Waiting for Wednesday

no good at this. She asked questions too harshly. She didn’t know
how to sound clear yet unjudgemental. She tried to imagine Karlsson asking the
questions. ‘Do you have a drink problem?’ she asked abruptly.
    Russell Lennox jerked his head up.
‘No, I don’t.’
    ‘But those bottles …’ She
thought about the white cider: nobody would drink that if they didn’t have a
problem.
    ‘People think that because you drink,
you have a drink problem, and they think if you have a drink problem you have a larger
problem underneath.’ He spoke rapidly, hiswords running
together. ‘It was just a stupid phase. To help me through. I put them in the shed
because I knew everyone would say what you’re saying now. Make it shameful. It was
simpler to hide it. That’s all. I was going to throw them away when I got the
chance.’
    Yvette tried to separate out his sentences.
‘To help you through what?’ she asked.
    ‘It. Stuff.’ He sounded like his
son.
    ‘When did you go through this
phase?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Recently?’
    Russell Lennox put his hand to his face,
half covering his mouth. He made an indistinct sound through his fingers.
    ‘Are you still drinking?’
    ‘Are you my GP now?’ His words
were muffled. ‘Do you want to tell me it’s not good for me? Do you think I
don’t know that? Perhaps you want to tell me about liver damage, addiction, the
need to acknowledge what I’m doing and seek help.’
    ‘Were you drinking because of problems
in your marriage?’
    He stood up. ‘Everything is evidence
to you, isn’t it? My wife’s private life, my drinking too much.’
    ‘A murder victim doesn’t have a
private life,’ said Yvette. ‘They both seem relevant to me.’
    ‘What do you want me to say? I drank
too much for a bit. It was stupid. I didn’t want my kids to know so I hid it.
I’m not proud of it.’
    ‘And you say it wasn’t for any
particular reason?’
    Russell Lennox was grey with weariness. He
sat down again opposite Yvette, slumping in his chair. ‘You’re asking me to
make everything neat. It wasn’t like that. I’m getting older, my life felt
stale. Nothing changing. No excitement. Maybe Ruth was feeling the same
thing.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ said Yvette. ‘But
did your wife know you were drinking?’
    ‘What’s that got to do with her
being dead? Do you think I killed her because she found out my guilty secret?’
    ‘Did she?’
    ‘She suspected. She had a nose for
people’s weaknesses.’
    ‘So she knew.’
    ‘She smelled it on me. She was pretty
contemptuous – that’s a bit rich, isn’t it, with what she was doing at the
same time?’
    ‘Which you still claim you had no
knowledge of.’
    ‘I don’t
claim
. I had
no knowledge.’
    ‘And you still say you had a good
marriage?’
    ‘Are you married?’
    Yvette felt a violent blush heat her neck
and face. She saw herself through his eyes – a solid, brown-haired, clumsy, lonely woman
with big feet and large, ringless hands. ‘No,’ she replied shortly.
    ‘No marriage looks good when you start
searching for the fault lines. Until now, I would have said that, although we sometimes
wrangled and sometimes took each other for granted, we had a good, solid
marriage.’
    ‘And now?’
    ‘Now it doesn’t make sense.
It’s been smashed apart and I can’t even ask her why.’
    Frieda had only just arrived home when
there was a ring at the door. She opened it to find two police officers, a man and a
woman.
    ‘Are you Dr Frieda Klein?’ said
the man.
    ‘Did Karlsson send you?’
    The two officers looked at each other.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said the man.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘Well, what are you here
for?’
    ‘Can you confirm that you are Dr Frieda
Klein?’
    ‘Yes, I can. Is something
wrong?’
    The officer frowned. ‘I have to inform
you that we need to interview you in connection with an alleged case of assault causing
actual bodily harm.’
    ‘What case? Is this something
I’m supposed to have witnessed?’
    He shook his head. ‘We’re
responding to a complaint that names you as the perpetrator.’
    ‘What on earth are you talking
about?’
    The female officer looked down at her
notebook. ‘Were you present at flat four, number two Marsh Side on the seventeenth
of April?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It is currently occupied by Mr Ian
Yardley.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘You admit you were
present?’
    ‘Yes, I admit I was present but
–’
    ‘We need to talk to you