Nicci French: Waiting for Wednesday

The house was in Chalk Farm, a couple of streets away from the noise of Camden Lock. There was an ambulance outside and several police cars. A tape had already been put up and a few passers-by had stopped to stare.

Detective Constable Yvette Long ducked under the tape and looked at the house, a late-Victorian semi, with a small front garden and a bay window. She was about to go inside when she saw Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson stepping out of a car and waited for him. He seemed serious, preoccupied, until he noticed her and gave a nod.

‘Have you been inside yet?’

‘I just arrived,’ said Yvette. She paused for a moment, then blurted out, ‘It’s funny seeing you without Frieda.’

Karlsson’s expression turned harsh. ‘So you’re pleased she’s not helping us out.’

‘I … I didn’t mean that.’

‘I know you had problems with her being around,’ said Karlsson, ‘but that’s been sorted. The chief decided that she was out and she almost got killed in the process. Is that the bit that seemed funny?’

Yvette blushed and didn’t reply.

‘Have you been to see her?’ Karlsson asked.

‘I went to the hospital.’

‘That’s not enough. You should talk to her. But meanwhile …’

He gestured towards the house and they walked in. It was full of people in plastic overshoes, wearing overalls and gloves. They spoke in hushed voices or were silent. Karlsson and Yvette pulled on their shoes and gloves and walked down the hall, past a handbag lying on the boards, past a photograph in a smashed frame, past a man dusting for fingerprints, into the living room, where spotlights had been rigged up.

The dead woman lay under the lights as if she was on stage. She was on her back. One arm was flung out, the other lay by her side, the hand in a half-fist. Her hair was brown, going grey. Her mouth was smashed open so it looked like an animal’s demented snarl, but from where he stood, gazing down at her, Karlsson could see a filling glinting among the splintered teeth. On one side of her face, the skin was quite smooth, but sometimes death uncreases wrinkles, takes away the marks that life has made and adds its own. Her neck had the wrinkles of middle-age.

Her right eye was open, staring. The left side of the woman’s head had been caved in, sticky with liquid and bits of bone. Blood soaked into the beige carpet around her, had dried in splashes all over the floor and sprayed the nearest wall, turning the middle-class living room into an abattoir.

‘Someone hit her hard,’ murmured Karlsson, straightening up.

‘Burglary,’ said a voice behind him. Karlsson looked round. A detective was standing at his back, slightly too close. He was very young, pimply, with a slightly uneasy smile on his face.

‘What?’ said Karlsson. ‘Who are you?’

‘Riley,’ said the officer.

‘You said something.’

‘Burglary,’ said Riley. ‘He was caught in the act and he lashed out.’

Riley noticed Karlsson’s expression and his smile melted away. ‘I was thinking aloud,’ he said. ‘I was trying to be positive. And proactive.’

‘Proactive,’ said Karlsson. ‘I thought we might examine the crime scene, search for prints, hair and fibres, take some statements before deciding what happened. If that’s all right with you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’

‘Boss.’ Chris Munster had come into the room. He stood for a moment, gazing at the body.

‘What do we know, Chris?’

It took an effort for Munster to shift his attention back to Karlsson. ‘You don’t get used to it,’ he said.

‘Try to,’ said Karlsson. ‘The family don’t need you to do their suffering for them.’

‘Right,’ said Munster, consulting his notebook. ‘Her name is Ruth Lennox. She was a health visitor for the local authority. You know, old people, new mothers, that sort of thing. Forty-four years old, married, three kids. The youngest daughter discovered her when she came back from school at about half past five.’

‘Is she here?’

‘Upstairs, with the father and the other two kids.’

‘Any estimate of time of death?’

‘After midday, before six o’clock.’

‘That’s not much use.’

‘I’m just repeating what Dr Heath told me. He was saying that it was a heated house, warm day, sun through the window. It’s not an exact science.’

‘Fine. Murder weapon?’

Munster shrugged. ‘Something heavy, Dr Heath said. With a sharp edge but not a blade.’

‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘Is someone getting the family’s prints?’

‘I’ll check.’

‘Anything stolen?’ asked Yvette.

Karlsson glanced at her. It was the first time she’d spoken in the house. Her tone still sounded shaky. He’d probably been too hard on her.

‘The husband’s in a state of shock,’ said Munster. ‘But it looks like her wallet’s been emptied.’

‘I’d better talk to them. Upstairs, you say?’

‘In the study. First room you come to up the stairs, next to the bathroom. Melanie Hackett’s with them.’

‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘There was a detective used to work round here, Harry Curzon. I think he retired. Could you get his number for me? The local police will know him.’

‘What do you want him for?’

‘He knows the area. He might save us some trouble.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘And have a word with young Riley here. He already knows what happened.’ Karlsson turned to Yvette and signalled her to follow him up the stairs.At the door he paused and listened. He could hear no sound at all. He hated this bit. Often people blamed him because he was the bearer of bad news and at the same time clung to him because he promised some kind of solution. And this was a whole family. Three kids, Munster had said. Poor sods. She looked like she’d been a nice woman, he thought.

‘Ready?’

Yvette nodded and he knocked on the door, three times, then pushed it open.

The father was sitting in a swivel chair, rotating this way and that. He still wore his outdoor jacket and a cotton scarf tied round his neck. His jowly face was white with mottled red patches on his cheeks, as if he’d just come in from the cold, and he kept blinking as if he had dust in his eyes, licking his lips, pulling the lobe of one ear. On the floor at his feet the younger daughter – the one who’d found Ruth Lennox – was curled in a foetal ball. She was hiccuping and retching and snuffling and gulping. Karlsson thought she sounded like a wounded animal. He couldn’t see what she looked like, only that she was skinny and had brown hair in unravelling plaits. The father put a helpless hand on her shoulder, then drew it back.

The other daughter, who looked fifteen or sixteen, sat across from them, her legs folded under her and her arms clasped around her body, as though she wanted to make herself as warm and as small as possible. She had chestnut curls and her father’s round face, with full red lips and freckles over the bridge of her nose. She had mascara smeared around one of her blue eyes, but not the other, which gave her an artificial look, clown-like, and yet Karlsson could see at once that she had a sultry attractiveness that even the ruined makeup and her chalky pallor couldn’t mask. She was wearing maroon shorts over black tights, a T-shirt with a logo he didn’t recognize. She stared at Karlsson when he entered, chewing her lower lip furiously.

The boy sat in the corner, his knees pulled sharply up to his chin, his face hidden by a mop of dark blond hair. Every so often he gave a violent shiver but didn’t lift his head, even when Karlsson introduced himself.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Karlsson said. ‘But I’m here to help and I’ll need to ask some questions.’