‘How much?’
‘I have this rule of thumb. I charge two pounds for every thousand they earn – so if you earn thirty thousand you’d give me sixty pounds for each session. I had one client who told me he’d have to pay me five hundred thousand an hour, in that case. Luckily for him, I have a cut-off point of a hundred pounds. I have been known to take people for almost nothing, though my colleagues frown on that. Anyway, I’d say that about seventy per cent of my patients are NHS referrals, maybe a bit less.
‘OK. Number two, I usually see my patients three times a week, and I usually have seven patients – in other words, about twenty sessions a week in all. I know therapists who have eight sessions each day – that’s forty in a week. As one patient leaves, the next arrives. It makes them wealthy, but I couldn’t do that. Nor would I want to.’
‘Why not?’
‘I need to absorb things, think about each person I see, make proper process notes. I don’t need more money than what I get now. I need time. What was next?’
‘What are they like?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that. They don’t have much in common with each other.’
‘Except they’re in a mess.’
‘Most of us are in a mess at some time in our lives, wretched beyond bearing or dysfunctional beyond tolerating or simply stuck.’ She fixed him with her piercing glance. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ Karlsson frowned, uncomfortable. ‘Do you ever turn people away?’
‘If I think they don’t need therapy, or if I think they’d be better off with someone else. I only take on people I think I can help.’
‘And what made you become a therapist?’ This was what he really wanted to know but had little expectation of her answering. They had sat companionably together and talked, and yet he did not understand her much better or have more sense of her vulnerabilities or doubts. She kept herself to herself, he thought. The self-possession that had struck him so forcefully at their first meeting rarely wavered.
‘That’s enough questions for one night. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Why did you join the police force?’
Karlsson shrugged, then stared into his whisky. ‘Fuck knows. Recently, I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t become a lawyer, the way I was meant to, earning serious money and sleeping properly at night.’
‘What’s the answer?’
‘There isn’t an answer. I work too hard, get paid too little, am drowning in paperwork, only get noticed when things go wrong, get pissed on by the press and by my own boss, and the public distrust me. And now that I’m heading up the Murder Investigation Team, I get to meet lots of killers and wife-beaters and perverts and drug dealers. What can I say? It just seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘You like it, then.’
‘Like it? It’s what I do, and I think I do it pretty well, most of the time. Though you wouldn’t guess it from this case.’
He seemed to remember something and reached into his bag. He took out two cardboard files. ‘These are statements made by Rosalind Teale. She’s the sister of Joanna Vine. The first statements were made just after the disappearance and then we interviewed her again the other day.’
‘Is there something significant about them?’
‘I know you’re resistant, but I’d like you to have a look at them.’
‘What for?’
‘I’d be interested in anything you had to say.’
‘Now?’
‘That would be good.’
Karlsson refilled his glass and didn’t add water. He stood up and walked around the room as if he was at a gallery. Frieda didn’t like being watched while she was reading. And she didn’t like the idea of him looking at her possessions and using them to try and learn something about her. But the quickest way to get him to stop was to read the statements. She opened the older one and began, making herself read slowly, word by word.
‘Have you read all these books?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Shut up,’ said Frieda, in a mumble, without even looking up from the file. As she moved on to the second, more recent, file, she was aware of Karlsson, out of her eyeline. Finally she closed it. She didn’t speak, although she knew that Karlsson was waiting.
‘So?’ he said. ‘If she was your patient, what would you ask her?’
‘If she was my patient, I wouldn’t ask her anything. I would try to stop her feeling guilty about her sister. Apart from that, I think she should be left alone.’
‘She’s the only possible witness,’ said Karlsson.
‘And she didn’t see anything. And it’s more than twenty years ago. And every time you talk to her you damage her all over again.’
Karlsson came over and sat back down so that he was facing Frieda. He contemplated his whisky glass. ‘This is good stuff,’ he said. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Someone gave it to me.’
‘Tell me something else about the statements,’ said Karlsson. ‘You’re clever. Don’t you see this as a challenge?’
‘Don’t think you can taunt me,’ said Frieda.
‘I’m not taunting you. I’m at a stage where I’d be grateful for any input. I’m interested in anyone who knows about things I don’t know about.’
Frieda paused for a moment. ‘Have you thought about the possibility that Joanna might have been taken by a woman rather than a man?’
Karlsson put his glass down very gently on the low table by his chair. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The disappearance was quick,’ said Frieda. ‘Rosie Vine only lost sight of her sister for a minute or so. It doesn’t seem as if there was any fuss, any noise. This wasn’t someone being snatched on a quiet lane and thrown into the back of a van. This was a street that people walked along, with shops on it. I could imagine a little girl walking off with a woman. Taking her hand.’ Frieda imagined the scene, the little girl walking away, trustingly. Then she tried not to imagine it.
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Karlsson.
‘Don’t patronize me,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s not very interesting. It’s obvious and you must have considered it from the beginning.’
‘The idea had occurred to us,’ he said. ‘It’s a possibility. You’ve got to admit, though, you’re interested.’
‘Why are you asking me this?’ said Frieda. ‘What are you trying to get me to say?’
‘I’d like you to talk to Rose Teale. Maybe you can get to her in a way we can’t.’
‘But what’s there to get at?’ She picked up the file and flicked through it.
‘Isn’t it frustrating?’ said Karlsson. ‘When I read the statement, I have this fantasy that I could get in a time machine and be there just for a minute, just for five seconds, and then I could find out what really happened.’ He gave a sour smile. ‘That’s not the way grown-up policemen are supposed to talk.’
Frieda looked at the statement again: the little girl talking about her younger sister. She felt she was being asked to go on a journey and after she had said yes it would be too late to turn back. Was there any point to this? Was there anything she could contribute? Well, maybe. And if she could, she must.
‘All right,’ she said.
‘Really?’ said Karlsson. ‘That’s great.’
‘What I’d need,’ said Frieda, ‘are those police artists who are used for creating likenesses. Have you got that?’
Karlsson smiled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something much better.’
Chapter Twenty-four
