Blue Monday Page 29

  She moved as quickly as she could among the gravestones, stooping at each one and standing up again, squinting in the dim light. The Lovatts, the Gorans, the Booths. Her eyes burned with tiredness and her chest ached with hope. A blackbird looked at her from a bare thorn bush and in the distance she heard the rumble of cars. Fairley, Fairbrother, Walker, Hayle. And then she stopped and heard the blood pounding in her ears. Reeve. Here was a Reeve – a small, crumbling headstone, tipped slightly to one side. She had found it.

  But then, with a crushing sense of failure, she understood that she had found nothing at all. For how could a child be hidden here, among these puny graves that stretched all round her? With a lurch of horror she looked closer at them for freshly turned earth where a body could have been buried, but they were thickly overgrown with weeds. Nobody could be hidden here. She sank to her knees beside Theobald Reeve’s inscription, feeling sick with a sense of defeat. Matthew wasn’t here after all. It had just been a delusion, a last spasm of hope.

  She didn’t know how long she knelt like that in the bitter cold, knowing that she had lost. But at last she raised her eyes and started to scramble to her feet, and as she did so she saw it – a high stone mausoleum, almost out of sight behind a tangle of brambles and nettles. She ran towards it, feeling the thorns tear at her. Her feet sank into the slushy mud and the wind whipped her hair round her face so that she could barely see. But she could see enough to know that someone had been there recently. There was a path of sorts where the nettles and brambles had been flattened. She reached the entrance and saw that it was blocked with a heavy stone doorway, but from the ruts in the mud it was obvious that someone had pulled it aside not long ago.

  ‘Matthew,’ she shouted, at the blank, mouldering stone. ‘Wait! Hold on! We’re here. Wait.’

  Then she started tearing at the stone with her bare fingers, trying to get a purchase, trying to hear some sound that would tell her he was there, and that he lived.

  The stone door gave slightly. A chink appeared. She strained at it. From over the hill she heard cars and she saw headlights. Then there were voices and there were people and they were running towards her. She saw Karlsson. She saw the expression on his face and she wondered if she looked like that as well.

  And then they were upon her – an army of officers who could pull the stone back, who could shine their torches into the dank blackness, who could crawl inside.

  Frieda stood back. A terrible calm descended on her. She waited.

  He couldn’t hear his heart any more. That was all right. It had hurt too much when it was beating hard. The Tin Man was wrong. And he couldn’t make his breath go in and out properly. It caught in small shudders and didn’t fill him up. The fire was gone, and the ice was gone too, and even the hard ground wasn’t hard now, because his body was just a feather trembling on its surface and soon it would be lifted up and floated away.

  Oh, no. Please. No. He didn’t want the tearing sounds and he didn’t want the white light shredding his eyes. He didn’t want the staring faces and the clawing hands and the gabble of voices and the jolting movements. He was too tired for more of the story; he had thought the story was over at last.

  Then he saw the dancer, the woman with snowflakes in her hair. She wasn’t shouting or running like the others. She stood quite still on the other side of the world with gravestones all round her and she gazed at him and her face was better than smiling. He had saved her and now she had saved him. She bent over him and her lips touched his cheek. The evil spell was broken.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Frieda stood near the bed, watching. The little figure was still curled in the position they had found him. Then he had been in a state of semi-undress – for in his delirium of death, the boy had ripped off the clothes he had been wearing, the checked shirt a replica of the shirts both twins favoured – and had lain in near-nakedness on the cold earth of the mausoleum. Now he was on a warm-water mattress. He was covered with layers of light cloth and there were monitors attached to his heart. His face, which in the photographs she had seen of him was round and ruddy and full of merriment, was so white it was almost green. His freckles stood out like rusted pennies. The lips were bloodless. One cheek was bruised and puffy. His hands were bandaged for he had ripped his fingers tearing at the stone walls. His hair had been crudely dyed black, with a stripe of red showing at the parting. Only the monitors showed he wasn’t dead.

