Waiting for Wednesday

by Nicci French

  She made her way back to her house, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. She picked up the envelope once more and went with it into the kitchen. She knew she wouldn’t get back to sleep so she made herself tea, and only when it was brewed did she sit at the kitchen table and run her finger under the gummed flap. She drew out the stiff paper inside, and laid it on the table. It was a pencil drawing or, rather, a pattern. It looked a bit like the mathematical rendering of an intricate rose, eight-sided and perfectly symmetrical. The straight lines had obviously been done with a ruler and, examining it more closely, Frieda could see marks where mistakes had been rubbed out.

  She sat for some time, staring down at the image that lay in front of her, her expression stern, then she carefully slid the paper back inside the envelope. Rage crackled through her, like fire, and she welcomed it. Better to be burned by anger than drowned by fear. So she sat in its flames, unmoving, until morning came.

  Many miles away, Jim Fearby poured himself a glass of whisky. The bottle was less than a third full. Time to buy another. It was like petrol. Never let the tank get less than a quarter full. You might run out. He took the old newspaper clipping from his wallet and flattened it on the desk. It was yellowing and almost disintegrating after all the foldings and unfoldings. He knew it by heart. It was like a talisman. He could see it when he closed his eyes.

  MONSTER ‘MAY NEVER BE RELEASED’

  JAMES FEARBY

  There were dramatic scenes at Hattonbrook Crown Court yesterday as convicted murderer, George Conley, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Hazel Barton. Justice Lawson told Conley, 31: ‘This was an atrocious crime. Despite pleading guilty, you have shown no remorse and it is my belief that you remain a danger to women and may never be safe to be released.’

  As Justice Lawson ordered Conley to be taken down, there were shouts from the victim’s family in the public gallery. Outside the court, Clive Barton, Hazel’s uncle, told reporters: ‘Hazel was our beautiful young treasure. She had her whole life in front of her and he took that away from her. I hope he rots in hell.’

  Hazel Barton, a blonde eighteen-year-old schoolgirl, was found strangled in May of this year near her home in the village of Dorlbrook. Her body was found by the roadside. George Conley was arrested near the scene. He had left traces on her body and he confessed within days.

  Speaking afterwards, Detective Inspector Geoffrey Whitlam offered his condolences to the Barton family: ‘We can only guess the living hell they have gone through. I hope that the speedy resolution of this thorough investigation can bring them a measure of closure.’ He also paid tribute to his colleagues: ‘It is my belief that George Conley is a dangerous sexual predator. He belongs behind bars and I want to thank my team for putting him there.’

  It is alleged that Hazel Barton was walking alone because her bus had failed to arrive. A spokeswoman for FastCoach, the local bus operator, commented: ‘We offer all condolences to Hazel Barton’s family. We are fully committed to maintaining an effective service for our customers.’

  Under the headline were two photographs. The first was the mug shot of Conley, released by the police. His large face was blotchy; there was a bruise on his forehead; one eye was askew. The other was a family photo of Hazel Barton. It must have been taken on holiday because she was wearing a T-shirt and the sea was visible behind her. She was laughing as if the photographer had just made a joke.

  Fearby carefully read through his seven-year-old report, running his forefinger along the lines. He sipped his whisky. Almost every word in the report was untrue. FastCoach did not provide an effective service for their customers. And, anyway, they were passengers, not customers. Whitlam’s investigation had not been thorough. Even his own byline looked wrong. Only his mother had ever called him James. And the headline – which he hadn’t written, and wouldn’t have written, even at the time – was the most wrong of all. Poor old Georgie Conley was many things but he wasn’t a monster, and now it looked like he was going to be released.

  Fearby carefully folded the clipping and replaced it in his wallet, behind his press card. A precious relic.

  FOUR

  When Sasha arrived at a quarter to nine on Thursday morning, Frieda had just finished watering the plants on her small patio. She was wearing jeans and an oatmeal-coloured pullover, and there were rings under her eyes, which looked darker and fiercer than usual.

  ‘Bad night?’ asked Sasha.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Do we have time? My car’s on a meter for another quarter of an hour, but we need to get to the hospital for half past nine. The traffic’s dreadful.’

  Sasha had insisted on taking the day off work to bring Frieda to her follow-up appointment with the consultant and then with the physiotherapist.

  ‘We’re not going to the hospital.’

  ‘Why? Have they cancelled?’

  ‘No. I have.’

  ‘What made you do that?’

  ‘There’s something else I need to do.’

  ‘You have to go to see your doctor, Frieda. And the physio. You’ve been very ill. You nearly died. You can’t just walk away from all the follow-up care.’

  ‘I know what the doctor will say: that I’m making progress but that I mustn’t think about going back to work yet, because for the time being, making a good recovery is my work. You know the sort of things we doctors tell our patients.’

