Waiting for Wednesday

long,’
she said, in a voice high and cracked with rage.
    ‘I won’t pretend I don’t
know why you’re here.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs
Kersey.’
    ‘You killed my daughter and now you
say you’re sorry for my loss.’
    Lorna Kersey’s daughter, Beth, had
been an unhappy and dysfunctional young woman who suffered from paranoid delusions and
who had killed Mary Orton. Frieda had got to the house too late to stop her. The
vividness of the flashbacks in which she remembered Beth standing over her with a knife,
and re-experienced the blade slicing through her, still woke her in the night, drenched
in sweat. She had known that she was dying, felt herself sliding into darkness and
oblivion – yet she had survived and Beth Kersey had not. The police had called it
self-defence and even Karlsson hadn’t believed Frieda when she insisted that it
was Dean Reeve who had killed Beth and saved her life.
    ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said
Frieda, steadily. It would do no good to tell Lorna Kersey she hadn’t killed her
daughter. She wouldn’t believe her, and even if she did, what did that matter?
Beth, poor lonely Beth, was dead, and a mother’s anguish was etched into Lorna
Kersey’s face.
    ‘You came to me and you got me to tell
you things about Beth we never told anyone. I trusted you. You said you would help find
her. You made me a promise. And then you killed her. Do you know what it feels like to
bury a child?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘No. Of course you don’t. How
can you bear to get up in the morning?’
    Frieda thought of saying that Beth had been
very ill, that in her frantic sickness of the mind she had slaughtered an old woman and
would have killed her, Frieda, as well. But of course Lorna Kersey knew all of that. She
wanted someone to blame and who more obvious than Frieda?
    ‘I wish there was something I could say
or do that would –’
    ‘But there isn’t. There’s
nothing. My child’s dead and now she’ll never be all right. And you did
that. In the name of helping people, you destroy them. I’ll never forgive you.
Never.’
Frieda – you sounded a bit distracted
today. I know that something is up but in spite of everything that’s passed
between us, you’re not very good at confiding in me, are you? Why? Are you
scared of being beholden – as if I’ll have some hold over you? I think you
feel you have to deal with things by yourself, as if it’s some kind of moral
obligation. Or maybe you don’t trust other people to help you. I guess what
I’m saying is that you should – can – trust me, Sandy xxx



SEVENTEEN
    The Sir Philip Sidney was a pub on the side
of a busy road. It looked lost and abandoned between a petrol station and a furniture
store. When Fearby walked in he recognized his man immediately and he knew at the same
moment that he was a policeman, or an ex-policeman. Grey suit, white shirt, striped tie,
black shoes. Slightly overweight. Fearby sat down beside him.
    ‘Drink?’ he said.
    ‘I was just leaving,’ said the
man.
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘You don’t need to know,’
said the man, ‘because we’re never going to meet again. You know, we all got
pretty sick of you. On the force.’
    ‘They got pretty sick of me on my
paper as well,’ said Fearby.
    ‘So you must be feeling chuffed with
yourself.’
    ‘Is that what you’ve dragged me
out here to tell me?’
    ‘Are you finished with the
story?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said
Fearby. ‘Conley didn’t kill Hazel Barton. Which means someone else
did.’
    ‘The police are not currently pursuing
other leads. As you know.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Fearby. ‘Is
that it?’
    ‘I was wondering if you had any
avenues of enquiry?’
    ‘Avenues of enquiry?’ said
Fearby. ‘I’ve got a room full of files.’
    ‘I was having a drink once,’
said the man, in a casual tone, ‘and someone told me that on the
morning of the Hazel Barton murder, a few miles away in Cottingham, another girl was
approached. But she got away. That’s all. It was just something I
heard.’
    ‘Why wasn’t this given to the
defence?’
    ‘It wasn’t thought relevant. It
didn’t fit the pattern. Something like that.’
    ‘So why are you telling me
now?’
    ‘I wanted to know if you were
interested.’
    ‘That’s no good to me,’
said Fearby. ‘That’s just pub chat. I need a name. I need a
number.’
    The man got up. ‘It’s one of
those things that irritate you, that won’t let you go,’ he said.