Blue Monday

Chapter Forty-five

The car couldn’t get Karlsson all the way to the canal. He stopped at a bridge that intersected it. An officer was waiting for him and led him down the steps to the towpath.

‘Who found the body?’ Karlsson asked.

‘Some old man walking his dog,’ said the officer. ‘He didn’t have a mobile and he couldn’t find a phone box, so he walked all the way home and he’s got a bad leg. It took an hour for someone to get there. If he’d had a mobile, maybe the paramedics could have done something.’

Ahead, Karlsson could see people on the towpath, kids mostly, trying to get a view. He and the officer stepped under the police tape and turned off the main towpath along the small inlet, a watery cul-de-sac. Once it had been a wharf for barges to tie up next to a factory. Now it was abandoned and desolate with bushes growing out of the cracked walls. Several officers were clustered ahead but there was no sense of urgency. One of them said something that Karlsson couldn’t hear and the others laughed. Further along the path Karlsson could see one of his team, Melanie Hackett, talking to an officer. He called her over.

‘They cut him down,’ she said. She gestured at a green tarpaulin on the ground. ‘You want a look?’

Karlsson nodded. She pulled the sheet back. He was prepared but he still flinched. The eyes stared upwards at nothing, the pupils enlarged; the swollen tongue protruded between the teeth. Hackett pulled the sheet back further. The rope was gone but the ligature mark along the neck leading behind the ear was clear to see.

‘He never even got changed,’ she said. ‘He’s wearing the same clothes he wore in the station.’

‘He never went home,’ said Karlsson.

Karlsson pulled a face. There was a distinct smell of shit. Hackett saw his expression and pulled the sheet back across.

‘It’s what happens when you hang yourself,’ she said. ‘If people knew that, it might put them off doing it.’

Karlsson looked around. There were some windows in the old factory but they had all been blocked up long ago.

‘Is the area overlooked from anywhere?’

‘No,’ said Hackett. ‘This bit of the canal’s quiet enough and nobody comes up here.’

‘I guess that’s why he came here.’

‘He knew the game was over,’ said Hackett.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘There was a letter in his pocket.’

‘What kind of letter?’

‘We’ve got it over in the box with the rest of the stuff we found in his pockets.’ She walked over to a small blue crate and pulled out a transparent folder. ‘He had a mobile phone, packet of cigarettes, lighter, a pen and this. It was in an envelope with nothing written on the front.’

She handed him the folder. Karlsson could read the note without opening the folder. He moved along the path out of the bridge’s shade. It was a small page torn out of a ring-backed notebook. He recognized the large looping handwriting from the signature he’d seen at the bottom of Reeve’s witness statement. It was short and easy to read:

I know what’s in store. I don’t want any of that. Tell Terry sorry. Sorry to leave you, doll. She knows she was always the one for me. She wasn’t part of any of this. She won’t stand up for herself. Tell her I did my best. Time to go.

Dean Reeve

Karlsson looked over at Melanie Hackett. ‘He’s left her to it,’ he said.

‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

‘Lean on her as hard as we can. She’s all we’ve got.’

Karlsson rang Frieda at home. He told her about the body, about the note.

‘Somehow I never imagined him sitting in a courtroom.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Karlsson. ‘Anyway, I said I’d keep you informed. So, you’re informed.’

‘And I’ll keep you informed,’ said Frieda.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Frieda. ‘If anything happens, I’ll get back to you.’

After Frieda put down the phone, she sat entirely still. On the table in front of her was a white earthenware coffee cup. The light through the window hit it so that one side was in shadow, a shadow that was almost blue. She had a pad of paper and a piece of charcoal and she was trying to capture it before the light moved, the shape of the cup changed and the image was lost. She looked at the cup and looked down at the page. It was wrong. The shadow on her drawing was like a shadow was meant to look; it wasn’t the shadow she was actually looking at. She ripped the page out and tore it in half and then in half again. She was wondering whether she could bear to start again when the phone rang. It was Sasha Wells.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she said. ‘I’ve got news for you.’

They arranged to meet in Number 9, which was just around the corner from where Sasha worked. As Frieda came into the coffee shop she looked at the tinsel and stars and little globes that had been hung around the room. Kerry greeted her and pointed at the window display. ‘You like our Santa Claus?’

‘I’d like to see him nailed to a cross,’ Frieda said.

Kerry looked shocked and disapproving. ‘It’s for the children,’ she said. ‘And Katya did it.’

Frieda ordered the strongest black coffee they could manufacture. When Sasha came in, Frieda thought how different she looked from the shaking, tremulous young woman she’d met a few weeks earlier. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean she was better, but she was wearing a suit, her hair was tied back, and she was dressed to face the world. When she caught sight of Frieda, her face broke into a wide smile. Frieda got up, introduced her to Kerry and ordered a herbal tea and a muffin for her. They sat down at the table together. Sasha’s smile turned to a look of concern.

‘When did you last sleep?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been working,’ Frieda said. ‘Well?’

Sasha took a bite of the muffin and a gulp of tea almost simultaneously. ‘I’m starving,’ she mumbled, with her mouth full, and then swallowed. ‘Well, I want to say first how grateful you should be to me. I’m in genetics but I don’t do testing. However, I know someone who knows someone and furthermore I dragged them out of a Christmas party and got them to do it in about thirty seconds. So basically we’ve done the test.’

‘What was the result?’

‘You’ve got to say, “Thank you.” ’

‘I’m very grateful, Sasha.’

‘Admittedly, I do owe you massively for punching that creep and risking going to prison but even so. You’re welcome. And at the risk of being extremely tiresome, I need to preface everything by saying that this is completely unofficial, between ourselves.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And I’m also going to say that I’m torn between wondering why you want to know about this piece of tissue paper and suspecting that it’s better if I know as little as possible.’

‘I promise you that it’s essential,’ said Frieda. ‘And it’s secret.’

‘And of course you’re a doctor, blah blah blah, and you know that there are legal issues here, issues of privacy, and that if part of any legal proceedings, this is entirely off the record.’

‘Don’t worry. That’s not a problem.’

‘What I mean is that it’s great to hear from you, and I’d been hoping we’d meet for a drink and a chat, but I really hope I’m not suddenly going to be asked to testify somewhere.’

‘No. I promise.’

‘So why did you want the mitochondrial DNA test?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’

‘I suppose so, in a way, but it’s very unusual.’

There was a pause. Frieda felt her voice tremble. ‘So what was the result?’

Sasha’s expression was suddenly serious.

‘It was positive.’

‘Ah.’ Frieda let her breath out in a long sigh.

‘So. That’s that,’ said Sasha, watching her closely.

‘What does that mean? What does it really mean? DNA tests are a balance of probability, aren’t they?’

Sasha’s expression relaxed. ‘Not in this case. You’re a medical doctor, aren’t you? You’ve studied biology. The mitochondrial DNA is passed unchanged through females. It matches or it doesn’t. In this case, it does.’

‘So I can be certain.’

‘I’m not sure I want to know, but where do these samples come from?’

‘You’re right, you don’t want to know. Thank you – thank you so much for your help.’

‘I didn’t help you.’

‘But you did.’

‘That was me being like a spy,’ said Sasha. ‘I mean, I’ve not kept the samples or the documentation. I’ve told you the result. That’s all.’

‘Of course,’ said Frieda. ‘I promised that from the beginning. I just needed to know.’

Sasha drank the last of her tea. ‘So what are you doing for Christmas?’

‘It just got a bit more complicated.’

‘That’s what I thought.’