Waiting for Wednesday

by Nicci French

  ‘Come in,’ said Frieda. ‘But be warned – it’s mayhem.’

  Perhaps it was better that way, though. There was no room for self-consciousness. He took off his jacket, drank a shot of vodka and then was somehow persuaded by Reuben to cook omelettes for everyone, which he did very slowly and seriously. Chloë stood beside him in her absurd excuse for a dress, whisking eggs with a fork and gazing at him with an over-serious expression on her smeared face. She was tipsy and giggly and a bit weepy, and swayed as she whisked, slopping egg on to the floor. Reuben, Jack and Josef took Chloë’s bags up to the study, making a lot of noise about it; they could be heard laughing and dropping things. Sasha and Frieda sat together at the table assembling a green salad, talking quietly. Sasha could feel that Frieda approved – or, at least, didn’t disapprove – and happiness filled her.

  THIRTY

  ‘I think I should be present,’ said Elaine Kerrigan.

  ‘He’s eighteen years old,’ said Yvette, firmly. ‘He counts as an adult.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. You should see his bedroom.’ There was a pause. ‘You wait here. I’ll get him.’

  Yvette and Munster sat in the living room and waited. ‘Do you ever think,’ she asked, ‘that we just go around and make things worse? In the great scheme of things. That in the end, when we’re done, the general level of happiness is a bit less than it was before?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Munster.

  ‘Well, I do.’

  The door opened and Ben Kerrigan came in. Yvette first saw his stockinged feet, with odd socks, one red, one with green and amber stripes, a big toe poking through the end. Then she saw faded grey corduroy trousers, a flowery blue shirt, long floppy dark-brown hair. He sank on to the sofa, one leg pulled up beside him. He pushed his hair back off his face.

  ‘You’ve heard about your father and this woman,’ said Yvette, after they’d introduced themselves.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How did it make you feel?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly happy about it. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Were you angry?’

  ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Because your father was being unfaithful to your mother.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I feel.’

  ‘Could you tell us where you were on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’

  Ben looked puzzled, then grimly amused. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right, then. I’m a schoolboy. I was at school.’

  ‘And you can prove that?’

  He gave a shrug. ‘I’m in the sixth form. We go out sometimes, if we’ve got a free. We might go for a coffee or, you know, a walk.’

  ‘But not for the whole day,’ said Yvette. ‘And when you have coffee, you have it with someone. You have a walk with someone. And they can vouch for you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Munster. ‘What you need to do first is take this seriously. A woman has been killed. Some children have lost their mother. We don’t want to waste our time chasing up false leads. So, what we want you to do is, first, to show us some respect, and second, pull your finger out, look through your diary or your phone, talk to your friends and put together a convincing story of what you were doing for every minute of that Wednesday. Because if we have to do it ourselves, we won’t be very happy about it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Ben. ‘So is it just me? Are you going to hassle Josh as well?’

  ‘Your brother was a hundred and fifty miles away, so far as we know, but we’ll check up with him.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ said Ben. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’

  When they were back in the car, Yvette asked if they could make a diversion via Warren Street.

  ‘Is this about Frieda?’ said Munster.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be about Frieda?’

  ‘I was just saying.’

  When Frieda opened the door, Yvette noticed over her shoulder that there were people there. She recognized Josef but no one else. For a few seconds, the two women stared at each other, then Frieda stepped back and invited Yvette in. She shook her head.

  ‘Why did you call me about the charge?’ she asked.

  ‘If it’s a problem,’ said Frieda, ‘just say.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ Yvette glanced round to see if Munster was listening, but he was oblivious in the front seat of the car with his headphones on. ‘Since your injury, we hadn’t talked properly.’

  ‘We hadn’t talked at all.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Yvette bit her lip. ‘Anyway, I hadn’t said things I meant to say. So when you rang, I didn’t know how to interpret it.’

  ‘You don’t need to interpret it,’ said Frieda. ‘I told you about it on the phone. I thought Karlsson was sick of clearing up my messes.’

  ‘And now it’s my turn?’

  ‘As I said, if it’s a problem …’

  ‘I called the police down at Waterloo. Look, Frieda, what you did wasn’t sensible. All right, that bastard Bradshaw set out to humiliate you. If it were me, I’d want to go and sort him out. But you can’t do things like that. If you do, you leave yourself open to all kinds of trouble.’

  ‘So you think I’m in trouble?’

  ‘I talked to the officer you saw. I explained about our relationship with you, things you’ve done for us. So I think this will go away.’

  ‘Yvette, this was all rubbish.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. But if these things get into court, you just never know which way they’ll go. And another thing: you don’t want to put yourself into the power of someone like Bradshaw.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frieda. ‘Really. I hope you haven’t gone out on a limb for me. But I just want you to know that when I went to see Ian Yardley it wasn’t anything to do with Bradshaw.’

