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Waiting for Wednesday

Waiting for Wednesday

Titel: Waiting for Wednesday Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Nicci French
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and a can of beer) on each
corner. He took off his shoes and walked across the map, staring down at it and
frowning. Then he stuck a flagged pin-tack to the spot where Hazel Barton’s body
had been found; another where Vanessa Dale had been approached by the man in a car that
had perhaps been silver.
    He skewered her photograph onto the big cork noticeboard, next to Hazel Barton’s
picture. Two doesn’t make a pattern – but it’s a start.



TWENTY-FIVE
    The only patient Frieda still saw was Joe
Franklin. Many of the rest were waiting for her to return, sending her emails asking
when she thought she would be well enough. Some she worried about. They jostled at the
edge of her consciousness, with their pain and their problems. A few she thought perhaps
she would never see again. She had said that in two weeks, at the start of May, she
would resume her old duties whatever her doctor might advise, but in the meantime, twice
a week and often more, she went to her rooms in the mansion block in Bloomsbury. Today
she had been grateful for the opportunity to leave her house because, at a quarter to
eight that morning, Josef had arrived. Frieda had left him trudging back and forth from
the van, his face beaming at her behind piles of boxes.
    After her session with Joe, Frieda stood
with her back to the neat room, the red armchair where she always sat, the muted
charcoal drawing of a landscape on the wall, staring into the tangled space outside
where foxes lurked, shrubs and wild flowers forcing their way up through the cracked
earth. She was thinking or at least letting thoughts run through her mind. Her old life
seemed far away, a ghost of itself. The woman who had sat in the armchair hour after
hour and day after day receded as she pictured her. She had always thought that the
centre of her life was in this room, but now it seemed to have shifted: Hal Bradshaw and
his four researchers, Karlsson and his cases of death and disappearance, Dean Reeve
somewhere out there watching her – all these had pulled her out of it.
    She thought now about the four psychology
students and their stunt, trying to separate the actual story from the fact of having
been tricked and the humiliation of this being made public. She didn’t know why
she couldn’t lay it to one side. It prickled in her mind, shifted and changed in
its meaning. There was something that wouldn’t let her go, like a piece of string
twitching in her hands. Sometimes at night, lying awake with the darkness pressing down
on her, she would think of the four of them and what they had said to her. The blades
opening and closing; the image of tenderness and dangerous power.
    Her mobile rang in her pocket and she took
it out.
    ‘Frieda.’
    ‘Karlsson.’
    ‘You turned your phone on.’
    ‘I can see why you became a
detective.’
    He laughed, then said: ‘You were
right.’
    ‘Oh, good. What about?’
    ‘Ruth Lennox. She was too good to be
true.’
    ‘I don’t think I said that. I
said she was like an actress performing her life.’
    ‘Exactly. We’ve found out that
she was having an affair. For ten years. Every Wednesday. What do you say to
that?’
    ‘That it’s a long
time.’
    ‘There’s more, but I can’t
talk about that now. I’ve got to go and see the husband.’
    ‘Did he know?’
    ‘He must have done.’
    ‘Why are you telling me?’
    ‘I thought you’d like to know.
Was I wrong?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Can I come round for a drink later? I
can fill you in. It can help to talk things through with someone on the
outside.’
    Something in his voice, the nearest he had
ever come to pleading, stopped Frieda refusing.
    ‘Maybe,’ she said
cautiously.
    ‘I’ll be there at
seven.’
    ‘Karlsson –’
    ‘I’ll call if I’m running
late.’
    The Lennox family had moved back into their
home. The carpet had been removed; the walls had been washed, though the bloodstains
were still visible; the broken glass and scattered objects had been taken away.
    When Karlsson and Yvette arrived, the door
was opened for them by a woman wearing an apron. He could smell baking.
    ‘We’ve met before,’ said
the woman, noticing Karlsson’s expression, ‘but you’ve forgotten who I
am, haven’t you?’
    ‘No, I remember you.’ He
recalled the baby in a sling, the little boy at her side, ashen with exhaustion, the
girl pushing her buggy, as if she was trying to copy her mother.
    ‘I’m Louise Weller. Ruth’s
sister. I was here on the day it

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