Dark Saturday

by Nicci French

  “How did Deborah take it?”

  “Badly, I think. But it was hard to know. She was always so controlled. People thought she was reserved or even shy, but I don’t think she was, really, more watchful. She had a kind of steely detachment from things.”

  “That’s an interesting thing to say.”

  Sebastian Tait re-crossed his long legs. “It just popped out. Flora’s always telling me to think before I speak.”

  “What about Aidan?”

  “Aidan? He was great.” Frieda waited. “He was the opposite of Debs. He talked a lot, was extrovert and sociable to a fault, full of enthusiasms, every week a new thing. I used to play tennis with him. Keen on wine. So am I. I should show you my cellar. Had a very loud voice and a very loud laugh. Very charming.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Very charming,” he repeated, lingering on the words. “But a good guy in the end.”

  “Did he get on with Hannah?”

  “He tried. She ran circles round him. I think she was a bit contemptuous of him, really.”

  “Why was that?”

  “You’re the therapist. Because he was a man. Because he was her stepfather. Because he was what she called a reactionary. Poor sod, he wasn’t a reactionary, just a bit clueless about politics and what-not. Me too. I just like making suits and ties and hats, and the rest of the world can do what it likes.” He looked at the watch on his bony wrist. “Really,” he said apologetically, untangling his legs and levering himself out of the sofa. “I don’t think the boiler person is coming and I have to go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wish you could have met Flora. She’s better at remembering things.”

  “Perhaps another time.”

  “Then you could have coffee and look at those photos.”

  Frieda took his number and keyed it into her phone. “And your sons,” she asked. “Would they mind me getting in touch with them?”

  “I’ll give you their emails. They’re both in London. Rick’s a doctor. Saul’s in IT. They’ve both got beards, of course. They think I’m some kind of relic.” He gave a small whoop of laughter, then reached into his apron pocket and drew out a vivid tie made of interwoven strips of silk. “Can I offer you one? One of my mosaic ties. I’m rather proud of them, if I say so myself.”

  “I don’t really wear ties.”

  “For your husband, then.” His eyes flitted to her ringless fourth finger.

  “You keep it.”

  He wrapped it round his thin neck, over the top of the cotton scarf.

  “I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” he said. “It’s been too long since I talked about the Dochertys. We don’t mention it in the family any more.”

  “Because it’s too painful?”

  “Too painful. Too strange. Too long ago.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “I haven’t asked,” he said, laying a hand on her forearm. “Do you know how Hannah is?”

  “She’s not in a good state.”

  “Has she ever confessed?”

  “No.”

  “Poor girl,” he said, and smiled. “Poor everyone.”

  As Frieda approached the car, Emma Travis came hurrying out of her house. She knocked on Josef’s window and he wound it down.

  “Are you a builder?” she asked.

  “I am a builder.”

  “Could you give me your card? It’s so hard to find anyone good in Dulwich.”

  Frieda looked suspiciously at Josef as he steered the car back northwards. “Are you going to work for her?” she said.

  “Is difficult with the work now.” Josef looked at her with a smile she didn’t quite trust. “All the Romanians coming here. And the Bulgarians.”

  Frieda heard a disapproving sound behind her from Yvette: something between a sigh and a grunt. She looked round. “Have you heard of Detective Chief Inspector Ben Sedge?”

  “No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Actually, his name does ring a bell. Why would that be?”

  “He’s been in the news lately. He led the original investigation. I think I should talk to him.”

  Yvette gave a shake of her head and her expression turned to something like alarm. “You don’t understand,” she said. “When police start investigating other police, it becomes delicate. It’s like family. People don’t like it.”

  “You mean they close ranks.”

  “It’s easy for you to say that.”

  “I’m not asking you to talk to him.”

  “Which would be completely out of the question.”

  “Which is why I’m not asking you. I just want to get a number. Or someone who can put me in touch with him. Can you do that? Discreetly?”

  “I’ll see. Maybe.”

  TWELVE

  When Frieda arrived home she wanted a bath, she wanted tea, she wanted to pull the curtains on the world, but first she knew she had to call Levin. She had to tell him what she wanted to do.

  “What do you expect from him?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. But DCI Sedge ran the inquiry. Maybe he had some doubts.”

  “Even if he does, he probably won’t admit them to you.”

  “I wanted to make sure that you were all right with it.”

  “I trust you to do what you think is right,” said Levin. “Until it all goes wrong.”

  “That’s a joke, I hope.”

  “You’re a psychotherapist,” said Levin. “You know that there’s no such thing as a joke.”

  Frieda took the Overground through east London, though it felt more like the train was flying over it. When she had first moved to London she had lived out in Dalston and the area had felt as if the city had turned its back on it, left it for dead. Now the abandoned warehouses were studios and apartments. What had been lock-ups under the railway arches were now coffee shops and artisan bakeries. She got off at Shadwell and walked down toward the river. The Bear was easy to miss, the narrow façade of a pub in a small cobbled street. She pushed the door open. It was late morning and the interior was deserted, except for a young, dark-haired woman behind the bar, drying glasses.

