Friday on My Mind (29 page)

‘The window.’

‘I’ll leave the curtains a bit open so some light comes in, all right?’ For Ethan hated true darkness.

‘Will he come again?’

‘Who?’

‘Daddy.’

‘Of course. Very soon. Just a day or two.’

‘Not now?’

‘No. Please go to sleep. I’m very tired.’

‘I wanted him to say goodnight to me.’

‘Ethan –’

‘He stood and stood.’

‘Who – Frank?’

Ethan nodded. ‘I waved. He didn’t see me.’

Sasha sat very still on the bed. Then she took one of Ethan’s hands and said in a low voice: ‘Do you mean you saw Daddy tonight?’

Ethan nodded and snuggled against her. ‘In the window.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Waiting.’

‘Why was he waiting, darling?’

‘For Frieda,’ said Ethan, as if it were obvious. ‘Frieda walked away and then he walked too. I waved and waved but he didn’t wave back. Was it a game?’

But Sasha had gone from the room and she hadn’t even turned out his light.

Karlsson had gone towards Hackney with a miserable feeling of having nowhere to go and nothing to do. He bought a coffee and drank it as he walked south along Kingsland Road, lighting another cigarette. Then his phone rang. It was Hussein. Frank wasn’t at his chambers
and he wasn’t at his house. They were widening the search and also getting a warrant. She would let him know what they found.

‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied firmly, but not unkindly. ‘You can do nothing.’

As she spoke a message came up on his screen: there was an incoming call from Sasha. Without saying goodbye, he cut Hussein off and answered. ‘Yes?’

‘Frank was here.’ Her voice was a wail.

‘Now?’

‘No. When Frieda came.’

‘What?’

‘Ethan’s just told me. He saw Frank from the window, outside the house. When Frieda left here, Frank followed her.’

He called Hussein and told her. His voice seemed to come from far off; he heard his words as if they were a stranger’s and he heard her answer.

‘All right,’ said Hussein. ‘Where would Frieda have gone, given that she clearly hasn’t gone to the police?’

‘Perhaps she would go to her own house. In fact, that’s the first place to try.’

‘We’re sending officers there now.’

‘Or even her consulting rooms.’

‘Good. Yes. Right. Anywhere else?’

‘I don’t know. You could try Reuben and Josef. Olivia, perhaps. Jack, though that’s not so likely.’

‘Right.’

‘She might want to go to people who knew Sandy best – his sister, or his friends.’

‘OK,’ said Hussein, doubtfully.

‘Otherwise – I don’t know. She walks,’ he added uselessly.

‘Walks?’

‘When things are on her mind, when she’s troubled and needs to think, she walks and walks. Through the night.’

‘Where does she walk?’

‘All over.’

‘That’s not much good.’

Karlsson tried to think it through clearly, but it was like he was in a storm. Where would she go? She knew now, so the sensible thing would be just to call the police. Wouldn’t it? But she didn’t have a phone. All right. Get in a cab. Straight to the police. But, first, Frieda never seemed to do the sensible thing and then Hussein had said she hadn’t. And was this really the sensible thing? Did she actually have evidence that would convince the police? Did she realize the danger she was in? He knew that if he did nothing, or didn’t think of the right thing, something would happen. Something that he would hear about on the news.

He took out his phone and stared at it helplessly. It felt like that terrible phase where you had lost something and you were looking in the places you had already looked in. He dialled Reuben’s number. He answered immediately as if he had been waiting for the call.

‘I know, I know,’ Reuben said. ‘The police called me.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing much. A couple of names. Obviously I mentioned that she was most likely to go home or to her consulting room.’

‘I’ve been through that with them. They’re already on to it. I thought maybe she’d turn to you. You’re her old friend, her therapist.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She’s known you longer than anyone. I thought she might turn to you.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Reuben. ‘I mean, I’m not her therapist. Not any more. That was long ago, when she was training. In the last couple of years, she was seeing someone else, someone she really rated.’

‘What’s their name?’

‘It was …’ There was a long pause. Karlsson wanted to shout at Reuben to fucking remember. ‘Thelma something.’

‘Do you think she might go to her at a time like this?’

‘It’s not likely but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘Then I need a name. A proper name. And a number.’

‘Wait. I think I know where I can find it. I’ll call you back.’

Karlsson felt so agitated that he couldn’t stay still. He was shifting from foot to foot. He could hear a rushing sound in his ears. He stared at his phone, willing it to ring. He started to count. He promised himself that it would ring before he got to ten. It rang at fourteen.

‘Thelma Scott,’ said Reuben.

Karlsson got her number and dialled it instantly, praying that she wasn’t with a client or abroad or asleep. He was almost taken aback when a woman’s voice answered.

‘Dr Thelma Scott?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name’s Malcolm Karlsson. I’m a police detective and I’m a friend of Frieda Klein and this is very urgent. Have you seen her?’

There was a pause. He tried to imagine how he himself would react to a call like this. Did it sound trustworthy?

