Waiting for Wednesday (2 page)

TWO

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.’

‘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.