‘Of course, it could be that they’re just beads,’ said Karlsson.
When the phone rang, Frieda knew it was going to be Karlsson. It almost rang with Karlsson’s accent.
‘Do you want the good news or the good news?’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘You’re forgiven,’ said Karlsson. ‘Completely forgiven. Aisling Wyatt has identified the necklace. She said it “went missing” a few weeks ago. What an amazing coincidence. Our trophy collector at work again. Robert Poole clearly took things from whoever he conned and redistributed them: some kind of power game. And that’s not even the best bit. You knew, didn’t you? Though fuck knows how. The dirt on the necklace was blood. Robert Poole’s blood.’ There was a pause. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? It means we can charge Frank Wyatt.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘What it means is you can’t charge Frank Wyatt.’
‘Joanna,’ said Frieda, ‘where else did Dean like to go? Apart from Margate.’
‘It’s in the book. Can I have another beer?’
‘Of course. I’ll get one in a minute. I’ve read the book.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘I thought it was extremely interesting.’
‘Fishing. He liked to go fishing. Anywhere – canals and flooded gravel pits and rivers. He could sit there all day with his tin of maggots. Drove me mad.’
‘What happened to his fishing rods?’
‘I sold them on eBay. I didn’t say who they’d belonged to.’
‘Anywhere else, any particular town?’
‘We didn’t travel much. When he was a kid, he said he and his ma used to go to Canvey Island.’
‘OK.’
‘Why? Why d’you need to know?’
‘I’m tying up loose ends,’ said Frieda, vaguely.
Joanna nodded, as if satisfied. Frieda got her another beer and watched her as she drank it, froth on her upper lip.
‘I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve,’ she said, when she’d finished it. ‘After everything.’
‘You didn’t think we’d meet again?’
‘No. I’m in the new chapter of my life. That’s what my editor said to me. You belong to the old one.’
Forty-five
It was in the middle of the night when the voices came back. They started as a murmur that Beth could barely distinguish from the lapping of the water against the hull and the rustle of the trees by the bank and the spatter of rain on the roof. She knew the voices were coming for her and she tried to hide from their anger, shut them out by wrapping a pillow around her head, blocking her ears, but gradually the voices became clearer, then settled into one voice, harsh, heavy, deep, coming out of the darkness close by and surrounding her.
It was angry with her. It asked questions she couldn’t answer. It made accusations. It knew her secrets and her fears.
‘You let him down.’
‘No, I didn’t let him down.’
‘He went away and you forgot him.’
‘No, I didn’t forget him.’
The voice said terrible things to her, told her that she had done nothing, that she was nothing, that she was useless. She told him about the photographs and the documents but the voice just continued with its harsh accusations.
‘It’s the same. It’s always the same. I speak and you don’t listen.’
‘I do listen. I do listen.’
‘You’re nothing. You do nothing.’
Beth started crying and waving her head from side to side, banging it against the wooden wall above her bunk, anything to shut the voice out. Slowly, as the room grew lighter, the voice faded and left her aching, rubbing her tear-blotched face.
She got up and searched through Edward’s papers until she found the pages she wanted. She wasn’t nothing. She wasn’t useless. She stared at the words and stared at them, committing them to memory, saying them to herself over and over again in a sing-song voice. Then she fumbled through the cutlery drawer until she found what she wanted. The knife and the stone for sharpening it. She remembered, from when she was a child, her father in the kitchen telling her mother, ‘Women don’t understand.’ And then she’d hear the noise, the knife edge scraping against the grey stone with the hint of a spark. ‘This is how you sharpen a knife. This is how you sharpen a knife.’
Frieda took a deep breath before she made the call.
‘Frieda,’ Harry said.
‘You sound cross.’
‘You can tell that from just one word?’
‘But you are.’
‘Why would that be, Frieda?’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Where am I? I’m near Regent’s Park, with a client.’
‘Are you free?’
‘When?’
‘Now. For a quick lunch. I’ve got an hour.’
‘Nice of you to fit me in.’
‘I’d like to see you for lunch, if you have the time.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All right, then. Where?’
‘There’s a little place that’s quite near you – Number 9, Beech Street. Quite near my house. I can be there in ten minutes.’
‘I’ll get a taxi. One thing, though: I don’t really like being made a fool of.’
‘I understand that.’
‘Back to wearing dark clothes, I see.’
Frieda glanced down at what she was wearing, all blacks and sombre blues, and smiled. ‘I guess so.’
‘I liked what you were wearing last night.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You looked beautiful.’
She didn’t reply, but studied the offers chalked up on the board. Marcus came over to take their order. His eyes were bright with curiosity.
‘Goat’s cheese salad, please,’ she said briskly.
‘Same,’ said Harry.
‘And tap water.’
‘Same.’ He put his chin in his hands and studied her, thinking she looked tired. ‘So what happened?’ he asked.
‘You mean last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, Frieda.’
‘I’m not being coy. I want to be honest about it. I didn’t know in advance that I was going to leave like that. I just had to. I can’t really explain.’
‘You could have told me, though. I was waiting for you to come back and feeling idiotically happy. Then bit by bit I realized you’d deserted me and I was this stranger at a party who’d been dumped.’
‘I just couldn’t stay there.’
‘I thought …’ He stopped and gave an awkward smile. ‘I thought you liked me. Were coming to like me, at least.’
‘I do. I’m sorry I left you like that last night. It was wrong of me.’
Their salad arrived. Marcus winked at Frieda, who raised her eyebrows at him sternly.
‘Is it because of all the things that are going on?’ asked Harry, prodding his goat’s cheese with a fork. He didn’t really like salads. Or goat’s cheese. ‘With this investigation and all that you’ve had to go through, I mean. That woman who killed herself, I forget her name, and the newspaper articles and the general ugliness of it all. It must be tough.’
Frieda considered. ‘I sometimes think I made a mistake in getting involved at all,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not entirely sure what my motives were. I’ve always said, always believed, that you can’t solve the mess of the world, only the mess inside your own head. Now I’m interviewing suspects and wandering around crime scenes. Why?’
‘Because you know you’re good at it?’ suggested Harry.
‘I probably shouldn’t be talking about this to you. But I don’t know the rules for a police investigation. I don’t know where the boundaries are.’