Dark Saturday

by Nicci French

  “Have you collected things that belonged to the Dochertys?”

  “I think of myself as a curator.”

  Frieda had suspected and now she felt certain. “Yes. Did you perhaps go to Seamus Docherty’s house in Hampstead shortly after the murders and remove garbage bags that he had taken from his ex-wife’s house?”

  “I did. Three whole bags, and he just threw them away. They didn’t care about what had really happened.”

  “ ‘They?’ ”

  “Everybody. The police, the family, even her so-called friends. They just wanted to shove Hannah into prison and forget about her. I wasn’t taking things. I was rescuing them. You know, you can learn a lot about people from what they throw away.”

  “What did you get?”

  “All sorts of stuff. Letters, bits from the house, photos, school reports, bits and pieces. I got other things later as well, from the actual house in Dulwich.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Oh, whatever they were chucking. My prized possession is a teddy bear that I think belonged to Hannah. Imagine that. I wrote to her about it but she never wrote back. They must have intercepted it.”

  Frieda paused. This was the important bit. “Would you let me look at them?”

  “Totally,” said Erin Brack, cheerfully. “I’d be honored.”

  “Could I do it now?”

  “There’s a bit of a problem with that.”

  Uh-oh, Frieda thought. “What sort of problem?”

  “I said I’ve got my own way of arranging things. This house is like my own museum. It’s like a cross between a museum and a library and a warehouse and a few other things, and I have to live here as well.”

  “Could you at least show me?”

  “No problem.”

  “Now?”

  “As soon as you’ve finished your tea.”

  Frieda looked down at her mug. Something was floating in it. It might have been a tea leaf but it might not. “Maybe straight away?”

  “All right,” said Erin Brack. “I’ve got two rooms upstairs where I keep things.”

  Frieda looked around her. “Aren’t you keeping things here?”

  “Sort of. Some of them. But this is also where things are kept while waiting to be arranged.”

  Frieda followed her up the stairs. Erin Brack turned the handle of a door on the first floor, then leaned against it, pushing.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Frieda.

  “It’s a bit full.”

  “What is?”

  “The room.” She was breathing heavily. “Sometimes the piles tip over against the door. Can you give me a hand?”

  Frieda pushed at the door as well. It moved a couple of centimeters and then stopped.

  “It needs a sharp heave,” said Erin Brack. “We’ll do it together. On three. One, two, three.” They both shoved the door hard and it shifted forward. From inside there was a clatter and something shattered. There was enough of a gap now for Erin Brack to squeeze through into the room. Frieda followed her. At first it was hard to make anything out because the curtains were drawn. Frieda could just see shapes.

  “There’s a light by the door.”

  Frieda felt on the wall and found the switch. The sudden bright light made her blink. It was difficult to say how high the piles were because the floor was out of sight. As on the ground floor, there were papers and magazines, but more of them, some in piles, others just lying where they had been thrown or dropped. There were also objects. It looked like a car-trunk sale, and there was almost too much to take in. Frieda saw a bird cage in a tin bath; there was a pile of electrical devices, a radio, a clock, a food mixer, a bicycle wheel with no tire, and much, much more.

  “Is all this from the Docherty case?” said Frieda, with a feeling of despair.

  “No. This is stuff that is from the first half of the alphabet. But I’m not completely consistent. Sometimes I go by the first name and sometimes by the second, then forget which I’ve done.”

  “Are they all murder cases?”

  “Mainly. There are some others I’d like you to look at.”

  “Not just now.”

  “As you can see, it might be a bit of challenge at first for you.” Frieda nodded. “What I’ll do, now that we’ve got to know each other, is go through it and dig things out for you.”

  “All right.” Frieda turned and forced her way back out through the door. This was going to be more difficult than she had anticipated. She walked down the stairs and stood by the front door. There wasn’t much more to be done.

  Erin Brack was behind her. “Do you ever want an assistant?” she asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve always wanted to do what you do.”

  “This is a one-off,” said Frieda, quickly. “The real help you can give is by showing me anything that might be useful.”

  “You’re going to be surprised,” said Erin Brack. “There are things the police never knew.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Nobody wanted to know. I’m telling you.”

  “Like what?”

  “I told you. I’m going to go through it all. Get it arranged. Then you can come and see it.”

  “All right,” said Frieda. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed. “Let me know whenever you’re ready.” She took a card from her pocket, wrote her number on it and handed it across.

  Erin Brack looked at it and smiled. “I read about the Dean Reeve case,” she said.

  “Yes, it was in the papers.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t think he really died. I think he’s still out there. I know that nobody believes you. I know what it’s like not to be believed. But I believe you. That may be some comfort.”

  “Thank you.”

  Frieda turned and left. She walked back down toward the river. When she got there she leaned on the railings and stared at the water that, an hour earlier, had been flowing through London.

