Waiting for Wednesday (11 page)

Fearby sat opposite Conley as he had so many times before. Conley had become so fat that his bloodshot eyes almost disappeared in the fleshy slits in his face. He compulsively
scratched at the top of his left hand. Fearby made himself smile. Everything was good. They were winning. They should both be happy.

‘Did Diana come to see you?’ he asked.

Diana McKerrow was the solicitor who had taken over Conley’s case for the latest appeal. At first Fearby had worked closely with her. After all, he had known more about the case than anyone else in the world. He knew the weak links, all the people involved. But as the case had proceeded, she had stopped phoning him. She had been harder to reach. Fearby tried not to mind. What mattered was the result, wasn’t it? That was what he told himself.

‘She phoned,’ said Conley, never quite looking Fearby in the face.

‘Did she tell you about the appeal?’ Fearby spoke slowly, separating each word, as if he was talking to a small child.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘It’s all good news,’ said Fearby. ‘They’ve got the details of the illegal interview.’ Conley’s expression didn’t change. ‘When the police picked you up, they didn’t interview you properly. They didn’t warn you. They didn’t explain things the way they should have done. They didn’t pay attention to your …’ Fearby paused. At the next table a man and a woman were facing each other, not speaking. ‘Your special needs,’ said Fearby. ‘That’s enough on its own to quash the conviction. But added to the details of your alibi that the prosecution suppressed …’

Fearby stopped. He could see from the blank look in Conley’s eyes that he had lost his attention.

‘You don’t need to get bogged down in the details,’ said Fearby. ‘I just wanted to come and say to you that I know what you’ve gone through all these years. All that stuff, all that shit. I don’t know how you did it. But you just need to
hang on a bit longer, be strong, and it’ll all come right. You hear what I’m saying?’

‘Coming right,’ said Conley.

‘There’s something else,’ said Fearby. ‘I wanted to say that it’s good, but it’ll be hard as well. When someone gets paroled, they prepare them for months. They take you out on visits, you know, walks in the park, trips to the seaside. Then, when you’re on the outside, you get to stay in a halfway house and they check up on you. You’ve heard that, haven’t you?’ Conley nodded. Fearby couldn’t make out if he was really following what he was saying. ‘But it won’t be like that for you. If the appeal court quashes your conviction, you’ll just walk free that minute, straight out the door. It’ll be difficult. You should be prepared for that.’

Fearby waited for a reaction, but Conley just seemed puzzled. ‘I just came up here today to tell you that I’m your friend. Like I’ve always been. When you’re out, you might want to tell your story. A lot of people would be interested in what you’ve been through. It’s an old-fashioned tragedy-and-triumph story. I know about these things and you’ll want to put your own side of the story because if you don’t people will do it for you. I can help you with that. I’ve been telling your story right from the beginning, when no one else would believe you. I’m your friend, George. If you want help telling your story, I can do that for you.’ Fearby paused, but the reaction still didn’t come. ‘Are you all right for things at the moment? Anything I can get you?’

Conley shrugged. Fearby said goodbye and that he’d be in touch. In the old days he would have driven home however late it was, but since his wife had left him and the children had gone, he usually made a day of it. People joked about the hotels at motorway service stations, but they suited him. He’d got a cheap deal at this one. Thirty-two pounds fifty.
Free parking. Coffee and tea in the room. A colour TV. Clean. Except for the paper flap across the toilet bowl, there was no sign that anyone else had ever been in there.

He had the usual luggage. His little suitcase. His laptop. And the bag with the files. The real files were back at home. They filled most of his office. These were the ones he needed for reference: the basic names and numbers and facts, a few photos and statements. As always, his first action was to take the purple pending file from the bag and open it on the little desk next to the colour TV. While the miniature white plastic kettle was starting to heat up, he took a new sheet of lined paper, wrote the date and time of the meeting at the top and noted everything that had been said.

