Nicci French: Waiting for Wednesday

‘I thought you’d come to look at a murder scene. If you want to discuss an earlier case, we should go somewhere else.’

Bradshaw shook his head. ‘Don’t you think this is like a work of art?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘We need to think, what is he trying to express? What is he telling the world?’

‘Maybe I should just leave you to it,’ said Karlsson.

‘I imagine that you think this is a simple burglary gone wrong.’

‘I’m trying to avoid quick conclusions,’ said Karlsson. ‘We’re gathering evidence. Theories can come later.’

Bradshaw shook his head again. ‘That’s the wrong way round. Without a theory, data is just chaos. You should always be open to your first impressions.’

‘So what’s your first impression?’

‘I’ll be delivering a written report,’ said Bradshaw, ‘but I’ll give you a free preview. A burglary isn’t just a burglary.’

‘You’ll have to explain that to me.’

Bradshaw made an expansive gesture. ‘Look around you. A burglary is an invasion of a home, a violation, a rape. This man was expressing anger against a whole area of life that was closed to him, an area of property and family ties and social status. And when he encountered this woman, she personified everything that he couldn’t have – she was at the same time a well-off woman, a desirable woman, a mother, a wife. He could have run away, he could have struck her a simple blow, but he’s left us a message, just as he left her a message. The injuries were directed to her face, rather than to her body. Look at the splashes of blood on the wall, so out of proportion to anything that was needed. He was trying to literally wipe an expression off her face, an expression of superiority. He was redecorating the room with her blood. It was almost a kind of love.’

‘A strange kind of love,’ said Karlsson.

‘That’s why it had to be so savage,’ said Bradshaw. ‘If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have to do something so extreme. It wouldn’t matter. This has an emotional intensity.’

‘So who are we looking for?’

Bradshaw closed his eyes before he spoke, as if he was seeing something nobody else could see.

‘White,’ he said. ‘Early to mid-thirties. Strongly built. Unmarried. Of no fixed abode. No steady job, no steady relationship. No family connections.’ He took out his phone and pointed it in various directions around the room.

‘You need to be careful with those images,’ said Karlsson. ‘Things have a way of ending up online.’

‘I’m cleared for this,’ said Bradshaw. ‘You should take a look at my contract. I’m a criminal psychologist. This is what I do.’

‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘But I think we should leave. The scene-of-crime team need to take over.’

Bradshaw slipped his phone into his jacket pocket. ‘That’s fine. I’m done. Oh, by the way, give Dr Klein my best. Tell her I’ve been thinking of her.’

As they left, they met Louise Weller coming back into the house. The baby was still slung round her, but now she was towing a tiny boy by the hand. At her heels stomped a slightly older girl, stocky like her. Even though she was wearing a pink nightgown, and pushing a toy buggy in which a doll was swaddled, she reminded Karlsson of Yvette.

Louise Weller gave him a brisk nod. ‘Families should rally round,’ she said and, like a general leading a reluctant army, she marched her children into the house.

At twenty-five past three in the morning, when it was no longer night but not yet day, Frieda Klein woke up. Her heart was racing and her mouth was dry, her forehead beaded with sweat. It was hard to swallow or even to breathe. Everything hurt: her legs, her shoulder, her ribs, her face. Old bruises flowered and throbbed. For a few moments she did not open her eyes, and when she did, the darkness pressed down on her and spread out in all directions. She turned her head towards the window. Waiting for Wednesday to end, for the light to come and the dreams to fade.

The waves came, one after another, each worse than the one before, rising up and crashing over her, pulling her under, then spitting her out ready for the next. They were inside her, thrashing through her body and her mind, and they were outside. As she lay there, greyly awake, memories mixed with fading dreams. Faces gleamed in the darkness, hands reached out to her. Frieda tried to hold on to what Sandy had said, night after night, and to haul herself out of the tumult that had invaded her: It’s over. You’re safe. I’m here .

She stretched her hand out to where he should have been lying. But he had gone back to America. She had accompanied him to the airport, dry-eyed and apparently composed even when he gathered her to him with anguish on his face to say goodbye; had watched him go through into Departures until his tall figure was no longer visible; had never told him how close she had come to asking him to stay, or agreeing to go with him. The intimacy of their last few weeks, when she had let herself be cared for and felt her own weakness, had stirred up feelings in her that she had never before experienced. It would be too easy to let them sink back into the depths. It wasn’t the pain of missing that she dreaded but the gradual easing of that pain, busy life filling up the spaces he had left. Sometimes she would sit in her garret-study and sketch his face with a soft-leaded pencil, making herself remember the exact shape of his mouth; the little grooves that time had worn into his skin; the expression in his eyes. Then she would lay down the pencil and let the memory of him wash through her, a slow, deep river inside her.

For a moment, she let herself imagine him beside her – how it would feel to turn her head and see him there. But he was gone, and she was alone in a house that had once felt like a cosy refuge yet, for the last few weeks – since the attack that had nearly killed her – had creaked and whispered. She listened: the pulse of her heart and then, yes, there was a rustle by her door, a faint sound. But it was only the cat, prowling the room. Sometimes, in this pre-dawn limbo, Frieda found it a sinister creature – its two previous owners were dead.

Had something woken her? She had a muffled sense of a sound entering her sleep. Not the distant rumble of traffic that in London never ceases. Something else. Inside the house.

Frieda sat up and listened but heard nothing except the soft wind outside. She swung her feet to the floor, feeling the cat wind its body round her legs, purring, then stood, still weak and nauseous from the night terrors. There had been something, she was certain, something downstairs. She pulled on tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and made her way on to the landing, then, step by step, gripping the banisters, down the stairs, stopping halfway. The house she knew so well had become unfamiliar, full of shadows and secrets. In the hall, she stood and strained to hear but there was nothing, nobody. She turned on the lights, blinking in the sudden dazzle, and then she saw it: a large brown envelope lying on the doormat. She stooped and picked it up. It had her name written in bold letters across it: Frieda Klein. A line slashed underneath diagonally, cutting into the final n .

She stared at the handwriting. She recognized it, and now she knew that he was near – in the street outside, close to her home, to her place of refuge.

In a fever, she pulled on a trenchcoat and pushed her bare feet into the boots by the front door. She took the door key from the hook and then was out into the darkness, cool April breeze in her face, the hint of rain. Frieda stared around the unlit little cobbled mews, but there was no one there and as fast as her sore body would go, she half hobbled and half ran out on the street, where the lamps threw long shadows. She looked up and down it. Which way would he have gone: east or west, north or south, towards the river or up into the maze of streets? Or was he standing in a doorway? She turned left and hurried along the damp pavement, swearing under her breath, cursing her inability to move quickly.