Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (18 page)

‘Not a soul.’ Mrs Lowe
beamed.

‘Never?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Her son never visits?’

‘You mean the other son? Dean’s
twin.’

‘Alan. Yes.’

‘Never. Not once. You can’t
quite blame him, can you? After all, she wasn’t a mother to him, was she? She
picked the wrong one to keep, is what I always say.’

‘So she’s been quite alone since
Dean killed himself?’

‘Not that she minded. She’s not
what I’d call a sociable lady. Never did join in with our fun and games, even
before her memory got as bad as it did. Always kept herself to herself. Perhaps
it’s just as well. I have to admit that some of our old dears here didn’t
take very kindly to having the mother of an evil monster …’ Mrs Lowe’s
mouth lost its fixed smile and momentarily twisted in a grimace. ‘Now it’s
too late for things like that. Too late for anything. She never did make her peace with
the world.’

‘Thank you for your help.’

‘Someone did come once, but they
didn’t even go and visit her. They just left her a bag of doughnuts at the front
desk.’

‘Doughnuts,’ said Frieda,
softly, to herself more than to Mrs Lowe.

‘She was always very partial to
doughnuts.’

‘Yes,’
muttered Frieda. ‘I know. Her son, Dean, used to bring them to her.’

‘It must have been someone else,
then.’

Frieda waited until she was several streets
away from River View Nursing Home before pulling out her mobile and calling the number
she had copied on to it that morning. She then walked to Gallions Reach, but travelled
only as far as Canning Town where she changed trains for Stratford. It was a foggy day,
and in the wet, cold air, the half-built Olympic Village took on a ghostly appearance –
scaffolded buildings and segments of domes and towers surfaced from the dank mist, below
which Frieda could make out vans and diggers and crowds of men in hard hats.

It took her fifteen minutes to walk to
Leytonstone, where she turned up the long, straight road of Victorian terraced houses
shrouded in the grey light to number 108. Frieda didn’t hurry: she was trying to
order her thoughts and to prepare what she was going to say. That she must say it she
finally had no doubt. She rang at the dark green door, hearing its double chime in the
distance, and had the eerie sense of being back in a previous life. She almost expected
Alan to answer, standing before her with his sad brown eyes and his apologetic
smile.

It was Carrie who came to the door, in a
yellow jersey that made her pallor more obvious, and she wasn’t smiling.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

Frieda stepped inside, wiping her boots
carefully on the doormat and hanging her coat up. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see
me.’

‘You didn’t give me much choice.
Shall we go through to the kitchen?’

It was the same as it had always been, neat
and pleasing,
with one half given over to domestic appliances and the
other to Alan’s tools. On dozens of shelves, divided into small compartments, were
his screws and nuts and bolts, his fuses and washers and keys. Carrie noticed
Frieda’s glance and smiled wryly. ‘He didn’t take any of his stuff. I
kept thinking he would come back so I didn’t clear it out. Stupid, isn’t it,
when he’s obviously not coming back? Only I don’t know how to
begin.’

‘There is something you should
know.’

‘About Alan? I knew it. You
do
know where he is.’

‘It’s about Alan, yes. You
should sit down.’

Carrie obeyed, looking wary, as if
anticipating a blow.

‘This is going to be a shock, and
perhaps you won’t believe me, but I am certain that Alan is dead.’

Carrie’s hands flew to her mouth. Her
grey eyes stared at Frieda. ‘Dead?’ she whispered. ‘Dead? Alan? My
Alan? But … when? When did he die?’

‘On the twenty-fourth of December
2009.’

Carrie’s hands slid away from her
mouth, which was working uselessly, mouthing words she couldn’t utter. She leaned
forward slightly in her chair and her head lolled to one side. ‘What are
you …?’ she said thickly, in a voice that was scarcely recognizable as her
own. ‘I was with him after that. I was with him at Christmas. I told
you.’

‘I believe that Dean killed Alan on
the day your husband went to meet him.’

Frieda paused for a moment, so that Carrie
could begin to see the implication of what she was saying. ‘He swapped clothes,
strung him up, wrote a suicide note for himself, came home to you, as Alan, and you
called the police. You know the rest.’

Carrie said something that Frieda
couldn’t make out. The voice came from her belly, low and guttural. Then she
sprang
up and flung the table over; it caught Frieda on the shin and
crashed to the floor in a scream of breaking china and screeching wood on tile.