  ‘That sounds a bit negative.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s something more important I have to do.’

  ‘What could be more important than getting better?’

  ‘I thought I’d show you rather than tell you. Unless you want to go to work after all.’

  Sasha sighed. ‘I’ve taken the day off. I’d like to spend it with you. Let’s have that coffee.’

  The road narrowed into a lane lined with trees that were freshly in bud. Frieda noticed the blackthorn. She stared fixedly: some things change and some things remain the same. But you never remain the same – you look at everything through different eyes so that even the most familiar object takes on a strange and ghostly cast. That small thatched cottage with a muddy pond full of ducks in front of it, that sudden stretch of road winding down over a patchwork of fields, or the farmhouse with its silos and its muddy enclosure of cows, and the line of spindly poplars ahead. Even the way the light fell on this flattened landscape, and the faint tang of the sea.

  The graveyard was crowded. Most of the stones were old, green with moss, and it was no longer possible to make out the inscriptions carved there; but some were new and shiny and had flowers on them, dates of the dearly beloved and the sorely missed.

  ‘Crowds of the dead,’ said Frieda, more to herself than to Sasha.

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  She stopped in front of a carved stone and pointed. Sasha, leaning forward, made out the name: Jacob Klein 1943–1988, much missed husband and father.

  ‘Is this your father?’ she asked, thinking about Frieda as a teenager, finding him dead, trying to imagine the history of pain that lay behind the simple stone.

  Frieda nodded, not taking her eyes off it. ‘Yes. That’s my father.’ She took a small step backwards and said: ‘Look at the engraving there, above his name.’

  ‘It’s very nice,’ said Sasha, lamely, after examining the symmetrical pattern. ‘Did you choose it?’

  ‘No.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of thick paper, holding it in front of her, gazing from drawing to engraving and back again
. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘It’s the same,’ said Sasha.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? Exactly the same.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Someone sent it to me. This morning.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They pushed it through my door in the early hours.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s the question.’ Frieda was talking to herself now, rather than Sasha.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Dean did it.’

  ‘Dean? Dean Reeve?’

  Sasha knew about Dean Reeve, the man who had abducted a little boy and dragged Frieda unwillingly into the outside world, away from the safety of her consulting room and the strange secrets of the mind. She had even helped Frieda by doing a DNA test that established Dean’s wife Terry was in fact the little girl Joanna, who had disappeared into thin air more than two decades previously. Frieda had become convinced that Dean Reeve, whom the police accepted as dead, was still alive. He had become Frieda’s invisible stalker. The dead man who watched over her and would never let her go.

  ‘Yes, Dean Reeve. I recognize his handwriting – I saw it once on a statement he made at the police station. But even if I didn’t, I’d know it was him. He wants me to understand that he has found out about my family. He knows about the death of my father. He was here, where we are now, where my father is.’

  ‘Your father is buried in a churchyard, but I thought you were Jewish,’ Sasha said.

  They were in a small café overlooking the sea. The tide was low and long-legged sea-birds picked their delicate way over the shining mudflats. Far out, a container ship, as big as a town, was moving across the horizon. There was no one else in the café and no one out on the shingle. Sasha felt as though she’d been taken to the edge of the world.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. Aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’ Frieda hesitated, then, making an obvious effort, said: ‘My grandfather was Jewish, but not my grandmother, so his children were no longer Jewish and neither, of course, am I. My mother,’ she added drily, ‘is most definitely not Jewish.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Unless my brothers forgot to tell me, yes.’

  Sasha blinked and leaned forward.

  ‘Brothers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got more than one?’

  ‘I’ve got two.’

  ‘You’ve only ever mentioned David. I never knew there was another.’

  ‘It wasn’t relevant,’ Frieda said.

  ‘Relevant? A brother?’

  ‘You know about David because he’s Olivia’s ex and Chloë’s father.’

  ‘I see,’ murmured Sasha, knowing better than to press her and thinking that in the last few hours she had learned more about Frieda than in the whole course of their friendship.

  She pierced her poached egg and watched the yolk well up, then ooze on to the plate. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t decided. Anyway, haven’t you heard? He’s dead.’

  Frieda hardly spoke on the way back. When Sasha asked her what she was thinking about, she couldn’t answer. ‘I don’t know,’ Frieda said. ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘You wouldn’t take that as an answer from one of your patients.’

  ‘I’ve never been a very good patient.’

