Saturday Requiem (26 page)

In the car park, Hal Bradshaw meets Dr Julia Styles. She is standing near his car, as if she is waiting for him.

‘What do you make of her?’ she asks.

‘Impressive. Interesting.’

‘Are you on her side now?’

‘I’m a scientist. I don’t take sides.’

‘But you want to write a book with her.’

‘With her. About her.’

‘And you’ll be speaking on her behalf at the hearing.’

‘I’ll present my findings. Is that a problem?’ He waits, his car key in his hand. ‘Look, the question we all face is whether we allow redemption to women like Mary Hoyle.’

Styles shakes her head. ‘The problem is whether she might do it again.’

‘Mal!’ Commissioner Crawford’s voice was hearty; his eyes were cold. ‘Take a seat. Rest that leg of yours. Tell me what it is that’s so urgent it couldn’t wait.’ He lifted his wrist and ostentatiously looked at his watch. ‘I can give you five minutes.’

Karlsson took a deep breath. ‘Dean Reeve has surfaced. I have the evidence for it.’

He looked away from Crawford’s outraged face and took the folder out of his briefcase, pulling out the photostats of the photographs from Josef’s phone.

‘Stop right there,’ said Crawford, holding up a hand like a traffic warden. ‘Right there, Mal. I’m warning you.’

‘This is important, sir.’

‘Stop. I’m warning you, Mal. This has gone too far.’

‘This is Dean Reeve.’ Karlsson held the paper in front of Crawford.

‘She’s put you up to this. I can’t believe it. After everything else she’s made you go through.’

‘I thought it my duty to tell you.’

‘And it’s my duty to tell you that you are out of order. Get out of my office.’

‘If you’re wrong, and it was discovered that you’d dismissed the evidence, you might not be –’

‘Are you
threatening
me?’

‘I’m just pointing out that there would be serious consequences.’

‘Jesus, Mal.’ Crawford picked up the photo and peered at it. ‘Dean Reeve had an identical twin, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Who ran out on his wife.’

‘That’s what we’re meant to think.’

‘Listen to yourself. You’ll be telling me no one actually landed on the moon next. He ran out on his wife. Here you are, then. This is him. Or just another poor fucker who looks a little bit like the man who used to be Dean Reeve but is now just ash.’

‘But –’

‘That’s all. Time’s up. Go home. Before I stop being in a good mood.’

Frieda opened the door to a man she didn’t recognize. He looked about forty, short brown hair, dark eyes, a wary expression. He was wearing a blue windcheater, dark trousers and trainers. Ex-sportsman, Frieda thought. Or ex-army.

‘I’m Stringer,’ he said. ‘Bruce Stringer.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Keegan sent me.’

Frieda poured herself coffee. Stringer wouldn’t take anything more than a glass of water. He placed it on the table next to his chair and didn’t touch it again. He took a notebook from his pocket and a pen. ‘I’m not totally clear,’ he said. ‘Keegan said you’d tell me. Someone’s bothering you. And you want to find them. Have I got that right?’

‘It’s a little difficult to explain.’

‘I need whatever you know. A name or two. An address. The question is: what is it you want?’

Frieda paused. She remembered that difficult moment in therapy. Something, some fear or anxiety or depression, had been a part of the patient’s life. Suddenly they had to give it a name, say it aloud, give it a shape, turn it into a narrative. Where to begin?

‘I got involved with the police over the kidnapping of a boy called Matthew Faraday. It was done by a man called Dean Reeve. It turned out that years before he had also taken a little girl called Joanna Vine.’

‘I read the file.’

‘If you’ve read it, you’ll have seen that the police believe he’s dead.’

‘He hanged himself.’

‘And you’ll probably have read somewhere in the same report that there’s a mad psychotherapist who claims that Dean Reeve staged it and that he’s still alive.’

‘And you think he’s out to get you?’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

‘I saw that in the file as well. You were found almost dead at a murder scene involving two women.’

‘They’ve got names. They were called Mary Orton and Beth Kersey.’

‘You were alleged to have killed Beth Kersey in self-defence. But you claimed it wasn’t you. You said it was Dean Reeve.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Which seems like a strange way of getting revenge.’

‘As I said, it’s complicated. But, look, if you don’t believe me, I can find someone else.’

‘No, you can’t. Or you’d have tried.’

‘All right. I’ll accept you at your valuation. But, still, you don’t have to do this.’

