Thursday's Children (10 page)

Frieda went straight to see Karlsson at his house. It seemed the only thing to do. He made a pot of coffee, then didn’t get round to pouring it. It gradually got cold, forgotten, while Frieda sat at the table and told him the whole story. When she had finished, there was a long silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘You must feel like you’re trapped. I came and told you the story before and now I’ve told it again. You’re probably wondering what I’m expecting of you.’

‘I was just trying to see it from the local police’s point of view. I can understand why they aren’t proceeding. From where they sit, it’s far from clear that there ever was a rape committed. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that this was a troubled young woman with a history of self-harm.’

‘You’re just repeating what they said.’

‘I’m trying to say that there isn’t an obvious way forward from here.’

‘I didn’t come to ask for your permission.’

At that Karlsson couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘I don’t recall you ever asking for my permission, even when you bloody well ought to have done. So why are you here? Not that you aren’t always welcome, of course, but if you’re not asking for my permission, what are you asking for?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘When I look back, I feel I’ve mainly caused you trouble.’

‘What you’ve mainly done is help. There have been occasional hiccups on the way, but they’ve usually been worse for you than for me.’

‘How are relations between you and the commissioner?’

Karlsson shook his head. ‘Not good. But they were bad before I met you. It’s probably more your area than mine. I think I’m the son he’s always been a bit disappointed with.’

‘I’m not sure I’d be the right therapist for him. But what I was trying to say is that I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I do know that I’ll need help. I don’t know what kind. I also want to say that I’m not asking you to believe me. And I won’t ask you to do anything stupid.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

‘It felt wrong to me even to begin to think about embarking on something like this without telling you.’

‘Thank you for that,’ said Karlsson. ‘Because you haven’t always done that. So what are you going to do?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to go back to Braxton and spend time there. It’s the thing I swore to myself I’d never do.’

Karlsson hesitated. What Frieda was saying made him uneasy. ‘If you need help, you have only to tell me and I’ll see what I can do.’ Frieda got up to leave. ‘And if you get any crazy ideas, tell me in advance so I can talk you out of them. Or at least come along with you.’

Frieda touched his hand with hers. ‘I will,’ she said.

The next day, Karlsson had meetings, a case review; he supervised the interview of a witness to a robbery who seemed to remember nothing whatever about what he was supposed to have witnessed. He told old George Lofting that in three months’ time he would no longer be a police
officer. He called a halt to the refurbishments in the canteen. All the time, somewhere in the back of his mind, he was thinking of what Frieda had told him. It was a little piece of grit in his shoe, an annoying scratchiness he couldn’t rid himself of.

Back home, he tried to Skype the children but they were out. He made himself a bowl of pasta and ate it with several glasses of red wine. He was just washing up when there was a knock at the door. He was sure it was Frieda. He was wrong. At first, he didn’t recognize the tall, rangy, middle-aged man in the dark suit, the white open-necked shirt.

‘Sandy,’ said Karlsson. It was almost a question. ‘Is Frieda with you?’

Sandy didn’t return Karlsson’s smile. ‘She doesn’t know I’m here,’ he said.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Can I come in?’

Karlsson led Sandy through to the kitchen. He was glad he’d cleared up, so it didn’t look too much like the symptom of a tired middle-aged man missing his children. He picked up his glass of wine. ‘There’s more in the bottle, if you’d like.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Sandy.

‘I can make tea or coffee.’

‘I’ll just be a minute.’

‘I’m guessing this must be something important.’

‘Frieda came to see you yesterday.’

‘That’s right.’

‘She wanted your advice.’

‘Not exactly advice.’

‘What did you tell her?’

Karlsson took a sip of his wine. ‘Can we go through to
the living room and sit down?’ he said. ‘This feels a bit strange, like we’re standing waiting for a lift to arrive.’

‘All right.’

When they were sitting opposite each other, Karlsson on a wooden chair, Sandy perched at the end of the sofa, Karlsson felt even more awkward.

