Tuesday's Gone

Forty-two

‘Are you ready for this?’ said Karlsson.

‘How do you mean?’ said Frieda.

‘I’m just trying to be encouraging. Wyatt’s got his lawyer with him. Don’t let him put you off.’

‘Put me off what?’

‘Nothing,’ said Karlsson. ‘I didn’t mean anything. Just be yourself. Remember, this is what you do, what you’re good at.’

‘What you want,’ said Frieda, ‘is for me to get Frank Wyatt to confess to killing Robert Poole.’

Karlsson held up his thumb and first finger, almost touching. ‘We’re this close to having the evidence to charge him. This close. But, yes, it would be helpful. I should warn you. I’ve just spent an hour with him. I dangled the idea of a manslaughter charge in front of him. I said he might even get a suspended sentence. But he’s not biting. So, it would be nice if you could work your magic on him.’

‘I’m interested in talking to him,’ said Frieda. ‘But I don’t want you to get your hopes up.’

‘No pressure,’ said Karlsson, as he opened the door and led her into the interview room. Frank Wyatt was sitting at a table. The jacket of his grey suit was draped over the back of his chair. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt. Beside him was a man dressed in a suit and tie. He was middle-aged, and not so much balding as thinning. His pale scalp showed through his short dark hair. As the door opened, they drew apart from each other, as if they had been caught saying something embarrassing.

‘Mr Joll,’ said Karlsson, ‘this is my colleague, Dr Klein.’ He waved Frieda towards the chair opposite the two men, then went and stood to one side, slightly in the background, so that Frieda felt he was looking over her shoulder, checking on her. As Frieda arranged herself on the chair, Karlsson stepped forward and pressed a button on the sound recorder on the table. She saw a digital counter but she couldn’t read the figures.

‘This is a resumption of the interview,’ said Karlsson, sounding slightly self-conscious. ‘We’ve now been joined by Dr Frieda Klein. Mr Wyatt, I’d like to remind you that you’re still under caution.’

He nodded at Frieda, then stepped back behind her, out of her sight. Frieda hadn’t really thought about what she was going to say. She looked across at Wyatt. His eyes flickered. He was angry and defensive. Both his hands were resting on the table, but Frieda could see that they were trembling.

‘What did you think of Robert Poole?’ she said.

He gave a sort of laugh. ‘Is that the best you can come up with? What do you think?’

‘Do you want me to answer that?’ asked Frieda. ‘Do you want me to tell you what I think?’

The lawyer leaned across. ‘I’m sorry. Mr Wyatt is here as a courtesy. He has made it clear that he is eager to co-operate but, please, if you have relevant questions, then ask them.’

‘I’ve just asked a question,’ said Frieda. ‘And then Mr Wyatt asked me one. Now, he can answer mine or I can answer his.’

Joll looked at Karlsson as if appealing to his authority to a put a stop to all this. Frieda didn’t turn round.

‘What I’m meant to say,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you found out that Robert Poole had slept with your wife and that he’d stolen your money. He’d cheated you and made a fool of you. You had to get back at him.’

There was a pause.

‘Yes?’ said Joll. ‘Is there some question at the end of this?’

Frieda continued to gaze at Wyatt. He leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Is that what you wanted me to say?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And I don’t care, really.’

‘What I want to know is why, when you started to see what was going on, you didn’t confront your wife. Why didn’t you talk to her instead of hiding your feelings away and brooding over them?’

Now Wyatt leaned forward, his head in his hands. He mumbled something.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘I couldn’t make that out.’

He looked up at her. ‘I said, it was complicated.’

‘You found out, but you couldn’t talk to your wife about it. So what did you do?’

Wyatt looked uneasily around, over Frieda’s shoulder at Karlsson, at Joll. She felt he was avoiding her gaze.

Suddenly Karlsson spoke. ‘You confronted him, didn’t you?’

Wyatt didn’t reply.

