Waiting for Wednesday fk-3

by Nicci French

  One month ago, Ruth had been alive and Elaine had known nothing, and his boys had been full of teasing affection for him. Now, each morning when he woke, he had to realize all over again that the old life was over.

  He reached the corner of his road and stopped. The pub was disgorging its drinkers on to the pavement in a burst of noise. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, or turn in time to see who it was who brought something heavy down on the back of his head, so that he reeled, stumbled, fell in an ungainly heap on to the road. The blow came again, this time on his back. He thought how that would hurt later. And so would his cheek, which had scraped along the tarmac when he fell. He could taste blood, and there was also grit in his mouth. Through the roar in his head, he could hear the pubgoers, like distant static. He wanted to call out for help but his tongue was swollen and it was easier to close his eyes and wait for the footsteps to recede.

  At last he struggled to his feet and blundered along the street to his front door. He couldn’t make his fingers hold the key so he knocked and knocked until Elaine opened it. For a moment she stared at him, as if he was a monster standing in front of her, or a madman. Then her hand flew to her mouth in a cartoonish gesture of horror that he would have found funny in his safe old life.

  ‘I didn’t do it.’ Russell Lennox’s eyes were bloodshot. He had the sweet, stale smell of alcohol on him. Since the bottles had been found hidden in the garden shed, he seemed to have taken to drink in earnest – almost as if, now the secret was out, he had given himself permission.

  ‘It would be understandable if …’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I was here. Alone.’

  ‘Can anyone confirm that?’

  ‘I told you I was.’

  ‘You seem to have had a fair bit to drink.’

  ‘Is that illegal?’

  ‘The man who was having an affair with your wife has been badly beaten up, not ten minutes from your house.’

  ‘He had it coming to him. But I didn’t do it.’

  That was all he’d say, over and over, while Dora peered through the banisters at him, her face small and pale in the darkness.

  Frieda lay in bed and tried to sleep. She lay quite straight, staring at the ceiling, and then she turned on to her side, rearranging the pillow, closing her eyes. The cat lay at her feet. She put an image in her mind, of a shallow river running over pebbles, but the water bubbled and the faces rose from the bottom. Thoughts stirred in the mud of her mind. Her body was sore.

  It was no good. She could hear Chloë downstairs. She was talking to someone on Skype and had been for what seemed like hours, sometimes loudly and emphatically, with occasional bursts of laughter. Or was she crying? Frieda looked at the time. It was nearly one o’clock and tomorrow Chloë had school and she herself had a whole day to get through. She sighed and got out of bed, tweaking her curtains back to see the half-moon and then going down the stairs.

  Chloë looked up from her computer guiltily. Frieda saw the image of Ted Lennox there, his peaky adolescent face staring out at her. She stepped back, out of range. ‘I didn’t know you were still awake.’

  ‘I don’t want to be.’

  ‘I need to talk to Ted.’

  ‘You were talking rather loudly. And I think it’s time for you to go to bed.’

  ‘I’m not sleepy.’

  ‘Go to bed, Chloë. You have classes tomorrow.’ Frieda stepped forward so that she could see Ted and Ted could see her. He looked dreadful. ‘You too, Ted.’

  ‘Can I have some tea first? With just a small amount of milk,’ Chloë asked.

  ‘This isn’t a hotel.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Chloë didn’t sound sorry. She grimaced into her computer screen and raised her eyebrows dramatically at Ted.

  ‘Take your things up with you. And don’t touch anything in my study.’

  She returned to her room but for a long while she didn’t get into her bed. Instead, she stood at the window, gazing out at the night.

  THIRTY-TWO

  When Karlsson woke, he wasn’t sure where he was. He shifted in the bed and felt the warmth, saw the edge of a shoulder and thought, she’s come back. And then he remembered and felt a lurch, and it was as if the colour had leached out of the world. He fumbled for his watch and found it still on his wrist. It was twenty to six. He lay back in the bed. There was a murmur of something he couldn’t make out from Sadie beside him. Wasn’t this what he had been wanting? Something uncomplicated, easy, affectionate, pleasurable? An ache started in his head and spread through his body. He felt an immense, disabling tiredness. Very cautiously, he edged himself out of the bed and started to dress.

  ‘You don’t have to run away,’ said Sadie, from behind him.

  She had pulled herself up and was leaning on one elbow. Her face was puffy from sleep. ‘I could make you some breakfast,’ she said. She looked kind and concerned.

  ‘I’ve really got to go,’ said Karlsson. ‘I need to get back and get changed and go into work. I’ve really got to rush.’

  ‘I can get you a tea or a coffee.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Karlsson felt a sudden sense of panic, so that he was almost choking. He pulled his trousers on and fastened them. It all seemed to be taking a long time and he sensed Sadie watching him, a character in an unfunny farce. He pushed his shoes on. They felt too small for his feet. He picked up his jacket and turned to her. She was lying in the same position.

