Still it went on. It was outside him and it was inside him, a shriek swelling and echoing, and he couldn’t escape. Fingers over ears, body in a ball, head on stone, sharp knees on sharp stones, grit in eyes, burning skin, don’t make a sound. Once upon a time there was a little boy.
It didn’t go the way Frieda thought it was going to. They didn’t jump in the car and head straight to the house. Instead, an hour later, Frieda found herself sitting in Karlsson’s office giving a statement to a uniformed officer while Karlsson stood to one side, frowning. At first, Frieda could scarcely control herself.
‘Why are we sitting here?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think the situation is just a bit urgent?’
‘The quicker we get your statement, the quicker we can get a warrant and the quicker we can act.’
‘We don’t have time for this.’
‘You’re the one who’s holding us up.’
Frieda had to take a deep breath, just so she could speak calmly.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘So what do you want me to say?’
‘Keep it simple,’ said Karlsson. ‘All we want is for the judge to grant the warrant. So don’t go into detail about your patient’s dreams or fantasies or whatever they were. In fact, don’t even mention them.’
‘You mean, don’t tell the truth?’
‘Just tell the part of the truth that’s helpful to the process.’ He looked at Yvette Long. ‘Ready?’ She smiled at him and clicked her pen. Frieda thought: She’s in love with her boss. Karlsson paused for a moment. ‘You want to say, “During therapy with my patient Alan Dekker, he made certain statements that implicated his brother Dean Reeve in the abduction of blah blah blah.” ’
‘Why don’t you just dictate it yourself?’
‘If we go into too much detail, the judge may start asking difficult questions. If we find the boy, it doesn’t matter if it was the man in the moon who told you about it. We just need the warrant.’
Frieda gave a brief statement while Karlsson nodded and made occasional comments.
‘That’ll do,’ he said finally.
‘I’ll sign anything,’ said Frieda. ‘Just as long as you do something.’
Yvette handed her the form. She signed it, and the copy underneath.
‘What do I do now?’ said Frieda.
‘Go home, whatever you want.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Our job. We’ll wait for the warrant, which should be delivered in an hour or two.’
‘Can’t I help?’
‘This isn’t a spectator sport.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Frieda. ‘I told you about it.’
‘If you want to come on police operations, you’ll need to join the force.’ He paused. ‘Sorry. I don’t meant to be … Look, I’ll let you know what happens as soon as I can. That’s all I can do.’
Back in her house, Frieda felt like a child who had been dragged out of the cinema five minutes before the film ended. At first she walked up and down her living room. All the action was happening somewhere else. What could she possibly do? She rang Josef’s mobile and got no reply. She called Reuben and he told her that Josef wasn’t back. She ran herself a hot bath and lay in it with her head mostly under the water, trying not to think and failing. She got out and put on some jeans and an old shirt. Clearly there were things she needed to do. She needed to make some sort of plans for Christmas. She’d been resisting it for weeks but she had to do something. She had appointments with patients to rearrange. It seemed impossible even to consider any of this now.
She made herself coffee, a whole pot, and steadily drank her way through it. She felt suddenly as if she were the subject of a psychological experiment designed to demonstrate how lack of control and autonomy resulted in intense, almost paralytic, symptoms of anxiety. It was almost six o’clock, and thoroughly dark, when there was a ring at the door. It was Karlsson.
‘Is it good news?’
Karlsson brushed past her. ‘You mean was he there? No, he wasn’t.’ He picked up Frieda’s half-finished cup of coffee and took a sip. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.
‘I can make you some.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘I should have been there,’ said Frieda.
‘Why?’ asked Karlsson, sarcastically. ‘So you could have looked in a cupboard we missed?’
‘I’d like to have seen Dean Reeve’s demeanour.’
‘His demeanour was confident, if that’s what you mean. The demeanour of someone with nothing to hide.’
‘And I’ve seen the house before. I could see if they’d done anything to it since I was there.’
‘Unfortunately the warrant doesn’t allow us to bring tourists.’
‘Wait,’ said Frieda.
She poured the last from the cafetière into a new mug and heated it in the microwave. She handed it to Karlsson. ‘You want anything with it?’ she said. ‘Or in it?’
He shook his head and took a sip of coffee.
‘So that’s that,’ said Frieda.
‘That photofit you did the other day. That reconstruction of the woman’s face.’
‘What about it?’
‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t just mean, “Have you got it?” I mean, can you get it and show it to me?’
Frieda went out of the room and came back carrying the printout. She smoothed it out on the table. ‘It got a bit scrunched up,’ she said.
Karlsson leaned over and looked at it.
‘While the officers were turning the house upside down and then turning it the right side up again, I wandered into their bedroom. I saw this on the wall.’ From his side pocket he took a small framed photograph. He laid it down on the table next to the printout. ‘Remind you of anything?’
Chapter Thirty-two
‘It’s the same woman,’ said Frieda.
‘Similar.’ Karlsson rubbed his face violently with his fist.
‘It must be.’
‘You think so, do you?’
‘Of course.’
He looked grimly at her.
‘This is the woman Rose remembered,’ Frieda said.
‘Rose didn’t remember. She was led by multiple choice through a succession of images that were narrowed down to this. That is not the same as remembering.’
‘It’s her. Of course it is. Can you think of any other explanation?’
‘It doesn’t need a fucking explanation. Through a series of suggestions, a damaged young woman came up with a face she might have seen twenty-two years ago or she might have imagined or made up, which happens to look a bit like the photograph of a woman in the house of someone who is a sort of half-suspect for a different crime. How do you think that would go down in court?’
Frieda didn’t reply.
‘And in the meantime, there is no sign of Matthew. When I say no sign, I mean nothing. Not a thread or a fibre. And there was one room they had just finished painting. The paint was still wet. If he’d been kept in there, any trace of him would have been covered. You know what I think? I think he died long ago and I’m being led by the nose into a world of shadows and hopes. If it were the kid’s parents, it would be understandable. But you’ve bought into it.’
Frieda stared at the photograph so intently that it almost hurt her head. ‘It’s an old family picture,’ she said.
‘Probably.’
‘Look.’ Frieda put her hand across the picture, covering the hair.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you see the likeness? Dean Reeve. And Alan as well. It must be his mother. Their mother.’ Frieda started murmuring to herself, as a way of thinking.
‘Am I meant to understand what you’re saying?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Remember what I said about a woman? Joanna wouldn’t have walked off with a man like Dean Reeve. But she might have done with her. Don’t you think?’
‘Sorry,’ said Karlsson. ‘My mind was on other things, like conducting an investigation, interviews, evidence, little things. There are rules. They have to find clues, evidence.’
Frieda ignored him. She stared hard at the photograph, as if it could yield up its secrets to her. ‘Is she still alive? She wouldn’t be that old.’