Waiting for Wednesday

Monroe’s at all. But he was right about the
other bit. She did find it annoying.
    Lawrence Dawes was at home. Frieda wondered
if he ever wasn’t at home. At first he seemed surprised. ‘I thought
you’d given up,’ he said.
    ‘I’ve got news for you,’
said Frieda. ‘
We’ve
got news for you.’
    Dawes invited the two of them through, and
once moreFrieda found herself sitting at the table in Dawes’s
back garden being served tea.
    ‘We found Shane,’ she said.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘He was the man your daughter was
associated with.’
    ‘Associated with? What does that
mean?’
    ‘You knew that your daughter was
involved with drugs. He was involved with drugs too. In a more professional way.’
Dawes didn’t react, but didn’t seem like a man expecting good news.
‘Shane was just a nickname. His real name is Mick Doherty.’
    ‘Mick Doherty. Do you think he’s
connected with my daughter’s disappearance?’
    ‘It’s possible. But I
don’t know how. It was when I went to see Doherty, out in Essex, that I met Jim.
We were both looking for Doherty, but for different reasons.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘I was investigating the case of a
young woman called Sharon Gibbs,’ Fearby said. ‘She had gone missing and I
learned that she had known this man, Doherty. When I met Frieda, I discovered that we
both wanted to talk to him about different missing women. It seemed an interesting
coincidence.’
    Dawes looked thoughtful and pained in a way
that Frieda had never seen him before. ‘Yes, yes, I can see that,’ he said,
almost to himself.
    ‘You’d never heard of
Shane,’ said Frieda. ‘But now that we know his real name – Mick Doherty – do
you recognize it?’
    Dawes shook his head slowly. ‘I
can’t remember ever hearing that name.’
    ‘What about Sharon Gibbs?’
    ‘No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t
mean anything to me. I can’t help you. I wish I could.’ He looked in turn at
Frieda and Fearby.‘I must seem like a bad father to you. You
know, I always thought of myself as the sort of man who would move heaven and earth to
find his daughter, if anyone had tried to harm her. But it wasn’t like a
five-year-old girl going missing. It was more like someone growing up, moving away and
wanting to lead their own life. Bit by bit, she disappeared. Some days I think of her
all the time and it hurts. It hurts here.’ He pressed his hand to his heart.
‘Others, I just get on with things. Gardening, mending. It stops me thinking, but
perhaps I shouldn’t stop thinking because that’s a way of not caring so
much.’ He paused. ‘This man, what’s his name?’
    ‘Doherty,’ said Fearby.
    ‘You think he’s connected with
Lila’s disappearance?’
    ‘We don’t know,’ said
Fearby, then glanced at Frieda.
    ‘There’s some kind of
link,’ said Frieda. ‘But he can’t be responsible for both. Doherty was
in prison when Sharon Gibbs disappeared. I can’t make it out. Jim’s been
looking at some girls who’ve gone missing and Sharon Gibbs fits with that pattern.
But the case of your daughter seems different. Yet she seems connected to them through
Doherty. Somehow he’s the hinge to all of this, but I don’t know
why.’
    ‘Why is she different?’ asked
Dawes.
    Frieda stood up. ‘I’ll take the
tea things in and wash up and Jim can tell you what he’s been up to. Maybe
something will ring a bell with you. Otherwise, we’ve got through one brick wall
only to run up against another.’
    Dawes started to protest but Frieda ignored
him. She picked up the patterned plastic tray that he had leaned against the leg of the
table and put the mugs, the milk jug and the sugar bowl on to it. Then she walked into
the house and turned right into the little kitchen. The window above the sink looked out
on to the garden and Frieda watched the two men as she did the washing-up. She could see
them talkingbut couldn’t hear anything that was being said.
Dawes was probably the sort of man who was more comfortable saying things to another
man. They got up from the table and walked down the garden away from the house. She saw
Dawes gesturing towards various plants and at the end of the garden where the little
river flowed. The Wandle, shallow and clear, trickling its way towards the Thames.
    There were four other mugs in the sink and
some dirty plates and glasses on the Formica worktop. Frieda washed those as well, then
rinsed and stacked them on the draining-board. She looked around the kitchen,