Waiting for Wednesday

for me? The local police will know him.’
    ‘What do you want him for?’
    ‘He knows the area. He might save us
some trouble.’
    ‘I’ll do my best.’
    ‘And have a word with young Riley
here. He already knows what happened.’ Karlsson turned to Yvette and signalled her
to follow him up the stairs.At the door he paused and listened. He could hear no sound
at all. He hated this bit. Often people blamed him because he was the bearer of bad news
and at the same time clung to him because he promised some kind of solution. And this
was a whole family. Three kids, Munster had said. Poor sods. She looked like she’d
been a nice woman, he thought.
    ‘Ready?’
    Yvette nodded and he knocked on the door,
three times, then pushed it open.
    The father was sitting in a swivel chair,
rotating this way and that. He still wore his outdoor jacket and a cotton scarf tiedround his neck. His jowly face was white with mottled red patches on
his cheeks, as if he’d just come in from the cold, and he kept blinking as if he
had dust in his eyes, licking his lips, pulling the lobe of one ear. On the floor at his
feet the younger daughter – the one who’d found Ruth Lennox – was curled in a
foetal ball. She was hiccuping and retching and snuffling and gulping. Karlsson thought
she sounded like a wounded animal. He couldn’t see what she looked like, only that
she was skinny and had brown hair in unravelling plaits. The father put a helpless hand
on her shoulder, then drew it back.
    The other daughter, who looked fifteen or
sixteen, sat across from them, her legs folded under her and her arms clasped around her
body, as though she wanted to make herself as warm and as small as possible. She had
chestnut curls and her father’s round face, with full red lips and freckles over
the bridge of her nose. She had mascara smeared around one of her blue eyes, but not the
other, which gave her an artificial look, clown-like, and yet Karlsson could see at once
that she had a sultry attractiveness that even the ruined makeup and her chalky pallor
couldn’t mask. She was wearing maroon shorts over black tights, a T-shirt with a
logo he didn’t recognize. She stared at Karlsson when he entered, chewing her
lower lip furiously.
    The boy sat in the corner, his knees pulled
sharply up to his chin, his face hidden by a mop of dark blond hair. Every so often he
gave a violent shiver but didn’t lift his head, even when Karlsson introduced
himself.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ Karlsson
said. ‘But I’m here to help and I’ll need to ask some
questions.’
    ‘Why?’ whispered the father.
‘Why would anyone kill Ruth?’
    At this, a sound broke from the older girl,
a sob.
    ‘Your younger daughter found her,’
said Karlsson, gently. ‘Is that right?’
    ‘Dora. Yes.’ He wiped the back
of his hand across his mouth. ‘What’s that going to do to her?’
    ‘Mr Lennox,’ said Yvette,
‘there are people who can help you with that …’
    ‘Russell. Nobody calls me Mr
Lennox.’
    ‘We need to talk to Dora about what
she saw.’
    The wailing from the small shape on the
floor continued. Yvette looked helplessly at Karlsson.
    ‘You can be with your father,’
said Karlsson, leaning down towards Dora. ‘Or if you’d prefer to speak to a
woman, not a man, then …’
    ‘She doesn’t want to,’
said the older sister. ‘Didn’t you hear?’
    ‘What’s your name?’ asked
Karlsson.
    ‘Judith.’
    ‘And how old are you?’
    ‘Fifteen. Does that help?’ She
glared at Karlsson out of her unnerving blue eyes.
    ‘It’s a terrible thing,’
said Karlsson. ‘But we need to know everything. Then we can find the person who
did this.’
    The boy suddenly jerked up his head. He
struggled to his feet and stood by the door, tall and gangly. He had his mother’s
grey eyes. ‘Is she still there?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Ted,’ said Russell Lennox, in a
soothing tone, moving towards him and holding out his hand. ‘Ted, it’s
OK.’
    ‘My mother.’ The boy kept his
eyes fixed on Karlsson. ‘Is she still there?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The boy tugged the door open and ran down
the stairs. Karlsson raced after him but didn’t get there in time. The roar ripped
through the house.
    ‘No, no, no,’ Ted was shouting. He
was on his knees beside his mother’s body. Karlsson put his arm round the boy and
lifted him up, back and out of the room.
    ‘It’s all right, Ted.’
    Karlsson turned. A woman had come in through
the front door. She was solid, in