Nicci French - Tuesday's Gone

And then, like a body rising to the surface of a murky lake, the thought came to her of Carrie Dekker talking about Alan, her husband, Dean’s identical twin. How he’d disappeared. She pressed her head harder against the door, feeling her brain working, her thoughts hissing. She couldn’t stop herself: the past was seeping into the present and there were things she needed to know. She wondered why she was doing this. Why was she going back?

On Monday morning, she had an eight o’clock session with a man – he seemed more like a boy – in his mid-twenties, who sat crouched over in his chair, his bulky body shaken by sobs for the first ten minutes, and then, stumbling from his seat and sinking down beside her, tried to get her to hug and hold him. He so badly wanted reassurance, a mothering presence to tell him that everything would be all right, that she would take the burden of it all for him. He was lonely and loveless and lost, and he wanted someone to care for him. He thought that Frieda could become his mother-figure, his friend, his rescuer. She took him by the chapped hand and led him back to his seat. She handed him a box of tissues and told him to take his time, then waited in her red chair while he wept and mopped his streaming face, all the while sobbing out apologies. She watched him in silence until his weeping subsided when she asked, ‘Why did you keep saying sorry?’

‘I don’t know. I felt stupid.’

‘Why stupid? You felt sad.’

‘I don’t know.’ He stared at her helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know where to begin. Where shall I begin?’

After he had left and she had written up her notes, Frieda walked to Warren Street station and caught the tube. The train stopped in a tunnel for fifteen minutes. A crackly voice had talked about a ‘body under a train at Earl’s Court’ and there had been a murmur of discontent. ‘It’s not even on the same line,’ a woman next to her had muttered, to nobody in particular. Frieda got out at the next station, looked for a taxi in the cold rain and didn’t find one, then just walked. Even so, she was only a few minutes late for the meeting. There were five people sitting around a table: Karlsson, Commissioner Crawford (whom she had never met but had seen on television the year before, talking about the tremendous police work that had been done to recover Matthew and how he didn’t want to take all the credit), and Yvette Long (who gave her a puzzled look, as if she wondered what she was doing there). There were also two men she didn’t recognize – someone the commissioner introduced as Jacob Newton, who peered at her as if she was some interesting specimen in a museum of curiosities, and Dr Hal Bradshaw. He looked as though he was in his early fifties, his curly dark hair streaked with grey. He was wearing a pin-striped suit, but the stripes were in a shade of green. When Karlsson described Frieda’s part in the Dean Reeve case to him, Bradshaw frowned at her.

‘I don’t quite see the need,’ he said to Commissioner Crawford. ‘Just my opinion, of course.’

‘I want her here,’ said Karlsson, firmly. He turned to Frieda. ‘Dr Bradshaw was about to give us his assessment of the murder scene and of Michelle Doyce’s state of mind. Dr Bradshaw?’

Hal Bradshaw coughed. ‘You all probably know my methods,’ he said. ‘It’s my view that murderers are like artists, like storytellers.’ Crawford nodded approvingly and sat back in his chair as if at last he felt on safe ground. ‘The scene of a murder is like the murderer’s work of art.’

As Bradshaw got into his stride, Frieda leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. It was made of polystyrene tiles with a rough grey pattern, which gave them the appearance of paving stones.

‘When I saw the photographs, I felt like I was looking at a chapter from one of my own books. I feel like I’m giving away the punch line at the beginning of the joke, but it was instantly clear to me that Michelle Doyce was a highly organized psychopath. Now, when I use a phrase like that, most of you think of a man cutting up women. But I’m using the term strictly. It was clear to me that she entirely lacked empathy and thus she was able to plan the murder, carry it out, arrange the crime scene, then continue to lead a normal life.’

‘Did you decide all this before you talked to her?’ Karlsson asked.

Bradshaw turned to him with an expression of tolerant amusement. ‘I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years. You get a sixth sense for these things, the way an art expert can instantly spot a fake Vermeer. Of course, I then interviewed Michelle Doyce, to the extent that it’s possible to interview her.’

Frieda was still staring at the polystyrene tiles. She was trying to establish whether the streaked pattern repeated itself or whether it was truly random.

‘Did she confess?’ asked Karlsson.

Bradshaw snorted. ‘The crime scene was her confession,’ he said, addressing most of his remarks to the commissioner. ‘I’ve looked at her file. She has led a life of utter failure and powerlessness. This crime and this crime scene were her final belated assertion of some kind of control of her life, some assertion of sexual power. “Here is a naked man,” she was saying. “This is what I can do to him.” Men have rejected her all her life. Finally, she decided to fight back.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Commissioner Crawford. ‘You agree, Mal?’

‘But did she say anything,’ Karlsson said, ‘when you asked her about the body?’

‘She wouldn’t answer directly,’ said Bradshaw. ‘She just babbled about the river and about ships and fleets. But if the story I’m telling is right, which I’m sure it is, then this isn’t just nonsense. This is her way of explaining herself. Obviously she lives near the river. She could almost see it from her house. But the way I read it, the river is the great symbol of the woman. The fluvial woman.’ Frieda looked down from the tiles just in time to see Bradshaw make a flowing gesture with his hands to accompany his words. ‘And the ships and the fleet,’ he continued, ‘are symbols of the man. I think what she is telling us is that the river, with its feminine tides and currents, is sweeping the male boat out to sea. Which is a form of death.’

‘I wish she could just tell us,’ said Yvette. ‘It sounds a bit abstract to me.’

‘She is telling us,’ said Bradshaw. ‘You just have to listen – with all due respect.’

Commissioner Crawford nodded. Frieda looked across at the young woman and saw her flush crimson and her fists clench on the table for a moment, before she let them uncurl again.

‘Did you see Dr Klein’s notes?’ asked Karlsson.

Bradshaw gave another snort. ‘Since Dr Klein is present, I’m not sure I should comment,’ he said. ‘But I really don’t think it’s necessary to chase up incredibly rare fantasy psychological syndromes. No offence, but I thought the notes displayed a certain naÏvety.’ He turned to Frieda and smiled at her. ‘I heard from the nursing staff that you bought a teddy bear for Michelle.’

‘It was a stuffed dog.’

‘Was that part of your examination or part of your treatment?’ said Bradshaw.

‘It was something for her to talk to.’

‘Well, that’s very touching. But, anyway, to business.’ He tapped a cardboard file that lay on the desk in front of him and directed his remarks once more to the commissioner. ‘It’s all in here. It’s my conclusion that this is a slam dunk. She clearly fits the profile. Obviously she won’t be fit to plead, but you can close your case.’

‘What about the missing finger?’ asked Frieda.

‘It’s all in here.’ Bradshaw picked up the file. ‘You’re an analyst, aren’t you? It all fits. What do you think cutting off a finger symbolizes?’