Saturday Requiem (21 page)

‘Thank you,’ said Sasha, in her soft, clear voice. ‘What a lovely kitchen. I wish I could keep things as neat as this.’

‘I consider it my job.’

‘I think we may have found your mother,’ said Frieda.

Shelley put her hand against her chest, then her throat. ‘What do you mean, found? I don’t want her to be found. I don’t care. I told you. How dare you go around finding people?’

‘Shelley, listen. If it is your mother, then she is dead.’

‘My mother?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you need to know. The body of a woman was discovered in a shallow grave in south London, and we think it may be Justine Walsh’s. Which is why we are here now.’

‘When was it discovered?’

‘In April 2010.’

‘That’s four years ago. It could be anyone. Why should it be her?’

‘We need a sample of your DNA,’ said Frieda. ‘Then we can test it against hers.’

‘Why should I care anyway? 2010 means that there were nine years when she didn’t bother to try and find me.’

‘It had been there for many years.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know?’

‘Nine?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘I don’t understand.’

The oven started to make a pinging sound.

‘Shall I look at your cake?’ asked Sasha.

‘They’re biscuits. She just went missing.’

‘Until we know if it’s your mother, we can’t work out what actually happened,’ said Frieda. ‘Sasha is a geneticist. She has come to take a DNA sample, if you’ll consent to that.’

Sasha put a tray of biscuits she had taken from the oven on the surface and nodded at Shelley. ‘It will take about five seconds,’ she said. ‘It’s very simple. It’s just a swab I wipe inside your mouth. I have a consent form for you to sign.’ She opened up her leather case and drew out a form.

Shelley stared at it. ‘Then you’ll know if it’s her?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘A few days,’ said Sasha.

‘What if I don’t want to know?’

‘Can I have a biscuit?’ asked Ethan.

‘Don’t you want to know?’ asked Frieda.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You might find it helps you to know at last,’ said Frieda.

‘I’m doing well,’ said Shelley. ‘In my life. My husband doesn’t know anything about that time.’

‘Have you thought he might want to know and to help?’

‘I’m not that person any more.’

She picked up the pen and stood poised above the form. Then, as if in a great hurry, she wrote her signature across the bottom and handed it to Sasha. ‘Have a biscuit,’ she said to Ethan. ‘Have as many as you like. Take them all. We never eat them. I don’t know why I make them.’

Sasha drew on a pair of thin plastic gloves. She took a small sealed bag from her case and took out a swab. ‘I’m just going to wipe the inside of your cheek and under your tongue and above your teeth,’ she said to Shelley. ‘OK?’

Shelley nodded. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth wide, looking suddenly like a small child.

‘Done,’ said Sasha, after a few seconds. ‘Thank you.’ She put the swab into a transparent container, then pulled off her gloves.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Good. Now go away.’

‘I’ll phone Yvette and see what she can do,’ said Frieda, as they left.

An email from Saul Tait arrived:
This is weird, but, yes, I do remember Hannah wearing it. She used it to tie her hair back when she went for runs. I remember clearly.

So that was that. She was back to square one with the collection.

Frieda spent the following afternoon at the Warehouse, seeing patients, then attending a meeting to discuss outreach projects. She had arranged to meet Jack afterwards, and he put his head round the door at exactly five o’clock. ‘Am I too early?’

‘You’re exactly on time.’

‘You’re not busy?’

‘Come in, Jack.’

He was wearing a red duffel coat, with a stripy scarf, and had a bad cold; his voice was husky and he kept pulling out tissues from his pocket to blow his nose. ‘I’m taking an unpaid sabbatical,’ he announced.

‘To do anything particular?’

‘To think.’

‘About whether you want to continue as a therapist?’

‘Are you angry?’

‘Why would I be angry?’

‘Or disappointed?’

‘I’m not your mother, Jack.’

‘You’re nothing like my mother.’

‘So you’re going to think?’

‘I need to think about whether the problem is being a therapist or being
me
. And then there’s the problem of what else I could possibly do.’ He ran his fingers through his wild hair. ‘I could be a gardener, I suppose.’

‘Do you like gardening?’

‘I’ve never tried it, except that time when your mother made me pull up the weeds in her garden.’

‘Which didn’t work out so well.’

‘Gardeners make the world a better place.’

‘Some gardeners do.’

‘Anyway.’ His face brightened. ‘I’ll have six weeks free so I can help you.’

‘Help with what?’

‘Your case.’

‘That’s very kind of you but …’

‘Give me a task.’

Frieda thought for a moment. ‘It’s complicated. And I’m not sure it’s safe.’

‘I don’t mind that.’

‘Then you’re a fool.’

