Dark Saturday

by Nicci French

  As Frieda approached Seamus Docherty’s house, the door opened and Docherty emerged, with his dog on a lead.

  “You,” he said. “It’s like having a stalker. I’m afraid I’m going out.”

  “It’s all right,” said Frieda. “I can come with you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’m being polite, by the way. I mean, no.”

  “I can always come back with a police officer.”

  “I’ve seen a police officer. They told me about Deborah being found. I’ve said what I have to say.”

  “I know different police officers. And that would be boring. It would mean going into a police station and making a statement. Have you ever given a statement? Do you know how long it takes?”

  “All right. At least it’s not a dawn visit this time. If you can keep up.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  They walked up the road and Seamus talked about his dog, about how it was a mongrel mixed with another kind of mongrel. It was the healthiest kind, apparently, he said. And it forced him to get exercise. They reached the end of the road that led on to the Heath. Then they walked up Kite Hill. When they reached the top, they stopped and looked across London.

  “It’s changed even since I’ve lived here.” He pointed at the tall buildings. “None of them were there. In ten years’ time there’ll be fifty more.”

  “You bought at the right time,” said Frieda.

  “I don’t know if that’s some kind of accusation.”

  “Just a statement.”

  “Well, we couldn’t afford the house now. It’s all bankers and gangsters. At least, I assume they’re gangsters.”

  “You probably could still afford the house. I know how much money you inherited when Deborah and Rory were killed.”

  Yvette had found out for her: the estate had been worth over two and a half million pounds, and that was thirteen years ago.

  Seamus turned toward her. “Yes,” he said softly. “My ex-wife and my son died. My daughter was put into a hospital for the criminally insane for life. And I became rich. And I would give every pound I got to see my son again. What are you trying to say to me and why are you here? Nothing about a bandanna this time?”

  “It must have been a surprise,” said Frieda.

  “What?”

  “That your ex-wife didn’t die in the house. That her body has only just been found.”

  “I am trying very, very hard not to think about it.”

  “You were married to her.”

  “That’s why.”

  “Justine Walsh’s body was found in the bedroom of your ex-wife’s husband. Is that something you’re trying not to think about?”

  “I never knew Justine Walsh. This was the first time I’d even heard her name.”

  “She was the mother of a friend of Hannah’s.”

  “The police told me that.”

  “Some people might assume that Justine Walsh was having an affair with Aidan Locke.”

  Docherty bent down and unfastened the lead. The dog ran off and immediately started barking at a black Labrador, backing away as he did so. “Sammy’s a wuss,” he said.

  “Tell me more about Deborah. Describe her.”

  “Debs was . . .” Seamus gazed into the distance, searching for a word. “Different,” he said at last.

  “Different in what way?”

  “Different from most women. She was extraordinary, really. She didn’t look it, but she was.” He stopped and gave a little nod to himself, as if in confirmation of his words. Frieda waited for him to continue, and at last he said, “She had an impersonal quality about her. Cool. She stood back and looked at people. If Aidan had had an affair, I think she would have been contemptuous, perhaps, or even a bit amused, in a scornful kind of way.”

  “But not threatened or jealous?”

  Seamus shook his head slowly from side to side. He seemed weighed down with thoughts. “I don’t think so.”

  “Did she love him?”

  “Aidan? Probably. She was very ambitious for him. But she would never have killed someone out of jealousy.”

  His phrasing struck Frieda as strange. “Could you imagine her killing someone for any reason?”

  “She was very unsentimental.”

  Frieda looked around. The top of the hill was almost crowded. There were runners and people with dogs. Especially people with dogs. Some had six or seven, with leads radiating out from them. “It must have been complicated for you, when the murders happened. Who would kill a whole family?”

  “Someone like Hannah, obviously.”

  “Or a person who would stand to gain if the whole family died, or as good as died, in Hannah’s case. I mean you, of course.” Frieda paused. “I’m just trying to see it from the police’s point of view.”

  Frieda thought that Docherty might be angry at the suggestion, or even break off the conversation. But he answered calmly enough. “The police interviewed me. Clearly they saw that I wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “But it must look different now. Your wife having being killed somewhere else. And buried.”

  “Different? She was dead either way.”

  “Did Hannah know about you and Deborah sleeping together?”

  “I don’t think children ever like to think about their parents’ sex lives.”

  “I don’t mean when you were married. I mean later. When you were separated. When you were both with other people.”

  Docherty looked round at her. His air of calm had gone and he blinked rapidly. Frieda could see that he was thinking fast.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “You seemed to know quite a lot about what your ex-wife was thinking, what she would have done. It’s common for people to sleep with their ex-partners. It can be comforting, or reassuring, or just a temptation.” Docherty didn’t answer. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He swallowed before he spoke. When he did so, his voice had lost its ironic inflection. “It was the year after we separated and was quite unexpected. Like a fire suddenly bursting into flames when we both thought it was just ash. I was with Brenda and she was with Aidan. Nobody ever found out. No one knew. Our last farewell.”

