She half led and half carried the girl, past Fearby and up out of the cellar that had been her torture chamber, into the light that was fading now. Sharon gave a little cry of pain at the dazzle and bent over, almost falling, coughing up dribbles of vomit. Frieda got her to the doorway, out of the accursed house and into the clean air, and sat her on the steps.
Josef shambled over. Frieda took off her cotton scarf and wrapped it around his neck, where blood was running thickly. He made to sit on the step, but Sharon shrank from him.
‘It’s OK,’ Frieda said. ‘This man is good. He rescued you, Sharon. We both owe him our life.’
‘I was coming to find Lila,’ Sharon whimpered. ‘I wanted to see Lila.’
‘It’s all right now. Don’t talk yet.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘Yes. I’m certain she is. She must have found out about her father so he killed her. But you are alive, Sharon, and you’re safe now.’
She stood beside the two of them. There was the smell of honeysuckle wafting over to them from the neighbouring garden, and three doors down Frieda could see the old woman watering her tiny front garden with a hose. It was a beautiful late-spring evening. She fixed her eyes on the road – looking not just for the flashing blue lights of the police and the ambulances, but also for the figure of Gerry Collier. It was only minutes since she and Josef had watched him leave, but it seemed like hours, days – another world. Behind them, the door was wrenched off its hinges, and in the cellar lay Jim Fearby, his long task over.
At last they came, sirens and lights shattering the soft evening. She heard them before she saw them, blue arcs swinging over the street before the cars and ambulances arrived, a screech of brakes, a sudden rush of men and women, voices speaking urgently, orders and exclamations, people bending towards them, stretchers, oxygen masks. Neighbours gathering on the road, a sudden sense of being at the centre of a world closing in on them.
There was a man standing in front of her, asking her something. She couldn’t make out his questions but she knew what she had to say.
‘My name is Frieda Klein.’ She heard her voice, calm and clear. ‘I made the call. This is Josef, who is hurt. And Sharon Gibbs, who has been missing for weeks. She has been held in the cellar by the man tied up inside, Lawrence Dawes. Be careful with her. You can’t know what she’s been through. A second man is at large, Gerry Collier. You have to find him.’
‘Gerry Collier, you say?’
‘Yes. He owns this place. And a man called Jim Fearby is dead, inside the house. You’re too late for him.’
Faces hovered above her, blurred, anonymous, mouths opening and stretching, eyes large and staring. Someone was saying something, but she pressed on.
‘There will be bodies in the garden.’ She could no longer tell if she was speaking quietly or shouting, as if from a pulpit. ‘Or bodies in the cellar.’
Sharon Gibbs was lifted from her crouched position on the steps to a stretcher. Her huge eyes gazed imploringly at Frieda from her pinched, dirty face. Now Lawrence Dawes was carried from the house, still tangled in the washing line. His eyes were flickering and they opened briefly on Frieda. For a moment they stared at each other, into each other, and then he turned his head away.
‘Please can someone tell Karlsson?’ Frieda continued.
‘Karlsson?’
‘DCI Malcolm Karlsson.’
A woman was wrapping a blanket around Josef’s shoulders, unwrapping Frieda’s bloody scarf from his neck. He stood up, bulky and dazed, staggering slightly. Frieda put her arms round him, careful of his dangling arm, and pressed her head against his chest. She could feel his heart hammering and smell his sweat and his blood. ‘You’ll be fine now,’ she said. ‘You’ve done well, Josef.’
‘I?’
‘Yes. I will write to your sons to tell them. They will be very proud of you.’
‘Proud?’
‘Yes, proud.’
‘But you –’
‘I’ll come and see you very soon.’ She looked at the woman. ‘Where are you taking him?’
‘St George’s.’
Now Josef was gone and Fearby’s body was being carried out of the house. His face was covered, but Frieda could still see his fine white hair. His feet poked out of the blanket the other end; the shoes were old and scuffed and on one the lace was undone.
The ambulances slid away, and suddenly she was alone. There were gathering crowds in the street, and in the house the light was unnaturally bright and full of noises, voices. But here, on this small patch of soil, she was by herself at last. The door gaped behind her, like a foul, hot mouth; she could smell its sickening stench.
‘Frieda Klein?’
A man was in front of her, blocking out the light.
‘Yes.’
‘I need to talk to you urgently. I will be a few more minutes. Would you wait for me here, please?’
He left her again. Her mobile rang. She looked at it – Sandy – but didn’t answer. Then she turned it off.
Without thinking what she was doing, she stood up and went into the house. No one stopped her or even seemed to notice. She stepped out of the back door into the garden. It was the same size and shape as Lawrence Dawes’s garden, and was full of flowers. Bright, sweet, fragrant flowers, peonies and roses and foxgloves and tall lupins; perhaps they were feeding on the bodies, she thought. Perhaps that was why they were so strong and bright and colourful. She walked down the lawn, past a well-tended vegetable plot, until she was standing by the shallow brown River Wandle. She could see the pebbles on its bottom, and a few tiny dark fish. Behind her, there was the roar of the world, but here just the trickle of water; she could hear its faint gurgle. A swallow dipped past her, low and fast, then up into the evening sky.
She knew she had to go home. She thought of something she had read in a book when she was a child. If you’re lost in the jungle, find a stream and follow it downhill and it will reach a larger river or the sea. This little brook would take her home.
She took off her sandals, rolled up her jeans and stepped into the water. It was cool, not cold, and rose to her ankles. She walked delicately along the stony bed until she was standing outside Lawrence Dawes’s garden. They’d drunk tea together there, and he’d shown her this little river. She could hear his voice now, mild and amiable: … we used to make little paper boats and put them on the stream and watch them float away. I used to tell them that in three hours’ time, those boats would reach the Thames and then, if the tide was right, they’d float out to sea.
Frieda crossed to the other side and stepped out on to a narrow, overgrown path, pulling her sandals back on to her wet feet. Here it was green, tangled and wild – a place of nettles and cow parsley, a smell of grass, mulched leaves and moisture. She started to walk.
The secret river narrowed to a ribbon of brown water. Frieda kept pace with its flow, watching the bubbles beading and bursting on its surface. She saw Jim Fearby’s face. She saw his dead eyes staring at her. What had his last thoughts been? She wished so much that he had stayed alive long enough to know he had won. She saw Josef’s face. He would lay down his life for her, but she would lay down hers for no reason at all, except that it seemed a cursed thing.
A short distance away in the opposite direction, the Wandle disappeared underground for ever, into a network of springs, burrowing its way under the earth. Here it wound north, the path following it almost closed over now with nettles that stung her feet and hanging branches that stroked her cheeks, so that Frieda felt she was in a tunnel of green light. She smelt something sweet and nasty; there must be the carcass of an animal or bird rotting nearby. This little river had worked so hard in its time, and carried so much shit and poison and death, a sclerotic artery clogged with waste. There would have been water mills once, and tanning factories, lavender fields and watercress ponds, litter and chemicals and flowers. All gone now, demolished and lying buried under concrete and housing estates. To her left Frieda could see through the tangle of weeds a deserted warehouse, a rash of light industrial units, a deserted car park, a rubbish dump rising out of the dusk. But the little river flowed on, quick and clear, leading her out of the labyrinth.