Nicci French - Blue Monday

Frieda had expected the noise to be gone and the station to be dark and deserted, but it wasn’t like that. As she entered, she was assaulted by the clatter, the din of metal chairs being pulled back, doors opening and closing, phones ringing, people shouting in the distance in anger or fear, feet clipping along the corridor. Frieda thought that perhaps a police station was at its busiest round Christmas, when drunk people were drunker, lonely people lonelier, the sad and the mad pushed beyond their endurance, and all the pain and nastiness of life rose to the surface. Someone might always fall through the door with a knife in their chest or a needle hanging off their arm, or a woman with a bruised face might lurch towards the desk saying he hadn’t meant to hurt her.

‘Any luck?’ she asked Karlsson, as he came to the front desk to meet her, although she didn’t really need to ask.

‘Time’s running out,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to release them. They’ll have won. No Matthew Faraday, no Kathy Ripon.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I’ve no idea. You could talk to them. Isn’t that what you do?’

‘I’m not a witch. I don’t have any magic.’

‘Pity.’

‘I’ll talk to them. Is it official?’

‘Official?’

‘Will you be there? Will it be taped?’

‘How do you want to play it?’

‘I want to see them alone.’

Dean Reeve didn’t look tired. He looked fresher than Frieda had ever seen him, as if he was feeding off the situation, unassailable. Frieda, pulling her chair up at the table, thought he was enjoying himself. He smiled at her.

‘So, they’ve sent you to talk to me. That’s nice. A pretty woman.’

‘Not talk,’ said Frieda. ‘To listen.’

‘What are you going to listen to? This?’

He started to tap his forefinger on the table top, the amiable half-smile still on his face.

‘So you’re a twin,’ said Frieda.

Tap tap-tap tap.

‘An identical twin at that. How do you feel about that?’

Tap tap-tap tap.

‘You didn’t know, did you?’

Tap tap-tap tap.

‘Your mother never told you. How does it feel to know that you’re not unique? To know that there’s someone out there who looks like you, talks like you, thinks like you? All this time you thought there was only one of you.’ He smiled at her and she persisted: ‘You’re like a clone. And you never knew anything about it. She kept you in ignorance all this time. Doesn’t that make you feel betrayed? Or stupid, perhaps.’

He tapped his stubby finger on the table, eyes fixed on her. The smile on his face didn’t change but Frieda could feel his anger on her skin and the room was ugly with it.

‘Your plans have all gone wrong. Everyone knows what you’ve done. How does that feel, to have something you planned in secret suddenly out in the open? Wasn’t he going to be your son? Wasn’t that the plan?’

The tapping grew louder. Frieda felt it inside her brain, an insidious beat.

‘If you’re like Matthew’s father, how can you place him in danger? Your job is to protect him. If you tell me where he is, you’re saving him and you’re saving yourself. And you’re staying in control.’

Frieda knew he wasn’t going to say anything. He was only going to smile softly at her and tap his finger on the table. He wouldn’t break down; he would outlast any of them who came and sat opposite him like this, outstare them, hold on to his silence, and every time he did, it was another small victory that strengthened him. She stood up and left, feeling his jeering smile on her back as she went.

Terry was different. She was asleep when Frieda came into the room, her head against her folded hands and a snore whistling from her. Her mouth was open and she was dribbling slightly. Even when she woke up, staring blearily at Frieda for a moment as if she didn’t know who she was, she remained slumped in her chair. At times she put her head back on the table, as if she would go to sleep again. Her makeup was smeared. There was lipstick on her teeth. Her hair was greasy. Frieda felt neither fear nor strong anger from her, simply a baleful resentment that she was being made to sit in this bare, uncomfortable room, hour after hour. She wanted to go back to her overheated house and her cats. She wanted a cigarette. She was cold. She was hungry, and the food they’d given her was crap. She was tired – and she looked tired: her face was puffy and her eyes seemed sore. Every so often she wrapped her arms around her big sad body for comfort, hugging herself.

‘How long have you and Dean known each other?’ asked Frieda.

Terry shrugged.

‘When did you marry?’

‘Ages ago.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘Years ago. When we were kids. Can I have my fag now?’

‘Do you work, Terry?’

‘What are you? You’re not a copper, are you? You don’t look like one.’

‘I told you before, I’m a kind of doctor.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me. Except I’m here.’

‘Do you feel that you have to do what Dean tells you?’

‘I need that fag.’

‘You don’t need to do what Dean tells you.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘Have you done?’

‘You can tell us about Matthew. You can tell us about Joanna and Kathy. That would be a brave thing to do.’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about. You think you know things about my life, but you don’t. People like you know nothing about people like us.’

There was an email from Sandy on her computer. He had written it at one o’clock in the morning and in it he said he had tried not to get in touch with her but in the end had found it impossible. He was missing her so much that it hurt. He could not believe that he would never see her again, or hold her in his arms. Could they meet? He was leaving for America in a few days’ time, but he would like to see her before that. He had to. Please, he wrote: please, Frieda, please.

Frieda sat for several minutes, staring at the message. Then she pressed the delete button. She stood up and poured herself a glass of wine, which she drank, standing by the fireplace, which was full of cold grey ash. It was half past two in the morning, the worst time to be awake and full of urgent desires. She returned to the computer and retrieved the message from Trash. For the past few days, Sandy had seemed long ago and far away. While he had been consumed by thoughts of her, she had been thinking of a stolen boy. Yet now, with this email, the sense of longing rushed back, a flood of sadness. If he was here now, she could talk to him about what she was feeling. He would understand as no one else could. He would listen carefully, without speaking, and to him she could confess failure, doubt, guilt. She could be silent and still he would know.

She wrote: ‘Sandy, come round as soon as you get this. It doesn’t matter what time.’ She imagined how it would feel to open the door and see his face. Then she blinked and shook her head. Once again, she pressed the delete button, saw her message wiped away, turned off her computer and went downstairs to her bedroom.

Three in the morning was a dangerous time to think things over. As Frieda lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling there was clarity to her thoughts, a lack of distraction, but there was also a chill to them, as if she were at the bottom of the sea. She thought of Dean Reeve. And Terry. How could she get inside their heads? Wasn’t that supposed to be what she was good at? Frieda had spent most of her adult life sitting in rooms when people talked and talked and talked. Sometimes they told truths they had never spoken aloud before, never even admitted to themselves. People lied or were self-justifying or self-pitying. They were angry or sad or defeated. But just so long as they had talked, Frieda had been able to use their own words and make of them a story that could create some kind of sense of their lives or maybe just a refuge in which they could survive. These were all people who sought her out or were sent to her. What did you do with people who wouldn’t talk, who didn’t know how to? How did you get at them?