Waiting for Wednesday fk-3

by Nicci French

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘When I came in, you apologized about the house.’

  ‘I didn’t apologize about it. I said I was lucky to get it.’

  ‘You said that when you were an undergraduate everything was arranged for you, but now you were left to fend for yourself. You told me that you never see your housemates.’

  ‘I meant that as a good thing.’

  ‘You probably don’t want to hear this from me …’

  ‘You know, I’ve got a feeling you’re about to say something about me that isn’t complimentary.’

  ‘Not at all. But I wonder if when you volunteered for this experiment, the chance to go to a therapist but not really go to a therapist, it gave you an opportunity to express something. A kind of sadness, a feeling of not being cared for.’

  ‘That is absolute crap. That’s exactly what therapists like you do. You read things into what people say in order to give you power over them. And then if they deny it, it makes them look weak. What you’re objecting to is the fact that you got involved in an experiment that showed you up. From what I’ve heard, you and Dr Bradshaw have some kind of history, and if I’ve played some part in that, then I’m sorry. But don’t suck me into your mind games.’

  ‘It doesn’t look as if you live here,’ said Frieda. ‘You haven’t hung up a picture, or put a rug down, or even left a book lying around. You’re even dressed like you’re outside.’

  ‘As you can feel for yourself, it’s cold in here. When the man fixes the boiler, I promise you I’ll take my jacket off.’

  Frieda took a notebook from her pocket, scribbled on a page, tore it out and handed it to Singh. ‘If you want to tell me anything about what you said – I mean anything apart from the stupid Hare checklist – you can reach me at that number.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ said Singh, angrily, as Frieda left the house.

  Ian Yardley’s flat was in a little alley just off a street market. It was down from the Thames but far enough away that the river couldn’t be seen. Frieda pressed a buzzer and heard an unintelligible noise from a speaker, then a rattling sound. She pulled at the door but it was still locked. More noise came from the speaker, then more electronic rattling, a click and the door was unlocked. Frieda walked up some carpeted stairs to a landing with two separate doors, labelled one and two. Door one opened and a dark-haired woman peered out.

  ‘I’m here to see –’

  ‘I know,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know what this is about. You’d better come in. Just for a minute, though.’

  Frieda followed her inside. Yardley was sitting at a table, reading the evening paper and drinking beer. He had long curly hair and glasses with square, transparent frames. He was dressed in a college sweatshirt and dark trousers. His feet were bare. He turned and smiled at her.

  ‘I hear you’ve been hassling people,’ he said.

  ‘I think you called on my old friend Reuben.’

  ‘The famous Reuben McGill,’ he said. ‘I must say I was a bit disappointed by him. When I met him, he looked like someone who’d lost his mojo. He didn’t seem to respond to what I was saying at all.’

  ‘Did you want him to respond?’ said Frieda.

  ‘What rubbish,’ said the woman, from behind her.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said the Ian. ‘I’m not being a proper host. This is my friend, Polly. She thinks I shouldn’t have let you in. She’s more suspicious than I am. Can I offer you a drink? A beer? There’s some white wine open in the fridge.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Not while you’re on duty?’

  Frieda began to ask some of the same questions she’d asked Rajit Singh, but she didn’t get very far because Polly kept interrupting her, asking what the point of all this was, while Ian just continued to smile, as if he was enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly he stopped smiling.

  ‘Shall I make things clear?’ he said. ‘If you’re here out of some faintly pathetic attempt at revenge, then you’re wasting your time. This was all cleared by the ethics committee in advance and we were indemnified. I can show you the small print, if you’re interested in reading it. I know it’s embarrassing when it’s demonstrated that the emperor has no clothes. If you’re the emperor. Or the empress.’

  ‘As I’ve tried to explain,’ said Frieda, ‘I’m not here to argue about the experiment, I’m –’

  ‘Oh, give us a fucking break,’ said Polly.

