Nicci French - Blue Monday

Finally she put her pencil down on the blank paper and went downstairs. She laid the fire in the living room and put a match to it, waited until flames were licking at the coal. Then she went to the kitchen again. She found a half-full carton of potato salad in the fridge and ate it with a spoon, just standing at the window. Then she took a tumbler from the sink, rinsed it out and poured some whisky into it. She sipped at it very slowly. She wanted time to pass; she wanted this night to be over. The phone rang and she picked it up.

‘You probably didn’t think you were going to hear from me for a bit?’

‘Karlsson?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Well, you’re on the phone. I can’t see you.’

‘Has Reeve tried to contact you?’ he said.

‘Not since you last rang.’

‘He’s done it before.’

‘What’s up?’

‘We’ve lost them.’

‘Them?’

‘Reeve. And Terry.’

‘I thought you were following them.’

‘I don’t need to justify myself to you.’

‘I don’t care about you justifying yourself. I just wondered how it could happen.’

‘Oh, you know – Underground, crowds and a bit of incompetent fucking police work. Maybe they meant to get away, maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. And I don’t know what they’re going to do.’

Frieda looked at her watch. It was past midnight. ‘They won’t go home. Will they?’

‘They could do. Why not? They’re not charged with anything. And it’s the middle of the night. Where else would they go?’

Frieda forced herself to think. ‘It could be a good thing,’ she said. ‘They might feel free now. That could be good.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Karlsson. ‘I don’t know enough to even guess. I’m not so sure it matters. Where could they have put them? If they’re tied up in a cupboard in an abandoned flat somewhere, how long can they survive without water? If they aren’t already… well, you know. Anyway, he might contact you. Stranger things have happened. Be prepared.’

After she had put the phone down, Frieda poured herself another inch of whisky and tipped it straight down her throat, feeling it sting and startle her. She went into the living room, but the fire had gone out and the room felt chilly and cheerless. She knew she needed to rest, but the thought of lying in her bed, wide-eyed, her brain hissing with images, appalled her. For a while she lay on her sofa with a rug pulled over her, but sleep eluded her and in its place was a dry, frantic wakefulness. At last she rose and went to the kitchen. She stepped outside into her small yard. The cold made her gasp and brought tears to her eyes but she relished it. It woke her up, scoured her of bleary tiredness, cleared her head and sharpened her thoughts. She stood, coatless and without gloves, until her face was stiff and she could bear it no longer, then returned inside.

She walked to the London map by the front door. The light wasn’t good enough to make out all the details, the little street names. She ripped it away from the wall and laid it out on the table in the living room. She switched the ceiling light on. Even that wasn’t quite enough. She fetched the reading light from next to her bed, took it to the living room and placed it on top of the map. She got a pencil and made a cross on the street where Dean Reeve lived. She had a sudden vertiginous sense that she was looking down on London from a plane half a mile high on a perfectly clear day. She could see the big landmarks, the curves of the Thames, the Millennium Dome, City Airport, Victoria Park, the Lea Valley. She looked closer, at the streets she had walked with Josef. She saw the cross-hatched areas representing the housing estates, the factories.

She thought of Alan and how she’d failed with him. She had failed both as a therapist and as an investigator. Alan and Dean had the same brains, thought the same thoughts, dreamed the same dreams, the way that two different birds would build identical nests. But the only way into that was through the unconscious, and when she had last talked to Alan, it had been like asking someone to describe the skill of riding a bicycle. Not only had he been unable to express the skill in words but she had damaged the skill. If you start trying to think about how you ride a bicycle while you’re riding a bicycle, you’re likely to fall off. Alan had found her out and turned on her. Maybe that was a sign of some strength. It could have been a sign that the therapy was working, even that it had run its course, because Frieda felt that the bond between them had been broken and couldn’t be restored. He could never give himself up to her again, the way a patient had to. She remembered that last session. It was ironic that the best bit of the session, the only real intimacy they achieved, was after the session was over, as they were leaving, when he no longer saw her as a therapist. What was it he’d said about feeling safe? She tried to remember his words. About his mother. About his family.

A thought struck her. Was it possible? It was the moment when he had given up trying to think of hiding places. Could he have…’?

Frieda ran her finger in a spiral around and outwards from Dean Reeve’s house and then her finger stopped. She grabbed her coat and scarf and ran from the house, out of the mews and across the square. It was still dark and these smaller streets were deserted; she could hear her own footsteps echoing behind her. It was only when she got to Euston Road, among the traffic of London that never ceases, that she was able to flag down a taxi. As it sped away she went over and over it in her mind. Should she have called the police? What would she have had to say? She thought of Karlsson and his team, knocking on doors, taking statements. Divers had been searching the river. What they wanted was something tangible, a piece of cloth, a mere fibre, a fingerprint, and all she’d been able to offer were memories, fantasies, dreams that sometimes seemed to coincide. But was she just seeing patterns the way children saw shapes in clouds? There had been so many dead ends. Was this just another?

‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ said the cabbie. She was a woman. That was unusual.

‘Is there a main entrance?’

‘There’s only one that’s open,’ said the cabbie. ‘There’s a back one but it’s locked up.’

‘The front one, then.’

‘I’m not sure if it’ll be open yet. It’s sunrise to sunset.’

‘The sun’s rising now. Look.’

It was just before eight o’clock, and Christmas Eve.

A few minutes later, the cab pulled up. Frieda paid and got out. She looked at the ornate Victorian sign: ‘Chesney Hall Cemetery.’ Alan had said that he had the fantasy of visiting a family grave where he would like to lie on the grass and talk to his ancestors. Poor Alan. He didn’t have a family grave that he could visit, or not one that he knew of. But did Dean Reeve? The large gates of the cemetery were shut but beside them was a small open entrance for pedestrians. Frieda walked inside and looked around. It was vast, the size of a town. There were rows and rows of tombstones in avenues. There were statues, broken pillars, crosses. Dotted here and there were mausoleums. One area to the left looked grown over, the graves almost disappearing under foliage. Her breath steamed in the cold.

Ahead, down the main avenue, Frieda saw a simple wooden hut. She saw that the door was open and a light was visible through the window. Did cemeteries keep registers? She started to walk down and as she did so, she glanced at the graves on either side. One caught her eye. The family tomb of the Brainbridge family. Emily, Nicholas, Thomas and William Brainbridge had all died in the 1860s before they had reached ten years of age. Their mother, Edith, had died in 1883. How had she managed it, growing old alone with her dead children dwindling into the past? Perhaps she had had other children to look after, children who had grown up and moved away and were now buried somewhere else.