it was almost impossible to make a path through them to the long table that acted as his desk, also disappearing under scraps of paper, old notebooks, two computers, a printer, an old-fashioned photocopying machine, a large camera with its lens off, a cordless phone. Also, two chipped saucers overflowing with cigarette stubs, several glasses and empty whisky bottles. On the rim of the table there were dozens of yellow and pink Post-it notes, with numbers or words scribbled on them.
When Fearby turned on the Anglepoise lamp, it illuminated a paper copy of a photograph of a young woman’s smiling face. One chipped tooth. It made Frieda think of Karlsson, who also had a chipped tooth and who was many miles away.
It wasn’t the mess of the room that arrested her, however: it was the contrast of the mess to the meticulous order. On the corkboards, neatly pinned into place, were dozens of young women’s faces. They were obviously separated into two categories. On the left, there were about twenty faces; on the right, six. Between them was a large map of Britain, covered with flags that went in a crooked line from London towards the north-west. On the opposite wall, Frieda saw a huge time line, with dates and names running along it in neat, copperplate writing. Fearby was watching her. He pulled open the drawers of a filing cabinet, and she saw racks of folders inside, marked with names. He started pulling them out, putting them on top of the dangerous heap of things on his table.
Frieda wanted to sit but there was only one swivel chair and that was occupied by several books.
‘Are they the girls?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Hazel Barton.’ He touched her face gently, amost reverently. ‘Roxanne Ingatestone. Daisy Crewe. Philippa Lewis. Maria Horsley. Sharon Gibbs.’
They smiled at Frieda, young faces smooth, eager.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe Lila is too.’
‘It can’t be Doherty.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ He directed her towards his timeline. ‘This is when Daisy went, and Maria – he was in prison.’
‘Why are you so sure it’s the same person?’
Fearby pulled open the first folder. ‘I’m going to show you everything,’ he said. ‘Then you can tell me what you think. It may take some time.’
At seven o’clock, Frieda called Sasha, who agreed to go round to her house and stay there until she returned. She sounded concerned, a note of panic in her voice, but Frieda cut the conversation short. She also called Josef to ask him to feed the cat and perhaps water the plants in her yard.