look up.
Chapter Seventeen
‘The boss is going to be spitting mad,’ said DC Foreman, gloomily.
There were several of them in the operations room, although Karlsson was out and not expected until later. They were thumbing through the morning’s papers, where the Matthew fever showed no sign of abating. In one tabloid, there were nine pages given over to him – several photographs of him, interviews with people who knew him or claimed to know him, pieces about psychological profiling, a long feature about Matthew’s home life. There were speculations about the state of the Faradays’ marriage. Sources ‘close to the heart of the operation’ had said as much.
‘Who the fuck was that, then?’
‘They’re flying kites. They know it’s usually the dad or the step-dad.’
‘He was miles away. There’s no way he could be a suspect. Why would they print such a thing?’
‘Why do you think? Matthew’s money. I read somewhere that papers put on tens of thousands in circulation if they have front-page news about him. This could run and run.’
‘Blood money.’
‘Easy to say. Who here’s been offered money yet?’
‘What – for leaking information?’
‘You will be. Just wait.’
‘The boss is not going to be happy.’
‘Nor his boss. I know for a fact that the commissioner is taking a very personal interest in the case.’
‘Crawford’s just a fucker.’
‘A fucker who can make life pretty uncomfortable.’
‘Karlsson’s the real copper. If anyone can solve this case, he can.’
‘Then it looks like no one can, doesn’t it?’
Twenty-two years: but when Karlsson told Deborah Teale who he was he saw the hope in her eyes, and the fear as well. She put two fingers on her lower lip and leaned against the door jamb as if the earth was shifting under her.
‘There really is no news about your daughter,’ he said quickly.
‘No, of course not,’ she said. She gave a small, shaky laugh, pressing a hand against her chest. ‘You said that when you called. It’s just…’ And she trailed to a halt because what was there to say, after all? It’s just that… how do you stop waiting, how do you stop hoping and dreading? Karlsson couldn’t stop himself thinking of what it must be like for her, even after all these years. The discovery of a little body in a ditch would be a relief to her. At least she would know, and there would be a grave where she could lay flowers.
‘Could I come in?’ he asked her, and she nodded and stood back to let him enter.
Everyone’s house has a different smell. Tanner’s had been musty, faintly rank, as if the windows hadn’t been opened for months, an odour that caught in the back of your throat, like old flower water. Deborah Teale’s house smelt of Flash and Ajax and polish and, under that, fried food. She led him into the front room, apologizing for mess that wasn’t there. All round the room he saw photographs, but none of Joanna.
‘I just wanted to ask you some questions.’ He eased himself into a chair that was too low for him, trapping him in its softness.
‘Questions? What’s left to ask?’
Karlsson didn’t know the answer to that. He found himself wondering why he was here, revisiting a tragedy that had almost certainly nothing to do with Matthew Faraday. He looked at the woman opposite him, her narrow face and thin shoulders. He had checked her in the file. She must be fifty-three now. Some people – for instance, his former wife’s new boyfriend – spread and solidified into a comfortable version of themselves as they got older, but Deborah Teale looked as though the years had pressed down on her, rubbing away her youth and softness.
‘I’ve been looking at the case again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we never solved it,’ he replied. It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
‘Joanna’s dead,’ Deborah Teale said. ‘Oh, I keep on imagining that she might be out there somewhere, but really I know she’s dead, and I’m sure you do too. She probably died the day we lost her. Why do you need to rake over old ground? If you find her body, then come and tell me. You won’t find her killer now, will you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You probably have to go through unsolved crimes every so often to satisfy some bureaucratic rule or other. But I’ve said everything there is to say. I’ve said it over and over again. Until I thought I’d go mad. Do you have any idea of what it feels like to lose a child?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘That’s something,’ she said. ‘At least you’re not telling me you know how I feel.’
‘You described Joanna as an anxious little girl.’
‘Yes.’ Deborah Teale frowned at him.
‘And she knew not to trust strangers?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yet she disappeared without a sound in the middle of the afternoon, on a busy street.’
‘Yes. As if she’d been a dream.’
Or as if she trusted the person who took her, thought Karlsson.
‘At some point, you have to tell yourself it’s over. Do you see? You have to. I saw you looking at the photos when you came in. I know what you were thinking, of course: that there were none of Joanna. You probably thought that was a bit unhealthy.’
‘Not at all,’ said Karlsson, truthfully. He was a great believer in denial. In his experience, that was how people stayed sane.
‘That’s Rosie, and that’s my husband, George. And my two younger children, Abbie and Lauren. I wept and I prayed and I mourned, and then at last I said goodbye and I moved on and I don’t want to go back again. I owe it to my new family. Does that sound callous to you?’
‘No.’
‘It does to some people.’ Her mouth twisted bitterly.
‘You mean your ex-husband?’
‘Richard thinks I’m a monster.’
‘Do you still see him?’
‘Is that what this is really about? You still think he did it?’
Karlsson looked at the woman opposite him, her gaunt face and her bright eyes. He liked her. ‘I don’t think anything, really. Except it hasn’t been solved.’
‘I gather his place is like a shrine. Saint Joanna amid the whisky bottles. I don’t suppose that means anything, though.’
It didn’t. In Karlsson’s experience, murderers were often sentimental or narcissistic people. He could easily imagine a father murdering his daughter and then weeping over her with tears of drunken, maudlin self-pity.
‘Do you ever see him now?’
‘Not for years. Unlike poor Rosie. I try to persuade her to keep away from him but she somehow feels responsible for him. She’s too kind-hearted for her own good. I wish -’ She stopped.
‘Yes?’
But she shook her head violently. ‘I don’t know what I was going to say. I just wish. You know.’
Richard Vine insisted on coming to the police station rather than seeing Karlsson at his flat. He had put on a suit, shiny with age and tight around his waist and chest, and a white shirt done up to the collar, constricting his Adam’s apple. Above it his face looked pouchy and his eyes were faintly bloodshot. His hands trembled when he took the mug of coffee. He gulped at it.