There was a knock at the door, and this time it was Reuben putting his head round. ‘Can anyone join in?’ He pulled a chair up to the desk and settled himself into it. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Jack’s taking a sabbatical,’ said Frieda.

‘Frieda’s case,’ said Jack.

‘Yes.’ Reuben’s eyes gleamed. ‘Irresistible, isn’t it? Almost too perfect.’

Frieda looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that: an angry teenage daughter, a controlling mother, an absent father, a charming stepfather, who’s taken his place in the bed. And the little brother – like a lamb to the slaughter. I can imagine giving a lecture on it.’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda, thoughtfully. ‘It is. Too much so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m thinking about the things that don’t add up – or that do add up too neatly.’

Reuben leaned across the desk and found a blank sheet of paper. He took a pen out of his jacket pocket. ‘What are these things?’

‘You really want this?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘OK. Number one, the layout of the house makes no sense. Or, rather, the order of the deaths. The murderer would have gone past Rory’s room, killed Aidan but not Deborah, waited at least an hour, then killed Rory and his mother. Why would anyone do that?’

‘Because they were cruel, and wanted to watch them suffer?’ Jack suggested.

‘Maybe.’

‘Two?’ said Reuben.

‘Two: Rory was found in bed, in his pyjamas. But his blood was also in the hallway and on the stairs. If he wasn’t killed in his bed, what is the staging for? If he was, why is his blood also downstairs?’

Reuben and Jack looked at each other but didn’t speak.

‘Three: all the deaths feel different. Incoherent. Rory was lying on his face with the back of his skull caved in. Horrible. Aidan was quite cleanly killed, if that’s the right word for it. It looked calculated and deliberate. Deborah had been savagely beaten.’

‘It could be an expression of anger,’ said Jack. ‘Or hatred.’

‘It’s the obvious explanation. Four: why were Hannah’s bloodstained clothes so easy to find? Five: why was her alibi so peculiar?’

‘What was it?’

‘She said she was going to meet her stepfather. But then she changed that to meeting her mother.’

‘When people are traumatized they get confused,’ said Reuben.

‘I know. But it feels odd.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Seamus Docherty. He’s Hannah’s father, Deborah’s first
husband. There was something wrong with his tone, I thought. I want to go back and see him, though. More obviously, Justine Walsh, the mother of Hannah’s housemate Shelley, went missing at the same time and that seems a large, strange coincidence. I think we’ve just found her body and that makes a fourth murder. And a fifth, with Erin Brack’s death, of course. Poor woman.’ She looked at Reuben, who had stopped writing. ‘She was killed because someone believed she had a piece of evidence that would incriminate them.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. But if she did, then I have it now.’ She turned to Jack, ‘Which brings me to how you could help me.’

‘Good.’

‘It won’t be very exciting and it may take a long time. I need someone to help me go through everything I collected from Erin Brack and sort it all into categories.’

‘I could do that. What categories?’

‘We – I mean, you – could first of all divide the objects between the family members, things that refer or belong to Hannah, Rory, Deborah and Aidan. Obviously there’ll be an overlap.’

‘And then?’

‘We could make a timeline for each of them, construct a narrative of their last weeks or months. Maybe something will come of it or maybe it’ll amount to nothing at all.’

‘But you’ll be there too?’

‘Some of the time. There’s one more thing. It’s in a building in Walthamstow, in the yard where Chloë works. Is that a problem?’

Jack flushed. ‘Why should it be?’

‘I’ll make sure it’s good with Chloë as well.’

Frieda was in her consulting room, writing up her notes on a session, when her phone rang. She looked at it and saw Yvette’s name on the screen.

‘Yes?’

‘Hello? Hello? Is that Frieda?’

‘Of course it’s me. So?’

‘I’ve got the result back.’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know whether it’s good news or bad. I’m not clear whether you expected –’

‘Just tell me.’

‘It’s not a match.’

There was a long pause. Frieda didn’t know what to say.

‘Hello? Frieda? Are you still there?’

‘I’ll call you back later, Yvette. I need to think.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Later.’ Frieda hung up. Suddenly she felt stifled and trapped by being indoors. She got up, put on her jacket and left the building. She headed north towards Regent’s Park. She needed to clear her head, to see grass and trees. But when she got to Euston Road she stopped on the south side and watched the traffic, the buses and the lorries that made the pavement tremble beneath her feet. What a terrible road it was. She watched a young woman on a bicycle coming from the east, impossibly vulnerable. A huge cement truck passed her and it looked as if she might be blown over by it. But she wasn’t. Frieda turned and walked back to her house. She let herself in and went up
the stairs to her little study. She opened a drawer and quickly found what she was looking for: an envelope. She opened the envelope and checked that the comb – the comb she had used on Hannah Docherty – was still there.

