Waiting for Wednesday

lean
down and check if he was dead but she stopped herself. There was no point. She felt a
jolt of nausea that was overtaken by an intense aching sadness as she gazed down at this
abandoned, dear man, who had finally been proved right.
    Josef was coming down the stairs and Frieda
was turning to speak when she heard a sound, like the whimper of an animal, somewhere
further in the cellar, where it went under the pavement. She looked and saw a movement.
She stepped forward and in the semi-darkness a figure took shape. A person, female,
young, propped upright against the wall, arms splayed, legs splayed. Frieda saw matted
hair, staring blinking eyes, taped mouth. She stepped forward and saw that the woman was
secured by wire around her wrists and ankles, waist and neck. She was whimpering. Frieda
put her finger to her lips. She tried to pull at the wire around one wrist but then
Josef was beside her. He took something from his jacket pocket. She heard a click of
pliers and one hand was free. The other wrist, the neck, the waist and then the woman
fell forward. Frieda supported her, fearing she might break herankles. Josef knelt down and cut her free and the woman fell to her knees.
    ‘Call for help,’ said Frieda to
Josef.
    Josef took out his phone.
    ‘Upstairs for signal,’ he
said.
    ‘Nine, nine, nine,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘I know it,’ said Josef.
    Frieda looked into the woman’s face.
‘Sharon?’ There was another whimper. ‘I’m going to pull the tape
off. You’ll be fine but keep quiet. Gerry has gone out but we have to move.’
Another whimper. ‘You’ll be all right. But this will sting.’ Frieda
got some purchase on the tape and pulled it off. The skin underneath was pale and raw
and smelt of decay. Sharon whimpered like an animal. ‘It’s all right,’
said Frieda, soothingly. ‘I told you. He’s gone.’
    ‘No,’ said Sharon, shaking her
head. ‘Other man.’
    ‘Fuck!’ Frieda turned round and
started to run up the stairs. ‘Josef.’
    As she ran she heard a clattering and
banging, like furniture falling downstairs, and as she emerged from the cellar door she
saw shapes moving and heard shouts. She couldn’t make anything out clearly and her
foot slipped. The floor was wet, sticky. Then there was a mess of impressions: the
figures moving and flexing, flashes of metal, cries, splashes, bangs, impacts so that
the floor shook under her feet. Her focus became narrow, as if she was looking at the
world through a long thin tube. Her thoughts became narrow as well. They seemed slow and
time seemed slow and she knew that she must not collapse because then it would all have
been for nothing. She found something in her hand – she didn’t know what it was or
how it got there, but it was heavy and she was hitting with it, as hard as she possibly
could, and then the scene became clearer, as if the light had graduallybeen turned up. Lawrence Dawes was lying face down on the hall floor and a dark red
pool was spreading out from him, and Josef was leaning back against the wall, panting
and groaning, and Frieda herself was leaning against the wall opposite and she realized
that the wet sticky stuff on her hands and clothes was blood.



SIXTY
    ‘Frieda? Frieda,
Frieda
.’ Josef seemed to have lost his English; her name was all that he
could say, over and over.
    Frieda crossed to him. She felt suddenly
clear and light and calm, a sense of purpose and energy coursing through her. She saw
that he had a violent gash running down his face and neck and one of his arms was
hanging in an odd way. His face was horribly pale under the grime.
    ‘It’s all right, Josef,’
she said. ‘Thank you, my very dear friend.’
    Then she stooped down beside Lawrence Dawes.
There was a matted red patch on his head where she had hit him but she could see that he
was breathing. She looked at the heavy object she was still holding: it was one of
Josef’s heavy spanners, which must have tumbled from his bag, and it had red
smeared across it.
    ‘Take this,’ she said to Josef.
‘If he comes round, hit him again. I’ll be back in a minute.’
    She ran into the kitchen and started pulling
drawers open. Gerry Collier was a very organised man: everything had its proper place.
She found a drawer full of string, masking tape, pens, and took out a roll of washing
line. That would do. She returned to the two men and, bending down, brought Lawrence
Dawes’s hands together and rapidly bound the line round them multiple