  ‘Then what was it about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘Just a feeling.’

  ‘I get worried about your feelings.’

  Frieda began to close the door, then hesitated. ‘What was it you wanted to say to me? I mean, apart from my so-called fight.’

  Yvette looked at the people behind Frieda. ‘Some other time,’ she said.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Josh Kerrigan was making roll-ups, adding thick tufts of tobacco to the Rizla paper, rolling it deftly between thumb and forefinger, licking the edge and laying the thin, straight tube beside the others he’d already assembled. He had six so far and was on to his seventh. Yvette was finding it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. Perhaps that was the point: he was making it quite clear that she was simply an interruption. She was getting a bit tired of these Kerrigan boys.

  ‘Josh,’ she said, ‘I can understand why you might be upset –’

  ‘Do I seem upset?’ He passed the Rizla over the tip of his tongue.

  ‘– but I’m afraid I’m not going until you’ve answered my questions.’

  ‘No. You’re fine.’ He laid the seventh cigarette beside the others and tapped it into line with a finger, tipping his head on one side to examine them. He had a small vertical scar just above his lip that pulled it up slightly, giving him the suggestion of a perpetual smile.

  ‘Where were you on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’

  ‘Cardiff. Is that a good enough alibi?’

  ‘It’s not an alibi at all yet. How can you prove you were in Cardiff then?’

  ‘Wednesday, the sixth of April?’

  �
�Yes.’

  ‘I have lectures on Wednesdays, until five. I don’t think I could have got back to London in time to murder my father’s lover, do you?’

  ‘You didn’t have lectures that Wednesday. Your term had ended.’

  ‘Then I was probably out somewhere.’

  ‘You need to take this more seriously.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

  He started on the next roll-up. At least there wasn’t much tobacco left in the tin, only enough for one or two more.

  ‘I want you to give proper thought to where you were on that Wednesday and who you were with.’

  He lifted his head and Yvette saw the glint of his brown eyes. ‘I was probably with my girlfriend, Shari. We got together at the end of term, so it was pretty intense. The things you’re finding out about the sex life of the Kerrigan family.’

  ‘You think or you know?’

  ‘I’m a bit hazy on dates.’

  ‘Don’t you have a diary?’

  ‘A diary?’ He grinned as if she had said something unintentionally funny. ‘No, I don’t have a diary.’

  ‘When did you return to London for the holidays?’

  ‘When? At the end of that week, I think. Friday? Saturday? You’ll have to ask Mum. I know I was back by the Saturday because there was a party. So it was probably the Friday.’

  ‘Did you come back by train?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you can look at the ticket or your bank statement to confirm the date.’

  ‘If I paid by card. Which I’m not sure about.’

  He had finished the tobacco at last. One by one he delicately lifted the roll-ups and put them into the empty tin. Yvette thought his hands were trembling, but perhaps she was imagining things: his expression gave nothing away.

  ‘Did you have any idea about your father’s affair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you feel about it?’

  ‘Do you mean, am I angry?’ he asked mildly, one dark eyebrow lifting. ‘Yes. Especially after all Mum’s gone through. Am I angry enough to kill someone? I think if I was going to kill anyone, it’d be my dad.’

  ‘I really don’t think I can help you.’

  Louise Weller was still wearing an apron. Maybe she lived in it, he thought. She must always be clearing up mess or cooking meals, scrubbing floors, helping her children splash paint on to sheets of paper. He saw that her shirt sleeves were rolled up.

  ‘How old are your children?’ he asked, following his train of thought.

  ‘Benjy’s thirteen weeks old.’ She looked down at the baby asleep on the bouncy chair beside her, eyes twitching in dreams. ‘Then Jackson is just two and Carmen is three and a bit.’

  ‘You do have your hands full.’ Karlsson felt tired just thinking of it and at the same time dizzy with a kind of nostalgia for those days of mess and tiredness. For one brief moment, he let himself think of Mikey and Bella in Madrid, then blinked the image away. ‘Does your husband help?’

  ‘My husband is not a healthy man.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘But they’re good children,’ said Louise Weller. ‘They’re brought up to behave well.’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few general questions about your sister.’

  Louise Weller raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t see why. Someone broke in and killed her. Now you have to find out who. You seem to be taking your time about it.’

  ‘It might not be as simple as that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Karlsson had spent years in the Met. He’d told mothers about children dying; he’d told wives about their husbands being murdered; he’d stood on countless doorsteps to deliver bad news, watching faces go blank with the first shock, then change, crumple. Yet he still felt queasy about telling Louise Weller that her sister had lived a double life. Ridiculous as it was, he felt that he was betraying the dead woman to the prim-mouthed living one.

