Nicci French: Tuesday's Gone

‘We saw that in the flat.’

‘Anyone else?’

Munster looked back at his notebook. ‘Metesky. Tony Metesky. I could hardly get him to talk at all. Wouldn’t look at me. He’s clearly got some kind of mental problem. I’ve rung Social Services about him and someone’s meant to ring me back. His room was in a real state, even by the prevailing standards. There are needles on the floor, hundreds of them.’

Karlsson frowned. ‘His?’

Munster shook his head. ‘Cuckooing, I reckon.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Newton. The three officers all glanced at him and he looked embarrassed.

‘Cuckooing,’ said Munster, ‘is when a dealer identifies a vulnerable person and uses his accommodation as a base for activity.’

‘I suppose that Mr Whatever-his-name-is didn’t give you any information about the deceased.’

‘I could hardly get any sense out of him at all.’

‘What kind of place is this?’ asked Yvette.

Munster shut his notebook. ‘I think it’s where they put people when they can’t think what else to do with them.’

‘Who owns the house?’ asked Karlsson. ‘Maybe the dead body is the landlord.’

‘The owner is a woman,’ said Munster. ‘She lives in Spain. I’m going to call her, check she’s actually there. She owns several houses and uses an agent. I’m getting the details.’

‘Where are they all now?’ asked Karlsson.

Munster nodded across at Yvette.

‘Michelle Doyce is back in hospital,’ she said. ‘The others are still there, as far as I know.’

‘Still there?’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s a crime scene.’

‘Not strictly speaking. Until we get the autopsy result, it may just be a matter of failing to register a death and I don’t suppose any court will find Michelle Doyce fit to plead. As for the rest of them, where are they supposed to go? We’ve been ringing the council and we can’t even find a person to talk to about it.’

‘Do they not care that one of their own hostels might be being used as a centre for drug-dealing?’ asked Karlsson.

There was a pause.

‘Well,’ said Yvette, ‘if we could find someone in Social Services and get them down here, what they would probably say is that if we suspect a crime then it’s a matter for us to investigate. Which we probably won’t do.’

Karlsson tried not to catch the eye of Jake Newton. This might not have been the best introduction to police work. ‘So what we’ve got,’ he said, ‘is a woman serving tea and buns to an unidentified naked rotting man, whose only distinguishing feature is the missing finger on his left hand. Could the finger have been removed to get a ring off?’

‘It was the middle finger,’ said Munster. ‘Not the ring finger.’

‘You can have a ring on your middle finger,’ said Karlsson. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’

‘Don got prints off him,’ said Munster. ‘It wasn’t much fun, but they got them. And they didn’t get a match.’

‘So what do we think?’ said Karlsson. ‘Where do we start?’

Munster and Yvette looked at each other. They didn’t say anything.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ said Karlsson, ‘but I know what I hope.’

‘What?’

‘I hope he had a simple heart attack and this crazy woman panicked and didn’t know what to do.’

‘But he was naked,’ said Yvette. ‘And we don’t know who he is.’

‘If he died of a heart attack, it’ll be someone else’s problem.’ He frowned. ‘I wish someone could make sense of what Michelle Doyce is saying.’

As he spoke, a face came into his mind, unsmiling and dark-eyed: Frieda Klein.

‘Please take a seat, Dr Klein.’

Frieda had been in the room several times before. She had come to seminars here as a trainee; she had led seminars here as a qualified analyst; once, she had even sat where Professor Jonathan Krull was now, with a sixty-year-old therapist, whose name had since been removed from the British Psychoanalytic Council’s register, in the seat she occupied today.

She took a deep, steadying breath and sat, folding her hands in her lap. She knew Krull by reputation and Dr Jasmine Barber as a fellow practitioner. They were on friendly terms and Dr Barber now looked awkward, finding it hard to meet Frieda’s eyes. The third member of the team was a squat, grey-haired woman in a violently pink jumper who was wearing a neck brace. Above it, her wrinkled face was shrewd and her grey eyes bright. Frieda thought she looked like an intelligent frog. She introduced herself as Thelma Scott. Frieda felt a tremor of interest: she had heard of Thelma Scott as a specialist in memory and trauma, but had never before met her. The only other person in the room sat at the far end of the table: she was there to take notes of the proceedings.

‘As you know, Dr Klein,’ said Professor Krull, glancing down at the sheets of paper in front of him, ‘this is a preliminary investigation into a complaint we have received.’ Frieda nodded. ‘We have a code of ethics and a complaints procedure to which as a registrant you have subscribed. We are here today to investigate the complaint against you and to make sure that one of your patients has not been a victim of poor professional practice, and that you have behaved in a safe and appropriate manner. Before we begin, I need to make clear that none of our decisions or findings have the force of law.’ He was reading from the paper in front of him now. ‘Moreover, whatever we decide does not affect the right of the individual making the complaint to take legal proceedings against you, should they choose to do so. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Frieda.

‘Also, this screening committee is made up of three psychotherapists who are here to give impartial professional consideration to the case. Have you any reason for doubting the impartiality of any of us, Dr Klein?’

‘No.’

‘You have chosen to have no representation.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then we can begin. The complaint has been made by Mrs Caroline Dekker, on behalf of her husband Alan Dekker. You can confirm that Alan Dekker was your patient?’

‘Yes. I saw him in November and December 2009. I’ve written the dates of each session down.’ She brought out a typed sheet and slid it across the table.

‘Mrs Dekker claims that her husband came to see you in a state of acute distress.’

‘He was experiencing severe panic attacks.’

‘She also claims that, far from helping him, you used him as a –’ Krull looked down at his notes ‘– pawn in a police investigation. That you acted like a detective, not a therapist, casting suspicion on him, and indeed reported him to the police, making him a suspect in a case of child abduction, that you violated your pledge of patient confidentiality and furthered your own career at the expense of his peace of mind and future happiness.’

‘Would you like to give us your version of events, Dr Klein?’ Thelma Scott, the elderly woman in the neck brace and ugly jumper, fixed Frieda with her sharp eyes.

Now that this moment, which she had long dreaded, had at last arrived she felt calm. ‘Alan Dekker came to me in November because he was tormented by fantasies of having a child. He was childless himself, although he and his wife had been trying for some time to have a baby. So we talked about why his childlessness should cause not just grief but severe dysfunction. At the same time an actual child, Matthew Faraday, had disappeared. The child that Alan described – the one he had never had – was so like the boy who had disappeared that I felt I had to report it to the police. And then I told Alan what I’d done.’

‘Was he angry?’ asked Jasmine Barber.