Nicci French: Waiting for Wednesday

‘What are you doing here? Couldn’t keep away?’

‘Hello, Ted.’

Ted jerked his head at Dora. ‘Louise wants you.’

Dora got to her feet, still holding Frieda’s hand. ‘Will you come and see us?’ she asked urgently.

‘Yes.’

‘Promise.’

‘I promise.’

The girl left the room and Frieda was left with Ted. She held up his portfolio. ‘I’ve brought you this.’

‘You thought I might be worrying about where it was? I’ve had other things on my mind.’

‘I know. DCI Karlsson told me that your father has confessed to the manslaughter of Zach Greene and he’s under suspicion of murdering your mother.’

His face twisted violently and he turned away from her. His thin, dirty figure reeked of misery and wretchedness.

‘I’ve also been told that Elaine Kerrigan has confessed, though I think she might be trying to protect her sons.’

‘Jesus,’ he muttered.

‘I’d like to say something, but maybe we can get out of here for a bit,’ suggested Frieda.

‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘Please.’

They went outside together. Frieda thought she saw a face staring at them out of a high window, but perhaps she was imagining things. She waited until they turned off the road on to a narrower street, which ran along a deserted playground and then beside a small grey church, before speaking.

‘I was looking at your art,’ she said. ‘You’re good.’

‘That’s what my mum used to say. “Ted, you’ve got a gift.” Is that what you’ve come to tell me?’

‘I saw the still-life you did for your mock exam. On the morning your mother died.’

Ted said nothing. They continued walking in silence down the street. It felt like everybody had gone away and only they were left.

‘There was a strange object I didn’t recognize at first,’ said Frieda. Her voice sounded dry and scratchy. She cleared her throat. ‘You’d drawn it from an interesting angle, so it took me some time to see what it was. I went to the evidence room to check.’

Ted had slowed. He dragged his feet as though they were too heavy for him.

‘You can only see the cog as it appears in your drawing if you tip it sideways and back. Then it flattens out, into what looks more like a ruler.’

‘Yes,’ said Ted, in what sounded more like a shudder than a word. ‘We had riddle books like that when I was a boy. I used to love them. I Spy …’

Frieda put her hand on Ted’s shoulder and he looked at her. ‘Your father knew you’d taken the cog to school that morning. When it turned up as the murder weapon, he knew it couldn’t have been there until you brought it back.’

‘He never said.’ Ted spoke in a dull voice. ‘I thought it could be all right, that nobody would ever know.’

‘You discovered about your mother’s affair?’

‘I’d suspected for ages,’ Ted said drearily. ‘I followed her that day, on my bike. I saw her go to the flat and a man open the door. I left her there and I wandered around for ages, in a kind of fog. I couldn’t really think and I felt sick. I thought I would be sick. I went home and I was putting the fucking cog back on the mantelpiece when she came in.’ He put one hand up to his face for a moment, touching his skin. ‘When I was little, I thought she was the best person in the whole wide world. Safe and kind. She’d tuck me into bed every night and she always had the same smell. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I knew she knew that I’d found out. She didn’t say anything at once, and then she gave me this odd little smile. So I swung the thing in my hand and it hit her, smack, on the side of her head. I can still hear the sound it made. Loud and dull. For one moment, it seemed like nothing had happened and she was still looking at me and I was looking at her and there was this funny smile on her face and then – she seemed to explode in front of my eyes. Blood everywhere and she didn’t look like my mother any more. She was lying on the floor and her face was mashed up and I was still holding the cog and it was all …’

‘So you ran away.’

‘I went to the park and I was sick. I was so sick and I’ve felt sick ever since. Every moment. Nothing takes the taste away.’

‘And then Judith gave you an alibi?’

‘I was going to confess. What else could I do? But then the murder weapon had gone and everyone was saying it was a burglary gone wrong and Judith was begging me to say I’d been with her that afternoon. So I went along with it. I didn’t work anything out in advance.’

‘You do understand that your father planned Zach’s murder, don’t you, Ted? It wasn’t manslaughter. It was murder. Once Judith came to him and told him about her affair and that she’d been with Zach on the day your mother died, he knew your alibi would be broken. Zach would say he’d been with Judith that afternoon.’

‘He killed Zach to save me,’ said Ted, in a low voice.

‘If he wasn’t caught, your alibi was safe. If he was, he could say he did it in an argument.’

‘What will happen to him now?’

‘I don’t know, Ted.’

‘Is he going to say he killed Mum as well, to save me?’

‘I think he will if he has to. It’s all a bit of a muddle at the moment, because of Elaine Kerrigan’s intervention.’

‘Will you tell the police?’

‘No,’ said Frieda, thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Why?’

Frieda stopped and turned to him. She looked at him with her dark eyes. ‘Because you are going to.’

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t … I never meant to … I can’t.’

‘What’s it been like?’ said Frieda. ‘These last weeks.’

‘Like being in hell,’ he said, the words barely audible.

‘That’s where you’ll be for ever, unless you speak the truth.’

‘How can I? My mother. I killed my mother.’ He jerked to a pause, and then dragged the words back again. ‘I killed my mother. I can see her face.’ He repeated the words wildly: ‘I can see her face, her smashed-in face. All the time.’

‘This is the only way. It won’t make things better. You will always be the person who killed his mother. You will always carry that with you, until the day you die. But you have to admit what you did.’

‘Will I go to prison?’

‘Does that matter?’

‘I wish I could tell her –’

‘What would you tell her?’

‘That I love her. That I’m sorry.’

‘You can tell her.’

The street had swung round in a crescent and now they were back on the road where Louise Weller lived. Ted stopped and drew a deep, unsteady breath.

‘We don’t need to go back in there,’ said Frieda. ‘We can just go to the station.’

He stared at her, his young face stricken with dread. ‘Will you come with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because I don’t think I can do it alone.’

Frieda had walked through London many times, but she couldn’t remember a walk so ghostly and so strange. It felt that crowds separated as they passed, and their footsteps rang out in the fugitive grey light. After a while, she put her arm through Ted’s and he drew closer to her, like a child with his mother. She thought of Judith and Dora in that dark, tidy, airless house, their father locked away, their brother too – this young, horror-struck man. Everyone alone in their own terror and grief.

At last they were there. Ted drew apart from her. Beads of sweat had sprung up on his forehead and there was a dazed expression on his face. Frieda put a hand on the small of his back.

‘This is it,’ she said. And they went inside together.

Karlsson had just gone back in to Russell Lennox when Yvette put her head round the door and beckoned him out again.