Nicci French - Waiting for Wednesday

‘Why?’ whispered the father. ‘Why would anyone kill Ruth?’

At this, a sound broke from the older girl, a sob.

‘Your younger daughter found her,’ said Karlsson, gently. ‘Is that right?’

‘Dora. Yes.’ He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘What’s that going to do to her?’

‘Mr Lennox,’ said Yvette, ‘there are people who can help you with that …’

‘Russell. Nobody calls me Mr Lennox.’

‘We need to talk to Dora about what she saw.’

The wailing from the small shape on the floor continued. Yvette looked helplessly at Karlsson.

‘You can be with your father,’ said Karlsson, leaning down towards Dora. ‘Or if you’d prefer to speak to a woman, not a man, then …’

‘She doesn’t want to,’ said the older sister. ‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Karlsson.

‘Judith.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘Fifteen. Does that help?’ She glared at Karlsson out of her unnerving blue eyes.

‘It’s a terrible thing,’ said Karlsson. ‘But we need to know everything. Then we can find the person who did this.’

The boy suddenly jerked up his head. He struggled to his feet and stood by the door, tall and gangly. He had his mother’s grey eyes. ‘Is she still there?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Ted,’ said Russell Lennox, in a soothing tone, moving towards him and holding out his hand. ‘Ted, it’s OK.’

‘My mother.’ The boy kept his eyes fixed on Karlsson. ‘Is she still there?’

‘Yes.’

The boy tugged the door open and ran down the stairs. Karlsson raced after him but didn’t get there in time. The roar ripped through the house.

‘No, no, no,’ Ted was shouting. He was on his knees beside his mother’s body. Karlsson put his arm round the boy and lifted him up, back and out of the room.

‘It’s all right, Ted.’

Karlsson turned. A woman had come in through the front door. She was solid, in her late thirties, with short, dark brown hair in an old-fashioned bob and wearing a knee-length tweed skirt; she also had something in a yellow sling around her chest. Karlsson saw that it was a very small baby, its bald head poking out of the top and two tiny feet sticking out at the bottom. The woman looked at Russell, her eyes bright. ‘I came at once,’ she said. ‘What a terrible, terrible thing.’

She walked across to Russell, who had followed his son down the stairs, and gave him a long hug, made awkward and arms’ length by the baby wedged in between them. Russell’s face stared out over her shoulder, helpless. She looked round at Karlsson.

‘I’m Ruth’s sister,’ she said. The bundle at her chest shifted and gave a whimper; she patted it with a clucking sound.

She had that excited calm that some people get in an emergency. Karlsson had seen it before. Disasters attracted people. Relatives, friends, neighbours gathered to help or give sympathy or just to be part of it in some way, to warm themselves in its terrible glow.

‘This is Louise,’ said Russell. ‘Louise Weller. I rang people in the family. Before they heard it from someone else.’

‘We’re conducting an interview,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s appropriate you should be here. This is a crime scene.’

‘Nonsense. I’m here to help,’ said Louise, firmly. ‘This is about my sister.’ Her face was pale, except for spots of red on her cheekbones. ‘My other two are in the car. I’ll get them in a minute and put them somewhere out of the way. But tell me first, what happened?’

Karlsson hesitated a moment, then shrugged. ‘I’ll give you all a few minutes together. Then, when you’re ready, we can talk.’

He guided them up the stairs and gestured to Yvette to follow him out of the room. ‘On top of everything else,’ he said, ‘they’ll need to move out for a few days. Can you mention it to them? Tactfully? Maybe there’s a neighbour or friends nearby.’ He saw Riley coming up the stairs.

‘There’s someone to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘He says you know him.’

‘Who is he?’ said Karlsson.

‘Dr Bradshaw,’ said Riley. ‘He doesn’t look like a policeman.’

‘He’s not,’ said Karlsson. ‘He’s a sort of consultant. Anyway, what does it matter what he looks like? We’d better let him in, give him a chance to earn his money.’

As Karlsson walked down the stairs and saw Hal Bradshaw waiting in the hall, he saw what Riley meant. He didn’t look like a detective. He wore a grey suit, with just a speckle of yellowish colour to it, and an open-necked white shirt. Karlsson particularly noticed his fawn suede shoes and his large, heavy-framed spectacles. He gave Karlsson a nod of recognition.

‘How did you even hear about this?’ Karlsson asked.

‘It’s a new arrangement. I like to get here when the scene is still fresh. The quicker I get here, the more useful I can be.’

‘Nobody told me that,’ said Karlsson.

Bradshaw didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was looking around thoughtfully. ‘Is your friend here?’

‘Which friend?’

‘Dr Klein,’ he said. ‘Frieda Klein. I expected to find her here, sniffing around.’

Hal Bradshaw and Frieda had worked on the same case, in which Frieda had very nearly been killed. A man had been found lying naked and decomposing in the flat of a disturbed woman, Michelle Doyce. Bradshaw had been convinced that she had killed the man; Frieda had heard in the woman’s meandering words some kind of sense, a distracted straining towards the truth. Gradually she and Karlsson had pieced together the man’s identity: he was a con man who had left behind him many victims, each with motives for revenge. Frieda’s methods – unorthodox and instinctive – and her actions, which could be obsessive and self-destructive, had led to her dismissal during the last round of cuts. But clearly this wasn’t enough for Bradshaw. She had made him look stupid and now he wanted to destroy her. Karlsson thought of all of this. Then he thought of a dead woman lying a few feet away, and a family grieving, and swallowed his angry words.

‘Dr Klein’s not working for us any more.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Bradshaw, cheerfully. ‘That’s right. Things didn’t go very well at the end of that last case.’

‘It depends what you mean by “well”,’ Karlsson said. ‘Three murderers were caught.’

Bradshaw pulled a face. ‘If the consultant ends up in a knife fight and then spends a month in intensive care, that’s not exactly an example of success. In my book, at least.’

Karlsson was on the point of saying something but again he remembered where he was.

‘This is hardly the place,’ he said coolly. ‘A mother has been murdered. Her family are upstairs.’

Bradshaw held up a hand. ‘Shall we stop talking and go through?’

‘I wasn’t the one talking.’

Bradshaw stepped inside and took a deep breath, as if he were appraising the aroma of the room. He moved towards the body of Ruth Lennox, treading delicately to avoid the pool of blood. He looked towards Karlsson. ‘You know, blundering into a crime scene and being attacked, doesn’t count as solving a crime.’

‘Are we talking about Frieda again?’ said Karlsson.

‘Her mistake is to get emotionally involved,’ he said. ‘I heard she slept with the man who was arrested.’

‘She didn’t sleep with him,’ said Karlsson, coldly. ‘She met him socially. Because she was suspicious of him.’

Bradshaw looked at Karlsson with a half-smile. ‘Does that trouble you?’

‘I’ll tell you what troubles me,’ said Karlsson. ‘It troubles me that you seem to feel competitive with Frieda Klein.’

‘Me? No, no, no. Simply concerned for a colleague who seems to have lost her bearings.’ He gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘I feel very sorry for her. I hear she’s depressed.’