Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone Read Online Free Page A

problem. I’ve rung Social
     Services about him and someone’s meant to ring me back. His room was in a real
     state, even by the prevailing standards. There are needles on the floor, hundreds of
     them.’
    Karlsson frowned. ‘His?’
    Munster shook his head. ‘Cuckooing, I
     reckon.’
    ‘What’s that?’ asked
     Newton. The three officers all glanced at him and he looked embarrassed.
    ‘Cuckooing,’ said Munster,
     ‘is when a dealer identifies avulnerable person and uses his
     accommodation as a base for activity.’
    ‘I suppose that Mr
     Whatever-his-name-is didn’t give you any information about the
     deceased.’
    ‘I could hardly get any sense out of
     him at all.’
    ‘What kind of place is this?’
     asked Yvette.
    Munster shut his notebook. ‘I think
     it’s where they put people when they can’t think what else to do with
     them.’
    ‘Who owns the house?’ asked
     Karlsson. ‘Maybe the dead body is the landlord.’
    ‘The owner is a woman,’ said
     Munster. ‘She lives in Spain. I’m going to call her, check she’s
     actually there. She owns several houses and uses an agent. I’m getting the
     details.’
    ‘Where are they all now?’ asked
     Karlsson.
    Munster nodded across at Yvette.
    ‘Michelle Doyce is back in
     hospital,’ she said. ‘The others are still there, as far as I
     know.’
    ‘Still there?’ said Karlsson.
     ‘It’s a crime scene.’
    ‘Not strictly speaking. Until we get
     the autopsy result, it may just be a matter of failing to register a death and I
     don’t suppose any court will find Michelle Doyce fit to plead. As for the rest of
     them, where are they supposed to go? We’ve been ringing the council and we
     can’t even find a person to talk to about it.’
    ‘Do they not care that one of their
     own hostels might be being used as a centre for drug-dealing?’ asked Karlsson.
    There was a pause.
    ‘Well,’ said Yvette, ‘if
     we could find someone in Social Services and get them down here, what they would
     probably say is that if we suspect a crime then it’s a matter for us to
     investigate. Which we probably won’t do.’
    Karlsson tried not to catch the eye of Jake
     Newton. This might not have been the best introduction to police work.‘So what we’ve got,’ he said, ‘is a woman serving tea and buns
     to an unidentified naked rotting man, whose only distinguishing feature is the missing
     finger on his left hand. Could the finger have been removed to get a ring
     off?’
    ‘It was the middle finger,’ said
     Munster. ‘Not the ring finger.’
    ‘You can have a ring on your middle
     finger,’ said Karlsson. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’
    ‘Don got prints off him,’ said
     Munster. ‘It wasn’t much fun, but they got them. And they didn’t get a
     match.’
    ‘So what do we think?’ said
     Karlsson. ‘Where do we start?’
    Munster and Yvette looked at each other.
     They didn’t say anything.
    ‘I don’t know what I
     think,’ said Karlsson, ‘but I know what I hope.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I hope he had a simple heart attack
     and this crazy woman panicked and didn’t know what to do.’
    ‘But he was naked,’ said Yvette.
     ‘And we don’t know who he is.’
    ‘If he died of a heart attack,
     it’ll be someone else’s problem.’ He frowned. ‘I wish someone
     could make sense of what Michelle Doyce is saying.’
    As he spoke, a face came into his mind,
     unsmiling and dark-eyed: Frieda Klein.

Five
    ‘Please take a seat, Dr
     Klein.’
    Frieda had been in the room several times
     before. She had come to seminars here as a trainee; she had led seminars here as a
     qualified analyst; once, she had even sat where Professor Jonathan Krull was now, with a
     sixty-year-old therapist, whose name had since been removed from the British
     Psychoanalytic Council’s register, in the seat she occupied today.
    She took a deep, steadying breath and sat,
     folding her hands in her lap. She knew Krull by reputation and Dr