‘Shut up,’ said Frieda. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please, just give me a moment.’
There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other awkwardly, like people who had arrived too early at a party and were stuck with each other. Finally, she turned to Karlsson. ‘If you closed your eyes, would you be able to describe everything in this room?’
‘I don’t know. Most of it.’
Frieda shook her head. ‘Years ago, I didn’t take many notes after my sessions. I thought that if it was important I’d remember it. My remembering it would be a sign it was important. But I changed my mind. Now, if it’s important, I write it down.’ She pulled a face, signalling frustration. ‘I don’t know. There’s something, but I can’t quite grasp it.’
‘What is it?’ said Karlsson.
‘If I knew …’ she began. Then she frowned. ‘Can we go downstairs? Do you have the key to her flat?’
Karlsson pulled out the bunch of keys. ‘Somewhere here,’ he said. ‘I feel like a gaoler in an old movie.’
‘How do you decide when to give up?’ said Newton, as they were walking downstairs.
‘Is this for your report?’ said Karlsson.
‘I’m just curious.’
‘There’s never a moment. But the urgency goes, people are reassigned.’
Karlsson unlocked the door and they walked into Janet Ferris’s flat. Frieda found this abandoned space sadder. There was a mug on the table, a book next to it. She could imagine Janet Ferris walking in, picking it up and carrying on. She tried not to think of that. It was a distraction. She looked around the room. She felt she was searching for something – and suddenly she found it. She turned to Karlsson. ‘Do you see that picture? Of the fish.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you like it?’
He smiled. ‘I think it’s lovely. But you’ll have to leave it here. Nowadays we’re not really allowed to help ourselves.’
‘When I first saw Poole’s flat, this painting was there. Not here.’
‘Really?’
‘You read the newspaper article. Janet Ferris said that Poole used to lend her things. Among other things, he gave – or lent – her a painting, and she lent him one of hers. She said she returned it and took hers back.’
Karlsson’s brow furrowed. ‘Interfering with a crime scene,’ he said, then caught Frieda’s eye. ‘Or a semi-crime scene. Well, no harm done.’
‘We should go upstairs again,’ said Frieda.
Back in Poole’s flat, Frieda stood once more in the centre of the room. She looked at the pictures on Poole’s wall. There were five: the Eiffel Tower, a Madonna and Child, a sun in a seascape, a poppy field and a pine tree with the moon behind it. Frieda took a pair of transparent plastic gloves from her pocket and put them on. ‘I bought these from the chemist,’ she said. She glanced at Newton. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to charge them to the taxpayer.’
She walked to the picture of the Madonna, lifted it from the wall and stepped back. She placed the picture on the desk. She turned to Karlsson. ‘What do you see?’
‘A rather crappy picture,’ said Karlsson. ‘I don’t think that’s worth stealing. I prefer the one of the fish.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘Look at the wall where the picture was.’ Frieda picked up the picture and held it next to the mark. ‘It’s not the same size.’
‘But …’ Karlsson began, and stopped.
‘Maybe it’s the same size as the fish painting that was hanging here until the woman took it back,’ said Newton.
‘But that was only here for a few weeks,’ said Frieda. ‘Those marks take years.’
‘I don’t know what this is about,’ said Karlsson. ‘Poole might just have got tired of his pictures and moved them around.’
‘You’re right. That’s possible. Let’s see.’ Frieda lifted the pine-tree painting off the wall.
‘Different shape,’ said Karlsson. ‘See?’
Then in turn Frieda took down the other three paintings. In each case the mark was smaller than the painting.
‘There we are,’ said Karlsson. ‘Poole did some rehanging before he disappeared. I’m not sure this was worth coming all the way down to Balham to see.’
Frieda didn’t reply. She just looked at Karlsson, then at Newton. A smile slowly appeared on his face.
‘They shouldn’t all be smaller.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Karlsson.
‘Shall we rearrange them?’ said Frieda.
‘What do you mean?’
She picked up the Madonna and Child and held it against one of the patches on the wall. ‘What do you think?’
Newton shook his head. ‘The picture’s too big.’ She moved it along the wall. ‘That’s right,’ he said.
She did the same with the other pictures, holding them one by one against the shapes on the wall while Karlsson and Newton nodded or shook their heads. They were left with two pictures and two spaces. The pine tree was slightly smaller than one space and much larger than the smallest. The seascape was larger than both spaces.
‘They don’t fit,’ said Karlsson.
‘That’s right.’
‘Now there are two pictures,’ continued Karlsson, ‘and two spaces, which neither of them fits. It’s doing my head in and I don’t even know why I should be caring about it.’
‘But it’s interesting, isn’t it?’ said Frieda.
‘He could have got rid of a painting,’ said Newton, ‘and bought two new ones.’
‘They came with the flat. He wouldn’t have got rid of them. Except this one.’ Frieda touched the picture of the pine tree. ‘It’s cheap and nasty but it’s new, don’t you think?’
Karlsson examined the shiny frame. ‘It does look new.’
‘It must be around here somewhere,’ said Frieda.
‘What?’ said Karlsson.
‘One of the pictures.’
‘Where?’
‘It’ll be somewhere. Down the side of something, somewhere out of the way.’
Newton found it under Poole’s bed, where it was stowed with an old mattress. He carried it through with an air of pride. It was a picture of a windmill and a horse. There was something synthetic about the colours so it seemed to shimmer.
‘No wonder he kept it under the bed,’ said Karlsson.
He took the painting and held it in front of the larger patch. It was the right size. ‘All right. Now we’ve still got a painting too many.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘We’ve got two paintings too many.’
She walked across to the pine dresser that stood by the wall furthest from the window and knelt down beside it. ‘Look,’ she said.
Karlsson and Newton peered down. Frieda pointed at two small depressions in the carpet.
‘It’s been moved,’ she said. ‘Just a couple of feet. But …’ She paused for a moment. ‘Let’s move it back.’
The three of them took hold of the dresser and moved it back.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Newton.
Where the dresser had been, there was another patch on the wall. They could see at a glance that it was the same size as the seascape but Karlsson held it up to confirm it.
Karlsson turned to Frieda. ‘So, what the fuck does it mean?’
‘It means that someone’s been here,’ said Frieda. ‘With all the risks it entailed, someone had to come here.’
Back outside the house, Karlsson asked Jake Newton if he could give them a moment. He and Frieda walked a few paces along the road. When Karlsson spoke, it was without looking at her. ‘I talked to your friend Reuben,’ he said.
‘What about?’
‘About the encounter they had with the photographer outside your house. I wanted to be clear about what had happened. Obviously, if the two of them had made an unprovoked attack on the man, it could potentially be treated as a serious case of assault.’ Now Karlsson stopped. His hands were in his pockets against the cold. ‘Reuben – Dr McGill – told me that the photographer had obstructed your other friend, Josef, and then struck him. While Reuben was trying to separate them, he inadvertently struck the photographer in the face.’