Nicci French - Tuesday's Gone

She glanced at Karlsson, who nodded.

‘Once you discovered how much money he had,’ Karlsson said, ‘and how he’d got it, the idea was simple. The best person to steal money from is someone who’s stolen the money himself because he can’t go to the police. Did he tell you about the money to try and impress you? So you and your brother decided to help yourself. Harry knew about bank transfers and setting up fake accounts. Con the conman.’

‘No,’ said Frieda.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t just stealing stolen money,’ she said. ‘It was even better than that. When did you discover that he was using a stolen identity? Did he boast about it to you? Or did Harry discover when he checked up on him?’ Tessa just stared at her, but didn’t speak. ‘Because that’s even better,’ Frieda continued. ‘Not just stolen money that won’t be reported to the police, but stolen from a non-existent person, someone with no history.’

‘It wasn’t me …’ Tessa began, but stopped.

‘Was it Harry’s idea?’ said Frieda. ‘It doesn’t matter. You know, I’ve tried not to think about the last few minutes of Robert Poole’s life. You probably imagined that a threat would be enough, like in the old days when you could get a confession just by showing the instruments of torture.’ Suddenly, she felt as if she were alone with Tessa and her voice became quiet. ‘What was it? A bolt cutter? A pair of secateurs? But he didn’t believe you, did he? He didn’t think you, Tessa Welles, would really go through with it. So you crammed a rag of some kind into his mouth and then you did it. It’s hard to cut off a finger, the bone and the tendon and the gristle, but you, or Harry, did it and he told you what you wanted to know to get at the money. Then you strangled him. But that was easy after the finger.

‘But this wasn’t an improvisation. It wasn’t a Plan B. You knew about the Wyatts. You knew Poole had helped himself to her necklace. You knew where you were going to dump the body in order to frame Frank Wyatt.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the solicitor. ‘Is there a question somewhere in this?’

‘It’s all a question,’ said Karlsson. ‘Will Tessa Welles admit to it?’

The solicitor looked at Tessa, who shook her head.

‘Robert Poole’s flat was interesting,’ continued Frieda. ‘I don’t mean your painting, which was hanging in Janet Ferris’s kitchen. We know about that. I mean that you weren’t clever enough about the evidence in his flat.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Karlsson, twisting his head to look at her. ‘There wasn’t any.’

‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘They left everything relating to his victims, but there was no reference to Tessa at all. Pages had been torn out of Poole’s notebooks but the names of the victims were left there. Which suggested that the pages had been torn out by someone else.’

‘What it suggested to you is not evidence,’ said Tessa’s solicitor.

‘You killed Robert Poole,’ said Karlsson. ‘You killed Janet Ferris.’

‘The coroner’s verdict was suicide.’

‘You killed Janet Ferris,’ repeated Karlsson. ‘And you tried to kill Michelle Doyce because you thought she knew something.’

There was a faint flicker in Tessa’s face.

‘She didn’t.’ Frieda leaned forward once more. ‘Michelle Doyce was no threat to you. She had nothing to tell me; I just let you and Harry believe that, God forgive me.’

‘That’s enough for now,’ said her solicitor, standing up.

‘You would have killed her, just in case,’ Frieda continued quietly. ‘You and your brother. How does it feel?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘How does it feel to find out what you’re capable of?’

‘Enough. My client has nothing further to say.’

‘You’re going to have to think about that, Tessa. Over the years.’

Harry Welles was wearing a thick grey pullover and black jeans. It was the first time that Frieda had seen him casually dressed: he had always been in a suit or a smart jacket, carefully groomed and impeccable. She considered him: many people would think him an attractive man. He had the self-conscious charm of one who is confident of getting his own way. Olivia positively cooed when she talked of him.

She took her seat in the corner and met his eyes. His solicitor was a woman, young, trim and pretty, who gestured with her hands whenever she spoke, and sometimes tapped her pink-tipped fingers on the table.

He had no comment about the torture of Robert Poole, no comment about his murder, nothing to say about the planted evidence and the dumping of the body, silence over Janet Ferris’s death.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Karlsson. ‘You were caught in the act of attempting to murder Michelle Doyce. It’s cut and dried. You’re going down, you and your sister. You’ve got nothing to lose. Why not tell us? It’s your last option.’

‘As you say,’ replied Harry, pleasantly, ‘you don’t get it.’

‘You think nobody is quite as clever as you,’ said Frieda. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘I was wondering when you’d speak.’

‘You and Tessa think that you’re superior to everyone else and it makes you feel impregnable.’

‘It takes one to know one.’

‘And contemptuous.’

‘I wasn’t contemptuous of you, was I? On our little dates?’ He raised his eyebrows at her.

‘Our dates?’ Frieda gazed at him speculatively. ‘Do you want to know what I thought about them? I’ve been on dates with other men, and sometimes they were interesting, and sometimes they were embarrassing, and sometimes they were charged with possibility. With our dates, there wasn’t anything. It was like a performance. There was nothing behind the words.’

‘Fuck you. You won’t be so calm when everything comes out. You like your privacy, but I know things, Frieda. You’ll be surprised by the things I know.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I know about your family, your father, your past.’

Karlsson stood up, with a violence that sent his chair skidding across the floor. ‘As your solicitor should have said, this interview is over.’

He turned off the tape recorder, then went to the door and held it open for Frieda. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then looked at Harry for the last time.

‘You called him Bob,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You asked about Bob Poole when we were in the pub. That was stupid of you, don’t you think? After that I knew for certain. One word, Harry. One syllable.’

Then she left the room, her chin raised.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Karlsson.

‘I’m fine.’

‘That stuff he said about –’

‘I said, I’m fine. It’s all right. It’s over.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘But there’s something else.’

‘Go on.’

‘Dean Reeve. Hear me out. I know he’s alive. I think I sense him sometimes. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m in danger.’

She didn’t go straight back to the hospital but took the bus to Belsize Park and walked towards the Heath. After a long winter’s corridor of darkness and unyielding cold, spring was arriving – in the new warmth of the air, in the daffodils that were everywhere. The sticky buds were just beginning to unfurl on the horse-chestnut trees. After the ice and the darkness, balmy days would arrive, long evenings and soft mornings.

She rang the bell, waited, rang again.

‘What?’ said the voice on the intercom, sounding cross.

‘Dr Berryman? It’s Frieda Klein.’

‘It’s Sunday. Don’t you ever bother to ring ahead?’

‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’

‘You are talking to me.’

‘Not like this. Face to face.’