‘Because it was the right thing to do.’ Frieda stood up and reached over for her coat. ‘I knew it was nothing. I just needed to be sure.’
Karlsson stood up and walked around his desk to lead her out. He felt he’d been too harsh with her. He’d taken the frustrations of a bad morning out on a woman who was just trying to be helpful. Even if uselessly. ‘You can see it from my point of view,’ he said. ‘I can’t go around interviewing people based on someone’s dream. I know you’re the analyst and I’m not, but people have these sorts of dreams all the time and they don’t mean anything.’
At this it was her turn to speak sharply. ‘I’m not going to take lessons from a detective about what dreams mean. If that’s all right.’
‘I was just saying -’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m not going to waste your time any more.’ She started to pull her coat on. ‘This wasn’t just some little dream he’d been having for years, the way most anxiety dreams are. He’d had the dream a long time ago when he was a young man and now he’d suddenly had it again.’
Karlsson had been about to say goodbye, about to steer her out of the door, when he stopped. ‘What do you mean “again”?’ he said.
‘You don’t want to hear the details,’ said Frieda. ‘But before it had been a definite desire for a daughter and now it was a son. One of his worries was that there was something sexual about the change.’
‘Change?’ Frieda looked puzzled by Karlsson’s expression. ‘You’re saying he had the dream before? A long time ago?’
‘Does this matter?’
There was a pause.
‘I’m just curious,’ said Karlsson. ‘For my own reasons. How old was he?’
‘He was just out of his teens, he told me. Twenty or twenty-one. Well before he met his wife. Then, suddenly, the dreams stopped.’
‘Take your coat off,’ said Karlsson. ‘Sit down. I mean, please. Sit down, please.’
With a slightly wary expression, Frieda laid her coat across the chair where it had been before and sat back down. ‘I don’t really see…’ she began.
‘Your patient, he’s what? Forty-three?’
‘Forty-two, I think.’
‘So that previous dream would have been twenty-two years ago?’
‘Something like that.’
Karlsson leaned back on the front of his desk. ‘Let me get this straight. Twenty-two years ago, he has a dream about a little girl. Taking a little girl. Then nothing. And now he has a dream about taking a little boy.’
‘That’s right.’
Suddenly Karlsson’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘You’re being straight with me, right? You haven’t spoken to anyone on the case. You haven’t done your own research.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘No one’s put you up to this?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve had journalists coming in pretending to be witnesses, just to see what we’ve got. If this is some kind of wind-up, you should be aware that you’ll face prosecution.’
‘I was just putting on my coat and now I’m facing prosecution?’
‘You don’t know anything apart from the Matthew Faraday disappearance?’
‘I don’t read the papers that often. I hardly know anything about the Faraday case. Is there some problem?’
Karlsson rubbed his face almost as if he were trying to wake himself up. ‘Yes, there is a problem,’ he said. ‘The problem is that I don’t know what to think.’ He mumbled something that Frieda couldn’t make out. It sounded as if he were arguing with himself, which was exactly what he was doing. ‘I think I’m going to talk to that patient of yours.’
Chapter Nineteen
Frieda stepped into her house with a small sigh of relief, letting the shopping bag drop to the floor while she took off her coat and scarf. It was cold and dark outside, frost in the air and the sense of winter closing in, but inside was snug. There was a light on in the living room and the fire was laid ready; she lit it before going into the kitchen with the bag. Reuben always said that there were two types of cook: the artist and the scientist. He was clearly the artist, flamboyant with improvisations, and she was the scientist, exact and a bit fussy, following every recipe to the letter. A level teaspoon had to be level; if a recipe said red wine vinegar then nothing else would do; pastry dough had to be left in the fridge for the full hour. She very rarely cooked. Sandy had been the cook in their relationship and now… Well, she didn’t want to think about Sandy because that hurt the way a toothache hurt, flaring up suddenly and taking her breath away with its electric sharpness. She just assembled ingredients on her plate and tried not to think of him with his pots and pans and wooden spoons, making meals for one. But today she was following a simple recipe that Chloe had inexplicably emailed her, with urgent instructions to try it, for a curried cauliflower and chickpea salad. She looked doubtfully at it.
She put on her apron, washed her hands, drew down the blinds, and was chopping the onion when her doorbell rang. There was nobody she was expecting and people didn’t often turn up at her house unannounced, except young men with dodgy smiles selling dusters, twenty for a fiver. Perhaps it was Sandy. Did she want it to be? She quickly remembered it couldn’t be. He had gone on the Eurostar to Paris this morning for a conference. She still knew those kinds of things about him and so she was able to imagine him in the life she had vacated. Soon enough that would change. He would do things she knew nothing about, see people she had never met or heard of, wear clothes she had never seen, read books he wouldn’t discuss with her.
The doorbell rang again and she laid down the knife, rinsed her hands under cold water, and went to answer.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ asked Karlsson.
‘Obviously.’
‘It’s a bit cold out here.’
Frieda stood back and let him walk into her hall. She noticed how he wiped his shoes – rather elegant black ones, with blue laces – on her mat before hanging his black coat, splattered with rain, next to hers.
‘You were cooking.’
‘Brilliant. I can see why you became a detective.’
‘This will only take a minute of your time.’
She led him into her living room, where the fire was still feeble and lacking warmth. She crouched before it and carefully blew its flames before taking a seat opposite Karlsson and folding her hands carefully on her lap. He noticed how straight she sat, and she noticed that one of his front teeth was very slightly chipped. This surprised her: Karlsson seemed otherwise punctilious about his appearance, almost dandyish: his soft charcoal-grey jacket, his white shirt, and a red tie so thin it was like an ironic stripe down his chest.
‘Is it about Alan?’ she said.
‘I thought you would want to know.’
‘Have you talked to him?’
She sat up straighter in her chair. Her expression didn’t waver, and yet Karlsson had the impression that she was holding back a wince of anticipated distress. She was paler than the last time they had met, and tired as well. He thought she looked unhappy.
‘Yes. His wife, too.’
‘And?’
‘He didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Matthew Faraday.’
He could sense a release of tension.
‘You’re sure?’
