Friday on My Mind (2 page)

Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Hussein and Detective Constable Glen Bryant climbed out of the car. Hussein fished her mobile from her pocket, and Bryant took a packet of cigarettes and a pink plastic lighter from his. He was tall and burly with cropped hair, big hands and feet and broad shoulders, like a rugby player; he was sweating. Beside him, Hussein looked small, cool, compact.

‘Something’s come up and I’ll be back late,’ said Hussein, into the phone. ‘I know. I’m sorry. You can give the girls pasta. Or there are pizzas in the freezer. I don’t know what time I’ll be home. They shouldn’t wait up. Nor should you. Nick, I’ve got to go. Sorry.’

A man was approaching them. His face was flushed and his hair was rough and untidy. He seemed more like a trawlerman than a policeman.

‘Hello.’ He held out a hand to Bryant, who looked sheepish but took it. ‘I’m Detective Constable O’Neill. Marine Policing Unit. You must be DCI Hussein.’

‘Actually …’ began Bryant.

‘This is Detective Constable Bryant,’ said Hussein, coolly. ‘I’m DCI Hussein.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I thought –’

‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’

Hussein looked along the river to her right at Tower Bridge and to her left at Canary Wharf and across at the smart new riverside flats of Rotherhithe. ‘Nice position.’

‘You should see it in November,’ O’Neill said.

‘I’m surprised it hasn’t been sold off for flats. Riverfront property like this.’

‘We’d still need somewhere to put our boats.’

DC O’Neill gestured at what looked like a large square tent made out of blue plastic sheets. Hussein pulled a face. ‘Really?’

‘It’s where we put them for a quick check. So we can decide whether to call you guys.’ O’Neill pulled the sheet aside and showed her through. Inside the sheets, two figures in plastic caps and shoes and white gowns were moving softly around the body. ‘Sometimes we’re not sure. But this one had had his throat cut.’

Bryant took a deep, audible breath and O’Neill looked round with a smile. ‘You think this is bad? You should see them when they’ve been in the water for a month or two. Sometimes you can’t tell what sex they are. Even with their clothes off.’

The body was lying in a large shallow metal basin. It looked swollen, as if it had been inflated with a pump. The flesh was unnaturally pale but also blotchy, marbled and bruised on the face and hands. It was still dressed in a dark shirt, grey trousers, robust leather shoes – almost more boots than shoes. Hussein noticed the laces were still double-knotted, and she couldn’t help thinking of him stooping and tying them, pulling them tight.

She made herself examine the face. There were remnants of the nose, little more than exposed cartilage. All the features seemed blurred, corroded, but the slashed neck was plain to see. ‘It looks violent,’ she said finally.

Bryant made a small noise of assent beside her. He had his handkerchief out and was pretending to blow his nose.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said O’Neill. ‘Apart from the throat. The river really knocks them about, the birds get at them. And then in summer things happen more quickly.’

‘Where was he found?’

‘Up near HMS
Belfast
, by London Bridge. But that doesn’t mean anything either. He could have gone into the river anywhere from Richmond to Woolwich.’

‘Any idea how long he’s been in the water?’

O’Neill cocked his head on one side as if he were doing some mental arithmetic. ‘He was floating. So we’re looking at a week. No more than ten days, the way he is.’

‘That’s not much help.’

‘It’s a good way of getting rid of a body,’ said O’Neill. ‘Much better than burying it.’

‘Was there anything in his pockets?’

‘No wallet, no phone, no keys, not even a handkerchief. No watch.’

‘So you’ve got nothing?’

‘You mean
you
’ve got nothing. He’s your baby now. But, yeah, there is something. Look at his wrist.’

Hussein pulled on her plastic gloves and bent across the corpse. There was a faint sweet smell she didn’t want to think about. Around the left wrist there was a plastic band. She lifted it gently. ‘It’s the sort of thing you get in hospital.’

‘That’s what we thought. And it looks like it’s got his name on it.’

She leaned right down close. The writing was faint, barely legible. She had to spell it out for herself, letter by letter. ‘Klein,’ she said. ‘Dr F. Klein.’

They waited for the van to arrive, gazing out over the river glinting in the late-afternoon sun. The rain had cleared and the sky was a pale blue, streaked with rose-coloured clouds.

