‘If you’re looking for a fish,’ said Josef, ‘you look where the fish are. You don’t just walk in the fields.’
‘Is that some Ukrainian proverb?’
‘No, it is my idea. But you cannot just walk in the streets. Why do you bring me here to do this? We are like a tourist here.’
Frieda squinted down at the map. She closed it. It had already got damp in the bitter sleet and the pages were ruffled. ‘All right,’ she said.
Breath. Heart. Tongue on stone. Little wheezy sound in chest. Lights in his eyes. Head of fireworks, red and blue and orange. Rockets. Sparks. Flames. They had lit the fire at last. So cold and then so hot. Ice to furnace. Must pull his clothes off, must escape this wild heat. Body melting. Nothing would be left. Just ash. Ash and a bit of bone and nobody would know this had once been Matthew with brown eyes and red hair, a teddy with velvet paws.
Chapter Forty-one
On the Underground back, jostled by the evening rush-hour, they didn’t speak at all. As Frieda opened the front door of her house, she heard the phone ringing. She picked it up. It was Karlsson.
‘I don’t have your mobile number,’ he said.
‘I don’t have a mobile,’ Frieda said.
‘I guess you’re not the kind of doctor people need in an emergency.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘That’s what I’m ringing about. I just wanted to let you know that, as of an hour and a half ago, Reeve and partner are back on the street.’
‘You ran out of time?’
‘We could have kept them a bit more, if we really wanted. But isn’t it better if they’re out there? He might make a mistake. He might lead us somewhere.’
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘I wish I believed that,’ she said. ‘It didn’t feel like that when I met him. He seemed like a man who had made up his mind.’
‘If he slips up, we’ll get him.’
‘He’s sure that you’re following him,’ said Frieda. ‘I think he’s probably enjoying it now. We’ve given him power. He knows what we’re going through. I don’t think there’s anything we could do to him, anything we could give him that would be as much fun for him as that.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ said Karlsson. ‘You’ve got your work. You can get on with it.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s fine for me.’
After she had put the phone down Frieda sat for a time, staring at nothing. Then she went upstairs and stared out of her bedroom window at the snow-specked roofs. It was a clear cold night. She ran a bath and lay in it for nearly an hour. Then she got dressed and went to her garret study, where she sat at her drawing board. How long had it been since she had sat here like this, with time for herself? She couldn’t remember. She picked up her soft pencil and held it between her thumb and forefinger, but didn’t draw anything. All she could think of was Matthew, out there somewhere in the fierce cold, perhaps alive and terrified, but probably long dead; of Kathy Ripon, who’d knocked at the wrong door; of Dean and Terry walking away from the police station, free.
Finally she put her pencil down on the blank paper and went downstairs. She laid the fire in the living room and put a match to it, waited until flames were licking at the coal. Then she went to the kitchen again. She found a half-full carton of potato salad in the fridge and ate it with a spoon, just standing at the window. Then she took a tumbler from the sink, rinsed it out and poured some whisky into it. She sipped at it very slowly. She wanted time to pass; she wanted this night to be over. The phone rang and she picked it up.
‘You probably didn’t think you were going to hear from me for a bit?’
‘Karlsson?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Well, you’re on the phone. I can’t see you.’
‘Has Reeve tried to contact you?’ he said.
‘Not since you last rang.’
‘He’s done it before.’
‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve lost them.’
‘Them?’
‘Reeve. And Terry.’
‘I thought you were following them.’
‘I don’t need to justify myself to you.’
‘I don’t care about you justifying yourself. I just wondered how it could happen.’
‘Oh, you know – Underground, crowds and a bit of incompetent fucking police work. Maybe they meant to get away, maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. And I don’t know what they’re going to do.’
Frieda looked at her watch. It was past midnight. ‘They won’t go home. Will they?’
‘They could do. Why not? They’re not charged with anything. And it’s the middle of the night. Where else would they go?’
Frieda forced herself to think. ‘It could be a good thing,’ she said. ‘They might feel free now. That could be good.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Karlsson. ‘I don’t know enough to even guess. I’m not so sure it matters. Where could they have put them? If they’re tied up in a cupboard in an abandoned flat somewhere, how long can they survive without water? If they aren’t already … well, you know. Anyway, he might contact you. Stranger things have happened. Be prepared.’
After she had put the phone down, Frieda poured herself another inch of whisky and tipped it straight down her throat, feeling it sting and startle her. She went into the living room, but the fire had gone out and the room felt chilly and cheerless. She knew she needed to rest, but the thought of lying in her bed, wide-eyed, her brain hissing with images, appalled her. For a while she lay on her sofa with a rug pulled over her, but sleep eluded her and in its place was a dry, frantic wakefulness. At last she rose and went to the kitchen. She stepped outside into her small yard. The cold made her gasp and brought tears to her eyes but she relished it. It woke her up, scoured her of bleary tiredness, cleared her head and sharpened her thoughts. She stood, coatless and without gloves, until her face was stiff and she could bear it no longer, then returned inside.
She walked to the London map by the front door. The light wasn’t good enough to make out all the details, the little street names. She ripped it away from the wall and laid it out on the table in the living room. She switched the ceiling light on. Even that wasn’t quite enough. She fetched the reading light from next to her bed, took it to the living room and placed it on top of the map. She got a pencil and made a cross on the street where Dean Reeve lived. She had a sudden vertiginous sense that she was looking down on London from a plane half a mile high on a perfectly clear day. She could see the big landmarks, the curves of the Thames, the Millennium Dome, City Airport, Victoria Park, the Lea Valley. She looked closer, at the streets she had walked with Josef. She saw the cross-hatched areas representing the housing estates, the factories.
She thought of Alan and how she’d failed with him. She had failed both as a therapist and as an investigator. Alan and Dean had the same brains, thought the same thoughts, dreamed the same dreams, the way that two different birds would build identical nests. But the only way into that was through the unconscious, and when she had last talked to Alan, it had been like asking someone to describe the skill of riding a bicycle. Not only had he been unable to express the skill in words but she had damaged the skill. If you start trying to think about how you ride a bicycle while you’re riding a bicycle, you’re likely to fall off. Alan had found her out and turned on her. Maybe that was a sign of some strength. It could have been a sign that the therapy was working, even that it had run its course, because Frieda felt that the bond between them had been broken and couldn’t be restored. He could never give himself up to her again, the way a patient had to. She remembered that last session. It was ironic that the best bit of the session, the only real intimacy they achieved, was after the session was over, as they were leaving, when he no longer saw her as a therapist. What was it he’d said about feeling safe? She tried to remember his words. About his mother. About his family.
A thought struck her. Was it possible? It was the moment when he had given up trying to think of hiding places. Could he have …’?