  “I’m looking for—” Frieda began, but the woman interrupted her.

  “Upstairs.” She gave a nod at a doorway. Even in that single word, Frieda heard her accent and smiled to herself. Probably one of those Romanians or Bulgarians that Josef was worrying about. She walked up a creaking narrow wooden staircase that wound round to the left. On the walls were engravings of ancient prize fights, men in breeches holding up their bare knuckles. When she reached the first floor she looked around. There were several closed doors.

  “In here,” said a voice.

  She opened the door in front of her and stepped inside. The worn old carpet on the floor, the old brown wooden paneling made the room look smaller than it was. She could see only the silhouette of a man, seated at a wooden table by the large window. He stood up.

  “I thought we’d meet in your office,” said Frieda.

  “This is my office.” The man held out his hand. Frieda shook it cautiously.

  “We met once before. Frieda Klein.”

  “Dr. Frieda Klein.”

  “You don’t have to call me that. And this isn’t really your office, is it?”

  “A friend of mine owns this place. They use this room for functions—weddings, wakes. It’s a useful place for meeting people who might not be comfortable in a police station. Coffee?” Frieda nodded and Sedge poured some into a mug from a flask on the table. She took it and walked across to the window. She’d been expecting a view but even so she almost gasped. On the street side, the Bear was small and overshadowed, but the rear looked out on the river, over to Rotherhithe on the other side, and along the north bank toward Limehouse and the curve of the Isle of Dogs. Sedge walked over and stood beside her. She could sense the bulk of him. She smelled his aftershave: tea and lavender.

  “I live in Romford now,” he said, “but this is where my family comes from. There were people called Sedge living in Poplar a hundred years ago
.”

  “London’s like that,” said Frieda.

  “My grandfather told me you could walk east from Greenwich and you’d see ships queuing along the river as far as the eye could see. My great-grandfather worked in the docks. My granddad said a crate fell on his dad’s head once. When he was in a good mood he’d let the kids feel the hole. At least, that’s what my granddad said.”

  “I’d be comfortable in a police station,” said Frieda.

  “But I wouldn’t.” He turned and looked at her. “I checked up on you. I found it hard to establish your exact role in the Met.”

  “I don’t have an exact role. And I’m not in the Met.”

  “But you’ve found a way of getting involved. As far as I can see, when you’re not on the run, you’ve been effective.”

  “It doesn’t always feel like that. There’s generally been a downside.”

  “But people are starting to know you, to talk about you. When you met me at that fuck-awful auction, I was on show. Ever since the Geoff Lester case went south, I’ve not exactly been the flavor of the month.”

  “Do people blame you for it?”

  He smiled at her. “I’ve heard about your problems with the commissioner,” he said. “Half the game in the Met is politics. I was the one left standing when the music stopped.” He gave a little nod. “If you come in and start asking questions in front of everyone, people will feel there’s a bad smell about me. Hence, my office here. Anyway, it’s nicer than the station in Stepney.”

  “I want to talk about Hannah Docherty.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Do you think she should have been found guilty?”

  Ben Sedge laughed, though it sounded slightly forced to Frieda, a piece of bravado. “You don’t waste time, do you? I can see why you and the commissioner didn’t hit it off. We’re talking about a young woman I put away, almost certainly for the rest of her life.”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Oh, yes?” Sedge banged his mug down on the table. His brows were drawn together and his eyes glared at her. “It might be simple from where you’re sitting but it’s not so fucking simple for me, excuse my language. This is my career, my whole bloody life, you’re asking about. I don’t see why I have to defend myself to someone like you.”

  “You don’t have to, of course.”

  There was a silence in the room. Sedge’s face slowly relaxed. He turned away from Frieda, looking out at the river.

  “It was my first big case. I’d never seen anything like it. Nobody had. What they can’t prepare you for is the smell of it. I can’t describe it.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  He glanced at Frieda again. “Yes,” he said. “I heard about that too. Well, we thought at first it was a burglary gone wrong or a really evil burglary gone right. But it never could have been that. As soon as we found out about Hannah, it fell into place. She’d fallen out with her family, she’d threatened them. She didn’t have an alibi.”

  “She did have an alibi.”

  “Not an alibi that made any kind of sense.”

  “You constructed the case. Did anything about it make you uneasy?”

  “Like what?”

  “The murderer used a claw hammer, which was found at the scene. There were no prints on it and no evidence about where Hannah would have got it from. Hannah’s stepfather was killed earlier than the other two. And he was wearing his clothes. They were dressed for bed. What did you make of that?”

  Sedge shook his head. “You ask if I’m uneasy. I’m always uneasy. That’s why I’m good at my job, and I am good, whatever mistakes I’ve made along the way. What we do is turn up when something terrible has happened and we try to make sense of it, and mostly we do, but there are always bits left over, things that are inexplicable. All I can say is that the case stood up. You’re right, there were pieces in the puzzle that were missing, or that didn’t quite fit. But, still, everything led to Hannah Docherty. There wasn’t even a sniff of another suspect.”

