Tuesday's Gone

Fifteen

Frieda hadn’t seen Josef for nearly two months. The last occasion had been shortly before Christmas when, in memory of the previous Christmas they had spent together, he had made some traditional Ukrainian food and carried it to her house, wrapped in white linen and placed inside a ribboned box, as a parting gift: little cakes made of wheat, honey and poppy seeds. She remembered him as he had been then, beaming with pride, expansive with generosity and full of solemn excitement. After many months of absence, he was returning to his country to visit his wife Vera and his two sons. His usually shaggy hair was cut short and he wore a new quilted jacket for the cold Ukrainian winter. He had bought his sons T-shirts saying ‘I love London’, small Union flags and snow domes with miniature London scenes inside.

It was a very different Josef who came to her door now. His hair was long, dirty and full of dust; he had the beginnings of a beard that looked like the unintended result of not bothering to shave. He was wearing an old pair of canvas trousers, held up with a plastic belt, and a thick jersey. Over it was that quilted jacket, but it was torn and filthy. His boots were cracked. His hands were chapped and blistered. There was a fading bruise on his neck and a plaster across his grimy forehead. Above all, his face was slack, his eyes were dull and he wouldn’t meet Frieda’s gaze: he stood in the doorway, twisting his woollen hat between his hands and shifting from foot to foot.

Frieda took his hand and pulled him into the hall, shutting the door behind them. She caught a thick whiff of body odour, tobacco and alcohol. She pulled off his jacket and hung it next to her coat. There were holes in the elbows of his jersey.

‘Do you want to take your shoes off,’ she said. ‘Then we can go through and sit down.’

‘I not stay.’

His English seemed to have deteriorated in the short time that he had been away.

‘I’ll make you tea.’

‘No tea.’

‘How long have you been back, Josef?’

He held up his palms in a familiar gesture. ‘Some weeks.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

Josef’s eyes lifted to her face then dropped again.

‘All your things are at Reuben’s. Your van’s there. Where have you been staying?’

‘Now? On site. In house that must be built. Is cold. But is roof.’

Frieda considered him. His entire body spoke of misery and defeat. ‘I want you to tell me what happened,’ she said gently. ‘But don’t worry – you don’t have to do it all at once. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here. I’m glad you’re back. So will Reuben be. His house needs you. And I need you.’

‘You only say.’

‘No, it’s true.’

‘I have no uses.’

‘Here’s the plan. I’m going to call Reuben and you’re staying there tonight. He has things wrong in his house. You can mend them. When you feel like it, you can tell me – or him – what’s happened. In the meantime, you’re going to sit in my kitchen, drink tea, and I have a question for you.’

Josef’s brown eyes stared at her for a moment. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why you help me? I am bad man, Frieda. Bad, sad man.’

Frieda put a hand under his elbow and steered him into the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and he lowered his body into it. She boiled the kettle and, while the tea was brewing, toasted two pieces of bread for him, which she spread with butter and honey. ‘There. Get that down you.’

He took a hot gulp of tea and his eyes watered. He picked up a piece of toast and she saw how his hand trembled.

‘Now. I need you to help me.’ She put the flyer in front of him, face down, and pointed to the letters. ‘If you had to guess, what do those letters mean?’

Josef put his toast back on the plate, dragged his sleeve across his mouth, and peered at the words. ‘String, straw, cord, stone.’

‘They’re things you could use in building. But why string and cord together? Karlsson said strawberry planting, but I don’t think so. He wasn’t giving it serious attention.’

‘Is easy.’

‘What?’

‘Is easy,’ repeated Josef. For the first time, his eyes looked brighter.

‘So?’

‘Is paint.’

‘Paint?’

‘Names of paint. Gloom colours – like colours in your working room. Pale, dim colours. String, straw, cord and stone. So.’

‘Oh,’ said Frieda. ‘Josef, you’re brilliant.’

‘I?’

‘What about those letters: C, SB, WL.’

‘Is easy,’ Josef said again. For a brief moment he sounded almost happy. He pointed a finger upwards: ‘C is ceiling.’ His finger moved like the hand on a clock. ‘WL is left wall. And …’ His finger moved down.

‘Skirting board,’ supplied Frieda. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘You are doctor, not builder.’

‘So someone was having their house painted.’ She looked at her watch. It was nearly half past four. ‘If we go now, we might get there before five. Will you come with me on an errand?’ He didn’t reply at once, so she added, ‘I need you to help me, Josef. Like you did before.’

It was beginning to get dark and the rain was turning to hail. Frieda thought that Josef looked like a large, helpless child as he trudged along the streets, his hat pulled low over his head and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his shabby trousers. She had called Reuben and told him that she and Josef would be there in the evening and he should make up the bed and perhaps put some baked potatoes into the oven.

‘Why we look?’ Josef asked now.

‘I’m trying to find someone. It’s a bit of a long story and I’ll tell you later.’

‘So how we look for walls of stone and straw?’

‘We can’t knock at every door of every house. But I thought if we see any external signs of building work we can knock at that door.’

‘So you take this road and I take that.’ Josef held up his phone. ‘I call you, you call me.’

Frieda was glad of these signs of engagement. She nodded, and they set off in different directions, met at the top of the streets without progress, and separated once more down another pair of parallel streets that led off from the high street and that Andy’s Pizzas flyers had apparently been delivered to.

Frieda was two thirds of the way along Tully Road when her mobile rang. ‘Josef?’

