Waiting for Wednesday

did. Why would anyone make up something like
that?’
    ‘And there’s nothing else you
want to tell me?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re sticking to your story
that you didn’t know who the mystery writer was?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Karlsson waited. Josh Kerrigan’s eyes
flickered towards him, then away again. There was a knock at the door and Yvette put her
head around it. ‘I need a word,’ she said.
    ‘We’re done here anyway. For
now.’ Karlsson stood up. ‘We’ll speak to your brother.’
    Josh shrugged. But his eyes were
anxious.
    ‘No,’ said Ben Kerrigan.
‘No, no and no. I did not tell my mother. I wish I had. But we decided to wait
till we were together. I had to look at her over the breakfast table and not say
anything. And him.’ His face twisted.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I didn’t say anything to him
either. I wanted to. I wanted to punch him in his stupid fat face. I’m glad
he’s got beaten up. He’s just a wanker. It’s such a fucking cliché,
isn’t it? Except the other woman wasn’t some bimbo. What did he think he was
doing? Ten years. He was cheating on Mum for ten years.’
    ‘But you never confronted him or told
your mother about the letter.’
    ‘Like I said.’
    ‘And you never got the impression that
your father knew about the letter.’
    ‘He didn’t know anything.’
Ben’s voice rang with scorn. ‘He thought he could get away with it, and no
price to pay.’
    ‘Or your mother?’
    ‘No. She trusted him. I know Mum. She
thinks that once you trust someone, it’s unconditional.’
    ‘Why did you hide this information
from us?’
    ‘Why do you think? We’re not
stupid, you know – we do realize that you’re all thinking this murder is some kind
of revenge.’ His voice rose in distress.
    ‘All right.’ Karlsson tried to
hold his eyes. ‘Let’s take it slowly, from the beginning. You were here,
living with your parents, when Josh told you.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What did you do when you found
out?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Nothing at all?’
    ‘I keep telling you.’
    ‘You didn’t talk to anyone apart
from Josh?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But you believed it was
true?’
    ‘I
knew
it was
true!’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I just did.’
    ‘How did you know, Ben? What made you
so sure?’ He waited, then asked: ‘Did you find out anything else?’ He
saw Ben flinch involuntarily before he shook his head. ‘Ben, I’m asking you
one more time: did you try to find anything out?’ He stopped and let silence fill
the space between them. ‘Didyou go through your father’s
things, looking for evidence? It would only be natural. Ben?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Alone in the house, with this new and
horrible suspicion, and you didn’t do anything?’
    ‘Stop it.’
    ‘We will find out.’
    ‘OK. I may have.’
    ‘You may have?’
    ‘I poked around a bit.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘You know. Pockets.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And his phone. His papers.’
    ‘His computer?’
    ‘That too.’
    ‘And what did you find?’
    ‘Nothing much.’
    ‘You do understand how serious this
is, Ben?’
    The boy turned to him. Karlsson could hear
his ragged breathing. ‘All right. I looked fucking everywhere. Of course I did.
What would you have done? Me and Josh agreed that I would do a search, and then I went
through all his grubby tissues and his receipts and his emails and nicked his mobile
phone to look at texts and calls. We – me and Josh – rang a few numbers I didn’t
recognize, just to check. There wasn’t anything. But I couldn’t stop. If I
hadn’t found something, I could have gone on for the rest of my life, trying to
find the evidence that he was cheating on my mum. It’s like that thing they teach
in science, you can only prove something is true, not that it isn’t.’
    ‘But you did find something?’
Karlsson said gently.
    ‘I went through his
history.’
    ‘On his computer, you mean?’
    ‘I don’t really know what I was
looking for. There was a search he’d done on Google images for Ruth Lennox. And I
just knew. It’s the way you look up someone you know, just to see if there’s
a picture of them somewhere.’
    ‘So. You and Josh knew your father was
having an affair with someone called Ruth Lennox.’
    ‘Yes. Then of course I did a search
for her name. He thought he was being so clever. He doesn’t understand
computers.’
    ‘What did you find?’
    ‘An email from her. Hidden in a folder
called something boring like “Household Insurance”. Just one email.’
He snorted