Nicci French - Blue Monday

Today he was thirty-five minutes late. He came staggering blindly over the threshold, like a man who had just escaped from a car crash and was still in shock; his mouth was working but no words came out. Frieda saw that his shoelaces were trailing loose, and that the buttons on his shirt were done up wrongly. She could see his stomach through it, shockingly white. His fingernails were too long and a bit dirty. His thick blond hair needed a wash. He hadn’t shaved recently. Frieda guessed he had been in bed for several days and had only now dragged himself out to get here.

He let himself crumple into the chair facing her, the low table between them. He still hadn’t met her gaze. He stared out of the window at the line of cranes standing suspended in the thickening dusk like ghostly figures, although Frieda wondered if he was actually seeing anything out there. There was a beaten look to him. He was a lovely young man, golden and luminous, but on days like today you couldn’t see that. His face was contorted; the light had gone out of it. He looked bruised and heavy.

Silence filled the room, not anxious but restful, and they sat inside it. This was a place of safety. Joe gave a long sigh and turned his head. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Bad?’ asked Frieda. She pushed the box of tissues towards him.

He nodded.

‘You got here. That’s something.’

He picked a single tissue out of the box and held it softly against his face, dusting it delicately as if it was sore, then dabbed his wet eyes. He screwed up the tissue and put it on the table in a tight wet ball, then took another to repeat the process. He leaned forward and put his face in his hands. He looked up as if to speak, opened his mouth, but no words came, and when Frieda asked if there was something he wanted to say, he shook his head violently, like a beast at bay. At six o’clock, when the time came for him to leave, he hadn’t said a single word.

Frieda stood up and opened the door for him. She watched him blunder down the stairs, his laces flapping, and then she stood at her window and saw him come out on to the street. He walked past a woman who didn’t pay him any special attention. Frieda looked at her watch. She was going out. She needed to get ready. Well, there was no hurry.

Eight hours later Frieda swung her legs out of a bed that wasn’t hers. ‘Is there anything to drink?’ she said.

‘There’s some beer in the fridge,’ said Sandy.

Frieda walked into the kitchen and took a bottle from the fridge door. ‘Is there an opener?’ she called.

‘If we went to your place, you’d know where things were,’ he said. ‘The drawer next to the stove.’

Frieda flipped the top off the beer and walked back into the bedroom of Sandy’s small Barbican flat. She looked out of the window at the lights shimmering in the dark. Her mouth felt dry. She took a sip of the beer and swallowed. ‘If I lived on the fifteenth floor, I’d spend my life looking out of the window. It’s like being on the top of a mountain.’

She walked back to the bed. Sandy was lying wrapped in the tangled sheets. She sat on the edge and gazed down at him. He didn’t look like a Sandy; he had a more Mediterranean appearance, with olive skin and hair that was blue-black like a raven’s wing, except for a few streaks of silver. He held her stare without smiling.

‘Oh, Frieda,’ he said.

Frieda felt that her heart was like some old chest that had been heaved up from the seabed, its barnacled lid prised open after all this time. Who knew what treasures she would find inside? ‘Do you want some beer?’

‘Give me some from your mouth.’

She tipped the bottle and took a swig, then leaned over him, their lips almost touching. She felt the cool liquid trickle into his mouth. He gulped at it, coughed and laughed.

‘It’s probably better from the bottle,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s better from your mouth.’

They smiled at each other, and then the smiles faded. Frieda put her hand on his smooth chest. They started to say something at the same time and both apologized, then tried to speak at the same time again.

‘You first,’ said Frieda.

He touched the side of her face. ‘I wasn’t ready for this,’ he said. ‘It’s happened so quickly.’

‘You make that sound like a bad thing.’

He pulled her down on to the bed beside him and leaned over her, running a hand down her body. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘But I feel I don’t know where I am.’ There was a pause. ‘Say something.’

‘I think I was going to say the same thing. This wasn’t part of the plan.’

Sandy smiled. ‘You have a plan?’

‘Not really. I spend my time helping people sort the story of their lives. Give them a narrative. But I don’t know what mine is. And now I feel I’m being carried away on something. I’m not sure what it is.’

Sandy kissed her on the neck and the cheek, and then deeply, mouth to mouth. ‘Are you going to stay the night?’

‘One day,’ said Frieda. ‘But not now.’

‘And can I come to yours?’

‘One day.’

Detective Constable Yvette Long looked across at her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson. ‘Are you ready for this?’ she said.

‘Does it matter?’ he said, and they stepped outside.

It was the side door of the court but there was no escaping the reporters and the cameras. He tried not to flinch at the lights. It would make him look shifty and defeated when it was shown on the news. He could make out some of the faces from the press gallery over the previous weeks. He heard a muddle of questions being shouted at him.

‘One at a time,’ he said. ‘Mr Carpenter.’ This was addressed to a bald man clutching a microphone.

‘Is the acquittal a personal humiliation or a failure of the system?’

‘I decided on a prosecution in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service. That’s all I’ve got to say.’

A woman put up her hand. She was from one of the quality papers. He couldn’t remember which.

‘You’ve been accused of bringing the case prematurely. What’s your response?’

‘I was in charge of the inquiry. I take full responsibility.’

‘Are you restarting your inquiry?’

‘Investigating officers will consider any new evidence.’

‘Do you think this operation was a waste of manpower and public money?’

‘I thought we assembled a compelling case,’ said Karlsson, trying to suppress a feeling of nausea. ‘The jury apparently disagreed.’

‘Will you resign?’

‘No.’

Later that day there was, following tradition, a wake at the Duke of Westminster pub. A group of officers formed a noisy huddle in the corner, under a display of nautical knots in a glass case. DC Long sat down next to Karlsson. She was holding two glasses of whisky, then saw that he had barely touched the one he already had.

Karlsson looked across at the other officers. ‘They’re in quite a good mood,’ he said. ‘Considering.’

‘Because you took all the blame,’ she said. ‘Which you shouldn’t have done.’

‘That’s my job,’ he said.

Yvette Long looked around and gave a start. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Crawford’s here. The cunt that dropped you in it. He’s actually here.’

Karlsson smiled. He’d never heard her swear before. She must be really angry. The commissioner hovered at the bar, then came over and sat with them. He didn’t notice DC Long glaring at him. He slid a glass of whisky across to Karlsson. ‘Add that to your collection,’ he said. ‘You deserve it.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Karlsson.

‘You took one for the team today,’ Crawford said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice. I know I pushed you. There were political reasons. We needed to be seen to be doing something.’