‘Not for a while,’ said Scott. ‘I know that she’s been in some sort of trouble.’

‘She’s in trouble now. I mean, not trouble, but danger. I need to find her urgently.’

‘I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen or spoken to her for several weeks.’

‘I need to find her. This moment.’ He made himself stop and think. ‘If things were really urgent, where would she turn? The police are trying all her friends, but I thought she might contact you.’

‘I haven’t heard from her. I’m truly sorry.’

‘All right,’ said Karlsson, in a dull voice. None of this was working. He was about to say goodbye when Scott spoke again.

‘Did you say you were called Karlsson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you the detective?’

‘I’m
a
detective.’

‘She mentioned you. Have you considered that she might turn to you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But …’ he was bewildered ‘… she doesn’t know where I am.’

‘Doesn’t she know where you live?’

Karlsson stared at his phone. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said.

He looked up and down the road. Taxi after taxi passed him, coming up from the City, but they were all taken. He called Hussein on his phone.

‘I’m at Manning’s flat,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘It’s clean.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘No, really clean. It smells of bleach, like a laboratory. This place has been scoured.’

‘He’s a lawyer. He knows about evidence. So you’ve got nothing.’

‘I didn’t say that. Even lawyers can’t clean in the cracks between floorboards. We’ve got hair from the pipe under his sink. There are stains behind the radiator in the living room. Something happened here. I’m sure of it.’

‘Have you got him?’

‘Once we’ve got this back to the lab.’

‘No, I mean got him. Arrested him.’

‘There’s no sign of him or of Frieda.’

‘I think she might be at my place. You’re nearer than me, only a few minutes away.’

He managed to flag down a taxi and gave the address. He settled down in the back.

‘Stupid stupid stupid,’ he muttered to himself.

Frieda rang the bell. There was no answer. She knocked at the door. No answer. But she knew where Karlsson kept a spare key. Next to the door there was a pot with a plant that didn’t look very well.

‘People will look under the pot,’ Karlsson had told her, ‘because that’s where people keep keys. And they won’t find one. And they’ll give up. So they won’t notice that there’s a loose brick next to the path and that there’s a key hidden under that.’

Frieda had suspected that quite a lot of people hid their keys under loose bricks, but she hadn’t said anything. Fortunately, because she lifted up the brick and there was the
key. She let herself into the house. Inside she could smell something, like food that had been left out. She could make herself coffee, but what she should probably do first was clear up. And she would start with throwing away whatever it was that she could smell. But before that, she would phone Karlsson. As she looked around for the phone, there was a gentle knock on the front door.

Frieda felt a moment of relief. But at the very moment she pulled the door open, she suddenly wondered why Karlsson would knock at his own front door and she knew that, of course, he wouldn’t, and then the door was pushed hard against her and Frank was inside and the door was slammed shut. She turned and ran towards the back of the house. He was nearly on her – she could hear him breathing and feel the heat of his body. She felt him behind her, hands on her shoulders, and she was slammed forward into the wall, and everything went sparkly yellow, then slammed again in another direction, through a door. She saw other colours, a clown mobile hanging from the ceiling, a poster of a football. Something from deep inside her mind told her she was in a child’s bedroom. Karlsson’s children’s bedroom. She pushed back but it was hopeless. Frank towered above her. She felt a blow on the side of her head and staggered back against the wall.

Now everything happened very, very slowly, as if she were watching it through frosted glass and with muffled ears. Frank had his left hand on her neck, pinning her against the wall. She felt something uncomfortable against her back. Probably the corner of a picture frame, she thought, and it seemed that she had a lot of time to think, that she could just let this happen, sink quietly into
blackness and rest. Frank’s face, his fierce eyes, were close to hers now. She saw the whiteness of his cotton shirt. He was breathing heavily. The feel of it, the smell of it reminded her of something. What was it? And then she remembered Lev, talking to her as he delivered her to that flat in Elephant and Castle. What was it he had said? All or nothing? Was it something like that? She didn’t look away from Frank. She mustn’t distract him. Her eyes stared straight into his eyes. What strange things eyes were.

She felt in her pocket. Yes. And, yes, she remembered his words. None of the way or all of the way.

Frank raised his right hand and she saw a glint, the blade of a knife. He moved his face closer now, so that when he spoke it was in little more than a whisper.

‘You can’t speak. There’s nothing to say. I cut Sandy’s throat with this. But he was unconscious. You won’t be. I want to watch.’

As he was talking, Frieda was remembering her first year at medical school, anatomy. What were they? Subclavian and carotid. She gripped on it in her pocket. She delicately pulled her hand from her pocket. One chance. Only one chance. Then her hand pulled up and the blade snapped open. Up and in. Lev had said it was sharp. Very sharp. It must have been, because Frieda felt no resistance, almost as if the handle pressed against the white cotton had no blade. But within a second a rosette of the deepest scarlet spread around it.

