Waiting for Wednesday

FIFTY-FIVE

Frieda phoned Fearby and told him what had happened – or hadn’t happened. There was a pause and then he said he was still in London and he was coming right over. Frieda gave him her address, then tried to tell him it wasn’t necessary, that there was nothing more to say, but he had already rung off. In what seemed like a few minutes, there was a knock at the door and Fearby was sitting opposite her with a glass of whisky. He asked her to tell him exactly what Karlsson had said. Frieda reacted impatiently.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They went to Lawrence Dawes’s house. They turned it upside down. They didn’t find anything suspicious at all.’

‘How did Dawes react?’

‘You know what? I didn’t ask. The police appeared out of the blue and searched his house and all but accused him of killing his daughter. I imagine he was shocked and distressed.’ Frieda felt a tiredness that was actually painful. ‘I can’t believe it. I sat in his garden with him and he talked about what he’d been through and I set the police on him. Karlsson is furious with me as well. And rightly so.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ said Fearby.

‘Where do we go? We go nowhere. I’m sorry, but are you incapable of seeing what’s in front of your nose?’

‘Have you stopped trusting your instincts?’

‘It was my instinct that got us into this.’

‘Not just your instinct,’ said Fearby. ‘I’d been following a trail and we found we were on the same trail. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Frieda sat back in her chair and sighed.‘Have you ever been out in the countryside and you were walking on a path and then you realized it wasn’t really a path at all, it just looked like one, and you were lost?’

Fearby smiled and shook his head. ‘I never was much for walking.’

‘For all we know, Sharon Gibbs is somewhere reasonably happy, not wanting to be found. But, whatever the truth, I think we’re done.’

Fearby shook his head again, but he didn’t seem dismayed or angry. ‘I’ve been doing this too long to get put off by something like this. I just need to go over my files again, make some more enquiries. I’m not going to give up now, not after all I’ve done.’

Frieda looked at him with a kind of horror. Was he a bit like her? Was this the way she appeared to other people? ‘What would it take for you to give up?’

‘Nothing,’ said Fearby. ‘Not after all this, after what George Conley suffered, after Hazel Barton’s murder.’

‘But what about what you’ve suffered? Your marriage, your career?’

‘If I give up now, that won’t bring my job back. Or my wife.’

Suddenly Frieda felt as if she was trapped in a disastrous therapy session where she couldn’t find the right thing to say. Should she try to convince Fearby that everything he had sacrificed his life for had been an illusion? Did she even believe it? ‘You’ve already done so much,’ she said. ‘You got George Conley out of prison. That’s enough.’

Fearby’s expression hardened. ‘I need to know the truth. Nothing else matters.’ He caught Frieda’s eye and gave a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Just think of it as my hobby. It’s what I do instead of having an allotment or playing golf.’

When Fearby got up to go, Frieda felt as if she was someone he had sat next to on a train journey and struck up a conversation with and now they were arriving at the station and would part and never meet again. They shook hands at the door.

‘I’ll let you know how things progress,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t want me to.’

When Fearby was gone, Frieda leaned against her door for a few minutes. She felt as if she needed to catch her breath but couldn’t, as if her lungs wouldn’t work properly. She forced herself to concentrate and take long, slow breaths.

Then, at last, she went up to her bathroom. She’d been waiting for the right time but there was never a right time. There was always something left to do. She thought of Josef, her shambolic and eager friend, all the work he’d put into this for her. It was his act of friendship. She had good friends, but she hadn’t turned to them, not even to Sandy. She could listen but she couldn’t talk; give help but not ask for it. It was strange that in the last days she had felt closer to Fearby, with his neglected home, his huge filing system and his wreck of a life, than she had to anyone else.

The doorbell rang and for a moment she thought she wouldn’t answer. But then, with a sigh, she turned away from the bath, and went to the front door.

‘Delivery for you,’ said the man, half obscured by a tall cardboard box. ‘Frieda Klein?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sign here, please.’

Frieda signed and took the box into the living room, levering open its top. As she did so, she was hit by a smell whose powerful sweetness reminded her of funeral parlours and hotel lobbies. Carefully, she lifted out an enormous bouquet of white lilies, tied at the bottom with purple ribbon. She had always hated lilies: they were too opulent for her and their fragrance seemed to clog her airways. But who had sent them?

There was a miniature envelope with the flowers and she opened it and slid out the card.

We couldn’t let him get away with it.

The world narrowed, the air cooled around her. We couldn’t let him get away with it.

Bile rose in her throat and her forehead was clammy. She put out one hand to steady herself, made herself breathe deeply. She knew who had sent her these flowers. Dean Reeve. He had sent her daffodils before, telling her it wasn’t her time, and now he had sent her these lush, pulpy lilies. He had set fire to Hal Bradshaw’s house. For her. She pressed her hand hard against her furious heart. What could she do? Where could she turn? Who would believe her, and who would be able to help?

