Free Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone by Nicci French Page A

that was thickening towards snow – and walked into the house with care,
     holding his buttonless jacket closed with one hand. The barriers had been taken down,
     the crowds had long since gone, and there was no sign that a crime had ever been
     committed here, except for the tape across Michelle Doyce’s door. There was the
     same rubbish in the hall, the same smell of shit and decay that coated the back of
     Karlsson’s throat and made Jake Newton wince. He pulled a large white handkerchief
     out of his pocket and blew his nose several times, unnecessarily. ‘A bit close in
     here, isn’t it?’
    ‘I don’t think they have a
     cleaner,’ said Karlsson, leading the way upstairs, taking care where he stood.
    Later, talking to Yvette, he wasn’t
     sure which of the three interviews had made him feel the most depressed. Lisa Bolianis
     was the loneliest. With her creased and reddened face, her thin arms and legs but
     drinker’s pot belly, she looked as though she was in her forties but turned out to
     be only thirty-two. She was an alcoholic, who had lost her children and her home. She
     reeked of cheap spirits as she spoke in flat, mumbling sentences. Karlsson could see
     bottles under her bed, and several dirty blankets stacked on top of it, along with a
     torn pink eiderdown. Her clothes were in two black bin bags in a corner. She said that
     Michelle Doyce was ‘nice enough’ but knew nothing about her and nothing
     about the man who had been found in her room. She said lots of strange men came to the
     house but she didn’t mix with them and she wouldn’t be able to recognize
     anybody if they showed her a picture. She’d had enough of men: they’d never
     done her any good from her step-father onwards. She had cold sores at the corners of her
     mouth; when she tried to smile at Karlsson, he could see them cracking. He had his
     notebook in his handbut didn’t write anything in it. He
     didn’t really know why he was there – Yvette and Chris Munster had already talked
     to her: what had he been expecting? All the while, Jake stood by the door, twitching
     uncomfortably and picking imaginary pieces of lint off the sleeve of his jacket.
    If she was the loneliest of the inmates,
     Tony Metesky was the one who seemed furthest from the reaches of society – a vast,
     scared ruin of a man, who wouldn’t meet Karlsson’s eye, and who rocked back
     and forth and talked without making sense, disconnected words and fragments of
     sentences. The needles had been cleared away. A team from the council had come in their
     special uniforms, like police divers, and it had taken them a whole day to clean the
     room. Karlsson tried to ask him about the dealers who had taken over his room, but
     Metesky wrung his dimpled hands together and his blubbery face screwed up in terror.
    ‘You’re not in trouble,
     Tony,’ Karlsson said. ‘We need your help.’
    ‘Not me.’
    ‘Did you see anyone go into Michelle
     Doyce’s room – any of the people who came here?’
    ‘Like a big baby, that’s me.
     Won’t tell nobody. Fat smelly baby.’ He laughed anxiously, looking into
     Karlsson’s face for an answering smile.
    ‘The men who came here, they
     threatened you, didn’t they?’
    ‘It’s all right.’
    Karlsson gave up.
    Jake didn’t accompany him into Michael
     Reilly’s room, but chose to wait in the car. He’d been warned about
     Reilly’s dog. It was chained to the radiator but kept lunging forwards to snarl at
     Karlsson, who was starting to think the radiator was in danger of coming away from the
     wall. The air was thick with the smell of dog hair and dog shit, and of the dog foodin the plastic bowl on the floor. But Michael Reilly was the most
     voluble of the three remaining residents. He paced round and round the room, jabbing his
     forefinger in the air. Metesky was a freak, and that Lisa Bolianis couldn’t see
     what was going on under her own nose, but he, Michael, could tell him a thing or