Meanwhile Frieda talked to Alan as clearly and calmly as she could manage. As she did so, she had the strange feeling that she had told the same story to the same face and she couldn’t help comparing the two. How had she not noticed the difference? Their expressions were similar but with Alan everything seemed to come as a blow. Halfway through, he whispered, ‘I’ve got a mother. And a twin brother. How long have you known?’
‘Not long. Just a few days.’
He took a long, shuddering breath. ‘My mother …’
‘She doesn’t remember anything really, Alan. She’s not well.’
He looked down at his hands. ‘Is he very like me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, is he like me?’
Frieda understood. ‘In some ways,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated.’
Alan looked up at her with a sharpness she had only seen glimpses of previously. ‘This isn’t about me, is it?’ he said. ‘Not really. You’re using me to get at him.’
For a moment Frieda felt ashamed but she was almost pleased at the same time. He wasn’t just whimpering and collapsing under the news. He was fighting back. He was angry with her. ‘That’s not what it’s really about. I’m here for you. But there’s …’ She gestured around her. ‘… all this.’
‘You reckon he was acting out what I wanted?’
‘It may be that you have some feelings in common,’ Frieda replied.
‘So I’m like him?’
‘Who knows?’ Karlsson said from the front, making Alan jump. ‘But we’d like a statement. We’d be grateful for your co-operation.’
‘All right.’
As they approached the police station, they saw a group of men and women gathered on the pavement, some with cameras.
‘What are they doing here?’ Frieda asked.
‘They’re just camped out,’ said Karlsson. ‘Like gulls round a rubbish dump. We’ll drive round the back.’
‘Is he in there?’ asked Alan, suddenly.
‘You won’t have to see him.’
Alan pressed his face against the glass, like a small boy peering in at a world he didn’t understand.
Chapter Thirty-five
Frieda sat with Alan in a small bare room. She could hear phones ringing. Someone brought them some tea, tepid and very milky, and went away again. There was a clock on the wall and the minute hand turned slowly, taking them through the afternoon. Outside it was glitteringly cold; inside it was warm, stale, oppressive. They didn’t really talk. It was the wrong place. Alan kept taking his mobile out of his pocket and looking at it. At one point, he fell asleep. Frieda stood up and looked out of the small window. She saw a Portakabin and a skip. It was getting dark.
The door opened and Karlsson stood there. ‘Come with me.’ She saw at once that he was seething with anger. His face twitched with it.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘This way.’
They went through an open-plan room that was heaving with activity, phones ringing, chatter. A meeting was going on at one end. They stopped outside a door.
‘There’s someone you should see,’ Karlsson said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
He opened the door for her. Frieda was about to ask something and then stopped. The sight of Seth Boundy was so unexpected that for a moment she couldn’t remember who he was. He looked different as well. His hair was standing up in small peaks and his tie was pulled loose. His forehead was shiny with sweat. He stood up when he saw her, but sat down again at once.
‘Sorry, I don’t understand,’ said Frieda. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was simply being a responsible citizen,’ he said, in a murmur. ‘I simply expressed a concern, and I was whisked off to London. It’s really –’
‘Concern. What concern?’
‘One of my research students appears to have gone missing. It’s probably nothing. She’s a grown woman.’
Frieda took a seat opposite Boundy. She put her elbows on the table between them and gazed at him. His eyes shifted nervously from her face to the window and back again. When she spoke it was in a quieter, harder tone. ‘But why here? Why are you in London?’
‘I –’ He halted and pushed his fingers back into his hair. His glasses were crooked on his nose. ‘You see, it was such an opportunity. You’re not a scientist. These subjects are getting rarer and rarer.’
‘It was the addresses,’ Frieda said. He licked his lips and looked at her uneasily. ‘You sent someone to the addresses I gave you.’
‘It was just to make initial contact. Routine stuff.’
‘And you’ve not heard from her?’
‘She’s not picking up the phone,’ said Boundy.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was just routine.’
‘Who is this student?’
‘Katherine Ripon. She’s very capable.’
‘And you sent her there on her own?’
‘She’s a psychologist. It was just a brief interview.’
‘Do you realize what you’ve done?’ said Frieda. ‘Don’t you know who this man is?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Boundy. ‘I just thought you were trying to keep them to yourself. You didn’t tell me anything about him.’
Frieda was about to shout at or slap him and then she stopped herself. Perhaps it was her fault as much as his. Shouldn’t she have realized what he might do? Wasn’t she meant to be good at reading people? ‘You really haven’t heard from her?’
Boundy didn’t seem to be listening.
‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ He spoke half to himself. ‘It’s not my fault. She will turn up. People don’t just vanish.’
Karlsson took a moment to get himself under control. He didn’t want to lose his temper or let his fear show. Anger should be a weapon to be used discriminately, not a weakness and a loss of control. Everything else was for later. He walked into the room, shutting the door carefully behind him, and sat down opposite Dean Reeve, observing him in silence for a few moments. He was so like the man who had just been sitting in his car that at first the similarities obscured any difference. They were both slightly on the short side, strong and stocky, with round faces; both had grey hair that had a cow-lick in the centre and still showed the faint coppery tint of the red it had once been – the red of Matthew Faraday and of the boy of Alan’s fantasies. They both had arresting brown eyes and skin that was marked with ancient freckles. They were both wearing checked shirts – although Alan’s was blue and green, he remembered, whereas Dean’s was more colourful. And they bit their nails, they had a habit of rubbing their hands against their thighs and of crossing and recrossing their legs. It was quite uncanny, like a strange and troubling dream where nothing is single, where everything resembles something else. Even the way he bit his lower lip was the same. But when Dean, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward, opened his mouth, he no longer reminded Karlsson of his twin brother, although the two of them had the same slightly muffled voice, blurred round the edges.
‘Hello again,’ he said.
Karlsson was holding a folder and placed it in front of him. He flapped it open, removed a photograph and placed it in front of Reeve, rotating it so that it was the right way up for him. ‘Look at it,’ he said.
He examined Reeve’s face for a response, a shimmer of recognition in the eyes. He saw nothing at all.
‘Is this him?’ asked Reeve. ‘I mean the boy you’re looking for.’
‘Don’t you read the papers?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Or watch TV?’
‘I watch the football. Terry watches the cooking programmes.’
‘And what about this? Do you recognize this girl?’
Karlsson placed the long-ago photograph of Joanna in front of Reeve, who looked at it for a few seconds, then shrugged.
‘Is that a no?’
‘Who is she?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘If I knew, why would I ask you?’
Reeve didn’t look at Karlsson but he didn’t seem to be avoiding his gaze either. Some people, when you get them into an interview, just crack immediately. Others show signs of stress: they sweat, they stumble over their words, they babble. Karlsson quickly saw that Reeve wasn’t one of them. If anything he looked indifferent, or perhaps slightly amused.