‘Look,’ he began, ‘I don’t like talking about Frieda behind her back.’ He looked down into his drink. ‘It’s no good keeping secrets from her. She’ll find out.’

‘But you know about all that’s happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘I came back because of it. And I went down with her to Braxton.’

‘That was the right thing to do.’

‘I wasn’t asking for a compliment. What I mean is that I’m worried about the situation.’

‘In what way?’

Sandy made a gesture as if he were trying to conjure up the explanation. ‘Frieda had this trauma in her past. She hadn’t told me about it. From what I understand, she hadn’t even told her own therapist. And now all this has happened, the tragedy of this girl in Braxton. You know what she’s planning?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘She’s going back there to conduct some sort of investigation.’ Sandy looked at Karlsson for a response but Karlsson was still staring into his wine glass, as if he had noticed something interesting. ‘Even by Frieda’s account, it’s possible that this girl wasn’t actually raped, and it’s possible that she did kill herself. I mean, just because the police said it was suicide doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

At Sandy’s sarcasm, Karlsson looked up.

‘Even if it did happen,’ Sandy continued, ‘it must be overwhelmingly probable that it has nothing to do with a crime that happened twenty-odd years ago.’

‘I don’t know enough about the case,’ said Karlsson.

‘What I’m really saying is that Frieda has faced up to this terrible thing that happened to her, she’s talked about it, she’s told her close friends. I can understand the feelings that have been stirred up but sometimes you have to accept that what has happened has happened. Now she needs to put this terrible thing behind her and move on.’

‘What?’ said Karlsson.

‘I’m sorry. Have I said something strange?’

‘This is Frieda we’re talking about. And maybe moving on isn’t an option.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s something you should discuss with Frieda.’

Sandy looked puzzled and angry. ‘You think going down to Braxton in search of whatever it is she’s in search of is a good idea?’

‘What I think doesn’t matter very much.’

‘You’re a true friend of Frieda’s.’

‘I’d like to believe so.’

‘She trusts and respects you.’

‘Oh, please stop,’ said Karlsson.

‘What I was hoping was that you’d join with me in telling her to abandon this. God knows she’s been through some terrible experiences. What she needs now is to get better, get back to her work, to her patients.’

Karlsson shook his head. ‘I don’t know where to begin. You know Frieda. You love Frieda. You must understand
that the best way to get her to do something is to tell her not to do it. The fact is that I never know what Frieda’s going to do or why she’s going to do it. You and I live in a world of pedantic reasons and black and white. Frieda isn’t like that.’

‘So you’re saying we should trust her instincts, whatever they are?’

‘Sometimes with Frieda I feel like one of those cowboys in a western who’s being dragged by a stampeding horse. You just hope the horse knows where it’s going.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Sandy. ‘You’re saying you believe her on this.’

‘I’m saying it doesn’t matter.’

Sandy glanced around him. ‘When you suggested a walk, I was thinking more of a park or along the canal.’

‘Don’t you like it?’ said Frieda.

Sandy looked doubtfully at the semi-industrial buildings, the shoddy office blocks. At first he couldn’t speak because they had to step back as a large lorry reversed its way out of the small street. It was starting to rain, slowly but steadily.

‘This is Shoreditch,’ he said. ‘And not even the nice bit of Shoreditch.’

Frieda’s expression changed, as if she were seeing something in the far distance. ‘I remember a couple of years ago, we were lying in bed and I told you about a walk we were going to do along a hidden river.’

‘That’s right. The Tyburn. You described every detail. Down through Hampstead and Regent’s Park and under Buckingham Palace to the river. We never did that walk.’

‘We’re doing this one instead.’

‘This is a river?’

‘This is my favourite one of all.’

‘I would never have thought it,’ said Sandy.

‘What did you expect? The sound of rushing water?’

‘Maybe some sort of valley, the shape of the old riverbank.’

‘This river disappeared too long ago for anything like that.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘The Walbrook.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Nobody has,’ said Frieda. ‘But it’s there somewhere, about thirty feet down, still trying to get to the Thames. This way.’

They walked a few yards and crossed a busy road.

