Waiting for Wednesday

hand
against his nose. ‘I was somewhere else.’
    ‘Before you went to the house in
Margaretting Street?’
    ‘That’s right. I just want to
say that this sounds worse than it was. There weren’t any kids there.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘There’s this nursery school.
But it was empty. It’s not finished yet.’
    ‘Why did you go there?’
    ‘Why d’you think?’
    ‘All right, what did you
take?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Hunt, holding
out his palms as if to prove it. ‘It was empty.’
    ‘Did you break in?’
    ‘Through the back. I broke one pane of
glass and that was all it took. They need to tighten their security before they open.
Cut my hand, though.’
    ‘What was the name of this
nursery?’
    ‘Busy Bees.’
    ‘And where is it?’
    ‘Over in Islington, just up from the
Caledonian Road.’
    ‘What time?’
    ‘I don’t know. About four
maybe.’
    ‘So at about four o’clock last
Wednesday you claim you were breaking into a children’s nursery in Islington. What
did you do then?’
    ‘I was going to walk back home along
the canal but it started to rain. I saw a bus and jumped on it. The one five three. It
took me to Camden. I was having a smoke so they threw me off and I walked up from there.
I was just going along the road and ringing on a few doorbells until I found one where
they didn’t answer.’
    ‘What then?’
    ‘I told you all that before. I broke
the window, opened the door. The alarm was going, so I was in a rush. There were alarms
everywhere. There was one in the hallway and one in the room where … you know,
she was. I just grabbed a few things and headed off.’ He shook his head.
‘It’s not my fault. If it hadn’t been raining, I wouldn’t have
caught the bus and I wouldn’t have been there.’
    Karlsson switched off the recorder.
‘And Mrs Lennox would still have been alive.’
    ‘No,’ said Hunt.
‘That’s not what I said. Put the tape back on.’
    ‘Forget about the bloody
tape.’



TWELVE
    As Frieda approached her front door, key in
hand, she saw that it was already open. She couldn’t see at first what was
happening but then saw there was a man at one end of a large, undeniably impressive
bath, and then she saw that the man was Josef’s friend, Stefan, and that Josef was
at the other end. The second thing Frieda noticed was that the bath was almost too wide
for the doorway. She could see that by the grey scraping marks on the doorpost. The
third thing she noticed was that they were carrying the bath outwards rather than
inwards.
    ‘Frieda,’ said Stefan, panting
slightly. ‘I can’t shake hands.’
    ‘Are you having trouble getting it
in?’
    ‘No,’ said Josef, from the other
end. ‘We take in fine and upstairs. But problem. Now we take it out and
back.’
    ‘What do you mean
“back”?’ said Frieda.
    ‘Wait.’
    With much groaning and a suppressed scream
when Josef got his fingers trapped between the bath and the doorway, they got it outside
and laid it down on the cobblestones.
    ‘That bath is fucking heavy,’
said Stefan, then looked at Frieda guiltily. ‘Sorry. It is big, though.’
    ‘But why are you taking it
out?’
    ‘Is heavy,’ said Josef.
‘Hard for floor, I think. We check it now. Probably need joist.’
    Frieda heard the phone ringing inside.
‘You mean a steel girder?’ she said.
    ‘So you don’t fall through floor
in bath.’
    ‘Well, you’d know about
that,’ said Frieda. ‘Are you sure?’
    Stefan smiled. ‘We are
sure.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Frieda.
The phone was still ringing. ‘Hang on.’ She pushed past them, but before she
could reach the phone, it had stopped. It was almost a relief, something that
didn’t have to be dealt with, someone who didn’t have to be talked to. She
stood still for a moment, watching Josef and Stefan pushing the bath back into
Josef’s van. It seemed to sag under the weight of it. And then the phone rang
again, insistently, like a person jabbing at her. She picked it up and heard a
woman’s voice.
    ‘Can I speak to Dr Frieda Klein,
please?’
    ‘Who is this?’
    ‘My name’s Jilly Freeman.
I’m calling from the
Sunday Sketch
.’ There was a pause.
‘I’m sorry. Are you still there?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Frieda.
    ‘We’re running a story in
tomorrow’s paper and we’d like to hear your comments on it.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because it concerns you.’
    Frieda felt a stab of dread and at the same
time a numbness, as if she was receiving a blow on a part of