  ‘If you’ll just let me finish a sentence, I’ll ask a couple of questions and then I’ll leave.’

  ‘What do you mean, and then you’ll leave? As if you had any right to be here in the first place! I’ve got another idea.’ Polly prodded Frieda on the shoulder. It was close to where she was still bandaged and made her flinch slightly. ‘You’ve been made a fool of. So deal with it. And just leave, because Ian has nothing to say and you’re starting to harass him and to get on my nerves.’ She started shoving at Frieda as if she wanted to push her out of the flat.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Frieda, raising her hands in defence.

  ‘Time for you to go,’ shouted Polly, and pushed even harder.

  Frieda put her hand on the woman’s chest and pressed her back against the wall and held her there. She leaned close so that their faces were only inches apart and she spoke in a quiet, slow tone. ‘I said “stop”.’

  Yardley stood up. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said.

  Frieda turned, and as she turned, she took her hand away, then stepped back. She wasn’t clear what happened next. She felt a flurry to the side of her. She sensed Polly flying at her and then stumbling over a low stool and falling heavily across it.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ said Yardley to Frieda. ‘You come here and you start a fight.’

  Polly started to struggle to her feet but Frieda stood over her. ‘Don’t you even think about it,’ she said. ‘Just stay where you are.’ Then she turned to Yardley. ‘I think Reuben understood you pretty well.’

  ‘You’re threatening me,’ he said. ‘You’ve come here to attack me and to threaten me.’

  ‘That hair story had nothing to do with you, did it?’ said Frieda.

  ‘What hair story?’

  ‘You’re too much of a narcissist,’ said Frieda. ‘You wanted to impress Reuben and he didn’t go for it.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve got what I came for.’

  And she left.

  Jim Fearby brought out a large map of Great Britain. There wasn’t room for it on the wall so he laid it out on the floor of the living room, with objects (a mug, a tin of beans, a book and a can of beer) on each corner. He took off his shoes and walked across the map, staring down at it and frowning. Then he stuck a flagged pin-tack to the spot where Hazel Barton’s body had been found; another where Vanessa Dale had been approached by the man in a car that had perhaps been silver.

  He skewered her photograph onto the big cork noticeboard, next to Hazel Barton’s picture. Two doesn’t make a pattern – but it’s a start.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The only patient Frieda still saw was Joe Franklin. Many of the rest were waiting for her to return, sending her emails asking when she thought she would be well enough. Some she worried about. They jostled at the edge of her consciousness, with their pain and their problems. A few she thought perhaps she would never see again. She had said that in two weeks, at the start of May, she would resume her old duties whatever her doctor might advise, but in the meantime, twice a week and often more, she went to her rooms in the mansion block in Bloomsbury. Today she had been grateful for the opportunity to leave her house because, at a quarter to eight that morning, Josef had arrived. Frieda had left him trudging back and forth from the van, his face beaming at her behind piles of boxes.

  After her session with Joe, Frieda stood with her back to the neat room, the red armchair where she always sat, the muted charcoal
drawing of a landscape on the wall, staring into the tangled space outside where foxes lurked, shrubs and wild flowers forcing their way up through the cracked earth. She was thinking or at least letting thoughts run through her mind. Her old life seemed far away, a ghost of itself. The woman who had sat in the armchair hour after hour and day after day receded as she pictured her. She had always thought that the centre of her life was in this room, but now it seemed to have shifted: Hal Bradshaw and his four researchers, Karlsson and his cases of death and disappearance, Dean Reeve somewhere out there watching her – all these had pulled her out of it.

  She thought now about the four psychology students and their stunt, trying to separate the actual story from the fact of having been tricked and the humiliation of this being made public. She didn’t know why she couldn’t lay it to one side. It prickled in her mind, shifted and changed in its meaning. There was something that wouldn’t let her go, like a piece of string twitching in her hands. Sometimes at night, lying awake with the darkness pressing down on her, she would think of the four of them and what they had said to her. The blades opening and closing; the image of tenderness and dangerous power.