She took out her phone. ‘Yvette. I’ve got another sample.’

‘I can’t just keep doing this.’

‘Just one more and then I’m done.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’ll bring it over now.’

The next day was Saturday and Frieda spent the weekend in a sort of suspension. She had planned to go to Walthamstow to take another look at Erin Brack’s collection but couldn’t face it. Not today. She met Sasha, as she did every weekend, and they walked with Ethan to Clissold Park and kicked a ball around with him. And they went and drank coffee. Sasha asked what had happened with the DNA sample and Frieda said to wait. She wasn’t sure yet. Sasha looked at her curiously and didn’t pursue it. The rest of the weekend Frieda spent mostly alone. She felt as if she was in a dream. She had started a process, and until she discovered what was going to happen, nothing really mattered. On the Sunday she met Reuben and they walked across Hampstead Heath, into the wild part where it felt like you weren’t in London at all – you couldn’t see any buildings, not even the Shard. You couldn’t hear traffic. There were just the jet trails in the sky. Reuben asked what was happening and Frieda just said, ‘Wait.’

On Monday afternoon, just after four, there was a ring at Malcolm Karlsson’s front door. Getting out of his chair was awkward and his walking was still slow, so the bell rang again.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he shouted. When he opened
the door, Frieda and Yvette were standing outside. ‘What is it?’ he said.

‘How’s the leg?’ said Frieda.

‘Still broken. Now, what’s up?’

‘We wanted to tell you first,’ said Frieda.

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Yvette.

Frieda tried to take Karlsson’s arm to help him back to his chair but he shook it off and toppled. Yvette caught him and the two of them almost fell over. Finally he managed to lower himself back into his chair.

‘You’re clearly getting more mobile,’ said Frieda.

‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘What have you got to tell me?’

‘It’s about the Docherty inquiry,’ Frieda began.

‘Frieda had this idea,’ said Yvette. ‘She checked the bodies of women who had been found but not identified in the past thirteen years.’

‘What for?’

‘Justine Walsh, the mother of Shelley Walsh, disappeared at the time of the Docherty murders.’

‘Who’s Shelley Walsh?’

‘She was a friend, or associate, of Hannah Docherty’s. A body was found a few years later in some woods in south London, fairly nearby. We checked the DNA to see if was Justine Walsh. It wasn’t.’

‘Was that worth coming here to tell me?’

‘It was Deborah Docherty.’

Karlsson looked at the two women. Yvette’s eyes were bright with excitement. Frieda was looking at him with a kind of curiosity. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Frieda got a DNA sample from Hannah Docherty. It matched with the body.’

‘But Deborah Docherty’s body was found in the house,’ said Karlsson. ‘With her husband and son.’

‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘Deborah Docherty’s body was found nine years later, severely decomposed in Denton Woods.’

‘But what about the body in the house?’

‘The police are investigating that,’ said Yvette. ‘They’re doing another DNA test.’

‘But we know what they’ll find,’ said Frieda.

‘That girl’s mother?’ said Karlsson.

‘That’s right. Justine Walsh.’

Karlsson had been leaning forward in his chair. Now he sank back. ‘So what does that mean?’

‘What it really means,’ said Frieda, ‘is that the Hannah Docherty inquiry has been reopened. Now the police can do what they should have done in the first place. I’m through with it.’

There was a pause. Karlsson and Yvette exchanged glances.

‘What?’ said Frieda.

‘It’s just I’ve never heard that from you,’ Karlsson said. ‘The idea of letting the police get on with their job.’

‘What do you want me to do? Start interviewing witnesses on my own?’

Karlsson managed a smile. ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? But maybe the team on the investigation won’t be receptive to your peculiar talents. Not like me. Besides, don’t you want to know what actually happened?’

Frieda shook her head. ‘What I want is for Hannah Docherty to get out. Nothing else matters. I’ve done all I can do.’

Karlsson looked at Yvette. ‘Do you know who’s leading the investigation?’

‘I can find out.’

‘Good. And keep Frieda in the loop.’ He looked back at Frieda. ‘So, you can get back to your job, Yvette can get back
to her job, and I can get back to learning to walk again. All’s right with the world.’

Frieda went straight from Karlsson to see Levin and Keegan. It was early evening and Keegan poured three glasses of whisky. The two men sat in silence as Frieda told them what had happened.

‘I thought I owed it to you to tell you,’ she said, when she had finished.

Neither man responded. Levin looked down into his whisky, which he hadn’t touched. Keegan drained his own glass and poured himself another.

‘So that’s basically it,’ said Frieda.

Keegan took another sip of his drink. ‘Good. That’s very good.’

‘What? The drink?’

‘Checking the unidentified bodies. That was very good.’

‘It seemed pretty obvious.’