‘“Painting and Decorating, No Job Too Small”. Van here by me now, one tyre looks flat. Outside thirty-three Owens Close.’

‘Don’t move. I’ll be there.’

But there were no lights on in Owens Close and no one answered when Frieda rang the bell. She tried thirty-one, stood back from the door and waited. She heard footsteps and the door opened. A young man with a shaved scalp stuck his head out. She saw he was wearing a suit, and had a phone in his hand. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ she said, conscious of Josef hovering on the street behind her, ‘but I was hoping you could help me. Do you happen to have decorators with you?’

‘Yeah. Hang on, let me just finish this call. Sorry, Cas, I’ll call back, OK? There. Sorry, decorators. Yes. Doing us top to bottom. They’re in the front room at the moment, I think they’re just finishing up for the day. But why do you want to know? Do you live nearby? Want a bit of painting done, maybe, because if so I can’t honestly say I’d recommend –’

‘No. It’s hard to explain. I’m looking for someone and I think you can perhaps help me.’

‘Me? I don’t get it. Do you want to come into the hall? It’s getting a bit chilly out here. And, um, your friend.’

‘It’s OK. I won’t take long.’ Frieda stepped into the hall, which still smelt of fresh paint. She pulled the flyer out of her bag. ‘Do you recognize this?’

‘Well.’ The young man looked at her warily, as if she might turn out to be a nutcase. ‘It’s a flyer. Obviously. Andy’s Pizzas.’

‘Do you get them delivered here? The flyers, I mean, not the pizzas.’

‘Yeah. I think so – all sorts of junk comes through our letterbox.’

Frieda turned the leaflet. ‘And this.’

He squinted, frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s my writing. Or Cas’s. My wife. What is this?’

‘Are you using Straw, String, Cord and Stone on your walls.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I’m sure, actually. This is beginning to spook me out, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Sorry. There’s a drawing I’ve got here. Can you tell me if it reminds you of anyone?’

She took her drawing out of the A4 envelope she’d put it in and handed it to him. He stared at it. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘It bears a resemblance. There was a guy – he was going to do our decorating. Really keen, as a matter of fact. Nice guy. Very helpful. This looks a bit like him. And he wrote down the paints, now I come to think of it. But we never used him, if that’s what you’re going to ask. He just disappeared. Didn’t answer his phone or anything. Left us in the lurch. That’s why we got this lot to come.’

Frieda tried to keep her expression steady. ‘When did he disappear?’

‘Well – maybe two weeks ago, something like that. I don’t know exactly. Cas could probably be more accurate. Is there a problem? Has he done something?’

‘What was his name?’ She heard her own use of the past tense, but the young man didn’t notice.

‘Rob. Rob Poole.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘No. Nothing. Just his mobile number.’ He scrolled down on his phone and found it, jotted it on the back of Andy’s worse-for-wear flyer. ‘He’s not answering it, though – I must have left him half a dozen messages.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not exactly. Could I have your name as well, please, and your phone number?’

‘Why on earth?’

‘I think the police might want to talk to you about him.’

Reuben hadn’t put potatoes in the oven: he’d made a greasy, rich lasagne, garlic bread and a green salad. The smell greeted them when he opened the door, wearing an apron and his half-moon spectacles balanced on the end of his nose. With one swift glance, he took in the state of Josef, then stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulders.

‘Thank goodness you’re back,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think I was actually going to have to pay someone to mend my roof and assemble my bloody easy self-assembly chest.’

‘I not stay,’ Josef mumbled. ‘I just give hello and take my things.’

‘Can we come in?’ said Frieda. ‘It’s too cold to be standing out here.’

So, they bundled him inside, peeled off his jacket and shoes, and Reuben pushed a bottle of beer into his hands and took him to see where the leak came from, and somehow, ten minutes later, Josef was immersed in a scalding hot bath. From where they sat in the warm, fugged-up kitchen, Frieda and Reuben could hear him splashing and moaning.

‘What the fuck’s happened?’ Reuben asked.

Both of them instinctively looked across at the dog-eared photo stuck to Reuben’s fridge that Josef had put there more than a year ago, when he’d first moved into Reuben’s house: his dark-haired wife and his two dark-haired sons.

‘He was in Summertown, living on a building site.’

‘Why didn’t he say?’

‘He’s ashamed.’

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘It’s lucky I really do have a leaking roof.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well done for rescuing him.’

‘I didn’t. I called him up for advice on something.’

‘He’s here now, anyway.’

Frieda nodded, then said, ‘By the way, I’m going to Kathy Ripon’s funeral at the end of the week. I’ve been thinking a lot about her death, and about Dean Reeve. I have these disturbing dreams about him and they don’t go away when I wake.’

‘So he’s haunting you from beyond the grave?’

‘I wish.’

That night she was sick. It started with beads of sweat on her forehead and a horrible breathlessness, a taste in her mouth that wouldn’t go away, and even when she lay down, she felt dizzy, her stomach churning.

She managed to get to the toilet in time and knelt beside it, her eyes stinging, her body cold and sweating, vomiting, half sobbing and choking as she did so. She felt poisoned, every bit of her. But she had barely eaten anything, not for days and days, and soon there was nothing left to vomit, so she just retched and gasped, occasionally laying her forehead against the rim of the toilet, her knees sore on the hard floor and her hair sticky, her mouth foul, every bit of her unclean. She thought of hot baths, fresh sheets, lemon barley water, a cool hand against her hot cheek, and retched again. Wanting to die. She mustn’t die. He would come. That was all she knew or needed to know.