  SIXTEEN

  Jason Brenner was the first on their list; he lived in Forest Hill. Yvette turned off a roundabout into a cul-de-sac. The two women got out of the car and looked around. There was a row of six little pebble-dashed houses. Frieda imagined them when they were first built as neat, smart cottages on the edge of fields or woodland. They might have felt like an escape from London. Even now, the road wasn’t paved. There were just patches of concrete and gravel. But Fern Close was thoroughly, brutally surrounded. Opposite the line of houses was the wall of a warehouse. At the end of the road there was a chain-link fence and, on the other side, a timber yard. Of the houses, the first was bricked up with cinder blocks. The furthest along had a decrepit caravan in its front yard and next to it a rusted car with no tires. Brenner lived in the second house from the end. It looked abandoned, except that where two windowpanes had been broken, someone had taken the trouble to block the gap with cardboard.

  It was half past nine in the morning and Jason Brenner looked as if they had woken him up. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. It was a gray, rainy day, but even so the light seemed to hurt his eyes. He was resistant at first, but Yvette showed her badge and Frieda talked of taking him to the police station and having his place searched, so he led them inside and up the stairs. They went into a back room where there was nothing more than a couple of old armchairs and a low glass table. There were dirty plates, glasses and beer cans scattered about, but still the room didn’t feel like anyone lived there.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Brenner said.

  He padded out of the room and they heard the sound of running water and coughing. Frieda and Yvette looked at the chairs and remained standing. Frieda stared out of the window. The house backed onto a car showroom selling a brand of car she didn’t recognize.

  “This is five minutes away from where the Dochertys lived,” she said. “It feels like a different world.”

  “You’ve
got to stop doing that,” Yvette said.

  “What?”

  “Talking about bringing people into the station for questioning. One day someone is going to call your bluff or get a lawyer.”

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “I’m not talking about being embarrassed. I’m talking about being disciplined or fired.”

  Brenner came back into the room and Frieda was able to look at him properly. She could guess that he had been handsome once, but it needed some imagination. He was so thin that his sharp cheekbones looked as if they might break through his papery, pallid skin. His dark hair was long and matted. He had a beard that wasn’t quite a beard. Too much skin showed through. He had dressed only by putting on a dusty brown zip-up cardigan and a pair of black workman’s boots, unlaced and with no socks. He picked up a coat from the floor, rummaged in the pockets and found a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit a cigarette.

  “You knew Hannah Docherty,” said Frieda.

  “A long time ago.”

  “Obviously. She’s been locked up for a long time,” said Yvette.

  “Shall we go somewhere?” said Frieda. “Get a coffee or a tea?”

  Brenner took a phone from his trouser pocket and looked at it. Frieda found the sight almost comical. This man had nothing, but he had a smartphone. He shook his head. “I’m meeting someone.”

  “Then we’ll try to be quick.” Yvette had taken up a position that Frieda was becoming familiar with, her feet slightly apart, her hands on her hips, her chin lifted and her brows drawn into a frown. “You were an associate of Hannah’s.”

  He gave a slight smile. “Associate?”

  “Friend,” Frieda amended. “Boyfriend even.”

  “We hung out.”

  “You didn’t give evidence at the trial,” said Frieda.

  “I wasn’t asked.”

  “A close friend of yours was accused of murder. You might have wanted to help.”

  “I’m not a character-witness sort of person.”

  “Can you tell me anything about Hannah’s relationship with her family?”

  “What can I say? It wasn’t good. She’d moved out. She was staying with us at this friend’s place.”

  “That was Thomas Morell.”

  “Tom. Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Do you know where to find him?”

  “We lost touch.”

  “I know,” said Yvette.

  “And Shelley Walsh,” Frieda continued.

  Brenner gave a slow smile that made Frieda feel uncomfortable.

  “Shelley. That’s right. We lost touch as well.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Yvette. “Old friends are important.”

  “We drifted apart.”

  “Because of the murder?” asked Frieda.

  “It happens.”

  “Well, when this happened, this murder of a family that became a national story, did you think that Hannah had done it?”

  “What does it matter what I think?”

  “You were spending time with her. You were her friend. You were sexually involved with her. And now she’s been locked up for thirteen years. Don’t you have an opinion about that?”

  His expression changed and he stepped forward. “What the fuck are you doing here? If you want to look into this, then look into it, just don’t ask what I fucking think about it.”

  “All right, then,” said Frieda. “Let’s be specific. She was getting on badly with her family. Do you know why they were getting on so badly?”

  “Because she was a teenager. Because they were trying to control her. Because she was spending time with people like me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There was some argument just after she left. Her mum or her stepdad said she’d been taking money from them.”

  “And had she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were living with her. You were sleeping with her. She must have told you.”

