Nicci French: Waiting for Wednesday

‘Frieda!’ There was no mistaking the warmth of his voice.

‘Hello.’

‘I’ve been thinking of you.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘In my office. Five hours behind you.’

‘What are you wearing?’

‘A grey suit. A white shirt. You?’

Frieda looked down at her clothes. ‘Jeans and a creamy-brown jumper.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Sitting on my bed.’

‘I wish I was sitting on your bed too.’

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes. I dreamed I was ice-skating. Did you?’

‘Dream I was ice-skating?’

‘Sleep well.’

‘All right.’

‘So you didn’t.’

‘Sandy?’ She wanted to tell him about her day but the words wouldn’t come. He was too far away.

‘Yes, my very darling Frieda.’

‘I hate this.’

‘This?’

‘All of it.’

‘Feeling weak, you mean?’

‘That too.’

‘Me being here?’ There was a pause. ‘What’s that noise? Is there a thunderstorm going on?’

‘What?’ Frieda looked around and then realized. She’d almost stopped hearing the sound herself. ‘There’s a new bath being put in.’

‘A new bath?’

‘It wasn’t exactly my idea. In fact, it wasn’t my idea at all. It’s a present from Josef.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘The bath hasn’t arrived yet. So far there’s just lots of banging and drilling going on. There’s dust everywhere. Including on several shirts – you left them here.’

‘I know.’

‘And some kitchen stuff, and a few books by the bed.’

‘That’s because I’m coming back.’

‘Right.’

‘Frieda, I’m coming back.’

‘Is that Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Constable Fogle from Camden. I’ve a Mr Russell Lennox with me.’

‘Russell Lennox?’ Karlsson blinked. ‘Why on earth?’

‘He’s been involved in an affray.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would he be involved in an affray? The poor man’s wife’s just been murdered.’

‘He seems to have caused some criminal damage. At a Burgess and Son.’

‘Ah.’

He broke a window, not to mention several pieces of china that the owner seems to think might be worth a good deal, and was also somewhat threatening.’

‘I’m on my way. Treat him gently, will you?’

Russell Lennox was in a small interview room, sitting with his hands plaited together on the table and staring ahead, blinking every so often as if to clear his vision. When Karlsson came in with the uniformed officer who had called him, Lennox turned his head. For a few moments it seemed that he didn’t recognize the detective.

‘I’ve come to take you home,’ said Karlsson, lowering himself into the chair opposite. ‘You know that you could be prosecuted for affray, assault, whatever?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Would that help your children?’

Lennox just stared at the table surface and didn’t reply.

‘So you went back to Burgess and Son?’

Lennox gave a faint nod. ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head. Anyway, what else am I supposed to do with my time? Ruth’s sister Louise is with the children and they don’t want to see me upset on top of everything else. So, I walked over there, just to check. I saw this fork.’

‘One fork?’ said Karlsson, doubtfully.

‘Ruth’s godmother gave them to us when we got married. I didn’t care about them or notice them, really, but this one had a bent spike. That’s how I recognized it. Judith used to get angry if she was given it at meals. She said it stabbed her gums. I went inside and asked to see it. Then things got out of hand.’ He looked up at Karlsson. ‘I’m not a violent man.’

‘I think there might be some argument about that,’ said Karlsson.

Jeremy Burgess, the owner of Burgess and Son, was small, skinny, with the wariness of someone who had spent years never quite getting anything pinned on him. Karlsson was leaning over a glass counter crammed with medals, old necklaces, cigarette cases, dented snuff boxes, thimbles and small silver boxes, glittery clip-on earrings and oversized cuff links. He took the fork with its crooked tine and laid it on the glass.

‘Where did this come from?’ he asked.

Burgess gestured helplessly. ‘I just pay in cash for little things like that.’

‘I need to know, Mr Burgess.’

‘I’m the one who was attacked. What’s happening about that? I’m just trying to run a business.’

‘Shut up,’ said Karlsson. ‘I know about your business. If the local police aren’t bothered, that’s their affair. But this is evidence in a murder inquiry, and if you don’t co-operate, then I will make your life very difficult indeed.’

Burgess glanced uneasily at two women on the other side of the shop who were poring over a tray of rings. He leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. ‘I’m just a businessman,’ he said.

‘Give me a name and I’ll go away. Otherwise I’ll send some officers round here to go through this piece by piece.’

‘Billy.’

‘Billy who?’

‘Billy. Young, dark-haired, thin. That’s all I know.’

Curzon’s voice kept coming and going. He explained that the reception was bad out there on the river. ‘Hunt,’ he said. ‘Billy Hunt.’

‘You know him?’

‘We all know Billy.’

‘Does he have a record?’

‘Robbery, possession, this and that.’

‘Violence?’

‘He’s a bit of wimp, our Billy,’ said Curzon, ‘but he may have gone downhill. I mean even further downhill.’

Karlsson put Riley on to it. Curzon didn’t have an address or a number for Billy Hunt but there were a couple of officers who’d been dealing with the local drug scene. They’d probably know, said Curzon. They hadn’t seen Hunt for some time but one of them remembered he’d once worked on a stall in Camden Lock. Selling implements made out of wire. Candlesticks. Little dogs for the mantelpiece. The stall was gone but a woman who’d worked on it was now at the other end of the market, near the canal, selling hot soup. She didn’t know Billy but the guy who used to run the wire stall lived in a flat in Summertown. He was out at night mostly and slept during the day. It took repeated banging at the front door (the knocker was missing and the bell didn’t seem to make a sound) before a woman appeared and, at their request, went to wake him up. He hadn’t seen Billy for a couple of weeks, but he used to drop by a café in the high street or the pub next to it when he had any money.

Nobody seemed to know him in the café, but when Riley showed his badge to the pale young woman behind the bar in the pub, she pointed him to two men sitting drinking at a table. Yes, they knew Billy Hunt. Yes, one of them had seen him today. What had they talked about? Nothing much. Just to say hello. Where was he? That other pub. Which other one? The one up Kentish Town Road, the Goth one, the one with the skulls.

Riley walked up Camden High Street and found Munster parked outside Camden Town tube station. He got into the car beside him.

‘What’s the plan?’ he said.

‘Plan?’ said Munster. ‘Find him. And then talk to him.’

‘Are we bringing him in?’

‘We’ll talk to him first.’

The car pulled up before reaching the pub. Munster gazed up at the black façade and shook his head with distaste.

‘I used to like heavy metal when I was a kid,’ said Riley. ‘I’d have loved this place.’

‘When you were a kid?’ said Munster. ‘Right. Do we know what he looks like?’

Two young women, dressed from head to foot in black leather, both with shaved heads and multiple piercings, were seated at a table outside.