‘I wish it hadn’t happened on a Friday,’ said Bryant.

‘That’s the way of things.’

‘It’s my favourite day, usually. It’s like an extra bit of the weekend.’

Hussein snapped her gloves off. She was thinking about the arrangements she would have to cancel, her daughters’ crestfallen faces, Nick’s resentment. He would try to hide it, which would make it worse. At the same time she was running through the list of tasks that lay ahead, sorting them into priorities. It was always like this at the start of a case.

‘I’ll go with the van to the morgue. You find out who this Dr Klein is and what hospital that tag comes from, if it is a hospital. You’ve got a photo of it.’

Bryant lifted up his phone.

According to the plastic bracelet, Dr Klein’s date of birth was 18 November but they couldn’t make out the year. There were two letters and a series of barely legible digits underneath the name, alongside what looked like a bar code.

‘Missing People,’ said Hussein. ‘Male, middle-aged, reported between five days and two weeks ago.’

‘I’ll call you if I find anything.’

‘Call me anyway.’

‘I meant that, of course.’

The plastic ID came from the King Edward Hospital, in Hampstead. Bryant called them and was put through a
series of departments until he ended up with an assistant in the executive medical director’s office. He was told very firmly that he would have to come in person with his request before they gave out personal information about staff or patients.

So he drove there, up the hill in thick rush-hour traffic, hot and impatient. It could almost have been quicker to walk: he should buy a scooter, he thought, or a motorbike. In the medical director’s office, a thin woman in a red suit carefully checked his ID and he repeated what it was he wanted, showing her the image on his phone.

‘I thought it must be someone who works here.’

The woman looked unimpressed. ‘Those wristbands are for patients, not for staff.’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’

‘The staff wear laminated passes.’

‘I’m more interested in this one.’

He was asked to wait. The minute hand on the large clock on the wall jerked forward. He felt sweaty and soiled, and kept picturing the bloated, waterlogged thing that had once been a man. The woman returned holding a printout.

‘The patient was admitted here three years ago,’ she said. ‘As an emergency.’ She looked down at the paper. ‘Lacerations. Stab wounds. Nasty.’

‘Three years ago?’ Bryant frowned and spoke almost to himself. ‘Why would he still be wearing his hospital ID?’

‘It wasn’t a he. The patient was a woman. Dr Frieda Klein.’

‘Do you have an address?’

‘Address, phone number.’

Hussein felt a small twitch of memory. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

‘I don’t have a clue. Shall I call her?’

‘Yes. Ask her to come to the morgue.’

‘To identify the body? I hope she’s up for that.’

Hussein stood outside the forensics suite eating a bag of crisps and watched Frieda Klein following the officer down the windowless corridor. She was probably the same kind of age as Hussein herself, but taller, and dressed in grey linen trousers and a high-necked white T-shirt. Her nearly black hair was piled on top of her head. She walked swiftly and lightly, but Hussein noticed there was a slight drag to her gait, like that of a wounded dancer. As she got closer, she saw that the woman’s face, devoid of make-up, was pale. Her eyes were very dark and Hussein felt that she was not just being looked at but scrutinized.

‘Dr Frieda Klein.’

‘Yes.’

As Hussein introduced herself and Bryant, she tried to assess the woman’s mood. She remembered what Bryant had said after he had spoken to her:
Dr Klein didn’t seem that surprised
.

‘You might find this distressing.’

The woman nodded. ‘He had my name on his wrist?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

The morgue was harshly lit and silent and very cold. There was the familiar smell, rancid and antiseptic, that caught in the back of the throat.

They stopped in front of the slab. The shape was covered with a white sheet.

‘Ready?’

She nodded once more. The morgue attendant stepped forward and drew back the sheet. Hussein didn’t look at the body, but at Frieda Klein’s face. Her expression didn’t alter, not even a tightening of the jaw. She stared intently and leaned closer, unblinking. Her eyes travelled down to the gaping wound at the neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t tell.’

‘Perhaps it would help to see the clothes that he was found in.’