  ‘Sadie, I’m sorry, I …’ He couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She turned away from him and twisted the duvet around her so that he could see only the back of her head. He saw her bra draped over the end of the bed. He thought of her putting it on yesterday morning and then taking it off last night. He had an impulse to sit down, pull the duvet back and tell Sadie everything, explain what he was feeling, why this was all wrong, why they were wrong for each other and why he was wrong for anyone. But that wouldn’t be fair on her. He’d already done enough.

  He came out on to the quiet street. There was a hum of traffic but the main sound was birdsong all around him, with a blue sky and early-morning sunshine. It felt wrong. It should have been raining and grey and cold.

  Frieda sat at her kitchen table while Josef boiled the kettle, ground coffee, washed up the remains of Chloë’s breakfast. A good thing about Josef – and she had to hang on to the good things, in the middle of everything else – was that she didn’t have to make conversation. So she could just sit at the table and stare in front of her. Finally he put the mug of coffee in front of her and sat down with his own mug.

  ‘Is difficult to help,’ he began. ‘There is a Ukrainian joke about three people helping old lady across the road. And a person say, why take three people? And they say because the old lady not want to cross the road.’ He took a sip from his coffee. ‘Is funny in Ukrainian.’

  ‘So where are we?’ said Frieda.

  ‘It is finished today, even if I kill myself to finish it. This evening you will have a bath in your own beautiful bath.’

  ‘Good,’ said Frieda.

  ‘And Chloë? She is staying here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘I need to find out what’s going on. We’ll see.’

  Josef looked at Frieda with a concerned expression. ‘You are not angry,’ he said. ‘You should be angry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Josef gestured around him. ‘I tried to make you better with your new bath but it is difficult to help. And I make things worse for you.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault –’

  ‘Stop. The bath didn’t come, then came and went away again. And the electricity stopped.’

  ‘Now that was irritating.’

  ‘You need help and I make it worse for you and now Chloë is here. I saw upstairs and there is her things everywhere in your study.’

  ‘Is there? Oh, God, I haven’t been up there. Is it bad?’

  ‘Is bad. There is girl things
and clothes all over your things. Apple cores too. Wet towels. Mugs growing things inside. But I am saying, you should be angry. You should be hitting out. Fighting, no?’

  ‘I’m not angry, Josef. Or maybe I’m too tired to be angry.’ She relapsed into silence. ‘But that bath had better be done by this evening or else –’

  A ringtone went off and it took Frieda a moment to realize it was her own. It came from her jacket, which was draped over a chair. She fumbled through the pockets until she found it. She heard a woman’s voice: ‘Is that Frieda Klein?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Agnes Flint. You left a message.’

  As soon as Jim Fearby saw the photograph, he sensed he could cross her off his list. Clare Boyle was – had been – a round-faced girl, with frizzy blonde hair. Her mother had sat him down and brought him tea and cake, then had produced a handful of photographs from a drawer. Valerie Boyle settled down in the armchair opposite and talked about how her daughter had always been difficult.

  ‘Did she ever run away?’ Fearby asked.

  ‘She got in with the wrong crowd,’ Valerie said. ‘Sometimes she’d stay out all night. Sometimes even for a few days. When I got upset she just flared up. There was nothing I could do.’

  Fearby put his notebook down. Really, he could leave now, but he had to stay long enough to be polite. He looked at Valerie Boyle. He felt he could classify these mothers by now. Some of them had grief like a chronic illness; they were grey with it, had fine lines scratched in their faces, a deadness in the eyes as if there was nothing worth looking at. Then there were women like this one. Valerie Boyle had a quavering quality, a sense of flinching from a blow that might come at any moment, as if she were in the middle of an embarrassing scene that might turn nasty.

  ‘Was there trouble at home?’ Fearby asked.

  ‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘She had some problems with her dad. He could turn a bit violent. But, like I said, she was difficult. Then she just disappeared. The police never did that much.’

  Fearby wondered if it had just been violence, or whether it had been sex as well. And the woman in front of him; had she stood by and watched it happen? In the end there would have been nothing for the girl to do but escape. She was probably somewhere in London, one of the thousands of young people who’d had to escape, one way or another. Perhaps she was with one of the ‘wrong crowd’ her mother had talked about. Fearby silently wished her luck.

  But when Fearby drove up to the little estate just outside Stafford, he knew he was on to something. The group of houses was just a few minutes’ drive out of town but also semi-rural, surrounded by scrubby open spaces, playing fields, some woods. He saw signs for footpaths. This was more like it. Daisy Logan’s mother was unwilling to let him in; she talked through the barely open door with the chain still attached. Fearby explained that he was a journalist, that he wanted to find out what had happened to her daughter, that he would only be a minute, but she was immovable. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. It had been seven years. The police had given up. They’d put it behind them.

  ‘Just a couple of minutes,’ said Fearby. ‘One minute.’

  ‘What is it you want?’

  Fearby got a glimpse of haunted dark eyes. He was used to it by now, but sometimes he felt the odd pang, that he was hunting people down and opening up their old wounds. But what else could he do?