‘Keegan asked me. That’s all I need to know. Well, not quite all. I’ve been around. I was in the force for fifteen years. People get caught and put away, or they’re not caught and they’re not put away. And sometimes they forgive and forget and sometimes they don’t. But this feels different. What is it with this man? Do you feel threatened by him? Do you want him caught? Do you want to meet him? What does he want with you?’

‘I know what I want – to find him, apprehend him, stop him doing more harm. I don’t know what he wants. He feels like something in my head, something only I can see. Sometimes he does things to me, sometimes for me. It’s like he’s sending me messages I can’t read. It’s like he’s haunting me.’

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘No, I don’t. And sometimes I really used to wonder if I could be imagining it all. I’ve seen enough patients who believed there were enemies out there, enemies that only they could recognize. Lying awake at night, once or twice, I asked myself if this was what it was like to be mad.’

‘And?’

‘Well, that’s the kind of question you ask yourself in the middle of the night. I was sure anyway, but then I saw this.’ She took out her phone, found the photograph and showed it to Stringer.

He looked at it and shrugged. ‘It’s not exactly proof.’

‘I don’t care about proof. It’s him. And he wanted me to see that.’

‘Why? To mess with your head?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I talked to Keegan. And it’s escalating. He’s been here.’ Frieda gave Stringer an account of the previous few weeks, the evidence that Reeve had been in the house. ‘So,’ she said, when she had finished. ‘Can you find him?’

‘I need names.’

‘What names?’

‘Anyone who’s met him. And places he’s been.’

‘That’s difficult. Most of the people who met him are dead or they didn’t know who he was when they met him.’

‘Just the names. Leave the rest to me.’

‘There’s Matthew Faraday, the boy he kidnapped. He
barely even saw Reeve and he was very young at the time. And there’s Joanna Vine, the girl he kidnapped. She lived with him for almost twenty years, collaborated in the kidnap of Matthew. But I’m not sure she’ll talk to anyone.’

Stringer was writing on his pad; Frieda saw he was using shorthand.

‘Don’t worry about that. I just need the names.’

‘Some of it’s a bit complicated. He met my sister-in-law, Olivia Klein.’

Stringer looked up from his notebook. ‘Met? How?’

‘He kind of befriended her when she was drunk and took her back to her house. I don’t think anything happened. But I made her change her locks.’

‘He sounds like an animal to me.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Frieda. ‘What kind of animal?’

‘Marking his territory.’

‘Please don’t say that to Olivia.’

‘You’ve got a number for her?’

‘Would you like me to talk to her for you?’

‘It’s better if I do it.’

Frieda gave Olivia’s number to Stringer. She gave him Josef’s number, and the last address she had for Joanna Vine. ‘She might be rather aggressive.’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘She’s probably moved.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I need places as well.’

‘What sort of places?’

‘Where he lived, where people he knew lived.’

Frieda had to hunt through some old notebooks until she found the address of where he had lived in Canning Town. She also gave Stringer the name of the old people’s home where Reeve’s mother had lived and died.

‘He used to visit her,’ Frieda said. ‘But the people there
won’t know anything. And it’s years ago now. The staff have probably all changed.’

‘We’ll see. Is that all?’

Frieda thought for a moment. It wasn’t all. There was another name that she could hardly bear to say. But she had to. ‘Caroline Dekker,’ she said.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Dean Reeve had a brother. Alan Dekker. They didn’t know about each other. Well, not at first. The body found hanging. That was Alan.’

‘Allegedly.’

‘It was Alan.’ Frieda felt suddenly nauseous. ‘You saw my statement in the file, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, now that you mention it, I think I did.’

‘Carrie had a terrible time after Alan was killed. She thought Dean was her husband. She had lived with him as her husband for a day or so.’ She paused.

Stringer looked up from his notebook. ‘Are you saying what I think?’

‘I don’t know what you think. But she lived intimately with the man who killed her husband.’

Frieda thought Stringer would express shock or say something sympathetic but he just carried on writing in his notebook. ‘So she might not be very welcoming, but treat her gently.’

He closed his notebook. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

‘I don’t have your phone number or email.’

‘I’ll contact
you
.’

‘I suppose it’s easier to find people than it used to be, what with the internet and mobile phones and credit cards.’

‘It depends how much people want to stay hidden. Usually the old way is the best, talking to people, following leads.’

‘You know that he’s killed several people, don’t you?’