When he had finished, he made himself a cup of instant coffee and removed a biscuit from its plastic wrapping. It was then that he remembered his first visit to Conley at Mortlemere. ‘This is the beginning,’ he’d said, ‘not the end.’ He looked at the file. He thought of the room full of files at home. He thought of his marriage, the squabbles, the silences and then the ending. It had seemed sudden, but it turned out that Sandra had been planning it for months, finding a new flat, talking to a solicitor. ‘What will you do when it ends?’ she had said – referring not to their marriage but to this case, in the days when they still talked of such things. It was more like an accusation than a question. Because there never really were endings. He’d been thinking he could produce a new edition of his book if Conley was released. But it felt wrong now. The book was just negatives: why this hadn’t happened, why that wasn’t true, why this was misleading.

The question now was different and new: if George Conley hadn’t killed Hazel Barton, who had?

ELEVEN

‘Northern countries,’ said Josef. ‘They all drink the same.’

‘What do you mean, drink the same?’

Josef was driving Frieda in his old van. They were on the way to Islington because Olivia had rung in a near-hysterical state to say that the washbasin in the upstairs bathroom had been ripped off the wall during the party and she needed it repaired. Urgently. And she was never, ever going to have teenagers in her house again. Josef had agreed to abandon the bathroom briefly to help Olivia. Frieda felt strangely torn in her emotional reaction. There was Josef taking a break from doing up her bathroom for nothing in order to help her sister-in-law. Not for nothing: Frieda would insist on that, if she had to pay for it herself. At the same time he was constantly in her house, which had stopped being her own. And each time she looked at what once had been her bathroom, its state seemed to be getting worse rather than better.

‘In the south, they drink wine and stay upright. In the north they drink clear liquid and fall down.’

‘You mean they drink to get drunk.’

‘Forget cares, lose sorrow, escape darkness.’

Josef swerved to avoid a man who stepped blithely out into the road, his ears encased in giant yellow headphones.

‘So, at this party, were there lots of people drinking clear liquid and falling down?’

‘They learn too young.’ Josef gave a huge, sentimental sigh. ‘The recovery position.’

‘That sounds ominous.’

‘No. no. This is just life. People fight, people dance, people kiss and hold, people talk about dreams, people break things, people are sick.’

‘All in a few hours.’

‘Chloë, she did not have such a good time.’

‘Really?’

‘She kept trying to clear the mess. No one should clear the mess before the party is over. Except for broken glass.’

Josef drew up outside Olivia’s house and they got out of the van. Olivia opened the door before Frieda rang. She was wearing a man’s dressing-gown and her face was tragic.

‘I just had to go to bed,’ she said. ‘Everything’s such a mess.’

‘It was quite a mess before,’ said Frieda. ‘You said you wouldn’t notice a bit extra.’

‘I was wrong. It’s not only the washbasin. My blue lamp is broken. My wheelbarrow is broken because they tried to see how many people could fit in it and still be moved – that, apparently, was your friend Jack’s idea. How old is he? I thought he was an adult, not a toddler. And my nice coat has disappeared, Kieran’s favourite hat he left before he went away has a cigarette burn in the crown.’ Kieran was her mild and patient boyfriend – or perhaps her ex. ‘The neighbours have complained about all the bottles dumped in their gardens and the noise, and someone has peed into my ornamental orange tree in the hall.’

‘I will fix the washbasin anyway,’ said Josef. ‘And perhaps the wheelbarrow too.’

‘Thank you,’ said Olivia, fervently.

‘Don’t let him take the washbasin away,’ said Frieda.

‘What?’

‘Is a joke,’ said Josef. ‘Is a joke against me by Frieda.’

‘I’m sorry, Josef, I didn’t mean that.’ She looked at the wheelbarrow. ‘How many did it hold?’

Olivia gave a shaky giggle. ‘Something ludicrous, like seven. Standing up. It’s lucky nobody got themselves killed.’

Although it was days later, the floor was still sticky underfoot. Pictures hung lopsidedly on the wall. There was the sweet smell of alcohol in the air, and Frieda saw dirty smudges on the paintwork and grime on the stair carpets.