  ‘I read about your daughter,’ he said. ‘It was a tragic case. I wanted to know whether you’d had any warning. Was she unhappy? Did she have trouble at school?’

  ‘She loved school,’ said the woman. ‘She had just started the sixth form. She wanted to be a vet.’

  ‘What was her mood like?’

  ‘Are you asking me whether Daisy ran away from home? The week after she … well, she was going on a school trip. She’d done a part-time job for six months to pay for it. You know, my husband’s at home here. He’s on disability. It broke him. We keep going over that evening. She was walking over to see her best friend. She always took a shortcut across the common. If only we’d driven her. We just go over and over it.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ said Fearby.

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Fearby. ‘But have you got a photograph?’

  ‘I can’t give you one,’ said the woman. ‘We gave some to journalists at the time. And the police. We never got them back.’

  ‘Just to look at.’

  ‘Wait,’ said the woman.

  He stood on the doorstep and waited. After a few minutes, there was the sound of the chain being unfastened. The woman handed him a photograph. He looked at the girl, a young and eager face. He thought, as he always did, of what was to come, what that face would witness. He noted the dark hair, something about the eyes. They were like a family, like a gang. He took out his phone.

  ‘Is that all right?’ he said.

  The woman shrugged. He took a picture with his phone and handed it back to the woman.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ said the woman. ‘What are you going to do about our Daisy?’

  ‘I’m going to find out what I can,’ said Fearby. ‘If I find out anything, anything at all, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Will you find Daisy?’

  Fearby paused. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then don’t bother,’ said the woman, and closed the door.

  Frieda had been interested to meet the woman who had broken Rajit Singh’s heart, but when Agnes Flint opened the door of her flat, she thought she must have come to the wrong door. The young woman had a smooth, round face, with coarse brown hair swept messily back. She wore a black sweater and jeans. But she was saved from being nondescript by her large dark eyes and a slightly ironic expression. Frieda had a sense of being appraised.

  ‘I don’t know what this is about,’ she said.

  ‘Just give me a minute,’ said Frieda.

  ‘You’d better come in. I’m on the top floor.’

  Frieda followed her up the stairs.

  ‘It looks a bit boring from the outside,’ Agnes said, over her shoulder. ‘But wait till you get inside.’

  She opened the door and Frieda followed her in. They were in a living room with large windows on the far side.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said.

  The flat looked over a network of railway tracks. On the other side was a warehouse and beyond that were some apartment buildings that marked the south bank of the Thames.

  ‘Some people hate the idea of living by the railway,’ said Agnes, ‘but I like it. It’s like living next to a river, with strange things flowing past. And the trains are far enough away. I don’t get commuters staring in at me while I’m in bed.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s interesting.’

  ‘Well, that makes two of us.’ There was a pause. ‘So you’ve been talking to poor old Rajit.’

  ‘Why do you call him that?’

  ‘You’ve met him. He wasn’t much fun when we were together.’

  ‘He was a bit depressed.’

  ‘I’ll say. Has he sent you to try to plead for him?’

  ‘Didn’t it end well?’

  ‘Does it ever end well?’ There was a rumble from outside and a train passed. ‘They’ll be in Brighton in an hour,’ Agnes said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? I mean, since you’ve come all the way to my flat.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What are you doing here? When you rang up, I was curious. Rajit probably told you that he had difficulty taking no for an answer. He rang. He came round. He even wrote me letters.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘I threw them away without opening them. So when you rang, I was kind of curious. I wondered whether he was sending women on his behalf. Like some kind of carrier pigeon. Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘No. I’ve only met him twice.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  ‘I’m a psychotherapist.�
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  ‘Did he come to see you as a patient?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  A smile of recognition spread across Agnes’s face. ‘Oh, I know who you are. You’re her, aren’t you?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by “her”.’

  ‘What’s this about? Is this some kind of complicated revenge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging you. If someone made a fool of me like that, I’d fucking crucify them.’

  ‘But that’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘No? Then why?’

  ‘There was something Rajit said.’ Frieda saw herself from the outside, going from person to person reciting a fragment of a story that seemed increasingly detached from its context – an image that she couldn’t shake off, but that glinted, sharp and bright, in the darkness of her mind. She should stop this, she told herself. Return to the life she’d been in before. She felt Agnes Flint waiting for her reply.

  ‘Rajit wasn’t actually the student who was sent to me; that was someone else. But all the four researchers told the same story, one that supposedly demonstrated they posed a clear threat.’

  ‘Yeah, I read about it.’

  ‘In this story, there was an arresting detail, which Rajit said actually came from you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘About cutting his father’s hair – well, I guess, your father’s hair if it came from you originally and he changed it for his purpose.’

  ‘Cutting my father’s hair.’

  ‘Yes. The feeling of power and tenderness you got from that.’

  ‘This is freaking me out a bit.’

  ‘He said you told him the story when you were lying in bed together, and you were stroking his hair and telling him it needed cutting.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Now what?’

  Now what? Frieda didn’t know the answer to that. She said wearily, ‘So it was just a memory you had, a simple memory?’