‘Only afterwards. It took some sharp thinking to bring it all together.’

‘That’s good of you to say, because I know we’ve had our differences.’

‘I’m just trying to get my head around it,’ said Keegan, as if Frieda hadn’t spoken. ‘Deborah Docherty isn’t at the murder scene she should be. She’s at another one.’

‘Yes, it’s very strange.’

‘And this other woman, Justine Walsh, is in Deborah Docherty’s house. In Deborah Docherty’s bedroom. And she’s identified by Hannah Docherty as her mother.’

‘That’s right. But you saw the state of the body. Hannah Docherty identified her, at the scene, in what must have been a state of shock. If you see a woman in your mother’s bed,
wearing your mother’s nightgown, you’re going to see it as your mother.’

‘So how did it happen?’

‘That’s why we have police forces,’ said Frieda. ‘To answer questions like that.’

‘They didn’t manage it the first time.’

‘Well, now they have a second chance.’ Frieda stood up. ‘I’m not one for goodbyes, but this feels like a goodbye.’

Keegan stood up and held out his hand. Frieda shook it.

‘Maybe we’ll meet again.’

‘I can’t imagine where,’ said Frieda.

‘You never know.’

Frieda put her untouched whisky on the table. Then she turned to Levin. ‘You haven’t said anything.’

He looked up at her. ‘I thought you would find this harder to walk away from.’

‘What do you mean, “walk away from”?’

‘The investigation hasn’t even begun. Hannah Docherty isn’t out yet.’

‘We’ll see.’

As Frieda left the house, she felt as if she was escaping. Even though it was raining, she walked home. When she got in she took her clothes off, had a bath and felt purified, free of it all.

She had two days of hard work. She saw patients, she went to the Warehouse and talked to Reuben about expanding her role there. She told Chloë that she would be coming to the shed soon to take away all the things she had left there. She dealt with a backlog of letters. She cleared up the house. She threw out some old clothes. On the Thursday morning, after a session with Maria Dreyfus, she switched on her phone.
There was a missed call from Yvette and she rang the number.

‘I’m on my way to see you,’ Yvette said. Even in those few words her tone sounded strange.

‘It’s bad news.’

‘I’ll be outside.’

‘Go to the coffee shop round the corner,’ Frieda said.

She gave Yvette the address of Number Nine, then walked there herself. She ordered two coffees, and just as they were being placed in front of her, Yvette came in, looking flustered, her cheeks red. She sat down opposite Frieda. ‘I’ll have tea,’ she said, then noticed the coffee. ‘Coffee’s fine.’

‘They’re not proceeding with the case,’ Frieda said.

Yvette looked surprised. ‘How did you hear?’

‘Is there any other bad news you could be ringing about?’

Yvette shifted awkwardly in her seat. ‘There could be.’

‘Who’s the detective in charge of the investigation?’

‘It doesn’t matter. He’s not someone you know.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You might do something. You might go and shout at him or hit him. It’s happened before.’

Frieda stared past Yvette out into the street. She certainly felt like doing something. Hitting someone was a possibility. She forced herself to speak calmly. ‘How could they possibly not proceed with the case? After finding the body?’

‘He …’ Yvette stopped herself. ‘Or she. Well, it’s actually a he. He said that nothing had really changed.’

‘How can he say that? What about the body?’

‘It’s not me. I’m just reporting what was said. I was only able to have a brief conversation and that was just because Karlsson asked him as a favour. He said Hannah Docherty’s
prints were at the scene. Her statement was still inconsistent. She still had the motive.’

‘But it wasn’t her mother who was dead at the scene. It was Justine Walsh. Her mother was in the shallow grave in the woods.’

‘DCI – I mean
he
said that was the really key bit of evidence. It was Hannah Docherty who identified Justine Walsh as her mother. And you have to see he has a point, Frieda – there’s a way in which what you found only makes things worse for Hannah, if they could be worse. Why would she make a false identification if she wasn’t the murderer?’

‘Because she was in shock. Because her mother is who she would have expected the damaged corpse to be.’

‘I’m not the one who’s arguing this.’

‘Then tell me his name and I’ll go and argue it with him.’

‘It doesn’t matter. The inquiry’s over.’

‘Why was Justine Walsh in the Docherty house?’ said Frieda.

‘Is that a question I’m supposed to answer?’

‘It’s a question the police are supposed to answer. Why was she killed in the Docherty house, while the woman who actually lived in the house was killed somewhere else?’

‘There are always loose threads,’ said Yvette. ‘Unanswered questions.’

‘That’s just like giving a verbal shrug.’

‘No. It’s the way it goes. There are things we’ll never know.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Frieda.

She felt an intense weariness. It was starting all over again.