Nicci French: Tuesday's Gone

Karlsson left Yvette talking to Maggie Brennan and went to sit in the car with Michelle Doyce. All he knew about her was that she was fifty-one years old, that she had recently been discharged from hospital after a psychological evaluation that had come to no real conclusions about her mental health, and that she had been living in Howard Street for a month, with no complaints from neighbours. This was the first time Maggie Brennan had visited her: she was standing in for someone else, who wouldn’t have paid a visit because she had been on sick leave since last October.

‘Michelle Doyce?’

She looked at him with eyes that were very pale, almost like the eyes of a blind person, but didn’t reply.

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson.’ He waited. She blinked. ‘A police officer,’ he added.

‘Have you come a long way?’

‘No, I haven’t. But I need to ask you some questions.’

‘I have come a very long way. You may well ask.’

‘This is important.’

‘Yes. I know it.’

‘The man in your flat.’

‘I’ve been entertaining him.’

‘He’s dead, Michelle.’

‘I cleaned his teeth for him. Not many friends can say that about their guests. And he sang for me. Like the sounds of the river at night, when the dog has stopped barking and the shouting and crying dies down.’

‘Michelle, he’s dead. The man in your flat is dead. We need to find out how he died. Can you tell me his name?’

‘Name?’

‘Yes. Who is he? Was he?’

She looked puzzled. ‘Why do you need a name? You can ask him.’

‘This is a serious matter. Who is he?’

She stared at him: a strong, pale woman with uncanny eyes and large reddened hands that floated in vague gestures when she spoke.

‘Did he die in your flat, Michelle? Was it an accident?’

‘One of your teeth is chipped. I am quite fond of teeth, you know. I have all my old teeth under my pillow, just in case they come, and a few of other people’s, but that’s rare. You don’t find them so often.’

‘Can you understand what I’m asking you?’

‘Does he want to leave me?’

‘He’s dead.’ Karlsson wanted to shout it, to use the word like a stone that would shatter her incomprehension, but he kept his voice calm.

‘Everyone goes in the end. Though I work so hard.’

‘How did he die?’

She started to mumble words he couldn’t make out.

Chris Munster was making a preliminary assessment of the rest of the house. It repulsed him. It didn’t feel like a criminal investigation at all: it was about people who were hopeless, who had slipped through the cracks. This upstairs room was full of needles: hundreds, no, thousands of used needles covering the floor so at first he’d thought it was some kind of pattern. Dog shit here too, most of it old and hardened. Bloodstained rags. One thin mattress with nasty stains near the middle. Right now, he didn’t care who’d killed the man downstairs. He just wanted to empty everyone out of this house, torch it and get out, breathe some clean air, the colder the better. He felt dirty all over, outside and in. How could people live like this? That fat man with the red-veined eyes and the livid skin of the drunk, hardly able to speak, hardly able to balance his bulk on his small feet. Or the skinny dog-owning one, with his punctured arms and scabby face, who grinned and scratched himself and bobbed around: was this his room and were these his needles? Or maybe it was the dead man’s room. That was probably it. The dead man would turn out to be part of this household from Hell. Fucking landlord. They’d been pushed in here, the hopeless misfits, the ones society didn’t know how to deal with, had no money to treat and abandoned so that now the police had to clear up the mess. If the public knew, he thought, his feet in their heavy boots sliding among the syringes, if they knew how some people lived and how they died.

Karlsson was on his way into the case meeting when he met Commissioner Crawford in the corridor. He was in conversation with a tall young man who was wearing a shiny blue suit and a brightly patterned orange and green tie. He had slightly oversized black-framed glasses. Everything about him, from his strictly parted hair to his pointy green leather shoes, seemed to signal a degree of irony.

‘Mal,’ said the commissioner, ‘have you got a moment?’

Karlsson held up the file he was carrying.

‘Is it that body in Deptford?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure it’s a murder?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Then why are you handling it?’

‘Nobody can make any sense of it,’ said Karlsson. ‘We’re trying to decide what to do.’

The commissioner gave a nervous laugh and turned to the other man. ‘He’s not always like this,’ he said.

The commissioner was expecting some sort of joshing retort from Karlsson but he didn’t get one and there was an awkward silence.

‘This is Jacob Newton,’ said the commissioner. ‘And this is DCI Karlsson, the man I was telling you about. He’s the one who got the Faraday boy back.’

The two men shook hands.

‘Call me Jake,’ said the man.

‘Jake’s going to be around for a few days, looking at procedures, structures, that sort of thing.’

Karlsson was puzzled. ‘Are you from the Met?’

The man smiled, as if Karlsson had said something unintentionally amusing.

‘No, no,’ said the commissioner. ‘Jake’s from McGill Hutton. You know, the management consultancy.’

‘I don’t,’ said Karlsson.

‘It’s always useful to have a fresh pair of eyes. We can all learn lessons, especially in these days of budget reorientation.’

‘You mean “cuts”?’

‘We’re all in this together, Mal.’

There was another silence that lasted just a little too long.

‘They’re waiting for me,’ said Karlsson.

‘Mind if I come along?’ said Newton.

Karlsson looked quizzically at the commissioner.

‘He’s got a free hand,’ said Crawford. ‘Go anywhere, see anything.’ He clapped Karlsson on the back. ‘It’s not as if we’ve got anything to hide, is it? You can show Jake what a lean team you run.’

Karlsson looked at Newton. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Join the tour.’

Yvette Long and Chris Munster were sitting at a desk drinking coffee. Karlsson introduced Newton, who told them to pretend he wasn’t there. They immediately looked ill at ease and self-conscious.

‘Anyone else coming?’ Karlsson asked, and Yvette shook her head.

‘Autopsy’s this afternoon,’ said Karlsson. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it was a heart attack?’

‘You thought he might have been strangled,’ said Yvette.

‘I can hope, can’t I?’ said Karlsson.

‘It’s the dog I feel sorry for,’ said Munster. ‘These guys, they live in shit, they can’t hold down a job, but they’ve always got a bloody dog.’

‘From the fact that I haven’t heard anything,’ said Karlsson, ‘I’m assuming that the deceased has not been identified as one of the other residents.’

‘All accounted for,’ said Munster. He picked up his notebook. ‘Lisa Bolianis. Aged about forty, I think. Apparent drink problem. I talked to her. Not very coherent. She said she’d seen Michelle Doyce once or twice. Never with anyone else.’ He pulled a face. ‘I don’t get the impression that these housemates are meeting much around the barbecue. Michael Reilly – our dog owner. Got out of prison in November. Three and half years for possession and distribution of a class-A substance. He said he’d nodded to her in the hall. She didn’t care much for his dog. He didn’t see her with anyone either.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘She collected things. She’d come back with bagfuls of stuff she’d bought or found or whatever.’