‘Well?’ Karlsson’s tone hardened.

Wyatt looked at the floor. ‘I talked to him,’ he said, in a low voice.

‘Stop this,’ Joll said. ‘I need a moment alone with my client.’

Karlsson gave a thin smile. ‘Of course.’

Outside, Karlsson broke into a grin. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘If his lawyer’s got any sense, he’s telling him to confess.’ He glanced at Frieda and frowned. ‘You should be enjoying this. You know, the thrill of the chase.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a chase to me,’ she said.

After a few minutes, they had resumed their positions. For Frieda it felt artificial now, as if they were all actors, resuming a rehearsal after a break for tea.

‘Mr Wyatt would like to explain,’ said Joll.

Wyatt coughed nervously. ‘I talked to Poole about the money.’

‘I bet you did,’ said Karlsson.

‘When I asked him about it, it was more complicated than I expected.’ Wyatt was speaking in a low, miserable tone. ‘You’ve heard about him. When he talked about the money, it sounded convincing, or sort of convincing. He talked about his business plans. We ended up having a drink. It almost felt like I was the one in the wrong.’

‘Where was this?’ asked Karlsson.

‘At our house. My wife was out. She didn’t know – didn’t know I knew.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us about the meeting before?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Wyatt. ‘It was difficult to explain.’

‘That’s true,’ said Karlsson. ‘And you haven’t managed to explain it. Frieda? Is there anything you want to say?’

‘I want to go back to my original question,’ she said. ‘What do you think of Robert Poole now?’

‘I don’t know that I can answer that,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what does it matter what I think?’

‘It does matter,’ said Frieda. ‘Some people would say that you couldn’t do anything worse to a man than what he did to you.’

‘Thank you for that,’ said Wyatt. ‘Is that what they pay you for?’

‘What interests me,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you really don’t seem all that angry with him.’

Now Wyatt became wary, uneasy, as if Frieda were laying a trap for him to walk into. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘What did you mean when you said that talking to Poole was complicated?’

‘I meant just what I said.’

Frieda left a silence before speaking and looked at Wyatt closely. ‘I never met Poole,’ she said. ‘I’ve only heard about him. But it sounds to me as if when people met him they thought he recognized them, that he knew them. And that can be uncomfortable.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I wonder,’ said Frieda, ‘whether you really feel that in some strange way you almost deserve what he did to your wife. I was going to say did to you, but that’s not what you feel, is it?’ She left another silence. ‘What I’m wondering is whether you feel that Robert Poole was looking after your wife in a way that you hadn’t been doing for a while.’

Wyatt swallowed nervously. He flushed. ‘That sounds a bit pathetic.’

‘I don’t think it’s pathetic at all,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you think it’s possible that when you learned about what Robert Poole had done, even when you learned he’d been sleeping with your wife, you didn’t feel all that angry? A man is supposed to feel angry with the man who has slept with his wife, but it wasn’t quite like that, was it? Or not only like that.’ Now Wyatt was staring at her blankly. ‘I believe that you were confused. You were humiliated, of course. Maybe you had some fantasy of revenge. But I believe you’re a thoughtful man, and mainly you thought about your marriage, about your children. Perhaps you wondered how could you have let things get that bad.’

When Wyatt spoke it was in little more than a whisper. ‘What’s your point?’

‘You’d gone to sleep in your marriage,’ said Frieda. ‘Robert Poole showed you something. Maybe he even woke you up.’

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Wyatt, slowly. ‘Everything was a lie, everything I’d believed in.’

‘Have you talked to your wife about that feeling?’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘A bit. It doesn’t make much sense to me, so it’s hard to talk about it to someone else.’

‘You should try.’

Joll coughed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m not clear about the relevance of this.’

‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘I agree. I think we can stop for the day.’

As they left the interview room, he gestured at Frieda to follow him.

‘What was that?’ he said. ‘We had him. We were on the verge of getting him to plead. What was all that? Where was the old Frieda?’

