She murmured something and threw up one hand. Her eyes clicked open and, in a moment, she was sitting up straight, pushing her hair off her hot face.
‘I fell asleep.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I never fall asleep.’
‘You must have needed it.’
Then she sat back once more and gazed out of the windscreen at the cars streaming past in the opposite direction.
‘Is this Birmingham?’
‘I don’t actually live in the city. I live in a village, or small town, really, a few miles away.’
‘Why?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Why don’t you live in the city?’
‘It’s where I lived with my wife and kids. When my wife left, I never got around to moving.’
‘Not from choice, then?’
‘Probably not. Don’t you like the countryside?’
‘People should think about where they live, make a deliberate choice.’
‘I see,’ said Fearby. ‘I’m passive. And you’ve made a choice, I take it.’
‘I live in the middle of London.’
‘Because you want to?’
‘It’s somewhere I can be quiet and hidden. Life can carry on outside.’
‘Maybe that’s what I feel about my little house. It’s invisible to me. I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a place to go. I’m an ex-journalist. What do you do?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
Fearby looked bemused. ‘Now that I wouldn’t have guessed.’
He didn’t seem to understand just how wretched he had let his house become. There was a gravelled drive almost entirely grown over with ground elder, dandelions and tufts of grass. The windowsills were rotting and the panes were filthy. He might have cleared away the dirt, but a general air of neglect lay over everything. In the kitchen, piles of yellowing newspapers were stacked on the table, which clearly wasn’t used for eating at. When Fearby opened the fridge door to look for milk that wasn’t there, Frieda saw that, apart from beer cans, it was quite empty. It was a house for a man who lived alone and wasn’t expecting company.
‘No tea, then,’ he said. ‘How about whisky?’
‘I don’t drink in the day.’
‘Today is different.’
He poured them both a couple of fingers into cloudy tumblers and handed one to Frieda.
‘To our missing girls,’ he said, chinking his glass against hers.
Frieda took the smallest stinging sip, to keep him company. ‘You were going to show me what you’ve found.’
‘It’s all in my study.’
When he opened the door, she was speechless for a few seconds, her eyes trying to become accustomed to the combination of frenzy and order. Briefly, she was reminded of Michelle Doyce, the woman to whom Karlsson had introduced her, who had filled her rooms in Deptford with the
debris of other people’s lives, carefully categorizing litter.
Fearby’s study was dimly lit, because the window was half blocked with teetering piles of paper on its sill: newspapers and magazines and printouts. There were piles of papers on the floor as well: it was almost impossible to make a path through them to the long table that acted as his desk, also disappearing under scraps of paper, old notebooks, two computers, a printer, an old-fashioned photocopying machine, a large camera with its lens off, a cordless phone. Also, two chipped saucers overflowing with cigarette stubs, several glasses and empty whisky bottles. On the rim of the table there were dozens of yellow and pink Post-it notes, with numbers or words scribbled on them.
When Fearby turned on the Anglepoise lamp, it illuminated a paper copy of a photograph of a young woman’s smiling face. One chipped tooth. It made Frieda think of Karlsson, who also had a chipped tooth and who was many miles away.
It wasn’t the mess of the room that arrested her, however: it was the contrast of the mess to the meticulous order. On the corkboards, neatly pinned into place, were dozens of young women’s faces. They were obviously separated into two categories. On the left, there were about twenty faces; on the right, six. Between them was a large map of Britain, covered with flags that went in a crooked line from London towards the north-west. On the opposite wall, Frieda saw a huge time line, with dates and names running along it in neat, copperplate writing. Fearby was watching her. He pulled open the drawers of a filing cabinet, and she saw racks of folders inside, marked with names. He started pulling them out, putting them on top of the dangerous heap of things on his table.
Frieda wanted to sit but there was only one swivel chair and that was occupied by several books.
‘Are they the girls?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Hazel Barton.’ He touched her face gently, amost reverently. ‘Roxanne Ingatestone. Daisy Crewe. Philippa Lewis. Maria Horsley. Sharon Gibbs.’
They smiled at Frieda, young faces smooth, eager.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe Lila is too.’
