Waiting for Wednesday

going to go back to
one of the girls’ families? It was possible.
    But then Frieda thought: No. There had been
three parts to what he’d said. The girls. ‘We’ had thought wrongly
about them – and he hadn’t heard the engine. And he was going to take another
look. That must mean – mustn’t it? – that he was going to a place the two of them
had been together.
    Was he going to the horse sanctuary to talk
to Doherty? No, that didn’t make sense. Then he would have said he was going to
talk to someone. His message was about a place. That must mean he’d been going
back to Croydon. To take another look. But what could be the point of that? The police
had been to the house. They had searched it. What could there possibly be to take
another look at? She thought again about the message, as if it was a machine she was
taking apart and laying out on the table. The girls. We had the wrong idea about them.
Taking another look. The first bit was clear enough. The girls. The third bit seemed
obvious. Another look. That must be Croydon. The problem was the second bit, the middle.
We had the wrong idea about them. We. That was clear enough: Fearby and Frieda. What did
Fearby and Frieda have the wrong idea about? Them. The engine. They hadn’t heard
the engine. What bloody engine?
    And then, quite suddenly, it was as if
Frieda had walked out of a dark tunnel into light so dazzling that she could hardly
see.
    Them. What if ‘them’ wasn’t
the girls? What if the engine wasn’t a metaphor at all – because, after all,
Fearby didn’t talk in metaphors. He made lists; he focused on objects, facts,
details, dates. The engine was the one that Vanessa Dale had heard, the day she was
attacked, just before Hazel Barton had been killed. Vanessa Dale, through her panic,
when her attacker’s hands were round her throat, had heard an engine revving.
    That meant her attacker hadn’t been
acting alone. Someone else had been sitting in the car, revving the engine, waiting to
drive them away. Not one person. Two. A pair of killers.



FIFTY-NINE
    Everything had a steely clarity now, icy,
hard-edged. She found Thelma Scott’s number and dialled it.
    ‘Dr Scott? This is Frieda Klein.
I’ve got to cancel.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘Do you have a moment to
talk?’
    ‘Not really. I’ve got something
to do. Something that can’t wait.’
    ‘Frieda, are you quite
well?’
    ‘Probably not, just at the moment. But
there’s something important. It overrides everything.’
    ‘It’s just that you don’t
sound quite well.’
    ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve got to
go.’
    Frieda hung up. What did she need? Keys,
jacket, her hated phone. That was all. She was just pulling on her jacket when the
doorbell rang. It was Josef, dusty from work.
    ‘I’m on my way out. I’ve
got no time. Not even to talk.’
    Josef took her by the arm. ‘Frieda,
what is happening? Everyone phoning everyone. Where is Frieda? What she doing? You never
phoning. Never answering.’
    ‘I know, I know. I’ll explain.
But not now. I’ve got to get to Croydon.’
    ‘Croydon? The girls?’
    ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
    ‘Alone?’
    ‘I’m a big girl.’
    ‘I take you.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
    Josef looked stern. ‘I take you or I
hold you here and phone to Reuben.’
    ‘You want to try it?’ said
Frieda, fiercely.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘All right, drive me, then. Is this
yours?’
    Behind Josef was a battered white van.
    ‘Is for work.’
    ‘Then let’s go.’
    It was a long, long drive, first across to
Park Lane, then Victoria and over Chelsea Bridge into south London. Frieda had the map
open on her lap, guiding Josef and thinking about what she was going to do. Battersea.
Clapham. Tooting. Should she be calling Karlsson? And saying what? Suspicions about a
man whose name she didn’t know? Whose address she didn’t know? About a girl
nobody was looking for? And after their last awful encounter? Now they were in parts of
south London with names she barely recognized. The instructions got more complicated and
then, finally, Frieda steered Josef just a little past Lawrence Dawes’s house.
    ‘So,’ said Josef,
expectantly.
    Frieda thought for a moment. Lawrence and
his friend, Gerry. Them. She didn’t know Gerry’s second name and she
didn’t know where he lived. But she knew something. Upstream. That was what
Lawrence had said. He lived upstream, which meant he was on the same side of the road,
and she remembered that when she had stood in