  “She may have helped herself once or twice.” He gave a shrug. “We didn’t have food to eat.”

  “We,” said Frieda. “So she was stealing on behalf of you all.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “And you said she helped herself. That suggests there was money available in the house.”

  “Of course it fucking suggests it.”

  “Substantial amounts of money.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “And that you all knew about it.”

  “That’s rubbish.”

  “Were you in trouble with the police during this period?”

  “Trouble?” He raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. “They were always round our place on one pretext or another.”

  Frieda was standing by the window, looking outside. “There’s something about this street,” she said.

  “There’s a few things,” said Jason. “None of them good.”

  “No, I mean the shape of it, the direction, it reminds me of something.”

  “That’s the river.”

  “What river?” said Yvette. “There’s no river.”

  “You can’t see it,” said Jason. “It runs underneath, along this street and under the car park.”

  “That’s right,” said Frieda. “I should have realized.”

  “It’s funny. I’ve only met one other person who was interested in this bloody river that you can’t see and nobody knows about.”

  “Hannah?”

  “She used to talk about it. She knew all about it. She couldn’t believe there was a river underground that went all the way from Upper Norwood to the Thames and nobody knew about it. It never seemed much of a big deal to me.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Yvette.

  “The Effra.”

  “You know the name,” said Frieda. “You must be a little interested.”

  He shook his head. “We used to go up to Effra Road in Brixton and she said it was because of the river. That’s how I know.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “I don’t think about the past.”

  “You look as if you’ve been through a difficult time, these last years. Almost as bad as Hannah, in its own way.”

  “You don’t know anything about my life.”

  “You don’t think that the way someone lives says something about their life? Also, you shouldn’t be injecting drugs, and if you’ve got hepatitis, you definitely shouldn’t be injecting drugs, or taking drugs in any form, or drinking alcohol.”

  Brenner lifted his right hand and Yvette took a step forward but he just pointed at Frieda. “You don’t come in here and say things like that. Something might happen if you keep doing things like that.”

  “Careful,” said Yvette.

  “Or what?” said Brenner.

  “Are you serious? We can turn this place over. I’m sure we can find something.”

  “And then? I’ve been in prison. I can handle that.”

  Frieda looked at Yvette. “Have you got a card? With your number.”

  Yvette handed one across to her, with a disapproving sigh. Frieda scribbled her own email and mobile onto it as well and handed it to Brenner. “What was it like to see that happen to a friend of yours?” she asked. “And to do nothing. Just stand by.”

  Brenner looked down at the card. “It didn’t feel like anything,” he said.

  “It’s all a bit late,” said Frieda. “But if you remember anything, ring that number.”

  Back in the car, Yvette paused before starting it.

  “What a bastard,” she said.

  “You think?”

  “He knew about the money. He has no morals of any kind—he doesn’t care about some young girl he was sleeping with.”

  “So which is it?” said Frieda. “Is he indifferent or did he do the crime himself? Or did he do it with her? Or is it none of the above?”

  “He’s obviously gone downhill since then. If there was any money, he didn’t get his hands on it or he sp
ent it quickly.”

  “At any rate, he’s not got any money now.”

  “He didn’t show any concern at all about Hannah Docherty,” said Yvette. She seemed angry.

  “Maybe he thinks she did it and doesn’t deserve any concern. Anyway, why does he need to perform for two strangers who pop in thirteen years after it all happened? I wonder if he told us in another way.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “By the look of him, by the life he’s led. By what he’s done to himself.”

  “Why did you say that about hepatitis? About injecting drugs? Was it in the file?”

  “You saw the puncture marks on his arm when he let us in,” said Frieda.

  “I didn’t, actually.”

  “And then his emaciated state and the yellowness of his eyes. It was pretty obvious.”

  “You see, that’s not remorse for his girlfriend. That’s what people who do that when they’re twenty look like when they’re thirty.”

  “Let’s go and see what the others look like now.”

  Tom Morell was nothing like Jason Brenner and it was hard to imagine the two men ever being friends. He was quite short, plump, with a mop of dark brown hair and a broad face. He was dressed in a pair of dark trousers and a gray jacket, with a bright-checked shirt underneath. They met him at the housing association he worked for in Peckham and he offered them both coffee, seeming disappointed when they refused. Frieda noticed a photo on his overflowing desk of a beaming woman holding a baby, who was unmistakably his.

  “Thanks for seeing us,” she said, taking a seat opposite him.

  “It’s the least I can do. I had quite a shock when you said it was about Hannah.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t talked about her in ages. When it first happened, I couldn’t talk about anything else. I went over and over it, on a loop. I remember once getting drunk in a bar and telling the whole story to a total stranger, who was wasted too. It was like I couldn’t believe it until I’d talked it out of my system.”