They were on a shelf, folded into transparent plastic bags. One by one, Hussein lifted them down for inspection. A sodden dark shirt. Grey trousers. Those heavy leather shoes, whose laces were blue and double-knotted. Hussein heard a tiny intake of breath beside her. For an instant, the expression on Frieda Klein’s face had altered, like a landscape that had darkened and chilled. She curled one hand slightly, as if she were about to lift it to touch the bag that contained the shoes. She turned back towards the terrible body and stood quite upright, staring down.

‘I know who this is,’ she said. Her voice was soft and calm. ‘This is Sandy. Alexander Holland. I know him by his shoes.’

‘You’re quite sure?’ asked Hussein.

‘I know him by his shoes,’ Frieda Klein repeated.

‘Dr Klein, are you all right?’

‘I am, thank you.’

‘Have you any idea why he was wearing your old hospital ID round his wrist?’

She looked at Hussein and then back at the corpse. ‘We used to be in a relationship. A long time ago.’

‘But not now.’

‘Not now.’

‘I see,’ said Hussein, neutrally. ‘I’m grateful to you. This can’t be easy. Obviously, we’ll need all the details you can give us about Mr Holland. And your details too, so we can contact you again.’

She gave a slight tip of her head. Hussein had the impression she was making the greatest effort to keep herself under control.

‘He was murdered?’

‘As you see, his throat has been cut.’

‘Yes.’

When she left, after they had taken her details, Hussein turned to Bryant. ‘There’s something odd about her.’

Bryant was hungry and he was in need of a smoke. He stood on the balls of his feet, then subsided again. ‘She was calm. I’ll give her that.’

‘Her reaction when she saw the shoes – it was strange.’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. We need to keep an eye on her, though.’

When Alexander Holland’s sister opened the door, Hussein noticed several things at the same time. That Elizabeth Rasson was getting ready to go out: she was wearing a lovely blue dress but no shoes and she had a flustered air, as if she’d been interrupted. That there was a child crying somewhere in the house, and a man’s voice soothing it. That she was tall, dark-haired, rather striking in an angular kind of way, and that Bryant, standing just behind her, was stiffly upright, like a soldier on parade. She felt that he was holding his breath, waiting for her to say the words that would change this woman’s life.

‘Elizabeth Rasson?’

‘What is it? It’s really not a good time. We’re on our way out.’ She glanced beyond them, down the street, letting out an exasperated sigh.

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Hussein. This is my colleague Detective Constable Bryant.’ And they both held out their IDs.

Moments like this always got Hussein between the shoulder blades and in the thickening of the throat. However calm she felt and prepared she was, it never became automatic, just part of the job, to look into a person’s face and tell them that someone they loved was dead. She had come here straight from this woman’s brother, lying swollen and decomposing on the slab.

‘Police?’ the woman said. Her eyes narrowed. ‘What’s this about?’

‘You’re the sister of Alexander Holland?’

‘Sandy? Yes. What’s happened to him?’

‘Can we come in?’

‘Why? Is he in trouble?’

Say it plainly, clearly, with no room left for doubt: that’s what they had all been told during training, many years ago now. That was what she did, each time, looking into the person’s eyes and telling them without a quaver that someone they had known, perhaps loved, had died.

‘I’m very sorry to tell you that your brother is dead, Mrs Rasson.’

Suddenly Elizabeth Rasson looked bewildered. Her face screwed up in an expression that was almost comic, cartoonish.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Hussein said gently.

‘I don’t understand. It’s not possible.’

Behind them, a young woman came running along the pavement and in through the gate to the front garden. Her ponytail was crooked and her round cheeks flushed.

‘I’m sorry, Lizzie,’ she gasped. ‘The bus. Friday evening. I got here as quickly as I could.’

Hussein gestured sharply at Bryant, who stepped forward and took her by the arm, steering her away from the front door.

‘We were supposed to be going out,’ said Lizzie Rasson. Her voice was dull. ‘To dinner with friends.’

‘Can I come in for a minute?’

‘Dead, you say? Sandy?’

Hussein led her into the living room.

‘Will you sit down?’

But Lizzie Rasson remained standing in the middle of the room. Her attractive face had taken on a bony, vacant look. Upstairs the child’s screaming got louder and higher, piercing enough to break glass; Hussein could picture the furious red face.

