Nicci French: Tuesday's Gone

The woman who opened the door was wearing a purple knee-length dress and large earrings. She had on her party makeup, heavily lined eyes and red lips, blusher on her cheeks. Frieda could hear a hum from behind her and there was a glow from what must be the kitchen at the back of the house. It looked as if she had interrupted a dinner party.

‘Are you Dr Higgins?’

‘Yes,’ she said, puzzled and irritated.

‘I work as a consultant with the police and I’d like to talk to you for just a couple of minutes.’

‘What?’ said Dr Higgins. ‘At this time of night? We’ve got people here.’

‘Just one moment, that’s all. A patient of yours, Beth – or Elizabeth – Kersey, went missing a year ago. She’s still missing but she was involved with someone who was later murdered.’

‘Beth Kersey? Missing?’

‘That’s right. I wondered if you could tell me anything about her.’

There was a pause. Dr Higgins seemed to be remembering something. ‘Of course I can’t,’ she said, with an almost disgusted expression. ‘She was a patient of mine. You know that. What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming to my house at night, asking me about something private?’

‘I don’t need to know any clinical details,’ Frieda said. ‘I want to find her and I’d like to know, even in general terms, about the kind of risks involved with her condition.’

‘No,’ said Dr Higgins. ‘Absolutely not. And, in fact, I want your name, so I can make a complaint about your behaviour.’

‘You’ll need to get to the back of the queue,’ said Frieda.

‘What are you talking about? And if you’re working with the police, where are they? How did you get my address?’

A man appeared beside her, in a blue cotton shirt, loose outside his blue jeans. ‘What’s going on, Emma?’

‘This is someone who says she’s a doctor …’

‘A psychotherapist,’ said Frieda.

‘Even worse, she says she’s a psychotherapist and she wants to know about Beth Kersey.’

The man looked startled, then angry. ‘Beth Kersey? Do you know her?’ he said.

‘No.’

The man took Emma Higgins’s left hand and held it up. ‘Do you see that? What do you think it is?’

There was a pale line, three or four inches long, on Dr Higgins’s forearm.

‘It looks like a scar,’ said Frieda.

‘It’s called a defence wound,’ said the man. ‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Frieda. She looked at Dr Higgins. ‘Did Beth Kersey do that to you?’

‘What do you think?’ said the man.

‘I need your opinion,’ said Frieda. ‘She’ll have been without her medication for a long time. What are the risks?’

‘The answer is “No comment,”’ said Dr Higgins. ‘As you well know, if you want access to her medical records you need a court order. And I’m also going to make that complaint.’

She shut the door without another word. Frieda stood by the railings and, as she dialled Karlsson’s number, she heard raised voices from inside, the man saying something and Dr Higgins answering angrily.

Karlsson sounded tired. When she told him about Dr Higgins, she expected that he would be irritated by her acting without telling him and interested in what she had found out. But he didn’t react at all.

‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘She’s violent.’

‘It’s all in hand,’ said Karlsson.

‘What do you mean? You need to step up the search for her and you need to establish who may be at risk.’

‘I said, it’s all in hand. And we need to talk.’

‘Shall I come into the station?’ said Frieda. ‘I’m seeing patients all morning but I could come afterwards.’

‘I’ll come to you. When’s your first patient?’

‘Eight o’clock.’

‘I’ll be outside your house at seven fifteen.’

‘Karlsson, is something up?’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Would you like to come in for coffee?’ said Frieda.

‘No, thanks,’ said Karlsson. ‘You like walking, don’t you? Let’s go for a walk.’

He headed north, his hands plunged into the pockets of his dark coat. His face looked swollen in the fiercely cold wind. When they reached Euston Road, it was already jammed in both directions with the largely stationary commuter traffic.

‘You’ve got to love it, haven’t you?’ he said, and turned left, walking so briskly that Frieda had almost to run to keep up with him.

She grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to stop. ‘Karlsson,’ she said. ‘I know what this is about.’

‘What?’

‘When I was in the station, I saw Jake Newton. He wouldn’t meet my eye. He’s delivered his report, hasn’t he?’

Karlsson was silent, breathing out clouds of vapour. ‘That sharp-suited little cunt,’ he said. ‘I cannot believe we took that grinning little fucking oaf along with us and let him fart around with his fucking fly-on-the-wall act.’

‘So he’s not too keen on freelance contracts,’ said Frieda.

‘Oh, he’s keen on contracts. For the office work, bureaucracy, management, there’ll be freelance contracts out of our fucking arse.’

‘Karlsson,’ said Frieda. ‘You don’t have to do the big sweary policeman thing for my benefit. It’s fine. So, I’m out.’

‘Yes, Frieda. You’re out.’

‘Not that I was ever really in. After all that, you never got a contract for me to sign.’

‘Well, that’s the whole point about money-saving measures,’ said Karlsson. ‘You don’t expect them to save money, do you? “Dysfunctional operational procedures”. Those were his words. “Management organization unfit for purpose”. Those were more of them. Do you know what makes it worse? I tried to impress him. I feel like some teenage boy who’s tried to impress a girl he didn’t really like in the first place and she’s laughed at him. It’s not just you. There are going to be cuts everywhere.’

Frieda put her hand on his arm again, gently this time. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

‘And after all you did in this case, getting the Welleses, I can’t believe it.’

‘It’s all right.’

He pushed his hands more deeply into his pockets and looked embarrassed. ‘And despite me being sarcastic with you and shouting, it was, you know … having you around … I mean, anything’s better than someone like Munster.’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Me too.’

‘How do you get out of this place?’

‘This way,’ said Frieda, and turned east. ‘But what about Beth Kersey?’

‘I told you,’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s in hand.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘You remember Sally Lea, the name in Poole’s notebook?’

‘The one we never found.’

‘It’s not a woman,’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s a barge on the Lea river up near Enfield.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There was an incident yesterday. A resident of the adjacent barge called the emergency services. He’d been stabbed by a young woman. She had stolen food from him. She was acting strangely, talking to herself, and when accosted, she pulled a knife.’

‘Beth Kersey,’ said Frieda. ‘Did they find her?’

‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘But they found where she’d been living and a whole pile of Poole’s stuff, papers, photos, the lot. Some officers are going to spend the day going through it, for what it’s worth.’

‘What was this barge like?’ said Frieda.

‘What can I say? A barge is a barge.’

‘I mean inside, where she’d been living.’

‘I didn’t see it myself. But from what I heard, it was pretty gross. It sounds like she’d been stuck there on her own, foraging for herself, ever since Poole died.’