Waiting for Wednesday (40 page)

Yvette turned pink. ‘He didn’t actually say,’ she muttered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I asked him. But, now you mention it, he didn’t give me an answer. He went on about them being consenting adults or something. He distracted me.’

Karlsson stared at her. ‘Distracted you?’ he repeated pleasantly, coldly.

‘Sorry. It was stupid of me. I’ll get back to him.’

He stared down at his papers for a moment. He didn’t want to shout at her in front of Riley and Bradshaw but it took an effort.

‘Moving on. We have the Kerrigans. He wants to break off with her. Or she discovers about his office affair. Confronts him. He picks up the cog.’

‘Would she do it at her house?’ said Yvette. ‘Wouldn’t the flat be more logical?’

‘She might have threatened him at the flat,’ said Bradshaw. ‘She could have said she would inform his wife. For him to confront and kill her in her own home would be a tit for tat. Exposing her in her own family home.’

Karlsson frowned at Bradshaw. ‘I thought your theory
was that the murderer was a loner, of no fixed abode, that he had no family connections, that the murder was a kind of love.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Bradshaw. ‘But in a real sense Kerrigan was a loner, estranged from his family, and because of this rented flat, he actually was of no fixed abode and the murder was, arguably, a last, desperate expression of love, the end of love.’

What Karlsson really wanted to do was to lean across, take Bradshaw’s smart-phone and hit him over the head with it repeatedly. But he said nothing.

‘And then there’s Kerrigan’s wife, Elaine. Humiliated wife. Finds out about Ruth, confronts her, picks up cog.’

‘But she didn’t know about the affair,’ said Yvette. ‘Or Ruth’s name. Or where she lived.’

‘Maybe she did know,’ said Munster. ‘They always do.’

‘What do you mean,
they
?’ Yvette glared at him.

‘Women.’ Munster was wary at Yvette’s sharp tone. ‘You know, when their husbands are unfaithful. They know. Deep down. At least, that’s what some people say.’

‘Crap,’ said Yvette, decisively.

‘Anyway, we suspect that someone knew,’ said Karlsson. ‘Someone might have pushed that cut-up doll through the Lennox letterbox as a warning.’

‘That could just be coincidence.’

‘In my world,’ announced Bradshaw with a modest smile, ‘coincidence is another word for –’

‘You’re right,’ cut in Karlsson, decisively. ‘It could be coincidence. It might have been Dora’s charming schoolfriends persecuting her. Did you talk to her again, Yvette?’

Yvette nodded. ‘She said she’d assumed it was for her. And she thinks it arrived around lunchtime. She got distressed. But she didn’t want to talk about it really – apparently
things are better at school since her mother was killed. Everyone wants to be her friend suddenly.’ She made a grimace of disgust.

‘OK. So, the doll’s either a clue or it isn’t. Maybe we can talk to the head teacher and see if she can throw any light on it. Moving on, what about the sons?’

‘Josh and Ben Kerrigan?’ Yvette wrinkled up her face. ‘They’re both pretty contemptuous and angry. But Josh seems to have been in Cardiff – although he hasn’t been able to come up with any concrete alibi apart from being in bed with his girlfriend, who confirms that was probably the case. No sign on his bank statements that he used his card for a train ticket or anything. But that doesn’t mean much – as he himself pointed out, he could have used cash. His younger brother Ben was in a lesson. Apparently. His teacher can’t remember his being there, but she can’t remember his
not
being there and she thinks she would have noticed.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘What about Louise Weller?’ asked Yvette. ‘She was on the scene pretty quickly.’

‘On the scene?’ Karlsson shook his head. ‘She came round to help.’

‘It’s a common expression of guilt,’ Bradshaw explained comfortably. ‘Perpetrators like to involve themselves in the inquiry.’

‘What? Mother of three kills sister?’

‘You can’t rule it out,’ said Bradshaw.