‘How did he die? He was healthy. He went running most days.’

‘Your brother’s body was found in the Thames earlier today.’

‘In the Thames? Sandy drowned? But he was a good swimmer. Why was he in the river anyway?’

Hussein paused. ‘His throat was cut.’

Suddenly the crying stopped. The room filled with silence. Lizzie Rasson looked around her as if she were searching for something; her blank gaze drifted across furniture, books, family photographs. Then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said assertively. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I know this is a terrible shock, but there are questions we need to ask you.’

‘His throat?’

‘Yes.’

Lizzie Rasson sat down heavily in one of the armchairs, her long legs splayed. She looked suddenly clumsy. ‘How do you know it’s him? It could be someone else.’

‘He has been identified.’

‘Identified by whom?’

‘Dr Frieda Klein.’

Hussein was watching Lizzie Rasson’s face as she spoke. She saw the involuntary flinch, the tightening of the mouth.

‘Frieda. Poor Sandy,’ she said, but softly, as if to herself. ‘Poor, poor Sandy.’

They heard footsteps running down the stairs and a solid, open-faced man with reddish hair came into the room.

‘You’ll be glad to know he’s asleep at last. Was that Shona at the door?’ he said, then saw Hussein, saw his wife’s stricken face, stopped in his tracks.

‘Sandy’s dead.’ Saying the words seemed to make them true for the first time. Lizzie Rasson lifted a hand to her face, held it against her mouth, then her cheek. ‘She says his throat was cut.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said her husband. He put a hand against the wall as if to steady himself. ‘He was killed? Sandy?’

‘That’s what she says.’

He crossed the room and squatted beside the chair in which she was sprawled, lifting both her slim hands in his large, broad-knuckled ones and holding them tightly. ‘Are they certain?’

She gave a strangled, angry sob. ‘Frieda identified him.’

‘Frieda,’ he said. ‘Jesus, Lizzie.’

His arm was round her shoulders now and her blue dress was crumpled. Tears were gathering in her eyes and starting to roll down her cheeks.

‘I know.’ She gave a gulp, swiped her wrist under her nose.

He turned to Hussein at last. ‘You don’t need to believe everything that woman tells you,’ he said. His pleasant face had hardened. ‘Why did she identify him, anyway?’

Bryant entered the room and stood beside Hussein; by smell, she knew he had smoked a cigarette before coming back in again. He hated things like this.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Hussein. ‘But there are questions we need to ask you, and the sooner we do so the better for the investigation.’

She looked at the couple. It wasn’t clear if they understood what was being said to them. Bryant had taken out his notebook.

‘First of all, can you confirm your brother’s full name, date of birth and current address – and can you tell us the last time that you saw him?’

By the time they left the Rassons’ house, the sky was dark although the air was still soft and warm against their skin.

‘What do we know?’ asked Hussein, climbing into the car.

Bryant took a large bite from the sandwich he’d bought. Tuna mayonnaise, thought Hussein – that was what he always had, that or chicken and pesto.

‘We know,’ she continued, not waiting for him to answer, ‘that Alexander Holland was forty-two years old, that he was an academic at King George’s and his subject was neurology. He came back from the US a couple of years ago after a brief stint there. He lived in a flat off the Caledonian Road.’

She held up the key that Lizzie Rasson had given them.

‘That he lives alone. That he has no regular partner, as far as his sister knows. That she last saw him eleven days ago, on Monday, June the ninth, when he seemed much as usual. That his throat was cut left to right, so it’s likely we’re looking for a right-hander, and he was found floating in the Thames. No indication of where the body entered the water. That he has been dead a week minimum, so that gives us a window of possibility, from June the tenth, or even late on the ninth, to Friday, June the thirteenth.’

‘Unlucky for some,’ put in Bryant.

Hussein ignored this. ‘That he was found on Friday, June the twentieth. That, according to his sister, he has many friends and no enemies. The last of which cannot be true.’

She held out her hand and Bryant handed her his sandwich. She took a bite from it and gave it back. Her phone vibrated in her pocket but she didn’t take it out: it was probably one of her daughters and would make her feel guilty and distracted.

‘Anything else?’ she went on.

‘They don’t like Frieda Klein much.’