Waiting for Wednesday

FIFTY-SIX

Frieda was dreaming about Sandy. He was smiling at her and holding out his hand to her, and then Frieda, in her dream, realized it wasn’t Sandy at all – that it was actually Dean’s face, Dean’s soft smile. She woke with a lurch and lay for several minutes, taking deep breaths and waiting for the dread to subside.

At last, she rose, showered, and went into the kitchen. Chloë was already sitting at the table. There was a mug of untouched tea and what looked like a large album in front of her. She was bedraggled, her hair unbrushed and her face grimy with yesterday’s mascara. She looked as though she had hardly slept for nights. She was like an abandoned waif – her mother was going through a messy crisis and barely thought about her, her friends had been taken away from her, and her aunt had absented herself at her time of need. She lifted her smudged, tear-stained face and stared blindly at her.

Frieda took a seat opposite her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I guess.’

‘Can I get you some breakfast?’

‘No. I’m not hungry. Oh, God, Frieda, I can’t stop thinking about it all.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I was lying in bed and I kept imagining what they were feeling at that very moment. They’ve lost everything. Their mother, their father, their belief in their past happiness. How do they ever get back to an ordinary kind of life after this?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about you?’

‘I didn’t sleep so well either. I was thinking about things.’ Frieda walked across the kitchen and filled the kettle. She looked at her niece, who had her head propped on her hand and was dreamily staring at the pages of the album in front of her.

‘What is that?’ she asked.

‘Ted left his portfolio. I’ll give it back to him but first I’ve been looking through it. He’s an amazing artist. I wish I was just a tenth, a hundredth as good as he is. I wish –’ She stopped and bit her lip.

‘Chloë. This has been hard for you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said harshly. ‘I know he just thinks of me as a friend. A shoulder to cry on. Not that he does cry on it.’

‘And probably,’ said Frieda, ‘your own feelings are rather complicated because of everything he’s been through.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean there’s something extremely attractive about a young man who’s so surrounded by tragedy.’

‘Like I’m a grief tourist?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘It’s all over now,’ said Chloë. Her eyes filled with tears and she went on staring at the book in front of her.

Frieda leaned over her shoulder as she turned the large pages. She saw a beautifully exact drawing of an apple, a bulbous self-portrait as reflected in a convex mirror, a painstakingly precise tree. ‘He’s good,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ said Chloë. ‘There’s one I want to show you.’ She leafed over page after page until she was almost at the end. ‘Look.’

‘What is it?’

‘Look at the date. Wednesday, the sixth of April, nine thirty a.m. That’s the still-life drawing he had to do for his mock A level. It’s also the drawing he did on the day his mother was killed. It almost makes me cry just to look at it, to think of what was about to happen.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Frieda, and then she frowned, turning her head slightly. She heard the kettle click behind her. The water had boiled. But she couldn’t attend to it. Not now.

‘It bloody is,’ said Chloë, ‘it –’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Frieda. ‘Describe it to me. Tell me what’s in it.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’

‘All right. There’s a watch and a bunch of keys and a book and an electric plug thing and then …’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s something leaning on the book.’

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t tell.’

‘Describe it.’

‘It’s sort of straight, and notched, like a sort of metal ruler.’

Frieda concentrated for a moment in silence, so hard that her head hurt.

‘Is that what it is?’ she said finally. ‘Or what it looks like?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Chloe. ‘What’s the difference? It’s just a drawing.’ She slammed the portfolio shut. ‘I need to take it into school,’ she said. ‘To give to Ted.’

‘He won’t be at school,’ said Frieda. ‘And, anyway. I need that book today.’

Karlsson stood in front of her but he didn’t look at her. ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he said at last.

‘I know. This won’t take long.’

‘You don’t understand, Frieda. You shouldn’t be here. The commissioner doesn’t want you here. And you’ll not make your case any better with Hal Bradshaw if you start hanging round the station. He already thinks you’re an arsonist and a stalker.’

‘I know. I won’t come again,’ said Frieda, steadily. ‘I want to see the murder weapon.’

‘As a favour? But you’ve called in the favour, Frieda. And I’m in huge trouble now. I won’t bother you with the details.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘But I need to see it. And then I’ll go away.’

He stared at her, then shrugged and led her down the stairs into a basement room, where he opened a metal drawer.

‘This is what you want,’ he said. ‘Don’t put fingerprints on it, and let yourself out when you’ve finished.’

‘Thank you.’

‘By the way, Elaine Kerrigan has confessed to the murder of Ruth Lennox.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry. I think Russell Lennox is about to confess as well. And the Kerrigan sons. The whole station will be full of people confessing and we still won’t know.’

And he left.

Frieda pulled on plastic gloves and lifted out the large cog, placing it on the table in the centre of the room. It looked as if it should be in the machinery of a giant clock, but the Lennoxes had had it on their mantelpiece as a sort of sculpture.

She opened Ted’s artbook at the page dated Wednesday, 6 April and put it on the table as well. She stared from cog to drawing so hard that everything began to blur. She stood back. She walked round the table so that she could see the cog from every angle. She squatted on the floor and squinted up at it. Very delicately, she tipped the object, swivelled it, held it so that it flattened out in her view.

And then at last she had it. Viewed at a certain angle, levered back and twisted, the heft object looked like a straight notched line. The same straight and notched line that she could see among the items that Ted had drawn for his mock art A level, on the morning of Wednesday, 6 April.

Frieda’s face became expressionless. At last she gave a small sigh, put the cog back into the metal drawer, which she slid shut, pulled off the gloves and left the room.