  He poured himself another coffee. “It’s cold,” he said. “Shall I get us some more?”

  “I’m going soon,” said Frieda. She found it hard to tear herself away from that view, the slow, heavy flow of the river. It brought back memories and longings and fears. “One last thing. I was surprised that the defense didn’t make more of some irregularities.”

  “Like what?”

  “Confronting Hannah with the crime scene before she was interviewed. And, from what I read, the scene wasn’t properly secured. People were allowed to take objects away, evidence was lost.”

  Sedge stared at her; she could see his jaw clenching and unclenching. “You’ve got a nerve. I’ve been trying to help. I know I’ve made mistakes and I want to do what’s right. I don’t know what more you want me to say.”

  “It was just a comment. From an amateur.”

  “We’re not perfect,” Sedge said. “We’re just people, like builders and plumbers. We cut corners. We make mistakes. But we try. I don’t remember that about Hannah and the crime scene. It was probably a way of getting her to talk, making her face up to what she had done.”

  “Or face up to the brutal murder of her family.”

  “The jury heard the evidence,” said Sedge. “They were out for less than an hour.”

  Frieda looked away from the window, up at Sedge. “An hour, and Hannah Docherty’s been shut away now for thirteen years. I hope they were right.”

  “I thought you could go and see the officer he was working with,” Frieda said to Yvette. “Malik Gordon.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “To what end?”

  “To find out what he thought about the investigation, to ask him for his impressions, to see what he thought about Hannah, if he was anxious that any leads were missed—I don’t have to spell it all out.”

  “That’s certainly true. I know him.”

  “You know Malik Gordon?”

  “Yes. It’s not surprising. I’m in the Met, so is he. I’m in my thirties, so is he. I’m a detective constable, so is he. OK?”

  “OK,” said Frieda, mildly. “So that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “How can it be a good thing?”

  “You can talk to him more easily.”

  “Really? It’s easier to accuse someone you know of handling a case badly, and even charging the wrong person, than a stranger? That’s encouraging to know.”

  Frieda stood up. “You’re not accusing him of anything, Yvette. You’re asking for his help. I’m sure you can do it tactfully. And tomorrow we’re going to see Hannah’s father, Seamus Docherty.”

  She left before Yvette could reply.

  THIRTEEN

  The next morning, Frieda met Yvette at Hackney station. It had been raining all night and was raining still, and Yvette was struggling with a vast red umbrella whose fabric was coming away from its spokes. She walked toward Frieda, the umbrella dangerously near the tops of other people’s heads; her blue coat was streaked with water and her expression was grim.

  “Good morning,” said Frieda.

  “Hmm.”

  “We don’t have to be there until half past so I thought we could have coffee. There’s a place just up the road that looks fine. And dry,” she added.

  She led the way to a small café. Yvette battled the umbrella shut and followed Frieda inside. They ordered coffee and sat at a wooden table near the window, where they could watch people hurrying past through the gusts of rain, heads down.

  “So,” said Frieda. “Malik Gordon.”

  “Yes.” Yvette took a sip of her cappuccino, leaving froth on her upper lip. “I saw him.”

  “And?”

  “And I hope you know what you’re doing with this case.”

  Frieda kept her expression neutral. There had been a time, not so long ago, when Yvette, appalled at what had happened to Frieda and guilty for her own part in it, had set aside her hostility, acknowledging her
jealousy and insecurity. She had helped Frieda and become for a while almost as fiercely protective of her as she was of Karlsson, whom she revered. It had even seemed possible that the two women could become friends of a sort. The terrible events of the previous year and Karlsson’s temporary suspension and disgrace had swept that away, and Yvette was as opposed to Frieda as she had been when they’d first met, over five years ago. What was more, she wanted Frieda to understand that.

  “If I don’t know,” Frieda said, “I’m hoping you can advise me.”

  “Well.” Yvette took another sip. The steam rose into her face and moisture appeared on her flushed cheeks. “He was quite forthcoming, which was nice of him in the circumstances.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was his first big case and he was very upset by it. He says that when he saw the bodies he threw up. People often do, the first time. He says it’s still the most gruesome thing he’s ever seen. One of the other officers on the case couldn’t cope at all and left the force.”

  “What was his name?”

  Yvette frowned. “I don’t remember—it must be in the files. Except it wasn’t a he. Malik said she’s working in a shop on Mare Street in Hackney.”

  “What sort of shop?”

  “Flowers.” She gave a small snort. “That’s a serious career change.”

  “Go on.”

  “He was especially upset by the boy.”

  “Rory.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say much about Hannah?”

  “He says that when they interviewed her the first time, she was out of it.”

  “In what way?”

  “Like a wild animal. They had to forcibly restrain her.”

  Frieda thought of Hannah now, still wild, still being forcibly restrained. She nodded.

  “He told me stuff you already know—like she’d fallen out with her mother and stepfather, that she was living in a kind of squat. It was obviously pretty squalid. There was a creepy boyfriend.”