‘What wedding?’
‘You know, the wedding. The royal wedding.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘But we make our way across, then round the edge of Buckingham Palace. The actual river flows under the palace. When I’m dictator and all the hidden rivers of London are exposed again, the palace will have to be demolished …’
‘A small price to pay.’
‘And then we get to Victoria, which is even worse than the bit around Grosvenor Square. It’s like a Fascist traffic island in the middle of a motorway and then a horrible street that’s like the back of a hotel, where the deliveries are made and the rubbish taken out. But then you walk down Aylesford Street to the river and that’s nice.’
‘Do you finally get to see the Tyburn?’
‘You’re not meant to,’ said Frieda. ‘It flows in a pipe under a house on the Embankment. But I once went round the side, climbed over the railing and down some metal steps on to the mud by the river at low tide. I sat by the outlet. After all that it was just a dribble. Hardly worth the trouble.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Sandy. ‘You remember all that.’
‘I do the walks in my head sometimes. To try to get to sleep. It doesn’t work.’
‘You should be a cabby,’ said Sandy.
‘Thanks.’
‘No, I’m serious.’
‘I’m serious, too.’
‘But don’t they have to do that … what’s it called? The Knowledge. The examiner asks them how to get from, I don’t know, Banbury Cross to the Emirates Stadium and they have to describe it street by street.’
‘I don’t think Banbury Cross is a real place.’
‘But you can do that. And they have special brains, don’t they, cabbies?’
‘The ones I meet don’t seem to have particularly special brains.’
‘But they do,’ said Sandy.
‘They have an enlargement in their mid-posterior hippocampus,’ said Frieda, ‘due to the enhanced neural activity in the region. And we’re finished. We can go home.’
‘That’s my kind of walk,’ said Sandy. ‘The kind you don’t need to get out of bed for. And you’re done.’
‘Except that poor Beth Kersey and Dean Reeve are still out there. We’re warm in bed and they’re out in the world.’
‘They’re not your problem,’ said Sandy. ‘They’re being dealt with.’
Fifty-one
During the next morning, Frieda was perfectly able to play the role of a therapist. She leaned forward in her chair, she asked appropriate questions, she took a tissue from the box and handed it to a weeping woman. She rearranged appointments. At the end of each session she took accurate notes and made brief plans for the future.
But all the time her mind was elsewhere. She had the feeling, which almost took her over, that something somewhere was wrong. Her first thought was that it was within her own mind. Working with Karlsson and the police had been a sort of drug to her, and now that it had been snatched away from her, she was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Was it all vanity? Was she missing the excitement and the attention? She remembered Thelma Scott, who had come to see her and offered her help, left her card. Frieda thought it might be time to start seeing a therapist again.
And she thought of Sandy. He was in London for work, but it was just a few weeks. In a month he would be back in New Jersey. What, really, were the reasons that had made it seem impossible for her to go with him? ‘We’re all afraid to acknowledge the freedom we really have.’ Someone had said that to her once. Was it Reuben? Or had she read it? Was she afraid to face up to her own freedom?
But mainly she thought of other things. Or, rather, she was aware of them. They were like strange noises outside in the darkness. She didn’t know whether they were calling her or coming for her. She felt an urge that she could hardly define but that was telling her just to get away, to go anywhere. At twelve o’clock, after the last session of the day, she went into the tiny bathroom she had next to the consulting room, poured herself a glass of water and drank it straight down, then another. After, she sat and finished her notes on the session.
She walked slowly back to her house. She didn’t feel hungry. Mainly she felt she needed to lie down, get some sleep. Pushing her front door open, she saw the normal pile of letters. She picked it up. It was mainly junk mail; there was a gas bill, an invitation to a conference and, finally, a letter with no stamp, which must have been delivered by hand. There was nothing written on the envelope except her name in a vaguely familiar hand. Yes, Josef. She wondered why Josef would push a letter through her door instead of coming to see her. Had she been pushing him away? Him, too? Well, yes. She remembered their hasty words at Sasha’s party. There was something he had wanted to tell her and she had rebuffed him. She tore the envelope open and read the letter:
Dear Frieda,
Sorry. You are cross I know. Sorry for that. I try to talk to you. Here is paper from Mrs Orton. She want to burn it. I say I show to you. Sorry. I see you soon maybe.
Your best,
Josef
Frieda looked at Mary Orton’s will. For just a few seconds she stood in furious thought, staring at the wall.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said suddenly, ran through to the living room, found her notebook and flicked through the pages. She found Mary Orton’s number and dialled it. The phone rang ten times, fifteen times. She rang off and just stood in her room for almost a minute, paralysed with indecision. She pushed the notebook into her pocket and ran out of the house. She hailed a taxi in Cavendish Street and gave the driver Mary Orton’s address. He pulled a face.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘What way shall we go, do you reckon?’
‘I’m not the taxi driver,’ Frieda said. ‘What about Park Lane, Victoria and then south of the river? Everywhere’ll be jammed this time of day anyway.’
‘All right, love,’ said the driver, and pulled away.
Frieda dialled another number. She’d wanted Karlsson, but Yvette answered.
‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ she said.
‘That’s fine. Is Karlsson there?’
‘He’s not available.’
‘I need to speak to him. It’s really, really important.’
‘I can get a message to him.’
Frieda contemplated her phone. She felt like banging it on the floor of the taxi. ‘Perhaps you can help,’ she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. ‘I just got a message from Josef. My friend, a builder, who was helping Mary Orton with her house. Mary Orton made another will. She left a third of everything to Robert Poole.’ There was a silence. ‘Yvette, are you there?’
‘Sorry, Frieda, didn’t you get the memo? You’re not working with us any more.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? This will changes everything. I think it’s likely that Poole was going to kill Mary Orton, once he knew that he would inherit hundreds of thousands of pounds at her death.’
‘Well, it’s lucky he’s dead instead, then.’
‘But Beth Kersey isn’t.’
‘It’s all right, Frieda. We’re guarding the parents.’
‘The parents were never in danger. I talked to Lorna Kersey. Beth never threatened them. She tries to do things for people, what she thinks they want. It’s when she does that, or when people try to stop her, that she turns violent. Very violent. You need to arrange protection for Mary Orton.’
‘That will only meant anything when Poole was alive.’
‘No. Don’t you see? She would try to carry out his wishes. And if he wished Mary Orton dead – Yvette, will you tell Karlsson what I’ve told you?’
There was another pause. ‘I’ll pass on your concern. But, Frieda, can’t you just give this a rest? We’ve been shafted by that bastard Newton and we’re trying to pick up the pieces. The case is over. Please. I’m sorry it happened this way, but we’ve got our own problems.’