Frieda looked at him with a curious expression. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have met him?’

‘Who?’

‘Robert Poole.’

Karlsson seemed to be having trouble speaking. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. And nor should you, Frieda – because he’s dead and beyond your attempts to understand him or rescue him or change what happened.’

Chloë was waiting. Frieda noticed that she had washed her hair and put on a clean white shirt over her miniature stretchy black skirt. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and looked vulnerable and childlike. There wasn’t any sign of Olivia.

‘Tapas OK? asked Frieda.

‘I don’t eat meat any more.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘And only sustainable fish.’

‘Fine.’

‘There aren’t many of them.’

The restaurant was only a few minutes away, in Islington, and they walked there in silence. It had been raining earlier and the car headlights wavered in the long shallow puddles. Only after they’d taken their seats at a rickety wooden table by the window did Frieda speak.

‘Did you get to school today?’

‘Yeah. I said I would.’

‘Good. Was it all right?’

Chloë shrugged. Her face was slightly puffy, thought Frieda, as though she had cried a great deal. Her arms were covered by her shirt, so she couldn’t see if she’d been cutting herself again.

They ordered squid, roasted bell peppers, a Spanish omelette and a plate of spring greens. Chloë cut a tiny squid ring in half and then in half again, put it into her mouth and chewed very slowly.

‘Let’s take one thing at a time,’ said Frieda. ‘School.’

‘What about it?’

‘You did really well in your GCSEs. You’re bright. You say you want to be a doctor …’

‘No. You say that.’

‘Do I? I don’t think so.’

‘Anyway, people do. Adults. My dad. Teachers. There’s this road you’re expected to be on. You’re supposed to do your GCSEs and then your A levels and then you go to uni and then you get a proper job. I can see my whole life in front of me like a great slab of tarmac. What if I don’t want it?’

‘Don’t you want it?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stabbed her fork into the bright green pepper and juice spurted out. ‘I don’t know what the point of any of it is.’

‘You’ve had a hard time, Chloë. Your father left –’

‘You can use his name, you know. He’s called David and he’s your brother.’

‘OK. David.’ Even saying the name left a nasty taste in her mouth. ‘And Olivia has a new boyfriend.’

‘Guess where she is now,’ said Chloë.

‘I suppose she’s with Kieran.’

‘Wrong. Guess again.’

‘I can’t,’ said Frieda, uneasy under Chloë’s interrogation.

‘It’s that accountant or whatever he is. The one you brought round.’

‘I didn’t bring him round.’

‘I know what’s going on,’ said Chloë.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know I’m just a teenager, but even I can see that it’s really about you.’

‘I don’t even know where to start with that,’ said Frieda.

‘I can see the way he looks at you. He’s using my mother as a way to impress you. What do you think of him?’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘Auntie Frieda, you’ve got a really bad habit of always answering a question with another question.’

Frieda smiled. ‘It’s lesson number one in therapist school,’ she said. ‘It’s the way of avoiding being put on the spot. So that whatever your patient says to you, you just say, “What do you mean by that?” And then you’re off the hook.’

‘But I’m not your patient. And you’re not off the hook.’

‘We were talking about your mother.’

‘All right then, let’s talk about my mother,’ said Chloë. ‘I think she doesn’t care about me.’

‘I think she cares a lot, Chloë. But, you know, she’s not just your mother, she’s a woman who feels she’s been humiliated, who’s worried about the direction of her own road, if you like, and who’s just met a new man.’

‘So? She’s still meant to be my mum. She can’t just behave like a teenager herself. That’s supposed to be me. It feels scary sometimes. Like there’s no solid ground for me, so that everything shifts under my feet.’

This was so exactly what Frieda felt about Olivia that she took a moment to answer. ‘You’re right. And maybe you and I could talk to her about it, try to explain what you’re feeling and draw up some ground rules. But give her a chance to change as well. Leave doors open. She can be good at acknowledging when she’s wrong.’