‘I just find them,’ said Stringer. ‘What happens next is up to you.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

Jack took a gulp of beer directly from the bottle. ‘Can I get you one?’ he asked.

‘Not at the moment,’ said Frieda.

They gazed at the different piles of paper scattered around on the floor of the shed.

‘It’s not like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ he said. ‘It’s just like a haystack with lots and lots of hay. And it’s felt like we’ve just arranged the hay in different heaps.’

‘You’ve done very well,’ said Frieda.

‘I was imagining it like what they do after plane crashes. A plane hits the ground and explodes and it looks like nothing at all, just bits of fuselage and wires and whatever. And they bring it all to some giant hangar and put everything where it belongs and gradually the whole plane takes shape and you can see where it broke apart, where the fault lines were.’

‘That’s what I was hoping for.’

‘Yes, but lives don’t have a shape like a plane. You can order them in as many shapes as you like. It just depends on the story you want to tell.’

‘That sounds a bit like therapy,’ said Frieda.

‘It sounds like the dangers of therapy. That’s always been my problem. It’s easy to create a narrative. The problem is working out the authentic, true narrative, or the useful narrative.’

‘So where are we so far?’

‘Follow me and I’ll give you the guided tour.’ Jack walked around the shed pointing at the different piles. ‘This is Deborah Docherty. This is Hannah. This little pile is Rory. This
is Aidan Locke. Now it gets a bit fuzzy. That pile is general family stuff. And that pile is stuff that didn’t seem interesting at all. It was just stuff, brochures, programmes, minicab ads. It was the kind of thing you find at the bottom of a drawer because you forgot to throw it away.’

‘We’ll need to check everything,’ said Frieda.

‘I think I’ve looked at every single bit of paper. I even dreamed about it last night. I dreamed that you came to check through the papers and asked me how I’d arranged them but I couldn’t remember and couldn’t explain.’

‘Talk me through one of the piles,’ said Frieda. ‘Just to give me an idea. Try that one.’ She pointed at random.

Jack knelt down and lifted a printed card. ‘This is the Aidan Locke pile. I think what we have here is mainly the sort of thing you put in a drawer and keep because about once every three years you might need to refer to it. Here’s his NHS medical card, and there’s a P60 for a job he had.’

‘What job?’ asked Frieda.

Jack looked at the form. ‘I don’t know. It just gives the name of an employer: Benson Harcourt. But it was in 1995, so it probably doesn’t matter. There’s his paper driving licence, which reveals that his middle name was Charles. There’s a vaccination certificate for a cat from 1997. Only one, so I’m deducing that the cat is no longer alive. There’s Locke and Docherty’s marriage certificate. There’s a pile of certificates thanking him for giving blood. He kept them with all his other documents, so he was clearly proud of them, and rightly so. There’s his National Insurance card and a certificate for his ownership of Premium Bonds, which I didn’t think were still a thing. And finally there’s an Enduring Power of Attorney form for Ronald Locke and Jennifer Locke, who I’m guessing are Locke’s aged parents.’ He stood
up. ‘And so, Aidan Locke, that was your life. Not much to show for it.’

Frieda crouched down and started leafing through the pile. ‘He got married, he gave blood, he had a cat. That’s something.’ She paused at the blood-donor forms and leafed through them. ‘He stopped,’ she said.

‘Stopped what?’

‘Giving blood. Two years before he died. I wonder why.’

‘Are you serious? What does it matter?’

Frieda stood up and looked at him. ‘Have I taught you nothing? I don’t mean about crime. I mean about therapy, about life. Everything matters.’

‘That’s your problem,’ said Jack, his face flushed. ‘You’re incapable of seeing something as unimportant. Not everything is symbolic. Even Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’

Frieda smiled. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Everybody knows that. It’s his most famous saying.’

‘Everybody may know that but they’re wrong. If Freud had said it, he would have been wrong. But he didn’t say it.’

‘You want to bet?’

‘I never bet. Especially when I’m right.’

Jack took out his phone, walked to the corner of the room and tapped at it energetically. Frieda continued leafing through the papers. She heard a grunt from behind her. She turned to Jack. ‘Well?’ she said.

‘All right. Maybe Locke stopped giving blood because he moved.’

‘No. Locke and Deborah Docherty moved in together in 1996. He gave blood for three years after that.’

‘Maybe he got tired of it. Maybe he didn’t have time.’

‘It’s something to consider.’

‘Frieda, what could Aidan Locke stopping giving blood
possibly have to do with him being murdered two years later?’