‘I read about your daughter,’ he said. ‘It was a tragic case. I wanted to know whether you’d had any warning. Was she unhappy? Did she have trouble at school?’
‘She loved school,’ said the woman. ‘She had just started the sixth form. She wanted to be a vet.’
‘What was her mood like?’
‘Are you asking me whether Daisy ran away from home? The week after she … well, she was going on a school trip. She’d done a part-time job for six months to pay for it. You know, my husband’s at home here. He’s on disability. It broke him. We keep going over that evening. She was walking over to see her best friend. She always took a shortcut across the common. If only we’d driven her. We just go over and over it.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ said Fearby.
‘Yes, you can.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Fearby. ‘But have you got a photograph?’
‘I can’t give you one,’ said the woman. ‘We gave some to journalists at the time. And the police. We never got them back.’
‘Just to look at.’
‘Wait,’ said the woman.
He stood on the doorstep and waited. After a few minutes, there was the sound of the chain being unfastened. The woman handed him a photograph. He looked at the girl, a young and eager face. He thought, as he always did, of what was to come, what that face would witness. He noted the dark hair, something about the eyes. They were like a family, like a gang. He took out his phone.
‘Is that all right?’ he said.
The woman shrugged. He took a picture with his phone and handed it back to the woman.
‘So what are you going to do?’ said the woman. ‘What are you going to do about our Daisy?’
‘I’m going to find out what I can,’ said Fearby. ‘If I find out anything, anything at all, I’ll let you know.’
‘Will you find Daisy?’
Fearby paused. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘Then don’t bother,’ said the woman, and closed the door.
Frieda had been interested to meet the woman who had broken Rajit Singh’s heart, but when Agnes Flint opened the door of her flat, she thought she must have come to the wrong door. The young woman had a smooth, round face, with coarse brown hair swept messily back. She wore a black sweater and jeans. But she was saved from being nondescript by her large dark eyes and a slightly ironic expression. Frieda had a sense of being appraised.
‘I don’t know what this is about,’ she said.
‘Just give me a minute,’ said Frieda.
‘You’d better come in. I’m on the top floor.’
Frieda followed her up the stairs.
‘It looks a bit boring from the outside,’ Agnes said, over her shoulder. ‘But wait till you get inside.’
She opened the door and Frieda followed her in. They were in a living room with large windows on the far side.
‘I see what you mean,’ she said.
The flat looked over a network of railway tracks. On the other side was a warehouse and beyond that were some apartment buildings that marked the south bank of the Thames.
‘Some people hate the idea of living by the railway,’ said Agnes, ‘but I like it. It’s like living next to a river, with strange things flowing past. And the trains are far enough away. I don’t get commuters staring in at me while I’m in bed.’
‘I like it,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s interesting.’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’ There was a pause. ‘So you’ve been talking to poor old Rajit.’
‘Why do you call him that?’
‘You’ve met him. He wasn’t much fun when we were together.’
‘He was a bit depressed.’
‘I’ll say. Has he sent you to try to plead for him?’
‘Didn’t it end well?’
‘Does it ever end well?’ There was a rumble from outside and a train passed. ‘They’ll be in Brighton in an hour,’ Agnes said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? I mean, since you’ve come all the way to my flat.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘What are you doing here? When you rang up, I was curious. Rajit probably told you that he had difficulty taking no for an answer. He rang. He came round. He even wrote me letters.’
‘What did they say?’
‘I threw them away without opening them. So when you rang, I was kind of curious. I wondered whether he was sending women on his behalf. Like some kind of carrier pigeon. Are you a friend of his?’
‘No. I’ve only met him twice.’
‘So what are you?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
‘Did he come to see you as a patient?’
‘Not exactly.’
A smile of recognition spread across Agnes’s face. ‘Oh, I know who you are. You’re her, aren’t you?’
‘It depends what you mean by “her”.’
‘What’s this about? Is this some kind of complicated revenge?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging you. If someone made a fool of me like that, I’d fucking crucify them.’
‘But that’s not why I’m here.’
‘No? Then why?’
‘There was something Rajit said.’ Frieda saw herself from the outside, going from person to person reciting a fragment of a story that seemed increasingly detached from its context – an image that she couldn’t shake off, but that glinted, sharp and bright, in the darkness of her mind. She should stop this, she told herself. Return to the life she’d been in before. She felt Agnes Flint waiting for her reply.
‘Rajit wasn’t actually the student who was sent to me; that was someone else. But all the four researchers told the same story, one that supposedly demonstrated they posed a clear threat.’
‘Yeah, I read about it.’
‘In this story, there was an arresting detail, which Rajit said actually came from you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘About cutting his father’s hair – well, I guess, your father’s hair if it came from you originally and he changed it for his purpose.’
‘Cutting my father’s hair.’
‘Yes. The feeling of power and tenderness you got from that.’
‘This is freaking me out a bit.’
‘He said you told him the story when you were lying in bed together, and you were stroking his hair and telling him it needed cutting.’
‘Oh. Yes. Now what?’
Now what? Frieda didn’t know the answer to that. She said wearily, ‘So it was just a memory you had, a simple memory?’
‘It wasn’t my memory.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was something a friend once said to me. She told me this story about cutting hair. I don’t think she said it was her father’s, actually. Maybe it was her boyfriend’s or her brother’s or a friend’s. I can’t remember. I don’t know why I even remember her saying it. It was just a little thing and it was ages ago. It just kind of stayed with me. Weird to think of Rajit writing it into his spiel. Passing it on.’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, slowly. ‘So your friend told you and you told Rajit.’
‘A version of it.’
‘Yes.’
Agnes looked quizzically at Frieda. ‘Why on earth does it matter?’
‘What’s your friend’s name?’
‘I’m not going to tell you until you’ve answered my question. Why does it matter?’
‘I don’t know. It probably doesn’t.’ Frieda gazed into Agnes’s bright, shrewd eyes: she liked her. ‘The truth is, it bothers me and I don’t know why, but I feel I have to follow the thread.’
‘The thread?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lila Dawes. Her real name is Lily but no one calls her that.’
‘Thank you. How do you know her?’
‘I don’t. I knew her. We were at school together. Best friends.’ Again that ironic smile. ‘She was a bit wild, but never malicious. We kept in touch after she dropped out, when she was just sixteen, but not for long. Our lives were so different. I was on one road and she – well, she wasn’t on a road at all.’