  “Just once?”

  “No. But only a few times, over the space of one crazy month when I thought I was going a bit mad. Then we stopped and we never talked about it again. It died away and it was like it never happened.”

  “And you chose not to tell the police.”

  “It wasn’t relevant.”

  “You don’t get to decide that.”

  “Perhaps I was wrong. It felt too intimate. And I thought, once they knew, it was inevitable Brenda would find out as well.”

  “Did you still love her?”

  He hesitated, his eyes scanning the horizon. “I don’t know if there’s a proper answer to that. Even when I hated her, I never managed to feel distant from her. She was the woman I’d been married to for years. She was the mother of my children. That doesn’t mean I wanted her back or that I didn’t love Brenda as well. Debs never made me happy like Brenda does. She was too harsh, too unyielding. She was always critical of me, kept wanting me to be someone different.”

  “You say no one knew.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Hannah?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  “Because she was your daughter.”

  Seamus gave a shrug. “If she’d known, she wouldn’t have kept it to herself.”

  “Brenda?”

  “No!”

  “One other thing. Rory’s geography teacher was Guy Fiske.”

  “And?”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “Stop this. My son was killed. Are you suggesting he was abused as well?”

  “I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

  “What happened is that Hannah killed my son and ex-wife. And now some other woman as well.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”<
br />
  “Who else could have done it?” He hesitated. “Are you thinking, even as a theory, even for a moment, that I could have killed Debs, killed my little boy?”

  “I’ve got no theories. I’m just asking questions. For instance, what kind of clothes was Hannah wearing in the last few months before the crime?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Bear with me.”

  “I can’t remember exactly, but they were kind of grungy and torn, ugly really. Like a demonstration of something.”

  “What colors?”

  “Black. Always black or dark brown. But you know that already—you mentioned it last time you accosted me with that bandanna, if you remember.”

  “Yes. And yet the clothes she apparently wore when she killed three people, or now four, and that were found covered with blood, were a flowery dress and a cardigan. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?”

  “I don’t know. When you decide to kill your family, maybe you put on special clothes to do it.”

  “What was the last contact you had with them?”

  “I told the police about that at the time. Debs called me a couple of nights before she died and said she had something she wanted to talk to me about.”

  “You’ve no idea what?”

  “It was probably about holiday arrangements. It was that time of year. I was going to take Rory to Cornwall, Hannah, too, if she agreed to come.”

  “You’re sure that’s what it was about.”

  “It was years ago. Of course I’m not sure.”

  Frieda left him there, at the top of the hill, and walked away from the Hampstead side. Every road she went down seemed to be blocked or wind round on itself, leading her back to the beginning. She took out her phone. Jack answered.

  “Meet me at the yard,” she said. “There must be something.”

  THIRTY

  In the dim light of late afternoon, with rain gushing down from a low brown sky, the joiner’s yard was a depressing place. Frieda and Jack made their way round the large puddles that had formed to the door of the shed. Frieda inserted the key into the rusty padlock and pulled at the double doors; they swung open with a creak. She found the lights and turned them on, seeing once more the objects stacked against the walls and on shelves come into view under the flickering fluorescent lights. The cement floor was damp in patches where rain had seeped through, but the Docherty collection was untouched.

  “Wow,” said Jack, stepping into the shed. The rain drummed on the corrugated roof above them, and dripped from a leak onto an old pram, making a metallic ping. Water dripped off him and his wet hair lay flat against his skull. He looked younger than usual, thinner. “It’s cold in here. I’ll have to bring extra jumpers. And a Thermos flask.”

  “I’ll show you what we’ve got,” said Frieda, “and we can make a plan.”

  She pulled the three cardboard boxes and the suitcase away from the wall and opened them. They squatted on the floor. She could barely bring herself to look once again at the piles of papers, receipts, bills, notebooks, dog-eared photos, certificates, reports, old passports, medical cards and bank statements; at the old clothes with their smell of decay; at the flotsam and jetsam of long-ago lives.

  “Wow,” said Jack, again, but this time he sounded uncertain, dismayed. He picked up an empty crisps packet, a single sock with a balding heel. “It’s not in any order at all.”

  “Wherever possible, I’d like you to separate things into four individual piles: Deborah, Aidan, Hannah, Rory. And I guess a fifth pile for everything that doesn’t fit into that.”

  “Like this.” Jack held up the sock.

  “It will get easier as you go. That sock, for instance: it’s probably Rory’s because of its size.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. I suppose for something that feels wrong, that doesn’t fit. Once everything is sorted into piles, you need to go through them and try to get a kind of chronology.”

  “Right.”

  “And there might be nothing to find, Jack.”

  “I get that.”

  They heard a sound and looked round. Chloë was standing in the doorway, the steady sheets of rain behind her. She was wearing a leather jacket, heavy boots and a hat pulled down low. Jack gave a small grunt and bobbed his head.