  ‘Your sister,’ he said. ‘It turns out that she had a complicated life.’

  Louise Weller didn’t move or speak. She just waited.

  ‘You don’t know about it?’

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

  ‘Has Mr Lennox not said anything?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t.’

  ‘So you had no idea that Ruth might have had a secret she was keeping from her family?’

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me what you’re referring to.’

  ‘She was having an affair.’

  She made no response. Karlsson wondered if she’d even heard. Finally she spoke. ‘Thank goodness our mother never lived to find out.’

  ‘You didn’t know anything about it?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. She would have known how I would feel about it.’

  ‘How would you have felt about it?’

  ‘She’s a married woman. She has three children. Look at this nice house. She never did know how lucky she was.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘People are very selfish nowadays. They put freedom before responsibility.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Karlsson said mildly. He suddenly felt the need to defend Ruth Lennox, though he wasn’t sure why.

  The baby woke, his face crinkled and he gave a piteous yelp. Louise Weller lifted him up and calmly unbuttoned her shirt, placing him at her breast and casting Karlsson a bright look, as if she wanted him to object.

  ‘Can we talk about the specifics?’ Karlsson said, trying neither to look at the naked breast nor away from it. ‘Your sister, Ruth, who has been killed and who was having an affair. You say you had no idea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She never said anything to you that, now you think about it, might have suggested there was something going on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does the name Paul Kerrigan mean anything to you?’

  ‘Is that his name? No. I’ve never heard it.’

  ‘Did you ever see any sign that there was a strain in her marriage?’

  ‘Ruth and Russell were devoted to each other.’

  ‘You never got the impression that there was any problem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you notice that he was drinking heavily?’

  ‘What? Russell? Drinking?’

  ‘Yes. You didn’t see that?’

  ‘No, I did not. I have never seen him drunk. But they say that it’s the secret drinkers who are the problem.’

  ‘And you had no sense at all, looking back, that he knew?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes glittered. She wiped her hands down her apron. ‘But I wonder why he didn’t tell me when he discovered.’

  ‘It’s not something that’s easy to say,’ said Karlsson.

  ‘Do his children know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yet they haven’t shared it with me. Poor things. To find that out about your mother.’ She looked at Karlsson with distaste. ‘Your job must be like lifting up a stone. I don’t know how you have the stomach for it.’

  ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

  ‘There are things it’s better not to know about.’

  ‘Like your sister’s affair, you mean?’

  ‘I suppose everyone will find out now.’

  ‘I suppose they will.’

  Back in his flat, Karlsson tidied away the last of the mess his children had made. He found it hard to believe he had ever been irritated by it. Now it simply filled him with nostalgic tenderness – the miniature plastic figures embedded in the sofa, the wet swimming things on the bathroom floor, the pastel crayons t
hat had been trodden into the carpet. He stripped both their beds and pushed the sheets into the washing-machine, and then, before he had time to stop himself, called Frieda’s number. He didn’t recognize the person who answered.

  ‘Hello. Who’s this?’

  ‘Chloë.’ There was a terrific banging going on in the background. He could barely make out her words. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Malcolm Karlsson,’ he said formally.

  ‘The detective.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to call Frieda?’

  ‘It’s all right. It can wait.’

  He put the phone down, feeling foolish, then called another number.

  ‘Hello, Sadie here.’

  ‘It’s Mal.’

  Sadie was the cousin of a friend of Karlsson whom he bhad met a few times over the years, with his wife, or with Sadie’s current boyfriend. Their last meeting had been at a lunch a few weeks ago, both on their own, when, leaving at the same time, she had said that they ought to meet up, have a drink.

  ‘Can I offer you that drink?’ he said now.

  ‘How lovely,’ she said, and he was reminded of what he had always liked about her: her straightforward enthusiasm, her undisguised liking for him. ‘When?’

  ‘How about now?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘But you’re probably busy.’

  ‘As it happens, I’m not. I was just worrying that my hair needs washing.’

  He laughed, his spirits lifting. ‘It’s not a job interview.’

  They met in a wine bar in Stoke Newington and drank a bottle of white wine between them. Everything was easy. Her hair looked fine to him, and so did the way she smiled at him, nodded in agreement. She wore bright, flimsy layers of clothes and had put lipstick on. He caught a whiff of her perfume. She put her hand on his arm when she spoke, leaned in close. Her breath was on his cheek and her pupils were large in the dimly lit room.

  They went back to her flat because he didn’t want to be in his, even though it was closer. She apologized for the mess, but he didn’t mind that. He was a bit fuzzy from the wine and he was tired and all he wanted to do was to lose himself for a while.