‘It can’t be Doherty.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ He directed her towards his timeline. ‘This is when Daisy went, and Maria – he was in prison.’
‘Why are you so sure it’s the same person?’
Fearby pulled open the first folder. ‘I’m going to show you everything,’ he said. ‘Then you can tell me what you think. It may take some time.’
At seven o’clock, Frieda called Sasha, who agreed to go round to her house and stay there until she returned. She sounded concerned, a note of panic in her voice, but Frieda cut the conversation short. She also called Josef to ask him to feed the cat and perhaps water the plants in her yard.
‘Where are you, Frieda?’
‘Near Birmingham.’
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a place, Josef.’
‘What for?’
‘It would take too long to explain.’
‘You have to come back, Frieda.’
‘Why?’
‘We all worry.’
‘I’m not a child.’
‘We all worry,’ he repeated.
‘Well, don’t.’
‘You are not well. We all agree. I come to collect you.’
‘No.’
‘I come now.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why can’t?’
‘Because I’m not telling you where I am.’
She ended the call but her mobile rang again almost immediately. Now Reuben was calling; presumably Josef was standing beside him with his tragic eyes. She sighed, turned the phone off and put it into her bag. She’d never wanted to have a mobile in the first place.
‘Sharon Gibbs,’ said Fearby, as if nothing had interrupted them.
At half past ten, they were done. Fearby went outside for a cigarette and Frieda went to look in his cupboards for some food. She wasn’t hungry, but she felt hollow and couldn’t remember when she had last eaten. Not today; not last night.
The cupboards, like the fridge, were almost empty. She found some quick-boil rice and vegetable stock cubes long past their sell-by date: that would have to do. As she was boiling the rice in the stock, Fearby came back in and stood watching her.
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think either we’re two deluded people who happen to have bumped into each other at a donkey sanctuary – or that you’re right.’
He gave a grimace of relief.
‘In which case, it’s not Doherty or Shane or whatever he’s called.’
‘No. But it’s odd, isn’t it, that he knew them both? I don’t like coincidences.’
‘They lived the same kind of lifestyle – two young women who’d fallen off the track.’
‘Perhaps they knew each other?’ Frieda suggested, lifting the rice off the hob, letting the steam rise into her face, which felt grimy with toil and weariness.
‘That’s a thought. Who would know?’
‘I have one idea.’
After they’d eaten the rice – Fearby had eaten most of it, Frieda had just picked at hers – Frieda said she should take the train back. But Fearby said it was too late. After some argument about hotels and trains, Fearby ended by getting an old sleeping bag out of a cupboard and Frieda made a sort of bed for herself on a sofa in the living room. She spent a strange, feverish night in which she didn’t know when she was awake and when she was asleep, when her thoughts were like dreams and her dreams were like thoughts, all of them bad. She felt, or she thought, or she dreamed, that she was on a journey that was also a kind of obstacle race, and only when she had got past the obstacles, solved all the problems, would she finally be allowed to sleep. She thought of the photographs of the girls on Fearby’s wall and their faces became mixed up with the faces of Ted, Judith and Dora Lennox, all staring down at her.
From about half past three she was starkly, bleakly awake, staring at the ceiling. At half past four, she got up. She went to the bathroom and ran herself a bath. She lay there and watched the edges of the window blind grow light. She dried herself with the towel that looked like the least used and dressed herself in yesterday’s dirty clothes. When she emerged from the bathroom, Fearby was there pouring coffee into two mugs.
‘I can’t offer you much of a breakfast,’ he said. ‘I can go out at seven and get some bread and eggs.’
‘Coffee will be fine,’ said Frieda. ‘And then we should go.’
Fearby put a notebook, a folder, a little digital recorder into a shoulder bag and within half an hour they were back on the motorway, heading south. For a long time, they drove in silence. Frieda looked out of the window, then at Fearby. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘At first, for George Conley.’
‘But you got him out,’ said Frieda. ‘That’s something most journalists wouldn’t achieve in their whole career.’
‘It didn’t feel enough. He only got out on a technicality. When he got out and everyone was cheering and celebrating and the media were there, it felt incomplete. I needed to tell the whole story, to show that Conley was innocent.’
