Waiting for Wednesday

her late thirties, with short, dark brown hair in an
old-fashioned bob and wearing a knee-length tweed skirt; she also had something in a
yellow sling around her chest. Karlsson saw that it was a very small baby, its bald head
poking out of the top and two tiny feet sticking out at the bottom. The woman looked at
Russell, her eyes bright. ‘I came at once,’ she said. ‘What a
terrible, terrible thing.’
    She walked across to Russell, who had
followed his son down the stairs, and gave him a long hug, made awkward and arms’
length by the baby wedged in between them. Russell’s face stared out over her
shoulder, helpless. She looked round at Karlsson.
    ‘I’m Ruth’s sister,’
she said. The bundle at her chest shifted and gave a whimper; she patted it with a
clucking sound.
    She had that excited calm that some people
get in an emergency. Karlsson had seen it before. Disasters attracted people. Relatives,
friends, neighbours gathered to help or give sympathy or just to be part of it in some
way, to warm themselves in its terrible glow.
    ‘This is Louise,’ said Russell.
‘Louise Weller. I rang people in the family. Before they heard it from someone
else.’
    ‘We’re conducting an
interview,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think
it’s appropriate you should be here. This is a crime scene.’
    ‘Nonsense. I’m here to
help,’ said Louise, firmly. ‘This is about my sister.’ Her face was
pale, except for spots of redon her cheekbones. ‘My other two
are in the car. I’ll get them in a minute and put them somewhere out of the way.
But tell me first, what happened?’
    Karlsson hesitated a moment, then shrugged.
‘I’ll give you all a few minutes together. Then, when you’re ready, we
can talk.’
    He guided them up the stairs and gestured to
Yvette to follow him out of the room. ‘On top of everything else,’ he said,
‘they’ll need to move out for a few days. Can you mention it to them?
Tactfully? Maybe there’s a neighbour or friends nearby.’ He saw Riley coming
up the stairs.
    ‘There’s someone to see you,
sir,’ he said. ‘He says you know him.’
    ‘Who is he?’ said Karlsson.
    ‘Dr Bradshaw,’ said Riley.
‘He doesn’t look like a policeman.’
    ‘He’s not,’ said Karlsson.
‘He’s a sort of consultant. Anyway, what does it matter what he looks like?
We’d better let him in, give him a chance to earn his money.’
    As Karlsson walked down the stairs and saw
Hal Bradshaw waiting in the hall, he saw what Riley meant. He didn’t look like a
detective. He wore a grey suit, with just a speckle of yellowish colour to it, and an
open-necked white shirt. Karlsson particularly noticed his fawn suede shoes and his
large, heavy-framed spectacles. He gave Karlsson a nod of recognition.
    ‘How did you even hear about
this?’ Karlsson asked.
    ‘It’s a new arrangement. I like
to get here when the scene is still fresh. The quicker I get here, the more useful I can
be.’
    ‘Nobody told me that,’ said
Karlsson.
    Bradshaw didn’t seem to be paying
attention. He was looking around thoughtfully. ‘Is your friend here?’
    ‘Which friend?’
    ‘Dr Klein,’ he said. ‘Frieda
Klein. I expected to find her here, sniffing around.’
    Hal Bradshaw and Frieda had worked on the
same case, in which Frieda had very nearly been killed. A man had been found lying naked
and decomposing in the flat of a disturbed woman, Michelle Doyce. Bradshaw had been
convinced that she had killed the man; Frieda had heard in the woman’s meandering
words some kind of sense, a distracted straining towards the truth. Gradually she and
Karlsson had pieced together the man’s identity: he was a con man who had left
behind him many victims, each with motives for revenge. Frieda’s methods –
unorthodox and instinctive – and her actions, which could be obsessive and
self-destructive, had led to her dismissal during the last round of cuts. But clearly
this wasn’t enough for Bradshaw. She had made him look stupid and now he wanted to
destroy her. Karlsson thought of all of this. Then he thought of a dead woman lying a
few feet away, and a family grieving, and swallowed his angry words.
    ‘Dr Klein’s not working for us
any more.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bradshaw,
cheerfully. ‘That’s right. Things didn’t go very well at the end of
that last case.’
    ‘It depends what you mean by
“well”,’ Karlsson said. ‘Three murderers were caught.’
    Bradshaw pulled a face. ‘If