  Detective Constable Munster sat in the corner of the room. He was a young man with dark hair and dark eyes and he’d been on the team looking for Matthew since the first day. He was nearly as pale as the boy, and still, as though he were carved in stone. He was waiting for the boy to return to consciousness. Matthew’s eyes fluttered and closed again. His lashes were long and red; his eyelids were translucent. Karlsson had asked Frieda to stay as well, until the child psychiatrist arrived. Even so, she felt in the way, excluded from the process, the rapid footsteps, the rattle of trolleys, doctors and nurses murmuring to each other. Worse, she understood the jargon that was being used, the intravenous warm saline, the danger of hypovolaemic shock. They were trying to raise his core temperature and she was just a bystander.

  The door opened once again and the parents were ushered in. They had the pale, drawn, gaunt faces of people who have spent days waiting for bad news. Now they had hope, which was a new kind of agony. The woman knelt beside his bed, pushing the tubes aside and taking hold of her son’s bandaged hand, pressing her face into his body. Two nurses had to pull her back. The man looked flushed and angrily confused; his eyes darted around the room, taking in all the equipment, the flurry of activity.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  The doctor was looking at the chart. He took his glasses off to rub his eyes. ‘We’re doing all we can but he’s extremely dehydrated and has severe hypothermia. He’s dangerously cold.’

  Mrs Faraday gave a sob. ‘My little boy. My beautiful son.’ She raised his hand to her lip and kissed it, and then fell to stroking his arm and neck, saying over and over again that everything would be all right now, that he was safe.

  ‘But he’ll be all right?’ said Mr Faraday. ‘He will be all right.’ As if by insisting, it would become true.

  ‘We’re rehydrating him,’ said the doctor. ‘And we’re going to do a cardiopulmonary bypass. It means we attach him to a machine, pump his blood out, warm it up, pump it back in.’

  ‘And then when you do that, he’ll be all right?’

  ‘You should wait outside,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll let you know if there’s any change.’

  Frieda stepped forward and took Mrs Faraday’s hand. She seemed in a daze and allowed herself to be led out. Her husband followed. They were shown into a small, windowless waiting room, just four chairs and a table on which stood a vase of plastic flowers. Mrs Faraday looked at Frieda as if she had just noticed her.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve been working with the police. I was waiting for you to arrive.’ She sat beside them as Mrs Faraday talked and talked. Her husband didn’t speak. Frieda saw how his nails were dirty, his eyes red-rimmed. Frieda hardly spoke but once Mrs Faraday turned and looked her in the eyes and asked if she had children. Frieda said she didn’t.

  ‘Then you can’t understand.’

  ‘No.’

  And then Mr Faraday spoke. His voice was gravelly, as if his throat was sore. ‘How long was he in that place?’

  ‘Not long.’

  Too long: Kathy Ripon had called at Dean’s house on Saturday afternoon. Now it was Christmas Eve. Frieda thought of the last few days. Rain, sleet, snow. There would have been water running down the walls. He would have been able to lick it like an animal. She thought of him again, that first sight, his emaciated, bruised body, the eyes open but unseeing, his mouth drawn back in fear. That was the worst. At first he hadn’t realized he was being rescued. He thought they were coming back for him. And there was something else
to think about. Where was Kathy? Did she have a damp wall somewhere?

  ‘What he must have gone through,’ said Mr Faraday. He leaned towards Frieda. ‘Had he been – was he – you know?’

  Frieda shook her head. ‘It’s been a terrible, terrible thing,’ she said. ‘But I think he thought of him as his child.’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Mr Faraday. ‘Have they caught the one who did it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda.

  ‘He deserves to be buried alive, like my son was.’

  A junior doctor came into the waiting room. She was young and very beautiful, with skin like a peach and blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail; her face glowed. And Frieda knew it was going to be good news.

  They knelt on either side of the bed, under the brutal lights and among the hanging tubes. They held his bandaged hands and said his name and crooned nonsense words, as if he was a newborn baby. Poppet and sweetheart and muffin and Mattie-boy and pigeon. His eyes were still shut but his face had lost that deathly tinge, its clayey whiteness. The rigidity of his limbs had softened. Mrs Faraday was sobbing and talking at the same time. Her words of love came out in gulps. He was bleary and barely responsive, as if he had been woken in the middle of the night out of a deep sleep.