She had a sickening sense that she had to do something, or talk to someone. That was what she believed in, wasn’t it? Talking to people. But who? Once it would have been Reuben. But their relationship wasn’t like that any more. She couldn’t talk to Sandy because he was in America and these weren’t things to be put into words on the phone. What about Sasha? Or even Josef? Wasn’t that what friends were for? No. It wouldn’t work. She couldn’t find the proper explanation, but she felt it would be a betrayal of their friendship. She needed someone outside everything.

Then she remembered someone. She went to the bin outside her house and thrust the flowers into it. Back inside, she rummaged through her shoulder bag but it wasn’t there. She went upstairs to her study. She pulled open one of the drawers of her desk. When she cleared out her bag, she either threw things away or kept them here. She went through the old postcards, receipts, letters, photographs, invitations, and found it. A business card. When Frieda had faced a medical disciplinary panel, she had encountered one kindly face. Thelma Scott was a therapist herself and she had immediately seen something in Frieda that Frieda hadn’t wanted to be seen. She had invited Frieda to come and talk to her any time she felt the need and given Frieda her card. Frieda had been sure that she would never take her up on the offer, almost angry at the suggestion, but still she had kept it. She dialled the number, her hands almost trembling.

‘Hello? Yes? I’m sorry to call at this time. You probably won’t remember me. My name is Frieda Klein.’

‘Of course I remember you.’ Her voice sounded firm, reassuring.

‘This is really stupid, and you’ve probably forgotten this as well, but you once came to see me and you said I could come and talk to you if I needed it. I was just wondering if at some point I could do that. But if that’s not convenient, then it’s completely all right. I can find someone else to talk to.’

‘Can you come tomorrow?’

‘Yes, yes, that would be possible. But there’s no hurry. I don’t want to force myself on you.’

‘What about four o’clock, the day after tomorrow?’

‘Four o’clock. Yes, that would be fine. Good. I’ll see you then.’

Frieda got into bed. She spent most of the night not sleeping, besieged by faces and images, by fears and dark, pounding dread. But she must have slept a bit, because she was woken by a sound that at first she didn’t recognize, then gradually realized was her mobile phone. She fumbled for it and saw the name Jim Fearby on it. She let it ring. She couldn’t bear to talk to him. She lay back in the bed and thought of Fearby and had a sudden vivid, sickening, flashing sense of what it would be like to be mad, really mad, finding your own hidden meanings in a chaotic world. She thought of the troubled, sad people who came to her for help, and then the even more troubled, sadder people who were beyond anything she could do, the people who had voices in their heads telling them about conspiracies, how everything made horrible, terrifying sense.

Frieda looked at her clock. It was a couple of minutes after seven. Fearby must have waited for a permissible time to ring her. She got up and had a cold shower, so cold it made her ache. She pulled on some jeans and a shirt and made herself coffee. She couldn’t face anything else. What if Fearby had left a message? She didn’t even want to hear his voice, but now she’d thought of it, she couldn’t stop herself. She retrieved the phone from upstairs and called her voicemail. He probably wouldn’t have said anything. But he had.

The message began with a nervous cough, like someone starting a speech without knowing quite what to say.

‘Erm. Frieda. It’s me. Jim. Sorry about everything yesterday. I should have thanked you for all you’ve done. I know I come over as a bit of a nutter. And an obsessive. Anyway, I said I’d keep you in touch. Which is probably not what you want to hear. I’m in London. I’ve been going over things, the files on the girls. I’ve had a thought. We weren’t thinking about them properly. We didn’t hear the engine. I’m going out to have another look. Then I’ll call round to you and fill you in. I’ll be there at two. Let me know if that’s no good. Sorry to go on so long. Cheers.’

Frieda almost wished she hadn’t heard the message. She felt she was being sucked back in. It was clear that Fearby would never let go. Like those people obsessed with the Freemasons or the Kennedy assassination, he would never give up and nothing would change his mind. She was tempted to ring him back and tell him not to come but then she thought: No. He could come one last time and she would hear what he had to say and respond rationally and that would be that.

The day was almost as much of a blur as the night had been. Frieda thought she might read a book but she knew she couldn’t concentrate. Normally at a time like this she would have done a drawing, of something simple, like a glass of water or a candle. She didn’t even want to go out, not in the daytime, with the people and the traffic noise. She decided to clean her house. That would do. Something that required no thought. She filled bucket after bucket with hot water and cleaning fluid and took objects off shelves and wiped them down. She sprayed the windows. She mopped floors. She polished surfaces. The more she cleaned, the more she had a comforting sense that nobody lived in the house or had lived there or had ever been there.

The phone rang periodically, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t know whether it had been a surprisingly long time or a surprisingly short time, but she looked up at the clock and saw it was five to two. She sat in a chair and waited. There was going to be no coffee. Certainly no whisky. He could say what he had to say, she would respond, and he could go. Then it would be over, and she could go to talk to Thelma Scott and start to deal with all of this because it just couldn’t go on.

