‘What do you mean?’ said Karlsson, twisting his head to look at her. ‘There wasn’t any.’
‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘They left everything relating to his victims, but there was no reference to Tessa at all. Pages had been torn out of Poole’s notebooks but the names of the victims were left there. Which suggested that the pages had been torn out by someone else.’
‘What it suggested to you is not evidence,’ said Tessa’s solicitor.
‘You killed Robert Poole,’ said Karlsson. ‘You killed Janet Ferris.’
‘The coroner’s verdict was suicide.’
‘You killed Janet Ferris,’ repeated Karlsson. ‘And you tried to kill Michelle Doyce because you thought she knew something.’
There was a faint flicker in Tessa’s face.
‘She didn’t.’ Frieda leaned forward once more. ‘Michelle Doyce was no threat to you. She had nothing to tell me; I just let you and Harry believe that, God forgive me.’
‘That’s enough for now,’ said her solicitor, standing up.
‘You would have killed her, just in case,’ Frieda continued quietly. ‘You and your brother. How does it feel?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How does it feel to find out what you’re capable of?’
‘Enough. My client has nothing further to say.’
‘You’re going to have to think about that, Tessa. Over the years.’
Harry Welles was wearing a thick grey pullover and black jeans. It was the first time that Frieda had seen him casually dressed: he had always been in a suit or a smart jacket, carefully groomed and impeccable. She considered him: many people would think him an attractive man. He had the self-conscious charm of one who is confident of getting his own way. Olivia positively cooed when she talked of him.
She took her seat in the corner and met his eyes. His solicitor was a woman, young, trim and pretty, who gestured with her hands whenever she spoke, and sometimes tapped her pink-tipped fingers on the table.
He had no comment about the torture of Robert Poole, no comment about his murder, nothing to say about the planted evidence and the dumping of the body, silence over Janet Ferris’s death.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Karlsson. ‘You were caught in the act of attempting to murder Michelle Doyce. It’s cut and dried. You’re going down, you and your sister. You’ve got nothing to lose. Why not tell us? It’s your last option.’
‘As you say,’ replied Harry, pleasantly, ‘you don’t get it.’
‘You think nobody is quite as clever as you,’ said Frieda. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘I was wondering when you’d speak.’
‘You and Tessa think that you’re superior to everyone else and it makes you feel impregnable.’
‘It takes one to know one.’
‘And contemptuous.’
‘I wasn’t contemptuous of you, was I? On our little dates?’ He raised his eyebrows at her.
‘Our dates?’ Frieda gazed at him speculatively. ‘Do you want to know what I thought about them? I’ve been on dates with other men, and sometimes they were interesting, and sometimes they were embarrassing, and sometimes they were charged with possibility. With our dates, there wasn’t anything. It was like a performance. There was nothing behind the words.’
‘Fuck you. You won’t be so calm when everything comes out. You like your privacy, but I know things, Frieda. You’ll be surprised by the things I know.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I know about your family, your father, your past.’
Karlsson stood up, with a violence that sent his chair skidding across the floor. ‘As your solicitor should have said, this interview is over.’
He turned off the tape recorder, then went to the door and held it open for Frieda. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then looked at Harry for the last time.
‘You called him Bob,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You asked about Bob Poole when we were in the pub. That was stupid of you, don’t you think? After that I knew for certain. One word, Harry. One syllable.’
Then she left the room, her chin raised.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Karlsson.
‘I’m fine.’
‘That stuff he said about –’
‘I said, I’m fine. It’s all right. It’s over.’
‘You’re sure.’
‘But there’s something else.’
‘Go on.’
‘Dean Reeve. Hear me out. I know he’s alive. I think I sense him sometimes. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m in danger.’
She didn’t go straight back to the hospital but took the bus to Belsize Park and walked towards the Heath. After a long winter’s corridor of darkness and unyielding cold, spring was arriving – in the new warmth of the air, in the daffodils that were everywhere. The sticky buds were just beginning to unfurl on the horse-chestnut trees. After the ice and the darkness, balmy days would arrive, long evenings and soft mornings.
She rang the bell, waited, rang again.
‘What?’ said the voice on the intercom, sounding cross.
‘Dr Berryman? It’s Frieda Klein.’
‘It’s Sunday. Don’t you ever bother to ring ahead?’
‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’
‘You are talking to me.’
‘Not like this. Face to face.’
There was an exaggerated sigh, and then he buzzed her up. She followed the stairs to the top flat, where he was waiting by the open door. ‘I was playing the piano,’ he said.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not much progress.’
‘I’ve come about Michelle Doyce.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any developments?’
‘Yes. You and I are going to make sure she is put in a more appropriate institution, where she is properly cared for and can be surrounded by the things she loves.’
‘We are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Not because she is a medical curiosity but because she’s in distress and she is our responsibility.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Frieda nodded at him. ‘It was you who gave her the teddy, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Pink, with a heart stitched on to its chest.’
‘The shop had a lousy selection.’
‘Don’t worry – I won’t tell anyone. You don’t know how much trouble it caused,’ said Frieda. ‘But it was a nice thing to do. And it helped, in a way.’
As she walked down the stairs, she heard the sound of badly played Chopin behind her.
Forty-eight
‘Did you see the news today?’ Yvette asked Munster. ‘Money for the police is being cut by twenty-five per cent. How the hell are we going to manage that? I’ll probably be working at McDonald’s in six months. If I’m lucky.’
‘It’s about efficiency,’ said Munster. ‘Cutting bureaucracy. Frontline services won’t be affected.’
‘Crap,’ said Yvette. ‘The bureaucracy is me, sitting here trying to prepare a file for the CPS. How’s that going to be cut? That’s what that idiot Jake Newton was here for, wasn’t it? Looking for who to cut. Where is he, by the way?’
‘I suppose he’s writing his report, just as we’re writing ours. Speaking of which, we’ve got to explain these pictures for our report.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Yvette. ‘I was hoping someone else would deal with them. It’s like, I don’t know, like an old sweater. A bit of wool comes loose and you think you’ve sorted it but then something’s gone wrong with the sleeve. What I can’t understand is that you’ve killed someone, you’ve got the body dangling in front of you and you start rearranging the pictures. And moving furniture around. Is this just some crazy theory of Frieda Klein’s? Couldn’t they have just moved two of the pictures? Take the big one to cover the patch, move the furniture. Replace the smallest picture with the one they’d brought. Wouldn’t that be simpler?’