  After Sasha had driven away, Frieda let herself into her house. Inside, she fastened the chain and slid the bolt across the front door. She walked upstairs to her bedroom. She took off her jacket and tossed it on to the bed. She would have a long, hot bath and then she would go up to her little study in the garret room and do a drawing: concentrate, yet think of nothing. She thought of the graveyard, the desolate coastline. She pulled her sweater over her head. She started to undo the buttons of her shirt but then she stopped. She had heard something. She wasn’t sure whether the noise was inside or a much louder noise outside and far away. She stayed completely still. She didn’t even breathe. She heard the noise again, a small scraping sound. It was inside the house and close by, on the same floor. She could feel its vibration. She thought of the front door downstairs, with its bolt and chain. She tried to time it in her head, the scrambling downstairs, the fumbling with the chain. No, she couldn’t make it work. She thought of the mobile phone in her pocket. Even if she could whisper a message into it, what good would that do? It would take ten minutes, fifteen minutes, to get here, and then there was the locked, bolted door.

  Frieda felt her pulse race. She made herself breathe slowly, one breath after another. She counted slowly to ten. She looked around the room for a hiding place but it was no good. She had made too much noise as she came in. She picked up a hairbrush from her dressing-table. It was hopelessly flimsy. She felt in the pocket of her jacket and found a pen. She held it tightly in her fist. At least it was sharp. It seemed like the worst thing in the world, but she edged out of her bedroom on to the landing. It would take just a few seconds. If she could get down the stairs without them creaking, then …

  There was another scraping sound, louder now, and something else, a sort of whistle. It came from across the landing, in the bathroom. The whistling continued. Frieda listened for a few seconds, then stepped closer and pushed at the door of the bathroom so that it swung open. At first she had a sudden sensation of being in the wrong room or the wrong house. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. There was exposed plaster and pipes and a huge space. The room seemed larger than she’d remembered. And in the corner a figure was bent over, pulling at something to get it loose.

  ‘Josef,’ she said weakly. ‘What’s going on?’

  Josef was her friend – a builder from the Ukraine who had entered her life in an unlikely way, falling through her ceiling when she was with a patient. But he had not taken no for an answer, and had a fanatical devotion to her. Now he started, then smiled a bit warily. ‘Frieda,’ he said. ‘I did not hear.’

  ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’

  ‘I have the key you give me.’

  ‘But that key was for feeding the cat when I was away, not for this.’ She gestured. ‘And what is this?’

  Josef stood up. He was holding a huge wrench.

  ‘Frieda. You have been not well. I look at you and see you being sad and in pain and it is difficult.’ Frieda started to speak but Josef interrupted her. ‘No, no, wait. It is difficult to help but I know about you. I know that when you are sad you lie in your very hot bath for hours.’

  ‘Well, not for hours,’ said Frieda. ‘But where is my bath? I was just about to get into it.’

  ‘Your bath is gone away,’ said Josef. ‘While you were with your friend, Sasha, me and my friend, Stefan, we take your bath away and we take it to the dump. It was a bad plastic bath, and it was small, not good for lying in.’

  ‘It was very good for lying in,’ said Frieda.

  ‘No,’ said Josef, firmly. ‘It is gone. I have great luck. I work on a house in Islington. He spends much, much money. He cut everything out of the house and throw it in four skips and then put new things in. He is throwing out many beautiful things but the most beautiful thing is a big iron bath. I see the bath and I think of you. It is perfect.’

  Frieda looked more carefully at the bathroom. Where the bath had once stood, the wall and floor were now exposed. There were cracked tiles, bare floorboards, a gaping pipe. Josef himself was covered in dust, his dark hair speckled with it. ‘Josef, you should have asked me.’

  Josef spread his arms helplessly. ‘If I had asked you
, you would have said no.’

  ‘Which is why you should have asked me.’

  Josef made a gesture, palm upwards. ‘Frieda, you protect all other people and sometimes you get hurt from that. What you must do is let other people help you.’ He looked at Frieda more closely. ‘Why are you holding your pen like that?’

  Frieda glanced down. She was still holding the pen in her fist, like a dagger. ‘I thought there was a burglar,’ she said. Once more she made herself take a deep breath. It had been well meant, she told herself. ‘So, how long will it take to put my old bath back just the way it was?’

  Josef looked thoughtful. ‘That is problem,’ he said. ‘When we took the bath from the wall and the pipe and the brackets, there were big cracks from that. That bath was just all crap. And, anyway, it is now at the dump.’

  ‘This is probably some sort of crime, what you’ve done, but anyway, what happens now?’

  ‘The beautiful bath is now in the workshop of another friend called Klaus. That is no problem. But here …’ He gestured with his wrench at the damage and gave a sigh. ‘That is problem.’

  ‘What do you mean a problem?’ said Frieda. ‘You did it.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Josef. ‘This is …’ He said something in his own language. It sounded contemptuous. ‘The pipe connecting here is very bad. Very bad.’

  ‘It always worked fine.’

  ‘It was just being lucky. One movement of the bath and …’ He made an eloquent gesture signifying a chaotic and destructive flood. ‘I will put a proper pipe here and make the wall good and tiles on the floor. It will be my gift to you and you will have a bath that will be your place to be happy.’