One minute past two. Nothing. She actually went to the door and opened it and stepped out. As if that would help. She sat back down. Ten past, nothing. Quarter past, nothing. At twenty past, she called Fearby and went straight to his voicemail.

‘I was wondering where you were. I need to go out soon. Well, not that soon. I’ll be here until half past four.’

She thought he might be one of the people who had called during the day. There were fourteen messages on her answering machine. They were the usual suspects: Reuben, Josef, Sasha, someone about a possible patient, Paz, Karlsson, Yvette. She tried her voicemail. Nothing. For the next half-hour she answered the phone three times. One was a fake survey, one was Reuben, one was Karlsson. Each time she said she couldn’t talk. By three o’clock she was genuinely puzzled. Had she got the time wrong? She’d deleted Fearby’s message as soon as she’d heard it. Was it possible she had misheard? God knew, she hadn’t been thinking all that clearly. Was it really two o’clock? Yes, she was sure about that. He’d even said that if she couldn’t make that time, she should ring back. Could he just be late? Caught in traffic? Or maybe he had decided not to come. He might have drawn a blank and headed home. Or he might have picked up on her scepticism. She phoned his number again. Nothing. He wasn’t coming.

At last she gave up on Fearby. She put food in the cat’s bowl and then she walked to Number 9 for coffee. As she was returning, she saw a figure walking towards her. Something about the heavy-footed purposeful stride was familiar.

‘Yvette?’ she said, as they drew close to each other. ‘What is it? Why are you here?’

‘I’ve got to talk to you.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Can we go inside?’

She led Yvette into the house. Yvette took off her jacket and sat down. She was wearing black jeans with a hole in the knee and a button-down man’s shirt that had seen better days. Clearly, she wasn’t on duty.

‘So what is it? Is it something about the Lennoxes?’

‘No, I’m taking a well-earned break from that bloody circus. You wouldn’t believe – but anyway. That’s not why I’m here.’

‘So why are you?’

‘I had to tell you: I’m on your side.’

‘What?’

‘I’m on your side,’ Yvette repeated. She seemed close to tears.

‘Thank you. But on my side against who?’

‘All of them. The commissioner. That wanker Hal Bradshaw.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘I needed you to know. I know you had nothing to do with it, but if you had – well, I’d still be on your side.’ She gave a crooked, emotional smile. ‘Off the record, of course.’

Frieda stared at her. ‘You think I might have done it,’ she said at last.

Yvete flushed. ‘No! That’s not what I was saying at all. But it’s not a secret that you and Dr McGill were angry with him. You had every reason. He shafted you. He was just jealous.’

‘I promise you,’ Frieda said softly, ‘that I haven’t been near Hal Bradshaw’s house.’

‘Of course you haven’t.’

‘It was a monstrous thing to do. And I know that Reuben wouldn’t do that, however angry he was.’

‘Bradshaw said something else as well.’

‘What?’

‘You know what he’s like, Frieda. Insinuating.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘He said that he had some dangerous enemies, even if they didn’t do their own dirty work.’

‘Meaning me?’

‘Yes. But also that he has some powerful friends.’

‘Good for him,’ said Frieda.

‘Don’t you care?’

‘Not so much,’ said Frieda. ‘But what I want to know is why you do.’

‘You mean why should I care?’

She looked steadily at Yvette. ‘You haven’t always looked after my best interests.’

Yvette didn’t look away. ‘I have dreams about you,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Not the kind of dreams you’d expect, not dreams where you’re nearly killed or stuff like that. These are odder. Once I dreamed we were at school together – though we were our real age – and sitting next to each other in class, and I was trying to write neatly to impress you but I just kept smearing the ink and couldn’t form the letters correctly. They were crooked and childish and kept sliding off the page, and yours were perfect and neat. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to interpret my dreams. I’m not so stupid I can’t do that myself. In another dream, we were on holiday and were by a lake surrounded by mountains that looked like chimneys, and I was really nervous because we were about to dive in the water but I didn’t know how to swim. Actually, I can’t really swim – I don’t like getting my head under water. But I couldn’t tell you because I thought you’d laugh at me. I was going to drown so I didn’t look like a fool in front of you.’

Frieda was about to speak, but Yvette held up a hand. Her cheeks were crimson. ‘You make me feel completely inadequate,’ she said, ‘and as if you can look into me and see through me and know all the things I don’t want people to see. You know I’m lonely and you know I’m jealous of you and you know I’m crap at relationships. And you know …’ Her cheeks burned. ‘You know I’ve got a schoolgirl crush on the boss. The other night I got a bit drunk, and I kept imagining what you’d think of me if you could see me lurching around.’

‘But, Yvette –’

‘The fact is that I nearly let you get killed, and when I’m not having dreams I’ve been lying awake and wondering if I did it out of some pathetic anger. And how do you think that makes me feel about myself?’

‘So you’re making amends?’ Frieda asked softly.

‘I guess you could call it that.’

‘Thank you.’

Frieda held out her hand and Yvette took it, and for a moment the two women sat across the table from each other, holding hands and gazing into the other’s face.