‘Why should I give her a chance when she doesn’t even notice me?’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t think it, I know it. She’s so wrapped up in her own mess, she can’t see mine. I get home and I don’t know what I’ll find. Sometimes she’s drunk. Sometimes she’s crying. Sometimes she’s hyper and wants to rush out to the shops with me to buy me ludicrously expensive clothes or something. Sometimes she’s shouting at me about Dad and what a wanker he is. Sometimes she’s in the bath and she doesn’t even wash it out after she’s used it – she leaves hair and tide marks all over it. It’s disgusting. I have to clear up after her. Sometimes she cooks and sometimes she forgets. Sometimes she wakes me up in the morning for school and other times she doesn’t. Sometimes she’s all over me, hugging me and telling me I’m her precious darling or something, and sometimes she snaps at me for no reason. Sometimes Kieran’s there – actually, it’s best when he is. He’s calm and kind and he talks to me. She doesn’t ask about my work, she doesn’t open letters from school, she forgot to go to my last parents’ evening. She couldn’t care less.’

Frieda listened while Chloë talked and talked as though the floodgates had at last been opened to a gush of fear and wretchedness. She didn’t say much, but anger swelled inside her until she could barely contain it. Privately she made plans: she would talk to Olivia and make her see the consequences of her disordered life on her daughter; she would go with Chloë to talk to her teachers and draw up a plan of work; she would – this last resolution made her feel slightly dizzy, as if she was peering over a cliff edge – talk to her brother David.

Half a mile along Upper Street, in a new wine bar that had been extensively refurbished so that it looked as if it had been there unchanged since the nineteenth century, Harry was topping up Olivia’s wine glass. She took a sip.

‘It seems a bit cold,’ she said. ‘For a red wine.’

‘I think it’s meant to be cool,’ Harry said. ‘But I can get them to warm it up for you.’

Olivia took another sip, more of a gulp. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure you’re right.’

‘You know what they say, white wine is always served too cold and red wine too warm.’

‘No,’ said Olivia. ‘I didn’t know they said that. I just drink it, I’m afraid.’

‘Which is the right attitude,’ said Harry. ‘But what I’m really here to talk about is this.’ He put a folder on the table and pushed it across to her. ‘I’ve gone through everything. I’ve looked at your accounts and credit-card bills. I’ve drawn up a plan for you, made some suggestions. The situation isn’t as bad as you told me. And I’ve found some standing orders you’ve been paying for services you no longer get. I’ve written some letters for you to reclaim the overpayments, so you should get a bit of a windfall.’

‘Really?’ said Olivia. ‘That’s amazing. But I must say, I feel a bit embarrassed by all of this. I’ve dealt with my affairs for years by not opening letters or throwing documents away without looking at them and hoping for the best. And now you know all my most shameful secrets.’

‘That’s my job,’ said Harry. ‘Sometimes I feel a financial adviser ought to be like an old-fashioned priest. Your client, or parishioner, or whatever, has to confess everything, all the sins and omissions and evasions and then –’

‘And then you can give me absolution?’ said Olivia.

Harry smiled. ‘I can show that once you get everything into the open, look at all the figures, it’s not so bad. What causes problems is when you have secrets, when you don’t face up to things.’

‘It’s awful, though,’ said Olivia. ‘You’ve done so much for me and I didn’t … I can’t …’ She started to blush and covered her confusion by taking an even deeper gulp of wine.

‘That’s all right,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve been clear from the start. Frieda is paying for this and, between you and me, I’m doing it at a reduced rate.’

‘I don’t see how you can make a living, if you keep doing favours like this.’

‘It’s for my sister. She was helping Frieda and I’m helping Tessa.’

‘I didn’t know Tessa was such a friend of Frieda’s.’

‘They only just met,’ said Harry. ‘But Frieda’s the sort of person you hit it off with.’