  Her mobile rang in her pocket and she took it out.

  ‘Frieda.’

  ‘Karlsson.’

  ‘You turned your phone on.’

  ‘I can see why you became a detective.’

  He laughed, then said: ‘You were right.’

  ‘Oh, good. What about?’

  ‘Ruth Lennox. She was too good to be true.’

  ‘I don’t think I said that. I said she was like an actress performing her life.’

  ‘Exactly. We’ve found out that she was having an affair. For ten years. Every Wednesday. What do you say to that?’

  ‘That it’s a long time.’

  ‘There’s more, but I can’t talk about that now. I’ve got to go and see the husband.’

  ‘Did he know?’

  ‘He must have done.’

  ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘I thought you’d like to know. Was I wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can I come round for a drink later? I can fill you in. It can help to talk things through with someone on the outside.’

  Something in his voice, the nearest he had ever come to pleading, stopped Frieda refusing.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘I’ll be there at seven.’

  ‘Karlsson –’

  ‘I’ll call if I’m running late.’

  The Lennox family had moved back into their home. The carpet had been removed; the walls had been washed, though the bloodstains were still visible; the broken glass and scattered objects had been taken away.

  When Karlsson and Yvette arrived, the door was opened for them by a woman wearing an apron. He could smell baking.

  ‘We’ve met before,’ said the woman, noticing Karlsson’s expression, ‘but you’ve forgotten who I am, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, I remember you.’ He recalled the baby in a sling, the little boy at her side, ashen with exhaustion, the girl pushing her buggy, as if she was trying to copy her mother.

  ‘I’m Louise Weller. Ruth’s sister. I was here on the day it all happened.’ She ushered them inside.

  ‘Are you staying here?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘I’m looking after the family, as much as I can,’ she said. ‘Someone’s got to. It won’t get done by itself.’

  ‘But you have children of your own.’

  ‘Well, of course Baby’s always here. My sister-in-law is helping out with the other two when they’re not at their nursery. This is an emergency,’ she added reprovingly, as if he had forgotten that. She regarded him critically. ‘I suppose you’re here to see Russell.’

  ‘You must have been close to your sister,’ said Karlsson.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You’re here helping her family, even though you have small children of your own. Not everyone would do that.’

  ‘It’s my duty,’ she said. ‘It’s not hard to do one’s duty.’

  Karlsson gave her a closer look. He felt she was telling him who was in charge. ‘Did you see much of your sister?’

  ‘We live over in Fulham. My hands are full with my family and we have very different lives. We saw each other when we could. And Christmas, of course. Easter.’

  ‘Did she seem happy?’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything? She was killed by a burglar, wasn’t she?’

  ‘We’re just trying to build up a picture of your sister’s life. I was interested in her frame of mind. As you saw it.’

  ‘She was fine,’ said Louise, shortly. ‘There was nothing wrong with my sister.’

  ‘And she was happy in her family life?’

  ‘Haven’t we suffered enough?’ she said, looking at Yvette and then back at Karlsson. ‘Are you digging around trying to find something nasty?’

  Yvette opened her mouth to say something but Karlsson flashed her an urgent look and she stopped herself. Somewhere out of sight, the baby began to cry.

  ‘I’d just got him to sleep.’ Louise gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘You’ll find my brother-in-law upstairs. He has his own room at the top.’

  Russell Lennox’s room was a little den at the back of the house that looked over the garden. Karlsson and Yvette could barely squeeze inside. Yvette leaned on the wall to one side, next to a poster of Steve McQueen clutching a baseball glove. Lennox was sitting at a small pinewood desk, on which was a computer. The screensaver was a family group. They were posing by a blue sea, all wearing sunglasses. Karlsson reckoned it must have been taken a few years earlier. The children were smaller than he remembered.

  Before speaking, he examined Lennox, assessing his condition. He seemed in control, clean-shaven, in an ironed blue shirt, evidently the work of his sister-in-law.