‘It’s like one of those children’s picture books: spot the hidden object,’ said Olivia, pointing at a glass inside a shoe. ‘I keep finding unspeakable things.’

‘You mean condoms?’ asked Josef.

‘No! Oh, God, what happened that I don’t know about?’

‘No, no, is all right. I go on up.’ He bounded up the stairs, carrying his bag.

‘Let’s have something to drink,’ said Olivia, leading the way into the kitchen. ‘Sorry! I didn’t know you were back from school.’

Chloë was sitting at the table, and opposite her was a gangly, dishevelled figure: a mop of greasy, dark-blond hair, feet in trainers with the laces undone, jeans sliding down his skinny frame. He turned his head and Frieda saw a thin, pallid face, hollow eyes. He looked bruised and wrung-out. Ted: the boy she had last seen retching over the toilet bowl. The boy who had just lost his mother. He met her gaze and a hectic blush mottled his cheeks. He muttered something incoherent and slumped further over the table with his face half hidden by one hand. Nails bitten to the quick. A little tattoo – or probably an ink drawing – on his thin wrist.

‘Hello, Frieda,’ said Chloë. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. It’s not chemistry today, you know.’

‘I’m here with Josef.’

‘The washbasin.’

‘Yes.’

‘It must have been loose anyway. It just came away.’

‘Because two people sat on it!’ Olivia lowered her voice. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’

Chloë looked embarrassed. ‘This is Ted. Ted, my mum.’

Ted squinted up at Olivia and managed a hello. Olivia marched up to him, grabbed his limp, unwilling hand and shook it firmly. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘I keep telling Chloë she should bring friends home. Especially handsome young men like you.’

‘Mum! That’s why I don’t.’

‘Ted doesn’t mind. Do you, Ted?’

‘And this is Frieda,’ said Chloë, hastily. ‘She’s my aunt.’ She cast a beseeching glance at Frieda.

‘Hello.’ Frieda nodded at him. If it were possible, he turned even more crimson and stuttered something incoherent. She could see that he wanted to run and hide from the woman who’d seen him vomiting – weeping too.

‘Shall we go to my room?’ Chloë asked Ted, and he slid off the chair, a raw-boned, awkward, self-conscious young man, all angles and sharp edges.

‘I heard about your mother,’ Frieda said. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’

She felt Olivia stiffen. Ted stared at her, his pupils enormous. Chloë picked up one of his hands and held it between her own to comfort him. For a moment he seemed stranded in his emotions, unable to move or speak.

‘Thank you,’ he said at last. ‘It’s just … Thanks.’

‘I hope you’re all receiving proper help.’

‘What?’ hissed Olivia, as Chloë led Ted from the room, glancing back over her shoulder with bright eyes. ‘Is that –’

‘Her friend whose mother was killed. Yes.’

Olivia’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘I didn’t make the connection. Poor boy. Poor, poor boy. What a dreadful thing. He’s quite attractive, isn’t he, in a grungy kind of way? Do
you think Chloë’s in love with him? What a calamity. I mean what happened to him. At such an age, too. Just think of it! Let’s have that drink.’

Billy Hunt stared up at Karlsson. His eyes were bloodshot and he was twitchier and thinner than ever, but he wasn’t budging.

Karlsson sighed. ‘You’re making life hard for us and hard for yourself. You’ve admitted breaking and entering; the stolen items have been traced back to you; the murder weapon with your prints all over it, and Mrs Lennox’s blood, has been found. Just admit what you did.’

‘Unless I didn’t do it.’

‘The jury won’t believe you.’ Karlsson stood up. His head felt tight with weariness and irritation. Now his team would have to trawl through the evidence to put a watertight case together. The time he wanted to be spending with his children, Bella and Mikey, would be spent instead examining statements, going through the house again, talking to expert witnesses, making sure the correct procedures had been followed.

‘Wait.’

‘What now?’

‘I wanted to say – there is somewhere I went just before.’

‘Before?’

‘Before … you know.’

‘Tell me anyway.’