Nicci French - Tuesday's Gone

Frieda took a deep breath. ‘Your argument,’ she said, ‘is that Michelle Doyce, having killed this man and stripped him naked, wanted to symbolize cutting off his penis by cutting off his finger. Why didn’t she cut off his penis?’

Bradshaw smiled again. ‘You need to read my report. She’s a psychopath. She arranges the world in terms of symbols.’

Karlsson looked at his deputy.

Yvette shrugged. ‘It just seems too vague to me, too theoretical,’ she said. ‘You don’t convict someone based on symbols.’

‘But she’s mad,’ said the commissioner, harshly. ‘It won’t matter anyway,’

‘What about you?’ Karlsson turned to Frieda as if Crawford hadn’t spoken. Frieda could sense his anger, rather than see it. A vein ticked in his temple.

‘I’m not an expert on this,’ she replied. ‘Not like Dr Bradshaw. I don’t know. I mean, I really don’t know.’

‘But what do you think ?’ said Karlsson.

Frieda looked back up at the ceiling tiles. Definitely random, she decided.

‘I just can’t believe that Michelle Doyce committed that murder. I’ve been trying to construct scenarios in my mind in which she does it and none of them makes sense.’

‘I’ve just provided a scenario,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Yes. That’s what I mean.’

‘But the body was in her flat,’ said Commissioner Crawford, impatiently. She turned, and he leaned towards her, banging his hand on the table to make his point. She could see spittle at the corners of his mouth. ‘Of course she must have killed him. Did someone else come in and leave it there? If we don’t believe she did it, what the hell do we do?’

‘What I wrote in my notes is that we should listen to her.’

‘But all she’s doing is rambling about boats.’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘I wonder what she means by that.’

‘Well.’ Frieda almost thought Karlsson was trying not to smile. ‘There’s Dr Bradshaw’s theory about rivers and women and all that.’

Frieda thought for a moment. ‘That’s the big thing I have trouble with,’ she said. ‘I mean, I have trouble with all of it, but especially with that. The thing about Michelle is that I don’t think she talks in symbols. I think she lives in a world where everything is real. That’s her curse.’

Karlsson looked across at Bradshaw. ‘Well?’

‘I saw a woman in the corridor with a tea trolley,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Do you want her opinion as well?’

Karlsson looked back at Frieda, raising his eyebrows. There was a long silence that she didn’t see any reason to break.

‘I agree with Dr Klein,’ he said finally.

‘Fuck it, Mal.’

‘Michelle Doyce might have killed this man, but since when is “might” enough for us?’

‘I want this case closed.’

‘Indeed. We’re trying to do just that, but –’

‘No! You’re not listening. I’m beginning to think you’re taking your eye off the ball. I mean that I want this case closed right now. I agree with Dr Bradshaw. This Doyce woman did it. I’m overruling you, Mal. Send the file to the CPS.’

‘Sorry for wasting your time, Frieda.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. What are you going to do now?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘About the case.’

‘You heard. I’m sending the file to the CPS. She’ll be unfit to plead. Case done and dusted, commissioner satisfied, Michelle Doyce safe in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life.’

‘But if you think she didn’t do it?’

Karlsson shrugged. ‘Welcome to my life.’

Jack Dargan looked around. ‘This is different,’ he said. ‘Not necessarily in a good way. I preferred it when we had our meetings at Number 9. I could do with a cappuccino and one of Marcus’s brownies.’

They were walking down Howard Street in the sleety drizzle. Jack’s face looked raw, where it was visible. He was wearing a green bobble hat with side flaps and a checked brown and orange scarf wrapped several times round his neck. Whenever he wasn’t speaking he pulled it up over his mouth. He’d also put on an ancient bright blue anorak with a broken zip. He’d forgotten to wear gloves, though, and kept blowing on his hands. Frieda was Jack’s mentor and Jack her trainee, but today he looked more like her truculent nephew.

‘In ten years’ time, five, this area will be all done up. Houses like this will have been pulled down to make way for offices,’ said Frieda, stopping in front of number three.

‘Good.’

‘They’ll still have to find a place to dump all the misfits and the rejects, all the hopeless, forgotten people.’

‘Is it where your man was found?’

‘He’s not exactly my man, but yes.’

‘So why are we here? You told me the case was closed.’

‘It is closed. They’ve decided Michelle Doyce did it and she’s unfit to plead. I just wanted to see where she lived. I thought you and I could talk better while we walk.’

She turned and led Jack back up Howard Street towards Deptford Church Street.

‘I don’t know that I’ve got anything worth telling you,’ muttered Jack.

‘I’ve been your supervisor for nearly two years.’

‘That’s the bright spot in my week. Other than that …’ He looked away so she couldn’t see his face.

‘Other than that?’

‘I like talking about people’s problems – just not to them. I’m interested in it all in theory, but sitting in that little room hearing someone tell me about what their step-father said to them when they were six – it feels pointless. Or maybe I’m no good at it. I try to listen and then I catch myself thinking about what I want to eat for lunch or what film to go and see. People’s lives are mostly so dreary .’

Frieda looked at him attentively. ‘What’s your life like?’

‘I tell you what was good – last year, that time with Alan and Dean, being involved with all that, even on the edge of it. When it seemed relevant and there was some kind of answer – like a key fitting into a lock and the door swinging open. Most of the time it’s just me and them in a room saying stuff.’

‘Stuff,’ said Frieda. ‘Is that all it is?’

‘You know what I think, Frieda? I think I’m only still doing it because of you. Because I want to be like you. Because when I’m with you it all seems to make sense. Most of the time I think what we do might be a great con, a joke played on people who feel heroic because they suffer and that’s all they want to talk about.’

‘You sound resentful. You almost sound as though you’re saying, “And what about me?”’

‘They give me a nasty mess and I pat it into some kind of shape. It could be any kind of shape, it doesn’t really matter. I want to tell them to look outside themselves at the real world. There’s proper suffering out there. Rape and violence and sheer, grinding poverty.’

Frieda touched him on the shoulder. They had turned off Deptford Church Street and come to a small church, set back from the road, with an old tower. A skull-and-crossbones was set on one of its gate posts and a charnel house to the right.

‘St Nicholas was the patron saint of sailors,’ said Frieda, as they went through the gates and into a small graveyard. ‘It’s what you’d expect in a church by the docks.’

‘I haven’t been into a church since my grandma’s funeral,’ said Jack.

‘This one used to be in the countryside. It was all orchards and market gardens and small boats tied up at the wharves. Pilgrims to Canterbury would pass through it. Christopher Marlowe was killed in a brawl in a house nearby. They carried the body here.’

‘Which is his grave, then?’