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ said Lennox. ‘My wife’s been murdered.’

  ‘And I was expressing concern. I want to know how you are. I want to know how your children are.’

  Lennox replied in an angry tone, but without meeting Karlsson’s eyes. He just stared down at the carpet. ‘If you really want to know, Dora is scared to go to school, Judith cries all the time and I can’t talk to Ted at all. He just won’t communicate with me. But I don’t want your concern. I want all this brought to an end.’ Now he looked up at Karlsson. ‘Have you come to tell me about the progress of the investigation?’

  ‘In a way,’ said Karlsson. ‘But I also need to ask you a few questions as well.’ He waited for a moment. He wanted to do this gradually but Lennox didn’t speak. ‘We’re trying to build up a fuller picture of your wife’s world.’ He glanced at Yvette. ‘Some of it may feel intrusive.’

  Lennox rubbed his eyes, like someone trying to wake himself up. ‘I’m beyond all that,’ he said. ‘Ask me anything you want. Do anything you want.’

  ‘Good,’ said Karlsson. ‘Good. So. Well, one question: would you describe your relationship with your wife as happy?’

  Lennox started slightly, narrowing his eyes. ‘Why would you even ask that?’ he said. ‘You were here when it happened. On the same day. You saw us all. You saw what it did to us. Are you making some kind of insane accusation?’

  ‘I’m asking a question.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you a simple answer, which is, yes, we were happy. Satisfied? And now I’ll ask you a simple question. What’s going on?’

  ‘We’ve had an unexpected development in the inquiry,’ said Karlsson. As he spoke, he was aware of listening to himself and being repelled by what he heard. He was talking like a machine because he was nervous about what was going to happen.

  Frieda handed him a mug of tea and he took several sips before putting the mug on the table.

  ‘Christ, I needed that,’ he said. ‘Just before I told him, I felt as though I was in a dream. It was as if I was standing in front of a large
plate-glass window, holding a stone in my hand, round and solid like a cricket ball. I was about to throw it at the window and I was looking at the glass, smooth and straight, knowing that in a few seconds it would be lying on the ground in jagged pieces.’ He stopped. Frieda was sitting down again with her own mug of tea, still untouched. ‘You can see that I’m getting better. I didn’t tell you not to analyse the image, not to read hidden meaning into it. Except that I have now. But you know what I mean.’

  ‘How did he react?’ said Frieda.

  ‘You mean what happened when the stone hit the glass? It shattered, that’s what. He was devastated. He’d lost his wife and it was as if I was taking her away from him all over again. At least he’d had the memory of her and there I was contaminating it.’

  ‘You’re sounding too much like a therapist,’ said Frieda.

  ‘That’s rich coming from you. How can anyone be too much like a therapist?’ He took another sip of tea. ‘The more like a therapist everyone is, the more they’re in touch with their feelings, the better.’

  ‘The only people who should be like therapists are therapists,’ said Frieda. ‘And then only when they’re at work. Policemen should be like policemen. So, to get back to my question, did he react in any way that was relevant to the investigation?’

  Karlsson put his mug down.

  ‘At first he denied it absolutely and said how much he trusted her and that we’d made a mistake. Then Yvette spelled out in detail what we’d learned about Paul Kerrigan, about the flat, about the days when they met, about how long it had been going on. In the end, he saw reason. He didn’t cry, he didn’t shout. He just looked almost empty.’

  ‘But did you get the impression that he knew?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. How could it be possible? Ten years, eleven years. She was seeing this man, having sex with him. How did he not smell him on her? How did he not see it in her eyes?’

  ‘You think he must have suspected, at least?’

  ‘Frieda, you sit there day after day with people telling you their dark secrets. Do you ever just think that the clichés about relationships turn out to be true? What it’s like to fall in love, what it’s like to have a child, and then what it’s like to break up. The old cliché, you can live with someone for years and you realize you don’t know them.’