Nicci French: Tuesday's Gone

‘What’s this?’

‘The London Stone.’

Sasha looked at it dubiously: it was an unprepossessing lump of limestone, dull and pockmarked, and reminded her of the kind of uncomfortable rock you perched on at the beach when you were rubbing sand off your feet before pulling your shoes back on. ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s protecting us.’

Sasha gave a puzzled smile. ‘In what sense?’

Frieda indicated a small sign beside it. ‘“So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” It’s supposed to be the heart of the city, the point from which the Romans measured the scope of their empire. Some people think it has occult powers. Nobody really knows where it came from – the Druids, the Romans. Maybe it’s an old altar, a sacrificial stone, a mystical centre point.’

‘You believe that?’

‘What I like,’ said Frieda, ‘is that it’s in the side of a shop and that most people walk past without noticing it, and that if it got mislaid, it would never be found because it looks like a completely ordinary piece of rock. And it means what we want it to mean.’

They were silent for a few moments and then Sasha put a gloved hand on Frieda’s shoulder. ‘Tell me, if you were ever in distress, would you confide in anyone?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you confide in me?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Well. You could, that’s all.’ She felt constrained, embarrassed by the emotion in her voice. ‘I just wanted you to know.’

‘Thank you.’ Frieda’s voice was neutral.

Sasha dropped her hand, and they turned from the grille. The air had become notably colder, the sky blanker, as if it might snow.

‘I have a patient in half an hour,’ Frieda said.

‘One thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Tomorrow. You must be worried. I hope it goes all right. Will you let me know?’

Frieda gave a shrug. Sasha watched as she walked away, slim and upright, into the swallowing crowds.

Detective Constable Yvette Long arrived a few moments before Karlsson. She had got the phone call just fifteen minutes previously but already a small crowd was gathering in the street: children who ought to be at school, young mothers with babies in buggies, men who seemed in no hurry to get anywhere. It was bitingly cold but many of them were not wearing overcoats or gloves. They looked excited, bright-eyed with curiosity. Two police cars were parked in front of number three and a barrier had been put up. Just behind it, a thin stringy man with a ginger ponytail was pacing up and down, up and down, with his barrel-chested dog. Every so often it sat down and yawned, saliva drooling from its jaws. There was another man, enormously fat, ripples of flesh encased in his T-shirt, behind the barrier. He was standing quite still, mopping his shiny forehead, as if it was high summer, not icy February. Yvette parked and, as she opened the door, DC Chris Munster came out of the house, holding a handkerchief to his mouth.

‘Where’s the woman who found him?’

Munster took the handkerchief from his mouth and put it into his pocket. He made a visible effort to control the working of his face. ‘Sorry. It got to me for a bit. She’s there.’ He nodded towards a middle-aged African woman sitting on the pavement with her face in her hands. ‘She’s waiting to talk to us. She’s shocked. The other woman – the one who was with him – she’s in the car with Melanie. She keeps talking about tea. Forensics are on the way.’

‘Karlsson’s on his way too.’

‘Good.’ Munster lowered his voice. ‘How can they live like this?’

Yvette and Karlsson pulled on paper overshoes. He gave her a reassuring nod and, for a moment, put his hand on the small of her back, steadying her. She took a deep breath.

Later, Karlsson would try to separate all his impressions, put them in order, but now it was a jumble of sights and smells and a nausea that made him sweat. They walked through the rubbish, the dog shit, the smell, half sweet and so thick it caught in the back of the throat. He and Yvette made their way to the door that wasn’t blocked off. They stepped inside, into a different universe of order: it was like being in a library, where everything was meticulously catalogued and stored in its allotted space. Three pairs of ancient shoes, on top of each other; a shelf of round stones; another shelf of bird bones, some of which still had matted feathers stuck to them, a tub of cigarette butts lying side by side, another plastic container with what looked like hair balls. He had time to think, as he passed into the next room, that the woman who lived here must be crazy. And then, for a while, he stared at the thing on the sofa, the naked man sitting upright, in a halo of slow, fat flies.

He was quite slender, and although it was hard to tell, didn’t seem old. His hands were in his lap, as if in modesty, and in one of them was an iced bun; his head was propped up with a pillow so that his open sulphurous eyes stared straight at them and his lopsided, stiffened mouth leered. His skin was a mottled blue, like a cheese left out for too long. Karlsson thought of the acid-washed jeans his little daughter had made him buy for her. He pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to bring her into this setting, even in his mind. Leaning forward, he saw vertical marks striping the man’s torso. He must have been dead for some time, judging not just from the way his skin had darkened where the blood had puddled on the underside of his thighs and buttocks, but also from the smell that was making Yvette Long, standing behind Karlsson, breathe in shallow, hoarse gasps. There were two full cups of tea by his left foot, which was curled upwards at an unnatural angle, the toes splayed. He had a comb stuck into his light brown hair, and lipstick on his mouth.

‘Obviously he’s been here some time.’ Karlsson’s voice sounded calmer than he had expected. ‘It’s warm in the room. That hasn’t helped.’

Yvette made a noise that might have been agreement.

Karlsson forced himself to look more closely at the mottled, puffy flesh. He waved Yvette over. ‘Look,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘At his left hand.’

The tip of the middle finger was missing from above the knuckle.

‘It could be a deformity.’

‘It looks to me like it’s been cut off and the wound hasn’t healed properly,’ said Karlsson.

Yvette swallowed before she spoke. She absolutely wasn’t going to be sick. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to tell. It looks a bit mushy but it could be …’

‘General decomposition,’ said Karlsson.

‘Yes.’

‘Which is happening at an advanced rate because of the heat.’

‘Chris said the bar-fire was on when they arrived.’

‘The autopsy should tell us. They’ll need to get a move on.’

Karlsson looked at the cracked window and its rotting sill, the thin orange curtains. There were things that Michelle Doyce had collected and ordered: a cardboard box of balled-up, obviously soiled tissues; a drawer full of bottle-tops, colour-coded; a jam jar containing nail clippings, small yellowing crescents. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘Talk to her and the woman who found him. We can come back later, when he’s been taken away.’

As they left, the forensic team arrived, with their lights and cameras, face masks, chemicals and general air of professional competence. Karlsson felt relieved. They would take away the horror, turn the ghastly room boiling with flies into a well-lit laboratory where the objects would become data and be classified.

‘What a way to go,’ he said, as they went back outside.

‘Who the hell is he?’

‘That’s where we start.’