Friday on My Mind (26 page)

She was pale, her hair lank, her eyes large in her thin face. He saw that she kept twisting her hands together, that her nails were bitten, that she had a cold sore on the corner of her mouth. He knew that Frieda always worried about Sasha and remembered that after Ethan had been born she’d gone through an episode of post-natal depression that had never entirely passed.

‘I just want her to be all right,’ she said now, wiping the back of her hand against her cheeks.

‘That’s what we all want.’

‘I’ve made things worse for her. But it was so nice for me when she came back. Even when she’s in trouble herself, she makes the world seem safer.’

‘Do you know where she is now?’

‘No. I told that policewoman and it’s true. She wouldn’t say. I’ve tried calling her but she doesn’t answer.’

‘No idea at all?’

‘I don’t know if I’d tell you if I had. But I haven’t.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘All right. Not scared. Calm. Purposeful. You know what she can be like.’ Karlsson nodded: he did. ‘She was good with Ethan as well, in a stern kind of way.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘If he cried because he wanted something, it was as if she didn’t hear him. He keeps asking about her and the other kids.’

‘What others?’

‘She looked after two other young children as well.’

‘Frieda looked after
three
children?’

‘I know – it’s hard to imagine. The parents were good friends of Sandy – I think Al worked with him.’

‘I see,’ said Karlsson. A smile twisted his lips. ‘That was rather sneaky of her. Do you know their names?’

‘Al and Bridget. Hang on. Let me think.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘She had an Italian name. Bellucci? I think that’s right. I don’t know his last name. Why?’

‘They might know something.’

‘Is she going to be all right?’

Karlsson looked at her tightly plaited hands. Then the doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Frank,’ said Sasha. ‘He’s come to return some of Ethan’s clothes.’ She pushed her hair behind her ears.

Karlsson stood up as Frank came into the room. They hadn’t known each other well, and hadn’t seen each other since the break-up, but Frank shook his hand warmly and asked after his children, even remembering their names. They left the house together.

‘Drink?’ asked Frank, as they stepped onto the pavement.

Karlsson looked at his watch. It was still not nine o’clock.

‘Two men with nothing to go home to,’ said Frank.

‘You make it sound sad.’

‘There’s a place at the end of the road.’

Karlsson couldn’t think of a reason to say no. That seemed sad as well.

Frank came across to the table, carrying two glasses of beer and two packets of crisps. ‘You’re looking at me with your detective’s eye,’ he said.

Karlsson shook his head. ‘I feel like I’m seeing myself in a mirror. Except that the person in the mirror is a bit younger and is wearing a much nicer suit.’

Frank glanced down at his pinstriped suit, his open-necked white shirt, as if it had taken him by surprise. ‘I’ve been in court. It’s really just a uniform.’

‘Did you win?’

‘It wasn’t much of a victory. The prosecution mislaid some evidence and their key witness didn’t turn up. The judge directed the jury to acquit.’

‘You’re good,’ said Karlsson. ‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘I can sense a “but” coming.’

‘It’s an “and”, not a “but”.’

Frank ripped open the two packets of crisps. ‘You’ve completely lost me.’

‘It’s about Frieda. I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Oh.’ Frank held Karlsson’s gaze. ‘Before you go on, I expect you know I was angry with her for a while.’

‘I had heard.’

‘I blamed her for the break-up with Sasha.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘Easier than blaming myself, I suppose.’

‘I suppose it is. Are you still angry?’

‘Not so much. She was always Sasha’s friend, first and foremost – and she’s someone you want as a friend, isn’t she? Someone you want on your side.’

‘She is that,’ said Karlsson.

‘So I understand now that she was being Sasha’s friend. She thought Sasha needed to leave me. Perhaps she was right. Though –’ He stopped and rubbed his
face with both hands. ‘What were you wanting to ask about Frieda?’

‘I’ve never quite known what to think about the things she does. I’ve visited her in a police cell and I’ve visited her in intensive care, but this is something else. I can’t believe it can end well. But, however it ends, she’s going to need help.’

‘She’s got friends,’ said Frank.

‘Good friends. But what she’ll really need is a good lawyer.’