‘Holywell Lane,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s like a little whisper of memory that there’s water somewhere underneath. So, you talked to Karlsson.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I talked to him and he told me.’

‘I was going to tell you.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I really was going to tell you. I talked to him as a friend of yours.’

Ahead, as they skirted the edge of Liverpool Street station, they could see a vast construction site, with cranes and bulldozers and lorries.

‘Shall we have a look?’ said Frieda. ‘Maybe we can see what they’ve dug up.’

They made their way towards the edge of the giant pit but a man in a yellow coat intercepted them. ‘It’s a building site,’ he said. ‘You can’t come here without a hard hat.’

‘We just want a quick look,’ said Frieda.

‘You’ll need to go to the site office.’

‘It’s all right.’ They walked towards a small path that led around the site. ‘This was built in the eighties and it’s already gone. Five hundred years ago, this was all fields and marshes and there was a pit for victims of the plague. Dying people threw themselves into it.’

‘And there was a river,’ said Sandy.

‘Yes, a river running through it.’

They crossed London Wall.

‘We’re in the old city of London now,’ said Frieda. ‘The river’s gone, but whenever they dig here to build another headquarters for a bank, they find the sort of stuff that you get with rivers – bones from the old tanneries but also temples, statues of gods. Rivers are special. They come from another world.’

‘You never step into the same river twice,’ said Sandy.

‘You don’t think I should go back to Braxton,’ said Frieda.

‘I want us to discuss it.’

‘You think I should put it behind me. You think I should move on.’

‘You make that sound like a bad thing.’

‘Look,’ said Frieda, pointing at a street sign. ‘Walbrook. We must be on the right track.’

‘When was it covered up?’

‘Five hundred years ago. People were complaining about the smell a thousand years ago. We’re almost at the Thames.’

‘It’s a short river.’

‘It was the main river running through the old city. Even the old Roman city. And now it’s gone.’

They walked along the vast brick walls of Cannon Street
station and arrived at a set of railings. In front of them was the Thames. There were vast barges tethered close to the bank. It was now raining more heavily and it was cold. They were standing next to a riverside pub. Sandy nodded at it. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

Frieda shook her head. ‘Follow me,’ she said. They walked down some steep steps on to the gravelly bed of the river, exposed at high tide. ‘The river is meant to come out of a pipe somewhere here but I’ve never been able to see it myself.’

‘It’s funny to think of it still flowing after all these centuries,’ said Sandy.

Frieda looked up and down the river, then turned to Sandy and stared at him full in the face. ‘When I was a teenager in the town that you don’t want me to go back to –’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘Wait. My first boyfriend, I mean the first boy I ever slept with, was called Jeremy Sutton. We were obsessed with each other. Gradually that madness abated and, after a while, it just went wrong. I don’t really know why. We bickered and drifted apart and drifted back together and scratched at each other. We sort of broke up and saw other people. It was my first glimpse of what two people can do to each other.’ She paused. ‘Well, not quite my first. But I couldn’t believe how ugly it was, how shaming.’

‘Frieda …’

‘I swore to myself that whatever else I did I would never again go through that lying and pretence and evasion.’

‘And?’

Frieda took Sandy by both hands. ‘When you came back to London and when you accompanied me to Braxton, those were good things. I’ll always be grateful.’

‘Grateful?’ His eyebrows rose and his face took on a pinched look.

‘Yes.’

He took his hands from her grasp. His mouth curled in the wolfish smile she’d seen him turn on other people but never on her. ‘You sound like a fucking chief executive who’s letting someone go.’

‘I don’t mean to. But, Sandy, it’s over.’

There was a long pause and still she looked him full in the face.

‘I came back from New York. I gave up a prestigious job. I bought a flat near enough to you to be close, far enough away not to crowd you.’

‘I know. I didn’t ask you to,’ she added. ‘You chose to come and that was an act of generosity I will never forget.’

‘It’s because of that, isn’t it? It’s because you feel beholden.’

‘I don’t feel beholden.’

‘You do, and you can’t bear it.’

‘No.’