‘It’s the same woman,’ said Frieda.
‘Similar.’ Karlsson rubbed his face violently with his fist.
‘It must be.’
‘You think so, do you?’
‘Of course.’
He looked grimly at her.
‘This is the woman Rose remembered,’ Frieda said.
‘Rose didn’t remember. She was led by multiple choice through a succession of images that were narrowed down to this. That is not the same as remembering.’
‘It’s her. Of course it is. Can you think of any other explanation?’
‘It doesn’t need a fucking explanation. Through a series of suggestions, a damaged young woman came up with a face she might have seen twenty-two years ago or she might have imagined or made up, which happens to look a bit like the photograph of a woman in the house of someone who is a sort of half-suspect for a different crime. How do you think that would go down in court?’
Frieda didn’t reply.
‘And in the meantime, there is no sign of Matthew. When I say no sign, I mean nothing. Not a thread or a fibre. And there was one room they had just finished painting. The paint was still wet. If he’d been kept in there, any trace of him would have been covered. You know what I think? I think he died long ago and I’m being led by the nose into a world of shadows and hopes. If it were the kid’s parents, it would be understandable. But you’ve bought into it.’
Frieda stared at the photograph so intently that it almost hurt her head. ‘It’s an old family picture,’ she said.
‘Probably.’
‘Look.’ Frieda put her hand across the picture, covering the hair.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you see the likeness? Dean Reeve. And Alan as well. It must be his mother.
‘Am I meant to understand what you’re saying?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Remember what I said about a woman? Joanna wouldn’t have walked off with a man like Dean Reeve. But she might have done with her. Don’t you think?’
‘Sorry,’ said Karlsson. ‘My mind was on other things, like conducting an investigation, interviews, evidence, little things. There are rules. They have to find clues, evidence.’
Frieda ignored him. She stared hard at the photograph, as if it could yield up its secrets to her. ‘Is she still alive? She wouldn’t be that old.’
‘We’ll find out,’ he said. ‘It’s something to follow up.’
Frieda suddenly remembered. ‘Are your children OK?’
‘They’re back with their mother, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Were things all right with Josef?’
‘He made them pancakes and drew patterns on their legs with indelible ink.’
‘Good. In the meantime, are you keeping a watch on Dean?’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Karlsson’s tone was grim. ‘Even if you’re right, he knows we’re on to him. So.’
‘You mean he won’t lead you to Matthew because he’ll assume you’re watching him?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But if they’ve stowed Matthew somewhere, they need to feed him, give him water.’
He gave a shrug. His face was sombre. ‘It’s probably not him,’ he said. ‘If it was him, he probably killed him straight away. If he didn’t kill him straight away, he probably killed him after you knocked at the door. And if he didn’t… well, all he has to do is sit and wait.’
Karlsson bent over Rose where she sat, examining the photograph. Her kitchen was small and cold and there was a brown stain on the ceiling. The wall heater was rumbling and a tap was dripping.
‘Well?’ he asked at last.
Rose looked up at him. He was struck by how very pale and delicate her skin was, with small blue veins visible under the surface.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘But you think it may be her?’ He wanted to take her by her thin shoulders and shake her.
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘It rings no bells.’
She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I was just a little girl,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone.’
Karlsson straightened up. His back was aching and his neck felt stiff and sore. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What was I expecting anyway?’
‘I’m sorry. But you don’t want me to say something that misleads you, do you?’
‘Why not?’ They were both startled by his sudden harsh laugh. ‘Everybody else is.’
Frieda sat at her chess table and played through one of the games from her book of classic matches, Beliavsky versus Nunn in 1985. The felted pieces moved up the board. The fire flickered in the grate. The clock ticked away the minutes. The pawns fell and the queens advanced. She thought about Dean and Alan, with their dark brown eyes. She thought about Matthew and held his freckled, merry face in her mind. She thought about Joanna, with her gap-toothed, anxious smile. She tried not to hear their thin high voices screaming out in anguish for their mothers to come and rescue them. Her brain felt as though it was falling between the cracks on the board. Something: there must be something she had missed, some tiny, hidden key that could slide into the unyielding mystery and lever it open. No matter what horrors it revealed, anything would be better than this state of unknowing. She let herself remember how Matthew’s parents had looked at the press conference – their terror- struck faces. What would it be like to be them, lying in bed night after night and imagining their son crying for them? What had it been like for Joanna’s parents, month by month, year by year, never knowing and never having a grave on which they could lay their flowers?
At midnight, her phone rang.
‘Were you asleep?’ asked Karlsson.
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, lifting a bishop off the board and holding it in a clenched fist, waiting.
‘I’m going to visit Mrs Reeve. She’s in an old people’s home in Beckton. Will you come with me?’
‘She’s alive, then. Yes, of course I’ll come.’
‘Good. I’ll send a car for you first thing tomorrow.’
Once, when she was a student, Frieda had gone to Beckton to see the gasworks that looked like a colossal ruin standing in the desert. She still had the photographs she had taken. All of that was gone now; only a grassed-over slag heap showed where it had once been. Everything old and strange seemed to have been demolished, and in its place were lines of eighties houses, apartment blocks, shopping malls and light industrial units.
River View Nursing Home – its name was misleading – was a large modern building in raw orange brick, all on one floor and built around a courtyard with a small balding lawn in the middle, no trees or shrubs. There were metal grids over metal-framed windows. Frieda thought it looked like an army barracks. There were wheelchairs, zimmer frames, walking-sticks, a big jug of plastic flowers in the overheated entrance hall, and a smell of pine air freshener with something like porridge being cooked. She could hear a radio playing but otherwise it was very quiet. Their footsteps echoed. Perhaps most of the residents were still in bed. In the living room, there were only two people – one, a tiny sliver of a man whose bald head shone and whose round glasses caught the light; the other, a large woman dressed in what looked like a voluminous orange cape, with her neck in a brace and her feet in oversized fluffy slippers. Jigsaws were laid out on tables, waiting.
‘Mrs Reeve’s this way.’ The woman led them down a corridor. She had metal-grey hair, twisted into tight, even curls. Her buttocks rolled as she walked and she had strongly muscled calves and forearms, lips that turned down even when she smiled. Her name was Daisy, but she didn’t look like a Daisy.
‘I warn you,’ she said, before she pushed open the door that had a small spy-hole on the outside, ‘she’s not going to tell you much.’ She gave her turned-down smile.
