Waiting for Wednesday

Maybe everyone joined up
together to do it, like in that book.’
    ‘I thought you believed it was Russell
Lennox.’
    ‘I’m sick of this case.
It’s too full of misery. Come on, let’s get a coffee. Then you’re
going home. I don’t know when you last had any sleep.’



FIFTY-FIVE
    Frieda phoned Fearby and told him what had
happened – or hadn’t happened. There was a pause and then he said he was still in
London and he was coming right over. Frieda gave him her address, then tried to tell him
it wasn’t necessary, that there was nothing more to say, but he had already rung
off. In what seemed like a few minutes, there was a knock at the door and Fearby was
sitting opposite her with a glass of whisky. He asked her to tell him exactly what
Karlsson had said. Frieda reacted impatiently.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she
said.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘They went to Lawrence Dawes’s
house. They turned it upside down. They didn’t find anything suspicious at
all.’
    ‘How did Dawes react?’
    ‘You know what? I didn’t ask.
The police appeared out of the blue and searched his house and all but accused him of
killing his daughter. I imagine he was shocked and distressed.’ Frieda felt a
tiredness that was actually painful. ‘I can’t believe it. I sat in his
garden with him and he talked about what he’d been through and I set the police on
him. Karlsson is furious with me as well. And rightly so.’
    ‘So where do we go from here?’
said Fearby.
    ‘Where do we go? We go nowhere.
I’m sorry, but are you incapable of seeing what’s in front of your
nose?’
    ‘Have you stopped trusting your
instincts?’
    ‘It was my instinct that got us into
this.’
    ‘Not just your instinct,’ said
Fearby. ‘I’d been following atrail and we found we were
on the same trail. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
    Frieda sat back in her chair and
sighed.‘Have you ever been out in the countryside and you were walking on a path
and then you realized it wasn’t really a path at all, it just looked like one, and
you were lost?’
    Fearby smiled and shook his head. ‘I
never was much for walking.’
    ‘For all we know, Sharon Gibbs is
somewhere reasonably happy, not wanting to be found. But, whatever the truth, I think
we’re done.’
    Fearby shook his head again, but he
didn’t seem dismayed or angry. ‘I’ve been doing this too long to get
put off by something like this. I just need to go over my files again, make some more
enquiries. I’m not going to give up now, not after all I’ve done.’
    Frieda looked at him with a kind of horror.
Was he a bit like her? Was this the way she appeared to other people? ‘What would
it take for you to give up?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Fearby.
‘Not after all this, after what George Conley suffered, after Hazel Barton’s
murder.’
    ‘But what about what you’ve
suffered? Your marriage, your career?’
    ‘If I give up now, that won’t
bring my job back. Or my wife.’
    Suddenly Frieda felt as if she was trapped
in a disastrous therapy session where she couldn’t find the right thing to say.
Should she try to convince Fearby that everything he had sacrificed his life for had
been an illusion? Did she even believe it? ‘You’ve already done so
much,’ she said. ‘You got George Conley out of prison. That’s
enough.’
    Fearby’s expression hardened. ‘I
need to know the truth. Nothing else matters.’ He caught Frieda’s eye and
gave aslightly embarrassed smile. ‘Just think of it as my
hobby. It’s what I do instead of having an allotment or playing golf.’
    When Fearby got up to go, Frieda felt as if
she was someone he had sat next to on a train journey and struck up a conversation with
and now they were arriving at the station and would part and never meet again. They
shook hands at the door.
    ‘I’ll let you know how things
progress,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t want me to.’
    When Fearby was gone, Frieda leaned against
her door for a few minutes. She felt as if she needed to catch her breath but
couldn’t, as if her lungs wouldn’t work properly. She forced herself to
concentrate and take long, slow breaths.
    Then, at last, she went up to her bathroom.
She’d been waiting for the right time but there was never a right time. There was
always something left to do. She thought of Josef, her shambolic and eager friend, all
the work he’d put into this for her. It was his act of friendship. She had good
friends, but she hadn’t