  ‘Matthew, Matthew,’ murmured Mrs Faraday, almost nuzzling him. He said something and she leaned in even closer. ‘What’s that?’ He said it again. She looked round, puzzled.

  ‘He said “Simon”. What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s their name for him,’ said Frieda. ‘I think they gave him a new name.’

  ‘What?’ Mrs Faraday started to cry.

  DC Munster drew Mr Faraday aside, then leaned over the bed and started to talk to Matthew. He held a photograph of Kathy Ripon in front of the boy’s face. His eyes weren’t able to focus properly.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Mrs Faraday. ‘He’s terribly ill. He can’t do this. It’s bad for him.’

  A nurse said that the child psychiatrist was on her way but she’d phoned to say she was stuck in traffic. Frieda heard DC Munster trying to explain that they’d got their son back but other parents were still missing their daughter and Mr Faraday said something angry in response and Mrs Faraday was crying harder than ever.

  Frieda pressed her fingers to her temples. She tried to shut out the noise so she could think. Matthew had been snatched from his parents, hidden away, punished, starved, told that his mother was no longer his mother and his father no longer his father, told that he wasn’t himself but someone else – a boy called Simon – and then shut away, left to die, naked and alone. Now he lay blinking in an over-lit room, with strange faces looming at him out of his waking nightmare, shouting words he didn’t understand. He was a little boy, hardly more than a toddler still. But he had survived. When nobody could save him he had saved himself. What stories had he told himself as he lay in the dark?

  She moved to the other side of the bed, across from Mrs Faraday.

  ‘May I?’ Frieda said.

  Mrs Faraday looked at her numbly but she didn’t resist. Frieda moved her face close to Matthew’s, so she could talk in a whisper. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re home. You’ve been rescued.’ She saw a slight flicker of his eyes. ‘You’re safe. You’ve escaped from the witch’s house.’

  He made a sound but she couldn’t decipher it.

  ‘Who was there with you?’ she said. ‘Who was with you in the witch’s house?’

  Matthew’s eyes suddenly clicked open, like a doll’s.

  ‘Busybody,’ he said. ‘Poky-nose.’

  Frieda felt as if Dean was in the room, as if Matthew was a ventriloquist’s dummy and he was speaking.

  ‘Where is she?’ she asked. ‘Where did they put her? The busybody?’

  ‘Took away,’ he said, in his husk of a voice. ‘In the dark.’

  Then he started sobbing, twisting his body back and forward. Mrs Faraday gathered up her son and held him, twitching and retching, against her breast.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Munster.

  ‘It doesn’t sound good. Not at all.’

  Frieda walked out through the waiting room into a corridor. She looked around. An orderly was pushing an old woman in a wheelchair. ‘Is there anywhere I can get some water?’ Frieda asked.

  ‘There’s a McDonald’s down by the main entrance,’ the orderly said.

  She had only just started walking down the long corridor when there was a shout from behind her. It was Munster. He ran towards her. ‘I just got a call,’ he said. ‘The boss wants to see you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They found the woman.’

  ‘Kathy?’ Relief tore through her, making her feel dizzy.

  ‘No. The wife,’ said Munster. ‘Terry Reeve. There’s a car for you downstairs.’

  Chapter Forty-three

  Yvette Long looked at Karlsson and frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Your tie,’ she said. ‘It’s not straight.’ She leaned forward and adjusted it.

  ‘You need to look your best for the cameras,’ she said. ‘You’re a hero. And Commissioner Crawford’s going to be there. His assistant just phoned. He’s very pleased with you. The press conference is going to be a big one. They’ve got an overflow hall.’

  His mobile vibrated on the table. His ex-wife had left several messages asking him when the hell he was going to collect his children, each one angrier than the one before.

  ‘We’ve got the little boy back,’ said Karlsson. ‘That’s all they really care about. Where’s Terry Reeve?’

  ‘She’s just arrived. They’ve put her downstairs.’