‘I’m the one who rules people in or out.’ Karlsson spoke quickly. ‘But you’re right. We’ll talk to her again. And the Kerrigan boys. Anything else?’

‘Samantha Kemp,’ said Riley.

‘What?’

‘The woman Kerrigan had his affair with.’

‘Yes, I know who she is, but …’ Karlsson paused. ‘You’ve got to talk to her anyway, to check Kerrigan’s claim he was with her that afternoon. Maybe it’ll turn out she has a jealous boyfriend.’ He slammed the file shut. ‘Right, that’s it. Yvette, check that alibi. Chris, you talk to this Samantha Kemp. Now, for God’s sake, one of you go out and get me something.’

FORTY-THREE

Yvette was still smarting as she left the room. She could feel Chris Munster looking at her sympathetically, which made it worse. She snapped at him when he asked her if she wanted a coffee and slammed herself down at her desk.

First, she rang Zach at his workplace in Shoreditch, but the woman who answered the phone said he wasn’t in that day – he didn’t work full time and as a matter of fact he wasn’t the most reliable of employees. So she rang his mobile and went straight to voicemail, then his landline, which rang and rang. She sighed and pulled on her jacket.

On her way out, she met Munster once more.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘To see Samantha Kemp. You?’

‘To see bloody Zach Greene.’

‘Would you like me to –’

‘No, I would not.’

Samantha Kemp was doing some work for a digital-camera company just off Marble Arch. She met Munster in the small room set aside for visitors on the first floor; its window overlooked a sari shop.

When she came into the room, Munster was surprised by how young she was. Paul Kerrigan was a plump, greying, middle-aged man, but Samantha Kemp was in her twenties, neatly dressed in a black skirt and a crisply ironed white shirt. A ladder ran up her tights, from her ankle to her shapely knee. She had fluffy silver-blonde hair that framed her round pale face.

‘Thank you for seeing me. This won’t take long.’

‘What’s it about?’

Munster saw she was nervous: she kept sliding her palms down her skirt.

‘Is it true that you know Paul Kerrigan?’

‘Yes. I do work for his company sometimes. Why?’ A flush spread over her fair skin, and even when the colour receded it left faint blotches on her cheeks. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Can you remember what you were doing on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Well?’

‘I heard you. I just don’t know what you’re getting at. Why should I tell you anything about my private life?’

‘Mr Kerrigan says that you were with him on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, the sixth of April.’

‘With him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘You tell me.’

‘He might be married, but that’s his look-out, not mine.’

‘Wednesday, the sixth of April.’

‘He’s not happy, you know.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘He’s not.’ To his horror, Munster saw that she was about to start crying: tears stood in her grey-blue eyes. ‘And I comfort him. I’m not going to be made to feel bad about that.’

‘The point is, did you comfort him on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’

‘Is he in trouble?’

‘Do you have a diary?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was with him on that Wednesday.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. It was the day after my birthday. He bought me a bottle of champagne.’

‘What time?’

‘He arrived in the afternoon, about four. And we drank some champagne and then …’ Her face was flaming again. ‘He left at about seven or eight. He said he had to go back for his dinner.’

‘Is there anyone who can confirm this?’

‘My flatmate, Lynn. She came back at about six and had a bit of the champagne. I suppose you need her details as well.’

‘Please.’

‘Does she know about us? His wife, I mean? Is he in trouble?’

Munster looked at her. Surely she must know about Ruth Lennox. But it was impossible to tell, and he didn’t want to be the one to break it to her. Paul Kerrigan should do his own dirty work.

Zach Greene lived near Waterloo, a few roads south of the station on a road that was clogged with midday traffic: cabs and cars and vans and buses. Cyclists wove in and out of the queues, heads down against a strengthening wind. An ambulance blared past.

Number 232 was a small terraced house set slightly back from the road, with steps leading up to a cracked green door. Yvette rang the bell, then knocked hard as well. She already knew he wouldn’t be in, so she was surprised when she heard footsteps and the rattling of a chain. A woman stood in front of her, clutching a baby in a striped all-in-one.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for Zach Greene,’ said Yvette. ‘Does he live here?’

