Nicci French - Blue Monday

He was a dirty boy. His trousers went stiff with his wee and they smelt bad and yesterday night he had done a poo in the corner. He couldn’t help it. His tummy had burned so badly he’d thought he was going to die. He was turning into liquid and fire. Everything was runny inside him. Hot and shivery. Everything hurt and felt wrong. He was clean now, though. Scrubbing brush and scalding water. Pink sore skin. Bristles on his teeth and against his gums. One of his teeth was wobbly. The tooth fairy would come. If he stayed awake, he could see her and tell her to save him. But if he stayed awake, she wouldn’t come. He knew that.

And something nasty on his hair. Black and gluey and with a strong smell, like when you walk past men working on the roads with drills that make a heavy thumping sound that gets inside your head. His hair felt strange now. He was turning into someone else. If there was a mirror, he would see someone else in it. Who would he see? Someone with a glaring, wicked face. Soon it would be too late. He didn’t know the words to say to turn the spell around again.

Bare boards. Nasty cracking green walls. Blind tied down on the window. One bulb hanging from the ceiling with a frayed cord. A white radiator that burned his skin if he touched it and made groaning sounds in the night, like an animal that was dying on the road. A white plastic potty, cracked. It made him feel ashamed to look at it. Mattress on the floor with dark stains on it. One stain was a dragon and one stain was a country but he didn’t know which country. One stain was a face with a beaky nose and he thought it was a witch’s face, and one stain was from him. There was a door but it didn’t open for him. Even if he had hands to use, and even if it opened, Matthew knew he wouldn’t be able to go through it. There were things on the other side that would get him.

Detective Constable Yvette Long looked around the Faradays’ living room. There were toys scattered about: a large red plastic bus and several little cars on the rug, reading books and picture books, a monkey glove puppet. On the coffee-table, there was a large pad of lined paper with Matthew’s attempts at writing – painstaking, lopsided letters in red felt tip, the Bs and Ds reversed. Andrea Faraday sat opposite her. Her long red hair was tangled and greasy and her face puffy from crying. It seemed to Yvette Long that she’d been crying solidly for days.

‘What else can I tell you?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to say. Nothing. I don’t know anything. Do you think I wouldn’t tell you? I go over and over everything.’

‘Can you think of anything that seems suspicious, any strange person hanging around?’

‘No! Nothing. If I hadn’t been late – oh, God, if I hadn’t been late. Please get him back. My little boy. He still wets his bed at night sometimes.’

‘I know how painful this is. We’re doing everything we can. In the meantime…’

‘They won’t know anything about him. He’s allergic to nuts. What if they give him nuts?’

DC Long tried to keep her face calm and put a hand on Andrea’s arm. ‘Try to think of anything that might help.’

‘He’s just a baby, really. He’ll be crying out for me and I can’t come to him. Do you understand what that feels like? I missed the bus and I was late.’

Jack had taken Frieda’s advice. Today he was wearing black trousers, a pale blue shirt, only the top button undone, and a grey woollen jacket whose pockets, Frieda saw, were still sewn up. His shoes were cheap-looking, shiny black brogues; they probably still had the price sticker on the soles. He had even brushed his hair away from his face and shaved, though he’d missed a patch under his jaw. He no longer looked like a dishevelled student but a trainee accountant, or maybe a new recruit to a religious cult. Jack referred to his notebook and talked about his cases. It was a desultory process. Frieda was finding it hard to concentrate. She looked at her watch. They were done. She nodded at Jack, and then she asked: ‘Imagine that a patient confesses to a crime. What do you do?’

Jack sat up a bit straighter. He looked suspicious. Was Frieda trying to catch him out in some way? ‘What sort of crime? Speeding? Shoplifting?’

‘Something really serious. Like murder.’

‘Nothing goes beyond the room,’ Jack said doubtfully. ‘Isn’t that what we promise?’

‘You’re not a priest in a confessional,’ said Frieda, with a laugh. ‘You’re a citizen. If someone confesses to a murder, you call the police.’

Jack’s face turned red. He’d failed the test.

‘But now then: what if you suspect a patient of committing a crime?’

Jack hesitated. He chewed the tip of his thumb.

‘I’m not looking for wrong or right answers.’

‘How do you suspect them?’ he said at last. ‘I mean, do you just have a gut feeling? You can’t just go to the police on a gut feeling, can you? Gut feelings are often completely wrong.’

‘I don’t know.’ Frieda was talking to herself rather than to him. ‘I don’t really know what that means.’

‘The thing is,’ said Jack, ‘if I let myself, I could suspect lots of people of being criminals. I saw a man yesterday who said things that were completely gross. I felt poisoned just listening to him. I kept thinking of what you said to me once about the difference between imagining and doing.’

Frieda nodded at him. ‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re always telling us that our job is not to deal with the mess in the outside world but the mess in the person’s head.’ He paused. ‘This is one of your patients, isn’t it?’

‘Not exactly. Or maybe.’

‘The easiest thing would be just to ask him.’

Frieda looked at him and smiled. ‘Is that what you’d do?’

‘Me? No. I’d come to you and do what you told me.’

Frieda walked to the Barbican after her patient left, so she didn’t get there until half past eight. It was raining, at first just a slight drizzle but by the time she arrived it had turned into a downpour, so that puddles formed on the pavement and cars driving past sent up shining arcs of water from their wheels.

‘Let me get you a towel,’ Sandy said, when he saw her. ‘And one of my shirts.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Why didn’t you take a cab?’

‘I needed to walk.’

He found her a soft white shirt, pulled off her shoes and tights and dried her feet, towelled her hair. She curled up on the sofa and he handed her a glass of wine. Inside the flat it was warm and bright; outside, the night was wild and wet, and the lights of London glimmered and dissolved.

‘This is nice,’ she said. ‘What can I smell?’

‘Garlic prawns with rice and a green salad. Is that all right?’

‘Better than all right. I’m not really a cook myself.’

‘I can live with that.’

‘That’s good to know.’

They ate sitting at the small table. Sandy lit a candle. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and jeans. He looked at her with an intensity that unnerved her. She was used to her students and her patients being curious about her but this was different.

‘Why don’t I know anything about your past?’

‘Is this the serious talk?’

‘Not exactly. But you withhold.’

‘Do I?’

‘I feel you know far more about me than I know about you.’

‘It takes time.’

‘I know it does. And we have time, don’t we?’

She held his gaze. ‘I think so, yes.’

‘This has taken me by surprise,’ he said.

‘That’s the way of love.’ The word slipped out before she could check herself; it must have been the wine.

Sandy put his hand over hers. He looked suddenly serious. ‘There is something I’ve got to say.’