  ‘Has she said anything about Kathy Ripon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I want two officers with her every second.’

  He picked up his phone and wrote a text message:

  Sorry. Call soon

  pressed ‘Send’. Perhaps she would hear the news and understand, but he knew it didn’t work like that: there were other people’s children, and then there were your own. An officer put her head round the door and said that Dr Klein had arrived. Karlsson told the officer to send her straight in. When Frieda came in, he was startled by the fierce gleam in her eyes and recognized in it his own elated weariness, which made the idea of sleep impossible.

  ‘How is he?’ he said.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s with his parents.’

  ‘I mean, will he recover?’

  ‘How do I know?’ said Frieda. ‘Young children are surprisingly resilient. That’s what the textbooks say.’

  ‘And you did it. You found him.’

  ‘I found one, and I gave one away,’ said Frieda. ‘Forgive me if I don’t dance with joy. You’ve got Terry Reeve.’

  ‘She’s downstairs.’

  ‘I passed the mob on the way in,’ said Frieda. ‘I half expected them to be carrying pitchforks and flaming torches.’

  ‘It’s understandable,’ said Karlsson.

  ‘They should be back looking after their own children,’ said Frieda. ‘Where did you find her?’

  ‘At her home.’

  ‘Her home?’ said Frieda.

  ‘We were watching it, of course,’ said Karlsson. ‘And she came home and we arrested her. Simple as that, no brilliant detective work involved.’ He gave a grimace.

  ‘Why would she go home?’ Frieda was asking herself rather than Karlsson. ‘I thought they’d have a plan.’

  ‘They did have a plan,’ said Karlsson. ‘You stymied it when you saw her at the cemetery. She called him. We know that. We’ve got her phone. She phoned him. He got away.’

  ‘So why didn’t she?’ said Frieda. ‘And why did she go to the cemetery?’

  ‘You can ask her yourself,’ said Karlsson. ‘I want you to come in with me.’

  ‘I feel I ought to know already,’ said Frieda. ‘What is it that lawyers say? You should
never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.’

  ‘We need to ask a question that we don’t know the answer to,’ said Karlsson. ‘Where’s Kathy Ripon?’

  Frieda sat on the corner of Karlsson’s desk. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about that,’ she said.

  ‘You had a bad feeling about Matthew,’ said Karlsson.

  ‘This is different. They wanted a son. They saw him as a child. Even when they got rid of him, they didn’t kill him. They hid him away, like a child being left in the woods in a fairy story.’

  ‘They didn’t leave him in the woods. They buried him alive.’

  ‘Kathy Ripon is different. She wasn’t part of the plan. She was just an obstacle. But why did Terry go to the cemetery? And then why did she go home?’

  ‘Maybe she wanted to see if he was dead,’ said Karlsson. ‘Or finish him off. And maybe she wanted to collect something from home before escaping. She may have been checking ahead for her husband. To see if the coast was clear.’ Karlsson saw that Frieda’s hands were trembling. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Just some water,’ said Frieda.

  Karlsson sat and watched while Frieda drank a polystyrene cup of water and then they both drank cups of black coffee. They didn’t speak.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he said finally.

  Terry Reeve was sitting in the interview room staring in front of her. Karlsson sat opposite her. Frieda stood behind him, leaning against the wall next to the door. It felt surprisingly cool against her back.

  ‘Where’s Katherine Ripon?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Terry.

  Karlsson slowly unstrapped his wristwatch and laid it on the table between them. ‘I want to make the situation clear to you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you have some idea in your head that you’re going to face some little charge like reckless endangerment and get a nice little sentence, out in a couple of years for good behaviour. I’m afraid it’s not going to be like that. This is a soundproofed room, but if we took you out into the corridor, you’d be able to hear a crowd of people shouting and they’re shouting about you. There’s one thing we don’t like in Britain, and that’s people who harm children or animals. And there’s another thing, and Dr Klein here would probably consider it sexist, but they particularly hate women who do it. You will get a life sentence and if you think it’ll be all pottery classes and readers’ groups, then think again. Prison’s not like that for people who’ve done things to children.’