Tuesday's Gone

Fifty-one

During the next morning, Frieda was perfectly able to play the role of a therapist. She leaned forward in her chair, she asked appropriate questions, she took a tissue from the box and handed it to a weeping woman. She rearranged appointments. At the end of each session she took accurate notes and made brief plans for the future.

But all the time her mind was elsewhere. She had the feeling, which almost took her over, that something somewhere was wrong. Her first thought was that it was within her own mind. Working with Karlsson and the police had been a sort of drug to her, and now that it had been snatched away from her, she was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Was it all vanity? Was she missing the excitement and the attention? She remembered Thelma Scott, who had come to see her and offered her help, left her card. Frieda thought it might be time to start seeing a therapist again.

And she thought of Sandy. He was in London for work, but it was just a few weeks. In a month he would be back in New Jersey. What, really, were the reasons that had made it seem impossible for her to go with him? ‘We’re all afraid to acknowledge the freedom we really have.’ Someone had said that to her once. Was it Reuben? Or had she read it? Was she afraid to face up to her own freedom?

But mainly she thought of other things. Or, rather, she was aware of them. They were like strange noises outside in the darkness. She didn’t know whether they were calling her or coming for her. She felt an urge that she could hardly define but that was telling her just to get away, to go anywhere. At twelve o’clock, after the last session of the day, she went into the tiny bathroom she had next to the consulting room, poured herself a glass of water and drank it straight down, then another. After, she sat and finished her notes on the session.

She walked slowly back to her house. She didn’t feel hungry. Mainly she felt she needed to lie down, get some sleep. Pushing her front door open, she saw the normal pile of letters. She picked it up. It was mainly junk mail; there was a gas bill, an invitation to a conference and, finally, a letter with no stamp, which must have been delivered by hand. There was nothing written on the envelope except her name in a vaguely familiar hand. Yes, Josef. She wondered why Josef would push a letter through her door instead of coming to see her. Had she been pushing him away? Him, too? Well, yes. She remembered their hasty words at Sasha’s party. There was something he had wanted to tell her and she had rebuffed him. She tore the envelope open and read the letter:

Dear Frieda,

Sorry. You are cross I know. Sorry for that. I try to talk to you. Here is paper from Mrs Orton. She want to burn it. I say I show to you. Sorry. I see you soon maybe.

Your best,

Josef

Frieda looked at Mary Orton’s will. For just a few seconds she stood in furious thought, staring at the wall.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said suddenly, ran through to the living room, found her notebook and flicked through the pages. She found Mary Orton’s number and dialled it. The phone rang ten times, fifteen times. She rang off and just stood in her room for almost a minute, paralysed with indecision. She pushed the notebook into her pocket and ran out of the house. She hailed a taxi in Cavendish Street and gave the driver Mary Orton’s address. He pulled a face.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘What way shall we go, do you reckon?’

‘I’m not the taxi driver,’ Frieda said. ‘What about Park Lane, Victoria and then south of the river? Everywhere’ll be jammed this time of day anyway.’

‘All right, love,’ said the driver, and pulled away.

Frieda dialled another number. She’d wanted Karlsson, but Yvette answered.

‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ she said.

‘That’s fine. Is Karlsson there?’

‘He’s not available.’

‘I need to speak to him. It’s really, really important.’

‘I can get a message to him.’

Frieda contemplated her phone. She felt like banging it on the floor of the taxi. ‘Perhaps you can help,’ she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. ‘I just got a message from Josef. My friend, a builder, who was helping Mary Orton with her house. Mary Orton made another will. She left a third of everything to Robert Poole.’ There was a silence. ‘Yvette, are you there?’

‘Sorry, Frieda, didn’t you get the memo? You’re not working with us any more.’

‘That doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? This will changes everything. I think it’s likely that Poole was going to kill Mary Orton, once he knew that he would inherit hundreds of thousands of pounds at her death.’

‘Well, it’s lucky he’s dead instead, then.’

‘But Beth Kersey isn’t.’

‘It’s all right, Frieda. We’re guarding the parents.’

‘The parents were never in danger. I talked to Lorna Kersey. Beth never threatened them. She tries to do things for people, what she thinks they want. It’s when she does that, or when people try to stop her, that she turns violent. Very violent. You need to arrange protection for Mary Orton.’

‘That will only meant anything when Poole was alive.’

‘No. Don’t you see? She would try to carry out his wishes. And if he wished Mary Orton dead – Yvette, will you tell Karlsson what I’ve told you?’

There was another pause. ‘I’ll pass on your concern. But, Frieda, can’t you just give this a rest? We’ve been shafted by that bastard Newton and we’re trying to pick up the pieces. The case is over. Please. I’m sorry it happened this way, but we’ve got our own problems.’

‘Just tell Karlsson,’ Frieda said.