‘She’s got a lawyer, hasn’t she?’

‘She’s got a solicitor, Tanya Hopkins. She and Frieda didn’t see eye to eye.’

Frank nodded. ‘It’s the job of a solicitor to tell the truth. Often it’s the truth that the client doesn’t want to hear.’

‘That’s not true of Frieda.’

‘No, I guess not.’

‘That’s part of Frieda’s problem. She doesn’t want to get off. She wants the truth.’

Frank smiled. ‘The courtroom isn’t like therapy. It’s about winning and losing.’

‘So, what do you think?’

Frank took a gulp of beer. ‘I don’t know. As you know, the police don’t like being made fools of. Bear in mind that I knew the murder victim and I’m the ex-partner of one of the accused’s best friends. But I’ll do anything I can. Just keep me in touch. Here.’ He took a business card out of his wallet and handed it across. ‘If she breaks cover, I’ll be happy to talk to her. Though she might not want to talk to me.’

There was a pause while the two men drank their beer and helped themselves to the crisps.

‘She was looking after Ethan for a while, you know,’ said Frank.

‘Yes. Did you know about it?’

‘What? At the time? Of course not. Sasha only told me afterwards, when the police were suspicious. Frieda had left, and she was in pieces. Thank God – I would have reported it at once. I’m a barrister, for God’s sake. I would have been struck off if I’d known and kept silent. But then Sasha would never have talked to me again. Though I think she was quite wrong to do what she did. And so was Frieda.’

‘Are you on good terms with Sasha now?’ asked Karlsson, awkwardly.

Frank stared at him, through him, at something else. ‘Good terms?’ he said eventually. ‘Doesn’t that sound businesslike? How did we get to such a pass? To be on good terms with the woman I loved and who is the mother of my son. I couldn’t believe my luck when I met Sasha.’ He sounded dreamy and spoke as if he were really talking to himself. ‘She’s so beautiful, and I thought I could rescue her. She’s someone you feel needs rescuing, isn’t she? Sometimes, being with her, I’ve felt like I’ve been in a nightmare. It’s like I’ve been watching a very slow accident taking place and I can’t do anything to stop it. I feel like I tried everything and none of it worked.’

They walked out onto the pavement together. Frank held out his hand and Karlsson shook it.

‘So what’s your plan now?’ Frank asked.

‘I don’t know. Waiting. Doing what I can to help.’

‘And what’s Frieda’s plan, do you think?’

Karlsson made a gesture of helplessness. ‘Do you
know? In all the years I’ve known Frieda, I’ve never known what she was going to do. And after she’s done it, I often don’t understand that either. She broke into the Warehouse. That’s the clinic she’s connected to.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. It was something to do with Sandy, but I don’t know what.’

Frank wrinkled his brow. ‘Breaking and entering,’ he said. ‘And child endangerment. It’s not going to look good in court.’

Karlsson turned to go. ‘I don’t think it’ll ever get to court,’ he said. ‘Something will happen.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘Aren’t you breaking the barrister’s first rule?’

Frank looked puzzled. ‘And what’s that?’

‘Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Thanks for the drink, Frank.’

He was very tired now, his eyes sore, but he knew he was far from sleep. He didn’t want to go back to his empty flat to lie awake and wonder where Frieda could be and how he could find her. He thought of what Sasha had said and pulled his phone out of his pocket as he walked away from the pub towards his car; he Googled Bridget Bellucci, and in less than a minute had her email address. He wrote a message, explaining he was a friend of Frieda’s and would be grateful for the opportunity to talk to her and Al, as soon as possible and in strict confidence. Almost as soon as he’d sent it a reply pinged onto his screen. ‘Why not now?’ it said, and included an address.

Karlsson looked at his watch. It was ten past ten and
Bridget and Al lived in Stockwell. But he climbed into his car, put the address in the satnav and drove off.

He thought he had rarely met a couple as dissimilar as Bridget and Al: she vivid and dark-haired, with an olive complexion and Italian gestures; he gangly, sandy-haired, drily self-deprecating, the quintessence of a certain kind of Englishness. Karlsson sat in their kitchen and drank tea. He longed for a whisky but he had to drive later and knew, anyway, that he was in the dangerous mood of alert and heady tiredness, which alcohol would only increase.