‘You
fuck
.’

‘Carrie.’

Frieda grasped Carrie by her wrists and
tried to hold her steady, but although she was smaller than Frieda, rage made her
strong. Frieda could see the spittle on her chin and the white patches on her cheeks, as
if someone had pressed a thumb deep into them.

‘Get off me. Don’t touch me.
Don’t come near me. Do you hear?’

Frieda wrapped both arms around
Carrie’s body from behind, gripping her fiercely. ‘Carrie,’ she
repeated.

Carrie surged in her arms. The back of her
head was against Frieda’s mouth. She kicked at Frieda’s leg and, wrenching
her head round, tried to bite Frieda’s shoulder. ‘It’s not
true,’ she howled, low and hoarse. ‘It’s a lie. You’re lying to
me. It’s not true. Alan’s not dead.’

Frieda felt Carrie’s body tense and
then go limp. She made a gagging noise and then, as Frieda relaxed her hold, bent
forwards and started to vomit on to her kitchen floor. Frieda put a hand on her forehead
and held her, then eased her on to the chair that was still standing. Carrie crumpled on
to it like a rag doll. Frieda found some kitchen towel and wiped Carrie’s mouth,
pushed her hair back from her sweaty face. Then she picked up the fallen table and
Carrie laid her head on it and started to weep in retching sobs that sounded as though
she might weep up her organs and her heart, turn herself inside out.

Frieda picked up the other chair, then used
several squares of kitchen roll to wipe up the vomit and flush it down the next-door
lavatory. Returning, she filled a washing-up bowl
with hot, soapy
water and scrubbed the floor. She boiled the kettle and made a pot of strong tea. She
heaped four teaspoons of sugar into a mug and added a big splash of milk. She pushed it
in front of Carrie, who lifted her face, swollen with weeping.

‘Just a bit,’ said Frieda.
‘Are you cold?’

Carrie nodded. Frieda ran upstairs and came
back with a quilt she’d removed from the bed. ‘Wrap this round you and drink
your tea.’

Carrie sat up. She tried to hold the mug but
her hands were shaking so badly that Frieda took it from her and held it to her lips,
tipping it carefully until Carrie could take small gulps.

At last, Frieda said, ‘Have you
understood?’

Carrie wrapped the quilt more tightly around
her body so that only her face was showing. She looked like a beaten animal.

‘Carrie?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve
understood,’ she whispered.

‘Do you believe me?’

‘Alan had this habit.’
Carrie’s voice was hoarse from her weeping. ‘He always used to take bits of
my food, or drink half of my tea, even when he had his own. I’d be eating a
biscuit and he’d lean over and pop it into his mouth, or pick up my sandwich and
take a large bite out of the middle of it, the best bit, very casually as if he
didn’t even know he was doing it. I’d turn my head, and when I turned back,
there’d be his toothmarks in my Jaffa cake or something. It irritated me but it
was like a running joke between us. Even when things were at their very worst, even when
he’d lost his appetite for anything, he went on nicking my food. I often think
that’s what makes a marriage work, not the big obvious things, like sex and
children, but all those habits and routines and funny
tics, the little
things that drive you mad but bring you close.’ She wasn’t looking at Frieda
any more, but down at the table, and speaking in a voice so quiet that Frieda had to
lean forward to hear it. ‘He took my food because my food was his food. My life
and his life hadn’t got any boundaries. We’d kind of merged. The day he
left …’ She gulped. Her blotchy face twitched. ‘The day the man I
thought was Alan left, we were sitting on the sofa and I’d warmed up two mince
pies. We never had Christmas pudding at Christmas. We liked our luxury mince pies from
M&S, with cream, it was one of our traditions – and for once he didn’t take
any of mine. I made a joke out of it. I held it up to his lips and said,
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours,” or something
stupid like that. But he just smiled and said he’d got his own. Later, once
he’d gone away, I thought it was a demonstration of his separateness – he
wasn’t eating my food because he no longer wanted me. Do you see?’

Frieda nodded but said nothing. She stood up
and refilled Carrie’s mug, adding more sugar.

‘He made me one cup of tea,’
Carrie continued, in a dreary voice. ‘That same day. Usually I made the tea but
I’d done all the cooking and I asked him to get me a cup. He made a song and dance
of it. He put the mug on a tray, with milk in a little jug and sugar in a china bowl,
even though I don’t take sugar. I thought he was being funny and romantic. I
didn’t get it. He just didn’t know, did he? He didn’t know how I took
my tea.’