  “I was leaving. How’s it going here?”

  Frieda stood up. “We’ve just started. Jack’s got some time off and he’s going to help me sort this.”

  Chloë looked down at the collection. “The stuff that belonged to someone who died?”

  “Yes.”

  “That you said you were just going to go through to make sure there was nothing valuable?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I can tell you straightaway: there’s nothing valuable. Unless, of course, you’re looking for evidence of some kind. This is about Hannah Docherty, right?”

  “Chloë.”

  “I know that tone of voice. I’m an adult now, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  Chloë squatted down beside Jack and gazed at the pile of clothes. “What are you searching for anyway?”

  “We don’t know,” said Jack. He looked skinny and pale beside her.

  “So how will you know if you find it?”

  “We don’t know that, either.”

  “Fun way to spend your time off.”

  “I’m doing it to help Frieda,” said Jack.

  “These clothes are better.” Chloë was looking into the suitcase. She lifted out the pale blue silk shirt. “I wonder where she was going.”

  “Or who the “she” was,” said Frieda. “I don’t think these clothes belonged to Hannah’s mother.”

  She looked at the label on the black bra: 34C. She knew from the files she’d read through at Levin’s house that Deborah Docherty was a 32B. These clothes belonged to Justine Walsh, she thought.

  “I could help.” Chloë sat back on her heels. She was talking to Jack now.

  He turned to her. “You?”

  “Since I’m just across the yard.”

  “What about your work?”

  “I have lunch hours. And I often finish early. It’d be nice.” Her voice was amiable, but perhaps sarcastic. Frieda tried to make out her expression. Chloë patted Jack playfully on the shoulder so he nearly toppled. “Like the old days.”

  That evening, Josef came to her house with a bottle of vodka. Frieda poured herself a tumbler of whisky instead. They sat beside her fire, shutters closed against the weather.

  “I had a phone call,” she said.

  “Please?”

  “From Emma Travis.”

  “Ah.” He tipped the vodka down his throat and wiped the back of his wrist against his mouth. His brown eyes shone softly.

  “Josef . . .”

  “Lonely woman, Frieda.”

  “Exactly. Lonely and vulnerable.”

  “What to do?” Josef shook his head sadly.

  “She wants you to get in touch. Gutters, is what she said.”

  Josef looked at her solemnly, then poured himself another shot. He rubbed the back of his hand against his chin so that Frieda heard the rasp of stubble. “I show you picture of my sons?” he said.

  “I’d like that.”

  “From their mother.” Josef pulled out his mobile and tapped its screen a couple of times, then handed it to Frieda.

  She looked at the two boys, who were tall, dark, smiling for the camera, one with his arm slung round the other’s shoulders. “They’re very handsome,” she said. “And they look happy, in spite of everything that’s going on.”

  “Going on?” said Josef, looking concerned.

  “I mean in the country, in Ukraine.”

  “All right, yes, happy.” Josef dispatched the vodka. “Happy far from me.”

  “Is that what’s troubling you?”

  “Bad, bad times. Frieda. This is not right. I am their father.”

  “I know.”
r />   “I am scared for them.”

  “Of course you must be. Are they still in Kiev?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want them to come here?”

  Josef shook his head slowly from side to side, his large brown eyes deep and mournful. “They have new father.”

  “Stepfather. You’re their father.”

  “Look like men now,” he said. “Not boys. Grown.”

  “So you feel you’ve missed their childhood?”

  “Is too sudden,” he said, coming over to her chair and taking the phone from her hand. “Look. I show you them a year ago.”

  He started to scroll through the photos with his stubby forefinger. Frieda watched the stream of images. And then she felt a pinching of her attention, as though something were trying to force its way into her mind; something too large and sharp to get through.

  “There,” said Josef. “One year. Boys then. Now men.”

  “It must be painful,” said Frieda, softly, trying to keep her thoughts on Josef and his sons. “Do you talk to them?”

  “Skype. But is bad. They bored. I am far away. Just a memory, while they live in land of fighting.”

  “Have you asked them if they want to come here?”

  Something. Something she had seen. A door opened in her mind; a door into darkness.

  “Every time. Every time I ask.”

  He returned to his chair and poured more vodka. “Life is hard,” he said, with a sigh, but then his face brightened. “I help Reuben make shed in garden.”

  “Reuben wants a shed?”

  “He says.”

  “That’s difficult to imagine. Josef, there was a photograph I saw just now, when you were scrolling through.”

  “Yes?”

  “It reminded me of someone.”

  “Which?” He picked up the mobile and turned to the photos again.

  “There were pictures of that house you were working on last year.”

  “When you were running away?”

  “Yes.”

  Frieda thought back to that terrible summer, when Sandy’s body had been fished from the Thames, his throat cut, and Frieda had been the main suspect. She had gone into hiding in order to find out the real murderer, living in strange rooms among a community of the dispossessed in abandoned parts of London. The truth, when she finally found it, was intimate and dark, like a deep trap.