26
Frieda walked along the seafront. The cold, strong wind felt good in her face, scouring her skin, clearing her mind, whipping away the sense of unease she had felt sitting in Chas’s house. She thought of what he had said. She thought of Jeremy and of Lewis. Chas had said that he had seen neither of them at the concert, but of course that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. Just that she could no longer be sure they had. Jeremy, her ex-boyfriend; Lewis, who had been her boyfriend at the time. Surely, surely, if either of them had broken into her house and crept into her room to do violence, she would have known. However dark, she would have been able to tell from the smell of the skin, the feel of the body, the breath against her, the way they whispered those words. She shuddered and walked faster. There was rain in the wind now, stinging and salty, making her eyes water. The light was fading and the sea growing darker. Birds flapped slowly across its waters. She made herself remember again, in detail. The knowledge that there was someone in the room, his hand on her mouth, his fingers pressing and pulling, insistent, persistent, monstrous. His body on top of hers, obliterating her. The pain. No.
She turned away from the sea and made her way towards the main road. Surely she would have known, and yet, even as she said this to herself, she couldn’t be certain that the man in her room hadn’t been Jeremy. Or Lewis. Or anybody. How old had he been? How do you tell a rapist’s age in the silent darkness? She had simply thought of him as a man. How tall had he been and how heavy? She had no idea. She had always thought of him as huge and vastly heavy because he had overpowered her, but she saw now that he needn’t have been either.
Now she was walking along the road. There was no pavement here, only a churned-up grass verge. Cars drove past and she was splashed with water from the puddles. She thought about Lewis. Why would the person she was going out with – having sex with – rape her? She knew the answer before she asked herself the question. It was about power. Domination. She had just had a violent argument with him, wounding and humiliating him. But Lewis had never been aggressive, only troubled. Jeremy was a different matter – and he had had a reason to be angry with her. She had left him.
Her suspicions were like a stain spreading across her mind. Once you started thinking about people in this way, there was no reason to trust anyone. Chas: he could be lying. Ewan: he could be pretending. Greg Hollesley: she thought of his smile, the girls who had idolized him and the use he’d made of that. What else had he done?
A bus – the one she was meant to be catching further up the road – passed her in a dirty arc of water. Her mobile rang in her pocket and she scooped it out.
‘Yes?’ she snapped.
‘And hello to you too.’
‘Karlsson.’
‘The same.’
‘I’m cold and wet and walking along a road in the dark and I’ve missed my bus and I’ve had a horrible day.’
‘Where are you exactly?’
‘Why?’
‘I could come and get you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s about two hours away.’
‘I’m in Braxton.’
‘What?’
‘I left work early and thought, Why not visit the countryside? So tell me where you are.’
‘I think this is the first time we’ve ever had a meal together,’ said Karlsson.
They were sitting in a small brasserie on the high street. Frieda ordered sea bream with a green salad and Karlsson had quiche. He wouldn’t drink any wine: he was going to drive back to London later, ready for an early-morning start.
‘The first? Can that be true?’
‘We’ve had plenty of whisky and a fair amount of coffee. You gave me a roll with honey once, and maybe some toast. But I can’t remember a proper meal.’
‘It’s an odd place to start – Braxton high street.’
‘How are things?’
‘God, Karlsson, it’s very nice to see you, though you look rather out of place here. In my mind, you belong to London. I don’t know how things are. I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I’m starting to think that everyone has a guilty secret.’
‘Which, of course, they do.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled.
‘But you still feel sure you’re doing the right thing?’
‘I just know I have to do something.’
‘Have you made any progress?’
‘It’s like staring into a pond, trying to see past my own reflection to what lies beneath. I think all I’ve done is to stir up old memories, muddying the waters even further.’
‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘What?’
‘Not much. Those names you gave me of the two men that the police interviewed.’
‘Dennis Freeman and Michael Carrey.’
‘That’s it. You were right – they were both men who’d previously been in trouble with the police. Freeman you know about. He’d done time and he was later convicted of sexual abuse in another case and died in prison. Carrey was just a pathetic flasher in the park, frightening the kids.’
‘And?’
Karlsson shook his head. ‘Carrey was never really in the running. He was in a hostel at the time, had lots of witnesses who saw him being very drunk and ill that evening. You can rule him out.’
‘I see. Thanks, anyway.’
‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘I spoke to Crawford about Dean Reeve.’
‘Ah.’
‘It did not go well.’
‘He doesn’t want to reopen the case.’
Karlsson didn’t reply.
‘So that’s the end of it.’
‘I wouldn’t say so.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you’re right, then he’s still out there. Doing whatever it is he’s doing.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thanks for coming all the way here to see me.’
‘As I said, I had a spare few hours.’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘It’s a pleasure.’
‘Now tell me how you are.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I need more than that.’
‘It’s all I can say, Frieda. I’m all right. Nothing more than that. My kids are still in Madrid. Mikey’s grown about three inches and Bella doesn’t lisp any more. They speak Spanish and have friends I’ve never met. They’re starting to be polite to me.’
‘Isn’t that a good thing?’
‘No, it’s terrible. I get so nervous when I’m about to see them that I think I behave unnaturally as well. I over-plan everything so they won’t get bored. And we make conversation. I even think in advance about things to tell them.’
‘It’s bound to be hard. When they come back, it’ll return to normal soon enough.’
‘Maybe.’
‘So is that why you’re just “all right”?’
‘Part of it. Everything just feels a bit grey, I guess. I work too hard, I see my kids when I can, occasionally I meet friends.’
‘I think,’ said Frieda, ‘that sometimes life can seem like a straight road that stretches ahead with no change in sight.’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘And you’re just trudging along.’
‘Yes. Don’t tell me I need to find a hobby.’
‘I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to tell you anything. I was just going to say that it’s hard and I’m sorry about it. Perhaps you need to make a change.’
‘It feels impossible.’
‘We’re always freer than we know.’
‘That’s too deep for me.’
‘Do you sleep properly?’
‘I’m not going to talk to you about sleeping.’
‘Fair enough.’
After Karlsson had left, Frieda had a coffee, then went to collect her coat and scarf from the coat stand in the lobby. Her coat was there but her scarf – the one she had had for more than fifteen years, that was exactly the right shade of red – had vanished. It mattered to her more than it should. She hated to lose things, and that scarf felt almost part of her, wrapped brightly around her neck on all her night walks through London over the years. She gave her mobile number to one of the waiters and said that if he found it he should contact her.
She walked back to Eva’s in the icy drizzle. The path through the garden was muddy and her shed was cold and smelt slightly damp. She pulled down the blinds (she didn’t want Eva staring in at her from the kitchen, hoping she would go over and pay her a visit) and turned on the electric radiator, then put water in the kettle. While she was waiting for it to boil, she checked her emails. There was one from Chlo? that read simply – ‘Frieda, everything’s going wrong! Help!’ There was also one from Tom Helmsley:
I’ve tracked down Stuart Faulkner. He took early retirement and he’s living near Clacton. His address is 48 Chesselhurst Road, Thornbury. I hope this is of some use, Tom.
PS I get the impression his early retirement may not have been strictly voluntary.
Frieda looked up Thornbury on her phone and saw that it was about fifteen miles from Clacton, down a B-road. It had no station. She frowned, considering her options – and then, as if he had sensed that she was thinking of him, her mobile rang.
‘Josef?’ she said.
‘Is me. Hello, Frieda.’
‘Hello. How are you?’
‘Fine. All fine.’
Frieda waited but he didn’t add anything. ‘Is everything OK with Reuben?’
‘All fine,’ he repeated.
‘Good.’ She waited again. ‘Are you ringing for any reason, Josef, or just to say hello?’
‘Just hello.’
‘Well, in that –’
‘And how you are. I wonder. I think of you.’
‘That’s nice.’ And it was, she found. She pictured Josef, his large hand wrapped around the phone, his sad brown eyes. ‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking of you as well.’
‘You were?’
‘Yes.’
‘Frieda. I help you.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘I mean at this moment. Tell me what to do.’
‘Are you busy?’
‘Now?’
‘Tomorrow. I need another lift, I’m afraid. I could easily get a cab, in fact it would be much more sensible, but –’
‘No cab, Frieda. I come.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I come early. Seven?’
‘Definitely not. That would mean leaving at five.’
‘Is good. Is fine.’
And she couldn’t persuade him otherwise. She ended the call and spent an hour drawing shapes that turned into faces, faces that turned, without her wanting it, into the face of Dean Reeve. She tore out the pages from her sketchbook and crumpled them into little balls before throwing them into the bin.