‘I’m so very sorry,
Carrie,’ said Frieda.

‘I
slept
with him,’
cried Carrie. ‘I had sex with him. For the first time in months and months,
because Alan – he couldn’t. It was good.’ Her face contorted as if she would
throw up again. ‘It was the best it had ever been.
Ever
. Do you
understand? Do you?’

Frieda nodded again.

‘And it wasn’t
Alan. It wasn’t my darling, darling, hopeless Alan. Alan was dead, strung up like
some criminal. And I didn’t know and I didn’t grieve and I fucked his foul,
murdering brother and I was
happy
. I was so happy, lying tangled up in the dark
with the man who killed Alan and then had sex with me and listened to me crying out in
pleasure, oh, and then heard me telling him how it had never been this good before.
Argh! This is – I can’t –’

She stood up, her face chalky, and rushed
from the room. Frieda could hear her being sick again, then the lavatory flushing and
water running. Carrie returned, sat down again and fixed her red-rimmed eyes on
Frieda.

‘You are sure?’ she said.

‘Yes, I am. But I don’t have
evidence. Not the sort the police would accept.’

‘Can’t you do a DNA test?
I’ve got his toothbrush. His comb.’

‘Their DNA was the same,’ said
Frieda. ‘Anyway. What matters is what you think.’

‘I believe you.’ She seemed
flatly calm now.

‘Carrie, you must hold on to the fact
that Alan did not leave you and he always loved you. You loved him and were loyal to
him. You’ve got nothing to reproach yourself for.’

‘How could I not know, not feel it?
And now I can never make it right. I can never take Alan in my arms again and hold him
and comfort him and hug him to me until he feels safe again. I can never be forgiven by
him. This is what it will be like until the day I die. Oh, my poor sweet Alan. Nothing
ever went right for him, did it? Of course he wouldn’t have left me – how did I
not know that?’

Through that dark, wet day, Frieda sat in
the kitchen and listened as Carrie talked about Alan, about Dean, about her loneliness
and childlessness, about grief and anger, hostility
and self-disgust.
She heard her talk of hatred – for Dean, of course, but also for her, Frieda, who had
sucked Alan into a vortex from which he had never returned, for the police who
hadn’t stopped him, for herself – and of her desire for revenge. She heard of
Carrie’s early days with Alan, and how she had known on their first date that she
would marry him because of the way he had said her name – with flushed shyness, and as
if he was uttering some solemn and precious oath. Frieda made numerous cups of tea and,
later, a boiled egg that Carrie listlessly poked pieces of toast into. Only when Carrie
had called her friend and asked her to come over did she leave, promising to call her
the following day, and even then, she didn’t go straight home by cab or train, but
walked there through the London streets, winding her way westwards as the day turned to
evening and the fog became sleety darkness. Her mind was crowded with thoughts and
ghosts: Carrie’s staring white face, Alan’s eyes, which had always reminded
her of a spaniel’s, timid and pleading, and the jeering smile of Dean, who had
been dead but was now alive again. Somewhere in the world.

‘So,’ said Karlsson to Yvette
Long and Chris Munster, ‘this is what we have, and stop me if I get it
wrong.’ He ticked items off his fingers as he spoke. ‘One, a murder victim,
confirmed by DNA to be the Robert Poole who lived in the flat in Waverley Street, whose
body was found naked in a disturbed woman’s room, having been collected from an
adjacent alley, whose job we don’t know, whose friends haven’t missed him,
and whose neighbour says that he was charming, helpful, kind and would always water her
plants for her.’

Karlsson stopped and took a sip of water,
then continued, ‘Two, Mr Poole’s bank statements.’ He picked them up
and waved them. ‘The most recent of which show that he had just under three
hundred and ninety thousand pounds in his current account. I don’t know what
that’s about. We’re checking with the bank as we speak.’ He looked at
his watch. ‘They should have phoned by now. Anyway, three, a flat of which Yvette
made a preliminary search, as well as the scene-of-crime team. No passport, no wallet,
in fact, no personal documents of any kind. Nor is he on Facebook or Twitter, or any of
the other social networks. But there’s a notebook, with several pages ripped out,
in which there are a handful of names, some addresses, scrawls and doodles. Correct,
Yvette?’