Frank looked down in puzzlement and mild irritation, as if he had noticed an untied shoelace or an open fly. He stepped back and Frieda held onto the handle of the knife and pulled it back. There was a gurgling sound and she felt something warm and wet on her face and her jacket. She
looked down at the sticky redness. Had she been stabbed as well? She looked back at Frank.

‘You fucker,’ he said. ‘You’ve …’

He couldn’t say any more. The knife fell from his grasp. He tore at his shirt. The blood was coming out of him, not like a hose but in spurts. He looked down at his chest with a kind of interest. Spurt, nothing, spurt, nothing. He made a few staggering steps. Everything seemed to be turning red. The rug, bedspread, even a picture on the wall. Then his legs gave way and he fell heavily, out of control, half propped up against a low child’s bed. His eyes already looked blurry, unfocused.

Frieda took a few steps towards him, still clutching the knife, but she immediately saw that he was no kind of threat. She remembered her training again. Arterial bleeding. What was it her prof had said? Arteries pump, veins dump. How long did he have? A minute? Two? She thought of Sandy, the man beside her in bed, walking beside her, dead on that stainless steel. Was she going to watch him die, just as Frank had been about to watch her die? The thought instantly made her mind up. She sprawled across Frank, sitting on his thighs. He was looking straight towards her but Frieda wasn’t even sure if he was aware of her. She ripped at his shirt, tore a rag off, and pushed it against the wound, as hard as she could manage, with almost her whole weight on it. She could hear herself panting. Had the blood flow stopped? There was so much of it, on him, on her, everywhere around, that it was hard to tell.

Some sort of spark appeared in Frank’s eyes. Was it anger? Frieda leaned closer to him. There was a strange intimacy. She could smell his breath. It was sweet.

‘If you try anything,’ she said, ‘anything at all, I let go and you die. Got that?’

Frank gave a kind of a groan but whether it was a response or a moan of pain or just nothing at all, she couldn’t tell. She managed to free her right hand and move towards his neck. Another groan.

‘I need to check your pulse,’ she said.

It was slow. His blood pressure was falling. Now there was the sound of sirens and a car pulling up and ringing and banging on the door. Frieda’s face was almost against Frank’s and she saw a flicker.

‘I can’t answer the door,’ she said. ‘If I get up, you’ll bleed out by the time I’m back. We’d better hope that they can break it down.’

It seemed that they couldn’t. There was more ringing on the door and banging and then finally, the sound of the door opening. Frieda shouted something and there was a sound of steps. She looked round and saw a young police officer step into the room, the shocked expression on his face, then actually step back out. Almost immediately the room seemed full. She saw uniforms and faces she couldn’t make out.

‘Jesus, Frieda, what’s happened?’

She saw Karlsson’s appalled face. Hussein was beside him.

‘I can’t move,’ she said. ‘If I move he’ll die.’

Karlsson was looking around his children’s room. Frieda could see that there was even blood on the mobile above the bed. Her whole body felt stiff and sticky with it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘So sorry.’

Different people were staring at Frieda and at Frank and some of them went pale. She heard the sound of
someone vomiting. Then there were men and women in green overalls lugging bags. One of them, a young man, red-haired, leaned over and stared at Frieda’s hands on Frank’s chest.

‘Fuck,’ he said. He turned to Frieda, then looked at her hands, at the blood. ‘Are you a doctor?’

‘Yes. Of a kind.’

‘What did this?’

‘I did,’ said Frieda. ‘With a knife.’

‘All right,’ said the man, slowly. ‘Keep your hands there.’ He glanced around. ‘Jen, get on the other side. Gauze.’

A young woman rummaged through a bag and produced what looked like a toilet roll. She unravelled it and ripped off a sheet.

‘What’s your name?’ said the man.

‘Frieda Klein.’

‘OK, Frieda. On the count of three, you’re going to remove your hands and get them out of the way. One, two, three.’

Frieda raised her hands and at the same moment felt herself lifted up and away from Frank. She was laid down, almost forced down, on a stretcher.

‘Are you injured?’ a voice said.

‘No,’ said Frieda.

‘She’s bleeding,’ another voice said.

‘I’m not bleeding. It’s not my blood.’

But it all felt too tiring and she just lay back and felt hands on her and the stretcher was being carried down the hall and the sun was in her eyes and the flashing lights and then she was inside the ambulance and the doors were slammed and there was the sound of the siren and then the doors were opened again and Frieda just saw the blue
sky briefly, then strip lights. The stretcher became a trolley. To one side she saw a police uniform, the officer struggling to keep up. There was still all that to deal with. The trolley stopped in a corridor. There was a murmured conference, that endless search in every hospital for space, for a room or a bed. She heard a man shouting and swearing. Something was thrown. Men in uniform ran past her, down the corridor. The shouts continued, then became muffled. Finally her trolley was pushed into a cubicle and she was lifted onto a bed.

A doctor leaned over her. She was young, the age of one of Frieda’s own students. Frieda slowly gave her name and age and address. Her mind was clearing and she felt a dull ache of tiredness.

‘So where does it hurt?’ asked the doctor.