He explained once again that he was a detective but that he wasn’t there as a detective. He knew that when this was all over – whatever ‘over’ might mean – he would have to think about what he was doing. Not yet.

‘Karlsson, you say?’ Bridget was looking at him speculatively.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that why she called herself Carla?’

‘What?’

‘Karlsson. Carla.’

‘I don’t know about that. I’m sure it was just …’ He found he couldn’t reach the end of his sentence. He lifted his tea in both hands and carried it to his mouth.

‘How can we help you?’ asked Al, politely, as though he were there to ask for directions.

‘I need to find Frieda.’

‘She no longer works for us.’

‘Do you have any idea of where she might be?’

‘No,’ Bridget said. ‘I never knew where she went back to each evening. I knew very little about her, even after I discovered who she was.’

‘I see.’

‘She worked for us,’ said Al, ‘because we knew Sandy. God help us, we let her look after our kids, thinking she was a nanny, when all the time she was conducting her own investigation while being wanted by the police.’

‘She was quite a good nanny, in fact,’ said Bridget. ‘Unorthodox.’

‘I didn’t know what she was up to until yesterday.’ Al cast a glance at Bridget, both rueful and accusing. ‘For a while, I believe she suspected me of being the murderer.’

‘Us,’ corrected Bridget. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘Of killing Sandy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I had his keys,’ said Bridget. ‘And hers as well.’

‘Why?’

‘He gave me a set of his keys and hers were attached. It was as meaningless as that.’

‘And I had a motive,’ added Al. Karlsson couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused. ‘He’d rather shafted me. Professionally, I mean.’

‘Frieda discovered that?’

‘Yes. She found out a lot of things,’ said Al.

‘I liked her,’ said Bridget. ‘Why are you so eager to find her?’

‘Because I think she’s in danger.’

‘Why?’

‘I think that whoever killed Sandy is also after her.’

‘We can’t do anything for you,’ said Bridget. ‘We don’t know where she is. I tried to help her – I gave her names of women Sandy had been involved with. I told her everything about him I thought might be helpful.’

‘Like what?’

Bridget sat very still at the table for a few moments. She didn’t look at Al when she told Karlsson that Sandy used to confide in her, that he had been in a bad way before he died, that she had been scared he would do something foolish.

Al looked shocked. ‘You mean, that he might kill himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you never thought to tell me.’

‘It wasn’t my secret to tell.’

‘Even after he’d been murdered.’

‘Especially.’

‘Why was he in such a bad way?’ asked Karlsson.

‘He felt he had made a mess of everything. I think he felt guilty about the way he’d treated various women – hurting them the way he thought he’d been hurt.’

‘By Frieda?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And Frieda visited these women?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who were they?’

‘I know she spoke to Veronica Ellison and Bella Fisk, who both work at King George’s. And then there was the old nanny of Sandy’s sister.’

‘I see. But she didn’t find anything?’

‘By that time, she’d stopped being our nanny. I don’t know what she found.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s Sandy’s funeral tomorrow.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m speaking and Al’s doing a reading. “Fear No More the Heat of the Sun”. Do you know it?’

‘I think I heard it at a funeral.’

‘Sandy was scared. Did you know that?’

‘Did he tell you?’

‘He was trying to contact Frieda about it.’

‘You should have told me, Bridget,’ said Al. His face was sharp and pale.

‘Maybe, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.’ She didn’t sound sorry. She looked at Karlsson. ‘And I wish we could help. I hope she’s going to be all right; I hope you find her before someone else does.’

He couldn’t sleep and wondered if this was how Frieda felt when she went on her night walks. Perhaps she was on one right now – he tried to imagine where that would be, what she would be thinking, planning.

Tomorrow Sandy would at last be cremated. Frieda would know that, of course. What would she be doing when at eleven o’clock in the morning the mourners gathered and his coffin was carried into the chapel? His family and friends and colleagues would all be there; the police would be there. Where would Frieda be?