‘He’s our tenant. He lives in the flat. You have to go through the garden.’ She came out in her slippers and took Yvette down the steps, pointing. ‘That little road takes you
round the back and there’s a small garden with a gate that doesn’t shut properly. If you go through there, his flat’s to the side.’

‘Thank you.’ Yvette smiled at the baby, who stared at her in terror, then started to bawl. She’d never been good with babies.

‘Tell him to keep the noise down, will you? He was making a hell of a racket last night, just after I’d got this one off to sleep at last.’

Yvette found her way in through the rickety back gate. Wooden stairs led from the house she’d just been in, down to the small garden, where a child’s plastic tricycle lay tipped on its side. Tucked under the stairs was the door to the flat. Yvette rang the bell and waited. Then she knocked on the door and it creaked open a few inches.

For a moment, Yvette stood quite still, listening intently. Outside, she could hear the clamour of traffic. From within, there was nothing.

‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Zach? Mr Greene? It’s Detective Long here.’

Nothing. The wind blew a flurry of white blossom down on her where she stood. For a moment she thought it was snow. Snow in April: but stranger things happen. She pushed the door wider and stepped inside, onto a balding doormat. Zach Greene was not a tidy man. There were shoes on the floor, piles of junk mail, a couple of empty pizza boxes, a tangle of phone chargers and computer cords, a cotton scarf with tassels.

She took a few more cautious steps.

‘Zach? Are you here?’ Her voice rang out in the small space. To her right, a tiny kitchen, a hob encrusted with ancient food, an army of mugs, granules of instant coffee.
Two shirts hanging to dry on the radiator. A smell of something going off somewhere.

It’s odd, she thought. How you know when there’s something wrong. You get a feel for it. Not just the open door, the smell. Something about the silence, as if it hummed with the aftermath of violence. Her skin prickled.

Another shoe, a brown canvas one with yellow laces, on the floor, in the barely opened door that presumably led to Zach’s bedroom. She pushed the door with the tips of her fingers. The shoe was on a foot. The beginnings of the leg could be seen, encased in dark trousers and riding up to expose a striped sock, but everything else was covered with a patterned quilt. She took in the pattern: birds and swirling flowers; it looked Oriental, brightening up the grey and brown pokiness of the dingy flat.

She looked at her watch and noted the time, then squatted down and very carefully drew off the quilt, feeling how damply sticky it was, seeing now that she was close up to it how its vivid pattern had obscured the stains.

It must be Zach lying in front of her at the foot of his bed, but the narrow face, the golden eyes, the rosebud lips that had given her the creeps were all gone – smashed into a pulp. Yvette made herself look properly, not squint in a reflex of horror. She could still make out the delicate ear lobes in his wrecked face. There was blood everywhere. People didn’t know how much blood they had flowing through them, warm and fast – only when you saw it pooled around a body did you realize. Puddles of dark, sweet-smelling blood, thickening now. She laid one finger against his back, under his purple shirt; the skin was white and hard and cold.

She stood up, hearing her knees creak, and thought of Karlsson when he arrived at a crime scene: she tried to make herself into a camera. The muddy streaks in
the passageway, the tipped picture above the bed, the thickening blood, the rigid flesh, the way his arms were flung out as if he was falling through the air. She remembered the noise the woman upstairs had said she’d heard last night.

And then she took out her phone. From upstairs, she could make out the sounds of the baby, still howling. They arrived so quickly, the ambulances and the police cars. It seemed only minutes before the flat had been transformed into a makeshift laboratory, bright lights shining, with Zach’s body at the centre. Paper shoes, plastic gloves, brushes to dust for the fingerprints, bottles of chemicals, tweezers and evidence bags, tape measures, thermometers. Riley was talking to the woman upstairs. Munster, standing by the door and taking gulps of air, was talking into his phone. Zach was just an object now, a specimen.