But the phone had gone dead. She tried Mary Orton’s number again but, as before, it rang and rang. Who else was there to ring? Was it possible that Josef was still working there? Or nearby? She rang him and went straight to voicemail. She stared out of the window. The traffic wasn’t as bad as it might have been. As they crossed the river, she rang Yvette again.

‘Have you called Karlsson yet?’ she said.

‘I’ve told you. I’ll contact him when I can. Now, please …’

The phone went dead again. Frieda stared at it. At first she felt dazed. There was nothing she could do. And then she thought of one thing she could do. What did it matter now anyway? She dialled 999.

‘Emergency services. Which service, please?’

‘Police.’

There was a click and a whirr, then another female voice. ‘Hello, police. What is the nature of the emergency?’

Frieda gave Mary Orton’s address. ‘I’ve seen an intruder.’

‘When was this?’

‘A couple of minutes ago.’

‘Can you give any description?’

‘No … Yes, I saw a knife. That’s all.’

‘We’ll arrange to send a car. Name, please.’

Frieda imagined what Karlsson or Yvette would think of this. She felt as if she had cut the last fraying bit of thread that attached her to them. But it was the things you didn’t do that mattered more than the things you did.

As the taxi turned into Mary Orton’s road, Frieda expected to see brightly coloured cars, flashing lights, but there was nothing. Jake Newton was right, she thought. Bloody hopeless. She handed a twenty-pound note to the driver.

‘I haven’t got any change,’ he said.

‘Just keep it.’

She walked towards the house. She hadn’t planned for this moment. She moved to press the bell, then saw that the door wasn’t quite shut. She pushed at it and it opened. Had a policeman on the beat arrived? Was Josef working there? She stepped inside.

‘Mary?’ she shouted. ‘Mrs Orton?’

There was no reply. She felt her heart beating too strongly; she felt it in her neck and in her chest. There was a sour taste in her mouth. It was lactic acid, caused by the breakdown of oxygen. You got it when you ran fast or when … She called again. What to do? She couldn’t phone the police. She’d already done that. Where the hell were they? Some false alarm somewhere probably. This was probably a false alarm. She walked through to the kitchen, her footsteps sounding horribly loud, as if they were telling her she was somewhere she wasn’t meant to be.

The kitchen was empty. There was a mug on the table half filled with tea or coffee, an open newspaper. Frieda leaned over and touched the mug. It was warm. Not hot like tea that had just been made, but warmer than the ambient temperature. Mary Orton could have gone out, forgotten to shut the door. She turned and left the kitchen. Was there any point in looking round the house? She opened the door to the front room and stepped inside. She felt an immediate lurching, gulping shock. Mary Orton was lying on the carpet by the bookcase across the room from the door. Frieda knew about these things and she felt her cognitive faculties close and narrow. She was looking at Mary Orton as if through a long tube. Frieda’s first thought was that she’d fallen, like people of Mary Orton’s age so often do. They fall and break a hip and sometimes they can’t get up and nobody finds them and they die. Then, almost dully and slowly, Frieda saw that what she had taken for a shadow of something across Mary Orton and the shadow of Mary Orton on the cream carpet was actually blood. Mary Orton’s blood. She ran across to her, trying to remember the pressure points. Anatomy had been such a long time ago.

Mary Orton was lying sprawled as if she had tried to roll over on to her back and failed.

‘Mary,’ Frieda said, coaxingly. ‘Mary, I’m here.’ Frieda looked into her eyes. She saw the tiniest flicker of something, a glimmer that puzzled her.

‘Mary,’ said Frieda, and saw once again a minuscule movement in her eyes. And then Frieda realized what the movement signified. Barely alive, Mary Orton was not looking at Frieda but past her, over her shoulder, and Frieda thought, Oh, no. Oh, no. She felt a punch, hard and hot in her back, to one side, and from then on everything happened with great foggy slowness. So she had time to think, How slow everything is. And she was punched again, and now it was in her stomach. And she had time to think, Why am I being punched? After that, she was able to remember, quite calmly, that she had read of how being stabbed didn’t feel at all like being stabbed. It didn’t feel sharp. It felt blunt, like being hit by a fist in a boxing glove. Frieda raised her arms in some kind of defence but the next punch came on her leg and quite suddenly it was wet and warm. Frieda knew that she couldn’t stand up any more but she didn’t fall. She stayed where she was, and Mary Orton’s cream carpet came up to meet her. She lay face down on it. She could feel the rough threads on her lips and she was now very, very tired. All she wanted was to sleep. She realized that this was what it was like to die and that she mustn’t die so she made the most terrible, horrible effort to raise herself.

She saw a face, a girl’s face. She had found Beth; Beth had found her. It seemed to be far away, like in a dream. Then, from being slow, everything speeded up. There was a rush of sensations, noises, movement. She felt movement, she was moving herself, and then everything slowed down once more and became dark and first very warm and then very cold, and she felt her head fall back and then her leg started to hurt and then really hurt, so that she cried out and she almost did see something and someone, but it was too much effort and the pain faded, and she fell deeply, gratefully asleep.