‘That is absolute crap. That’s exactly what therapists like you do. You read things into what people say in order to give you power over them. And then if they deny it, it makes them look weak. What you’re objecting to is the fact that you got involved in an experiment that showed you up. From what I’ve heard, you and Dr Bradshaw have some kind of history, and if I’ve played some part in that, then I’m sorry. But don’t suck me into your mind games.’
‘It doesn’t look as if you live here,’ said Frieda. ‘You haven’t hung up a picture, or put a rug down, or even left a book lying around. You’re even dressed like you’re outside.’
‘As you can feel for yourself, it’s cold in here. When the man fixes the boiler, I promise you I’ll take my jacket off.’
Frieda took a notebook from her pocket, scribbled on a page, tore it out and handed it to Singh. ‘If you want to tell me anything about what you said – I mean anything apart from the stupid Hare checklist – you can reach me at that number.’
‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ said Singh, angrily, as Frieda left the house.
Ian Yardley’s flat was in a little alley just off a street market. It was down from the Thames but far enough away that the river couldn’t be seen. Frieda pressed a buzzer and heard an unintelligible noise from a speaker, then a rattling sound. She pulled at the door but it was still locked. More noise came from the speaker, then more electronic rattling, a click and the door was unlocked. Frieda walked up some carpeted stairs to a landing with two separate doors, labelled one and two. Door one opened and a dark-haired woman peered out.
‘I’m here to see –’
‘I know,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know what this is about. You’d better come in. Just for a minute, though.’
Frieda followed her inside. Yardley was sitting at a table, reading the evening paper and drinking beer. He had long curly hair and glasses with square, transparent frames. He was dressed in a college sweatshirt and dark trousers. His feet were bare. He turned and smiled at her.
‘I hear you’ve been hassling people,’ he said.
‘I think you called on my old friend Reuben.’
‘The famous Reuben McGill,’ he said. ‘I must say I was a bit disappointed by him. When I met him, he looked like someone who’d lost his mojo. He didn’t seem to respond to what I was saying at all.’
‘Did you want him to respond?’ said Frieda.
‘What rubbish,’ said the woman, from behind her.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said the Ian. ‘I’m not being a proper host. This is my friend, Polly. She thinks I shouldn’t have let you in. She’s more suspicious than I am. Can I offer you a drink? A beer? There’s some white wine open in the fridge.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Not while you’re on duty?’
Frieda began to ask some of the same questions she’d asked Rajit Singh, but she didn’t get very far because Polly kept interrupting her, asking what the point of all this was, while Ian just continued to smile, as if he was enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly he stopped smiling.
‘Shall I make things clear?’ he said. ‘If you’re here out of some faintly pathetic attempt at revenge, then you’re wasting your time. This was all cleared by the ethics committee in advance and we were indemnified. I can show you the small print, if you’re interested in reading it. I know it’s embarrassing when it’s demonstrated that the emperor has no clothes. If you’re the emperor. Or the empress.’
‘As I’ve tried to explain,’ said Frieda, ‘I’m not here to argue about the experiment, I’m –’
‘Oh, give us a fucking break,’ said Polly.
‘If you’ll just let me finish a sentence, I’ll ask a couple of questions and then I’ll leave.’
‘What do you mean, and then you’ll leave? As if you had any right to be here in the first place! I’ve got another idea.’ Polly prodded Frieda on the shoulder. It was close to where she was still bandaged and made her flinch slightly. ‘You’ve been made a fool of. So deal with it. And just leave, because Ian has nothing to say and you’re starting to harass him and to get on my nerves.’ She started shoving at Frieda as if she wanted to push her out of the flat.
‘Stop that,’ said Frieda, raising her hands in defence.
‘Time for you to go,’ shouted Polly, and pushed even harder.
Frieda put her hand on the woman’s chest and pressed her back against the wall and held her there. She leaned close so that their faces were only inches apart and she spoke in a quiet, slow tone. ‘I said “stop”.’
Yardley stood up. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said.
Frieda turned, and as she turned, she took her hand away, then stepped back. She wasn’t clear what happened next. She felt a flurry to the side of her. She sensed Polly flying at her and then stumbling over a low stool and falling heavily across it.
‘I can’t believe this,’ said Yardley to Frieda. ‘You come here and you start a fight.’
Polly started to struggle to her feet but Frieda stood over her. ‘Don’t you even think about it,’ she said. ‘Just stay where you are.’ Then she turned to Yardley. ‘I think Reuben understood you pretty well.’
‘You’re threatening me,’ he said. ‘You’ve come here to attack me and to threaten me.’
‘That hair story had nothing to do with you, did it?’ said Frieda.
‘What hair story?’
‘You’re too much of a narcissist,’ said Frieda. ‘You wanted to impress Reuben and he didn’t go for it.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve got what I came for.’
And she left.
Jim Fearby brought out a large map of Great Britain. There wasn’t room for it on the wall so he laid it out on the floor of the living room, with objects (a mug, a tin of beans, a book and a can of beer) on each corner. He took off his shoes and walked across the map, staring down at it and frowning. Then he stuck a flagged pin-tack to the spot where Hazel Barton’s body had been found; another where Vanessa Dale had been approached by the man in a car that had perhaps been silver.
He skewered her photograph onto the big cork noticeboard, next to Hazel Barton’s picture. Two doesn’t make a pattern – but it’s a start.
TWENTY-FIVE
The only patient Frieda still saw was Joe Franklin. Many of the rest were waiting for her to return, sending her emails asking when she thought she would be well enough. Some she worried about. They jostled at the edge of her consciousness, with their pain and their problems. A few she thought perhaps she would never see again. She had said that in two weeks, at the start of May, she would resume her old duties whatever her doctor might advise, but in the meantime, twice a week and often more, she went to her rooms in the mansion block in Bloomsbury. Today she had been grateful for the opportunity to leave her house because, at a quarter to eight that morning, Josef had arrived. Frieda had left him trudging back and forth from the van, his face beaming at her behind piles of boxes.
After her session with Joe, Frieda stood with her back to the neat room, the red armchair where she always sat, the muted charcoal drawing of a landscape on the wall, staring into the tangled space outside where foxes lurked, shrubs and wild flowers forcing their way up through the cracked earth. She was thinking or at least letting thoughts run through her mind. Her old life seemed far away, a ghost of itself. The woman who had sat in the armchair hour after hour and day after day receded as she pictured her. She had always thought that the centre of her life was in this room, but now it seemed to have shifted: Hal Bradshaw and his four researchers, Karlsson and his cases of death and disappearance, Dean Reeve somewhere out there watching her – all these had pulled her out of it.