Olivia gave a knowing smile. ‘Yes, isn’t she?’ she said.

Harry laughed. ‘I’ve got no ulterior motives,’ he protested. ‘I promise.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Olivia. ‘I believe it. So what do you make of my sister-in-law? You’re intrigued, aren’t you? Admit it.’

Harry held up his hands. ‘Of course I admit it. I’ve got to know Frieda and spent time with her but I still don’t really know what makes her tick.’

‘And you think I do?’

‘I can’t help noticing that you were married to Frieda’s brother and you had what I take to be a troubled break-up.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Yet Frieda has stuck by you instead of her brother.’

Olivia picked up her glass but put it down again without drinking from it. ‘Maybe she feels she needs to keep an eye on her niece. Sometimes I’ve not been the most stable parent in the world.’

‘What about her brother?’

Olivia ran a finger round the rim of her glass. ‘I’ve never been able to get it to make that sound,’ she said, then looked drunkenly thoughtful. ‘Frieda has a very complicated relationship with her family.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘I get the impression she doesn’t like being quizzed about her private life.’

‘She scared me when I first met her,’ said Olivia. ‘Sometimes she’d look at me or listen to me and I’d get the feeling she was looking right into me, knowing everything about me, all the things I didn’t want anyone to know. Like you, when you saw all my papers and cheque books that I’d kept hidden. I even used to wonder whether she had contempt for me. But when David left, I stopped hearing from quite a few people that I’d thought of as friends, but Frieda was there, admittedly sometimes being sarcastic or silent the way she can be, but she did things that were necessary. Or mostly necessary.’

‘Why does she do all this stuff with the police?’ asked Harry. ‘She’s been attacked, she’s been written about in the papers. Why does she put herself through it?’

Now Olivia took another gulp of wine and Harry topped up her glass once more. ‘Thanks. Is this how you normally meet with your clients? I hope not. Anyway, the thing is, when I decide to do something it’s because I know I can do it, and it won’t be too demanding and it won’t give me any grief. The basic way to understand Frieda is to look at me and then think the opposite. I don’t know why Frieda does these things, and when I hear that she’s done something, I never understand why. I don’t know why she helps me. I certainly don’t know why she puts herself through the purgatory of trying to keep Chloë on the straight and narrow.’ Another gulp of wine. Her voice was thickening now, as if her tongue was just slightly too large for her mouth. ‘For example. What was I saying?’ She paused for a moment. ‘Oh, yes. The newspaper article. I saw that, and if it had been about me I would have crawled into a hole and pulled the hole in after me. Whereas, Frieda, Frieda, she’s like one of those animals, a badger or a stoat. If you mess with their den, they become dangerous and … Well, I’m exaggerating. I’m making her sound feral. But she’s stubborn and bloody-minded. In a good way. Ninety-nine per cent of the time. Or ninety-five.’

Harry waited a moment. ‘I think Frieda has secrets,’ he said. ‘I mean, she’s someone with a hidden grief. Do you know what I mean?’

Now there was a long pause. Harry felt that Olivia was suddenly reluctant to meet his eyes. ‘It looks like you do know what I mean,’ he said. ‘And, as you can tell, I’m falling for her. I’d like to know.’

Finally she looked round. ‘Well, you know what happened with her father?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’

After Beth had finished with the photographs, there were his notes. There were pages and pages of them, and at first it was hard to make sense of what she was reading. Sometimes they seemed like short stories, and then they became lists – lists of odd things. Exercises to do to lose weight; plants and where to get them from. Some things had a neat tick by them, or were crossed off. There were figures but she couldn’t make any sense of those so after a while she stopped trying, although she knew that some of the numbers were quite long and had pound signs in front of them. Bit by bit she realized that she was reading about different people. They had names, addresses, dates of birth, relatives, jobs.