‘Is that what Conley himself wants?’
‘I’ve been to see him. He’s a ruined man. I don’t think he’s capable of putting into words what he wants.’
‘Some people who looked at your house would say that you were a ruined man.’
Frieda thought Fearby might flare up at that or say something defensive but he smiled. ‘Would say? People have said it already. Starting with my wife and colleagues. My
ex
-colleagues.’
‘Is it worth it?’ said Frieda.
‘I’m not asking for thanks. I just need to know. Don’t you agree? When you saw those photographs of the girls, didn’t you want to know what happened to them?’
‘Did it ever occur to you that there may not be any link between the pictures on your wall, except that they’re just poor, sad girls who went missing?’
Fearby glanced at her. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’
‘I’m not on anybody’s side,’ Frieda said, with a frown, and then she relaxed. ‘Sometimes I think I’m not even on my own side. Our brains are constructed so that we find patterns. That’s why we see animal shapes in clouds. But really they’re just clouds.’
‘Is that why you came all the way up to Birmingham? And why we’re driving all the way back to London?’
‘My job is listening to the patterns people make of their lives. Sometimes they’re damaging patterns, or self-serving, or self-punishing, and sometimes they’re just wrong. Do you ever worry what would happen if you discovered that you were wrong?’
‘Maybe life isn’t that complicated. George Conley was convicted of murdering Hazel Barton. But he didn’t do it. Which means someone else did. So, where in London are we going?’
‘I’ll put the address into your satnav.’
‘You’ll like it,’ said Fearby. ‘It’s got the voice of Marilyn Monroe. Well, someone imitating Marilyn Monroe. Of course, that might not appeal to a woman as much a man. I mean the idea of driving around with Marilyn Monroe. In fact, some women might find it quite annoying.’
Frieda punched in the address, and for the next hour and a half, the car was guided down the M1, round the M25, by a voice that didn’t really sound like Marilyn Monroe’s at all. But he was right about the other bit. She did find it annoying.
Lawrence Dawes was at home. Frieda wondered if he ever wasn’t at home. At first he seemed surprised. ‘I thought you’d given up,’ he said.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ said Frieda. ‘
We’ve
got news for you.’
Dawes invited the two of them through, and once more
Frieda found herself sitting at the table in Dawes’s back garden being served tea.
‘We found Shane,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘He was the man your daughter was associated with.’
‘Associated with? What does that mean?’
‘You knew that your daughter was involved with drugs. He was involved with drugs too. In a more professional way.’ Dawes didn’t react, but didn’t seem like a man expecting good news. ‘Shane was just a nickname. His real name is Mick Doherty.’
‘Mick Doherty. Do you think he’s connected with my daughter’s disappearance?’
‘It’s possible. But I don’t know how. It was when I went to see Doherty, out in Essex, that I met Jim. We were both looking for Doherty, but for different reasons.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was investigating the case of a young woman called Sharon Gibbs,’ Fearby said. ‘She had gone missing and I learned that she had known this man, Doherty. When I met Frieda, I discovered that we both wanted to talk to him about different missing women. It seemed an interesting coincidence.’
Dawes looked thoughtful and pained in a way that Frieda had never seen him before. ‘Yes, yes, I can see that,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘You’d never heard of Shane,’ said Frieda. ‘But now that we know his real name – Mick Doherty – do you recognize it?’
Dawes shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t remember ever hearing that name.’
‘What about Sharon Gibbs?’
‘No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t help you. I wish I could.’ He looked in turn at Frieda and Fearby.
‘I must seem like a bad father to you. You know, I always thought of myself as the sort of man who would move heaven and earth to find his daughter, if anyone had tried to harm her. But it wasn’t like a five-year-old girl going missing. It was more like someone growing up, moving away and wanting to lead their own life. Bit by bit, she disappeared. Some days I think of her all the time and it hurts. It hurts here.’ He pressed his hand to his heart. ‘Others, I just get on with things. Gardening, mending. It stops me thinking, but perhaps I shouldn’t stop thinking because that’s a way of not caring so much.’ He paused. ‘This man, what’s his name?’