Nicci French - Blue Monday

Now there was something else. Somewhere out there was Matthew. Or Matthew’s body. Perhaps, probably, he had been killed within an hour of being taken. That was what the statistics told you. What if he was alive, though? Frieda made herself think of it as if she was forcing herself to stare at the sun, however much it hurt. What must it have been like for that other detective, Tanner? Did he reach a point of hoping he would find a dead body? Just so that he would know. There was a ring at the door and Frieda buzzed Alan up.

When she opened the door, he walked in quite casually and sat down in his usual chair. Frieda sat opposite him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The tube just stopped in a tunnel for twenty minutes. There was nothing I could do.’

Alan fidgeted in his chair. He rubbed his eyes and pushed his fingers through his hair. He didn’t speak. Frieda was used to this. More than that, she felt it was important not to break silences, not to fill them with her own chatter, however frustrating it might feel. The silence itself could be a form of communication. At times she had sat with a patient for ten or twenty minutes before they spoke for the first time. She even remembered a problem from when she was training: if a patient fell asleep, should she wake them up? No, insisted her supervisor. Being asleep was itself a statement. She had never quite managed to accept that. If it was a form of communication, it was expensive and unproductive. She had felt that a gentle nudge wasn’t really a violation of the therapeutic relationship. As the silence continued, she started to think that some kind of a nudge might be necessary this time.

‘When someone doesn’t want to talk,’ she said, ‘sometimes it’s because there’s too much to talk about. It’s hard to know where to begin.’

‘I just felt tired,’ said Alan. ‘I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and I’ve been working again, on and off, which I have found hard.’

There was another pause. Frieda felt baffled. Was he playing games with her? Was his silence a sort of punishment? She also felt frustrated: this was a time to be exploring his new sense of who he was, not shying away from it.

‘Is that really the reason?’ she said. ‘Are we going to pretend it never happened?’

‘What?’

‘I know you’re going to be affected by what you’ve learned,’ she said. ‘It must be like turning your world upside down.’

‘It’s not as bad as that,’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘But how did you know? Has Carrie rung you? Has she been going behind my back?’

‘Carrie?’ she said. ‘I think we’re at cross-purposes here. What’s going on?’

‘I’m having these memory losses. I thought that was what you were on about.’

‘What do you mean, memory losses?’

‘I sent Carrie some flowers, arranged for them to be delivered, and then I didn’t remember doing it. What does that mean? I should do stuff like that more often. But why don’t I remember? This is what going mad is like, isn’t it?’

Frieda paused. She couldn’t make any sense of this. It was as if Alan were talking in a language she didn’t quite understand. Worse, she had a feeling that something, somewhere, was wrong. Then a thought occurred to her and it was like a blow. She had to compose herself so that she could speak without her voice trembling.

‘Alan,’ she said, hearing her voice from far off. ‘Do you remember coming to my house on Friday night?’

He looked alarmed.

‘Me? No. No – I would have known.’

‘You’re saying you didn’t come to my house?’

‘I don’t even know where you live. How could I have come? What’s this about? I couldn’t have forgotten that. I was home all evening. We watched a film, we got a takeaway.’

‘Excuse me a moment,’ Frieda said, as calmly as she could manage. ‘I’ve got to…’ She walked out of the room and into the little bathroom. She leaned over the sink. She thought she might be sick. She took a few slow, deep breaths. She turned on the cold tap and felt the water on her fingertips. A few more breaths. She switched the tap off. She walked back into the consulting room.

Alan looked up at her, concerned. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

She sat down. ‘You’re not going mad, Alan. But I just need to be sure. Since our last session here, you’ve made no attempt to contact me – you know, to talk about things?’

‘Is this some kind of game you’re playing? Because if it is, you’ve no right.’

‘Please.’

‘All right,’ said Alan. ‘No. I haven’t made any attempt to contact you. The sessions are draining enough.’

‘We’ve got to stop here. I’m sorry. I’d like you to wait outside for a few minutes and then we’ll talk again.’

Alan stood up. ‘What’s going on? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I need to make a call. It’s urgent.’

She almost hustled Alan out of the door, then ran to the phone and called Karlsson on his mobile. She knew it was going to be bad, and as she explained what had happened it felt worse and worse.

‘How could this happen?’ said Karlsson. ‘Are you blind?’

‘I know, I know. They’re identical, really identical. And he must have seen his brother. He was dressed like him. Or enough like him.’

‘But why did he do it? What was the point?’

Frieda took a deep breath and told him.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him what I thought he needed to know. I mean what Alan needed to know.’

‘In other words, you told him everything.’

‘Pretty much,’ said Frieda. She heard a sound from the other end of the line. ‘What was that?’

‘That was me kicking my desk. So you told him what you suspected about him. How could you do that? Don’t you look at your patients?’ There was the sound of another kick. ‘So he knew we were coming?’

‘He must have been prepared. Also, I think he gave flowers to Alan’s wife. Someone did. I think it must have been him.’

‘What for?’

‘I guess he’s trying to show who’s in control.’

‘We know that already. Him. We’ll need to bring him in anyway. And that wife or partner of his. For what it’s worth.’

‘He’s playing with us.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

Seth Boundy called Kathy Ripon’s mobile. He listened as it went to voicemail. He left another message, although it only said what his previous messages had: call me at once. He checked his emails again, to make sure that she hadn’t contacted him in the few minutes since he’d last checked. He went through his junk mail just in case her message had ended up there. He was irritated. He couldn’t think properly about anything else. What was she playing at?

His wife knocked at the door of the study and came in before he could tell her he was busy. ‘It’s lunch,’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I thought you were going shopping. You haven’t done any of the things you said you were going to. Are you expecting me to buy something for your sister?’

‘I’ll do it later.’

‘We’re only three days from Christmas. You’re on holiday.’

Boundy gave his wife a look that made her back off and close the door. This time he rang Kathy’s landline. It rang and rang and nobody picked up. He tried to remember: she lived in Cambridge, of course, but where did she go during holidays? Where did her parents live? He vaguely remembered her talking to him about her background, but he hadn’t paid proper attention. Yet there was something snagging at his memory. What was it? Something about cheese. That cheese-rolling competition in her home town. He Googled cheese-rolling and immediately came up with dozens of entries on the cheese-rolling competition that took place on Cooper’s Hill in Gloucester every year.