He had written about her parents and he had put down all the things they liked and didn’t like, all their hobbies, the charities they subscribed to and the events they attended. He had even done the same for her sisters. He had drawn a map of the house and garden, putting in the studio shed at the end where her mother played her cello sometimes and where her father kept his paints. She hadn’t grasped how closely he had listened to her and it made her eyes prick with tears to know that even when he’d seemed aloof he was thinking of her and looking out for her. He had left this for her, Beth thought, as a gift, and he had gone to such a lot of trouble – but why? She stared and stared at the words, until the lights in her eyes flickered and made her dizzy. She knew she had to find some food, make herself stronger.

She crawled out of the hatchway, her cheeks scraping against the metal rim of the opening. She hadn’t been out for a while and her body felt stiff, as though it had hardened into crookedness. She made herself jog up and down on the spot for a while, feeling how pain knifed in her chest and bounced up and down in her skull. Like those tennis balls she used to bounce on her tennis racket, counting up, trying to beat her record. When was that? She could almost see her fat child’s knees and the yellow sun, like a yolk, in the sky, but now everything was dim and dark and ragged, and the water was oily and when she walked, her body slid about on the muddy path.

She reached a boat she knew was inhabited. She wasn’t being careful enough, but perhaps it didn’t matter so much any more, because he was gone and everything was over, except the thing she had to do in his name. In his name. Like a disciple.

The lights were off and the boat felt deserted. There were bikes chained to the top, and when she scrambled on to the deck, the chains rattled and she lay quite still for a moment, flat against the icy wet wood, but nobody came. She pulled at the hatch and it creaked open, and she lowered her body into the snug interior. It was much, much nicer than hers. It was warm, neat, there was a good smell to it, of clean bodies and fresh food. You could call it a home. You couldn’t call hers a home. It was a hole. A dank ghastly pit. There was still enough light outside to see the shapes of things, and she found the small fridge and pulled it open. Milk. She took that out. Spreadable butter. Two wholemeal rolls. And there was half a chicken under shrink wrapping. Half a chicken. Golden skin. Plump thighs. Her mouth filled with saliva and she lifted the wrapping, tore off a piece of meat, stuffed it into her mouth and swallowed it almost without chewing. Blood roared in her head and she thought she might be sick. She tore another piece and pushed that in too. Her gashed lip hurt and her throat hurt and her stomach shrieked.

There was a sudden sound from the front of the boat, through the little closed door, and she froze, though fear coursed and thundered through her body. Someone was humming. Someone was there. A few feet away. Probably sitting on the toilet or something. They’d come out, find her with her mouth full of chicken. Call the police. Everything would be over. Finished. Wrecked.

She grabbed the chicken and the milk, pushed the tub of butter into her pocket, held the plastic bag with the rolls in her teeth and tried to clamber one-handed through the hatch. Her shoelace got caught in the corner and she yanked her foot hard. The humming stopped. She hauled herself into the air and stumbled across the wooden roof, then leaped on to the path, dropping the chicken into the mud. She picked it up and ran, her breath in sobs, the plastic bag still clenched between her teeth. Please please please please. She pushed her way through a thick, overgrown hedge beside the path, feeling the nettles brush her hands and, when she crouched down, her neck and face. A shape was standing on the deck of the boat, staring out. It lifted a torch and swung the beam around. She could see it bob across the water, the shattered buildings on the other side, the path, the hedge. She felt it in her eyes so she shut them and didn’t breathe.

The light went off. The shape disappeared. She waited. Her ankle throbbed. She took the bag of bread out of her mouth and laid it in front of her. She could smell the chicken, which made her feel both sick and excited. She didn’t know how long she waited, but at last she crept back on to the path and hobbled towards her boat, clutching her booty.

She’d done it. Now she had food and she could make herself strong again, enough to see her through. After that, it didn’t matter. She would have kept her promise to him. She chewed another piece of muddy chicken, grit in her mouth. His trusty soldier, his servant, his beloved.