Waiting for Wednesday

her eyes and looked at Frieda. ‘Is it
because of me he’s dead?’
    ‘You tell me.’
    And then Judith did at last burst into
tears. She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands and rocked her body to and
fro and wept. Tears dripped through the lattice of her fingers and snorts and groans and
gasps shook her.
    Yvette stared at her, then tentatively put out
one hand and touched her on the shoulder, but Judith reacted violently, lashing out and
pushing her away. It was several minutes before the sobs got quieter, and at last they
ceased. She lifted her face from the sieve of her hands; she was blotchy with weeping;
there were streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She was barely recognizable.
Frieda took a tissue from her bag and, without a word, handed it over. Judith dabbed at
her sodden face, still making sniffling sounds.
    ‘I told him about Zach,’ she
said at last, in a whisper.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did he kill him?’
    ‘I don’t know that.’
Frieda handed her another tissue.
    ‘But you did right to tell us,’
added Yvette, decisively. ‘We would have found out anyway. You’re not to
feel responsible.’
    ‘Why? Why shouldn’t I?
It’s my fault. I had sex with him.’ Her face puckered. ‘And then I
told my dad. He just wanted to protect me. What’s going to happen to him?
What’s going to happen to us? Dora’s just a little girl.’
    ‘Yvette’s right, Judith:
you’re not responsible.’
    ‘He’ll know it was me who told
you.’
    ‘He should never have put you in this
position,’ Yvette said.
    ‘Why is this happening to us? I just
want to go back to when it was all right.’
    ‘We should take you home,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘I can’t see him, not now. I
just can’t. My poor darling dad. Oh, God.’ And she ended on a juddering
sob.
    Frieda made up her mind. ‘You’ll
come to my house,’ she said, thinking of how her calm, orderly home had become
like a circus for other people’s grief and chaos. ‘You and Tedand Dora. We’ll call them now.’ She nodded at Yvette.
‘And you’ll have to speak to Karlsson.’
    When Yvette told Karlsson what she’d
learned from Judith, he just stared at her for a moment.
    ‘Stupid, fucking idiot,’ he said
finally. ‘Who’s going to look after his family now? What a mess. Russell
Lennox knew about Judith and Zach. Josh and Ben Kerrigan knew about their father and
Ruth Lennox. All those secrets. Where’s this going to end?’ His phone rang
and he snatched it up, listened, said, ‘We’ll be there,’ then put it
down again.
    ‘That was Tate in forensics.
He’s invited us for a guided tour of Zach’s flat.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘Have you got anything better to
do?’
    James Tate was a small, stocky,
dark-skinned and peppery-haired man with a peremptory manner and sarcastic sense of
humour. Karlsson had known him for years. He was meticulous and dispassionate, very good
at his job. He was waiting for them and when they arrived he gave them a small nod and
handed them both paper shoes and thin latex gloves to put on, before they stepped into
the scene of the crime.
    ‘You couldn’t have just told me
on the phone?’ Karlsson asked.
    ‘I thought you’d like to see it
for yourself. Like this, for example.’
    He pointed at the doorbell. ‘Nice
clear prints.’
    ‘Do they match –’
    ‘Don’t be in such a
hurry.’ He opened the door into the little entrance hall. ‘Exhibit number
two.’ He pointed at the muddy footprints on the floor. ‘Size forty-one
shoes. We’vegot a clear image. And three: signs of some kind of
struggle. This picture has been dislodged.’
    Karlsson nodded. Yvette, following them past
the disordered kitchenette into the bedroom, had the strange sensation that she would
find the body all over again.
    ‘Four. Blood splash. Here, here and
here. And substantially more there, of course, where the body was. Exhibit four, or
should that be five: in that bin there,’ he pointed, ‘we found a very dirty
kitchen towel covered with more blood. We took it away for DNA testing. Somebody had
used it to clean himself up.’
    ‘And that would be …’
    ‘Exhibit six: fingerprints, containing
traces of the victim’s blood, all against that wall. There. What do you
think?’
    ‘What do I think? What do you
know
?’
    ‘We can construct a very plausible
scenario. Someone – a man wearing size forty-one shoes – entered. Presumably he was let
in by the victim, but we can’t be sure. There was no sign of